Ognissanti all'Isola di San Michele

Free vaporetto boats connected Cannaregio to Isola di San Michele during the weekend of All Saints (1 November in Catholic countries). People were carrying huge bouquets of crysanthemums to replace the artificial flowers on the graves. Isola di San Michele is Venetians' cemetery where the people of La Serenissima have found their last place of rest ever since Napoleon ordered the island to be used for this purpose.

Once again, without flowers, I was an outsider in the flow of Venetians cleaning their family graves and ordering flowers. Somehow I always find myself in places where I feel a bit like an intruder. Especially in Venice, where people must hope that at least with death they will have peace from the tourists occupying the city by millions every year (18 millions to be exact). However, in 'the island of death', the Saturday before Ognissanti was busy. In Finland, candles are lit in the cemeteries in memory of the dead ones, but in Italy, as the weather permits, graveyard is decorated with flowers.

Cemetery of San Michele stores the graves efficiently in many floors...

I find cemeteries an interesting cultural destination in different countries. I have done the usual tourist paths in search of the graves of Jim Morrison (Come on baby light my fire) and Édith Piaf (Je ne regrette rien) in Père-Lachaise in Paris and marvelled the huge burial monuments in Buenos Aires' La Recoleta (Don't cry for me Argentina by the grave of Eva Perón). I have been amazed by the kitch decoration of a cemetary in Punta Arenas, in Chilean Patagonia. And by kitch, I mean plastic Santa Claus puppets and Christmas lights behind the glass vitrines (this was in January). In front of our high school, we looked inspiration for creative writing from the age-old grave stones from the 18th century. In Warsaw, I witnessed the collapsed stones and rampant plants in a Jewish cemetery. In Mostar, I was saddened by disproportionately many graves from the beginning of the 1990s, young and old Bosnians alike. In Normandy, I visited the American cemetery full of simple white crosses, soldiers of 20 years old from Ohio, California and Minnesota, so far from home. You can't think of any excuses or reasons for wars in Verdun, where in the ossuary rest the remains of 130 000 French and German unknown soldiers from the battle of 1916. You can't visit a cemetery without a little thought for all the dead ones that lie below the ground (or in the little walls as in Venice) and that's why it is probably so intriguing visit, home or abroad.

In the cemetery of San Michele you can find only a few "famous" graves: one of Ezra Pound and the other one of Igor Stravinsky (I spotted the two of them). However, even without some famous graves or monuments to look for, I was quite dazzled by the place: walls filled with name tags and photos, family graves decorated with mosaics of the family head (like the one above) and completely destroyed tomb stones. And then, the three crosses of a Norwegian ambassador's family (below); the daughter died at the age of thirty and the parents a bit later. Nobody took care of these graves long forgotten. "But still", I thought, "if I can choose, I want to die in Venice" (but not drowning in the waves of the turquoise lagoon).