Archive for Problems
It’s summertime, and the time is right for doing something idiotic
Posted by: | CommentsPreposterous, ludicrous, and any other “ous”ly things that come to mind can happen all year long. But either the summer seems to produce more of them, like tomatoes and zucchini, or we’re more in the mood to read about them.
Here are some tidbits from the recent past, as reported by the faithful Gazzettino:
“THE FAMILY JEWELS IN THE BADANTE’S CAKE”
(Note: A “badante” is a paid caretaker, usually living with a little old person in need of assistance. They are mostly women, and mostly from Eastern European countries, not that that matters particularly to this or any other story).
“They wanted a piece of cake and instead they found a treasure. Too bad the treasure was already theirs and the cake was destined for somebody else. This is the grotesque misadventure of two residents of Castello, a mother and daughter, in what was supposed to be an ordinary domestic afternoon.
These ladies aren't in need of a badante yet. Maybe they're discussing alternatives, like having more children.
The culprit was a 50-year-old Polish woman who has been living in the district for some years….
“She seemed like a good person [said the daughter]; she stayed with my mother all day, sometimes she even spent the night. I trusted her completely from the very first; she did the shopping and cooking, and would take my mother out for walks.”
But one day the badante asked for money to buy the ingredients for two apple-cakes she wanted to make — one for the family, and one to send to her own people back in Poland. And so the cakes were made, and one was sent off to Poland.
The following afternoon — the badante’s day off — the mother and daughter decided to taste the cake…..which turned out to be fairly difficult to cut. ”It seemed like cement,” said the daughter.
Then the discovery: In place of the apples, the cake was full of her mother’s jewelry, necklaces and rings of gold. ”There was even my baptism necklace.”
The other cake had been sent to Poland by mistake.
It was an exquisite plan — the only thing lacking was execution. After all, there were only two cakes — it’s not as if there were hundreds to keep track of, like M&Ms. Anyway, that was the scene: What a lovely cake, let’s have tea and a large piece. The daughter takes the knife and cuts into it. Crunch. (Crunch?) And out come her mother’s 18-karat bibelots. Like party favors, only, you know, not. Not at all. I’m not sure how you say “D’oh!” in Polish, but the badante is probably going to be saying it for quite a while. If not to herself, to her folks back home who cut into their cake, imagining all the things they were going to buy with the money arriving via Betty Crocker, and who came up with nothing but jam and chopped walnuts.
I’m not sure which scene I’d rather have witnessed: The cutting of the wrong cake (either one), or the unsuspecting badante’s return home that evening. Not to mention the phone call from her family.
A tooth in the lung is no more mysterious than this wall, which someone decided was the perfect place to stick Chiquita banana labels. I'm thinking it's some kind of secret signal. The fact that some have been partially removed is extremely suspicious.
“A TOOTH IN HER LUNGS MAKES HER SUFFER FOR 24 YEARS”
“Instead of swallowing it, which would have been simpler, luck would have it that the little girl unconsciously inhaled her milk-tooth molar, which had come loose, at the age, presumably, of 10 or 11. She didn’t realize [that she had done this], but soon afterward began to complain of a pain in her lungs. It would come and go, more or less frequently, more or less intensely, up until a few days ago. Today the little girl is a 34-year-old woman, married and the mother of two children. And by chance the other day, the pain having returned, she had a bronchioscopy and the cause was discovered: a milk tooth. An intervention at the hospital at Dolo [16 miles from Venice], one good cough, and out came the tooth which had caused so much pain for so long.”
What makes me wonder about this woman isn’t that she inhaled her tooth — I suppose it could happen to anyone. What I can’t grasp is that she lived 24 years without investigating further. Did she think everybody has a pain in their lung? Did she never wonder about it at all? Or does it take that long to get an appointment at the radiologist? And if one of her children had a pain in his/her lung, would she have just said “Suck it up” (sorry) and leave it at that? I couldn’t put up with 24 years of anything, if I didn’t know what it was. Evidently curiosity went to Dolo to die.
“130 CITATIONS FOR TWO BARRELS”
There is a very cool restaurant in the Campiello del Remer, not far from the Rialto Bridge. It’s called Taverna Campiello del Remer and I can remember when this campo was pretty desolate. So I was glad to see that improvements began to be made a few years ago by unseen hands. The main accomplishment was the fixing-up of a brick vaulted former warehouse (it would appear to have been) to become this congenial little eatery. But there is no joy in the Campiello del Remer, because the police won’t stop giving the restaurant owner summonses.
This is the entrance to the restaurant. The two barrels are usually within the arch somewhere. This little patch of pavement doesn't appear to be public, but what do I know.
