An open window in a blues club

The little bar near where we were staying in Venice had a blues band playing last night. Joe and I stopped in and enjoyed how the lead singer explained each song in Italian - getting the names almost right: Johnny Hooker, Sony Boy Williams, Little Richard in place of Little Walter) and then singing in flawless bluesy American English. We found a spot inside next to an open window, with people on the other side listening, drinking and smoking. As is often the case, we were observers, too timid to interact with the people around us. Finally, though, my curiosity got the best of me as I watched the young students hand-rolling perfect cigarets. I asked for a demonstration and the young lady summoned a young man, who was the expert of the group who had taught the others. He was a German architecture student, studying in Vienna along with his friends, who were Romanians. They had all taken an eight-hour bus ride down to Venice to attend the architectural exposition - the Biennial. Josef, the German, had led them to this bar and they would soon board a bus for the eight hour return trip. He let us try our hands at rolling a cigaret - hold the filter (he had a little bag of them) in your mouth, spead some tobacco evenly on the rolling paper with the glue strip away from you leaving room for the filter on the right, squeeze and roll the paper back and forth until the tobacco is compressed into a cylinder, then start rolling from bottom to top, inserting the filter as you go, just before you finish, lick the glue strip and squeeze to all together. Then we stepped outside to the smokers' side of the window to enjoy our cigarets with our new friends (who had to help us light them in the breeze). Promising to give up smoking after that night, we enjoyed our tutorial and were glad that we decided to not just stand and watch, but to talk with someone on the other side of an open window.