The nub of the problem is that commercial enterprises which occupy public space (think cafe tables on the sidewalk), have to pay a special tax. The space they are allowed to occupy is measured out and a record of these dimensions is kept in one of the city offices.
Emilio Farinon and Angela Cook, owners of the joint, put two big old wooden barrels (closed at both ends) outside the entrance. These barrels were intended to be useful as little tables where people could put their drinks and their ashtrays, much better than putting this stuff all over the ancient marble wellhead in the courtyard.
But somebody in the Campiello del Remer objects to the casks and has decided they must be removed because they are occupying public space illegally. (It’s really heartwarming to find that there is someone who takes the letter of the law so seriously around here. I wonder what they do for fun?). And so this person has taken to calling the police to come write out summonses for the alleged violation. This has happened 130 times in one year.
But not so fast, says Giorgio Suppiej, the owners’ lawyer. This is persecution, and a baseless one, because the square inches of soil upon which the hogsheads are sitting isn’t public, but private. So the summonses have no validity.
To demonstrate this fact, Suppiej has shown the Comune as well as the Court the Napoleonic Cadastre, the first ever to document the property limits of every building in the city. Suppiej then compared it to the subsequent version, and finally the one that is current today. ”In all of the maps,” he says, “the space, which is under a staircase, is shown as private.
“Furthermore, the Comune can’t say the space is public; we previously asked the Comune to grant the plateatico [authorization to use public space], a request which was rejected because the space is under a staircase, a rejection which was suspect because other spaces beneath a sottoportico [passageway under a house] have been granted the plateatico, and anyway, this isn’t a sottoportico, but a sottoscala [under a staircase].”
Speaking of occupying public space, I still haven't figured out who this little clan might have been, or why they felt the need to set up a makeshift playroom outside the Accademia gallery. It seemed to be on its way to becoming a small habitation, like something out of the Dust Bowl days. If they got a citation, I wasn't around to see it.
A city councilor, Renato Boraso, has added his booming notes to the chorus, and asked the mayor to justify what Boraso regards as the “excessive zeal” of the municipal police. [Didn't know they were prone to attacks of zeal, much less excessive ones. This is heartening indeed.]
“One hundred thirty citations isn’t something to underestimate,” he says. ”…It’s time to put an end to this persecution — we’ve reached administrative insanity and I’m going to ask for all the documentation and then send it to the Accounting office. The city is going to have to justify all the hours which the police have spent on pursuing the complaint of a private citizen who evidently knows somebody at City Hall, distracting them from their public duties.
“Furthermore, it appears to me that the night that those vandals tried to set fire to Marino, the old derelict, the police were in the office writing out their usual photocopied report on this.” I like this, not only because it shows the vivid contrast in importance between an attempt on someone’s life and a bureaucratic technicality, but because it implies that there were only two police on duty that night in the entire city. But I mustn’t get distracted.
Ernesto Pancin, head of the merchants’ association, also sees some anomalies in this conflict. ”I believe that businessmen ought to be rewarded, not punished, for their tenacity. In the case of the Campiello del Remer, before a business was established there, there were only drug addicts. I can guarantee that there are other cases which are flagrantly illegal but which inexplicably go unpunished.”
The Battle of the Barrels may, with all this publicity, have reached a turning point. Perhaps the anonymous protester will turn to pursuits of more evident public value, though I doubt it because this vendetta doesn’t have any significance to anyone but him or her. But if they’re still in the mood for persecution, I have a little list of offenses here that he or she could start on tomorrow. I could help.
There are specific ordinances prohibiting the degradation of the city's aesthetic aspect. But they don't appear to apply to certified works of art, which is what this decrepit boat from the Comoro Islands with its container most certainly is. I know this because it was moored outside the Biennale for months on end, till the boat began to fall apart. Evidently objects fraught with symbolism do not qualify as eyesores under the municipal edicts, while two barrels are intolerable. And isn't the water public space? Did they pay the tax?
Bring flowers, wear a helmet
Posted by: | CommentsIn a city full of special news comes something even more special than usual.
The columbarium at the municipal cemetery on the island of San Michele is aging and deteriorating faster than some of its past and future residents. This means that the dear departed are not resting in much peace anymore, and they’re not going to let you be feel too serene either.
Today the Gazzettino announced: ”If you want to go put some flowers on your loved one’s tomb, you have to wear a helmet.”
Grieving relative takes cover. (Credit: Il Gazzettino).
Yes, lack of money (”no ghe xe schei“) has brought us to this: A cemetery where you have to protect yourself from your relatives even after they’re dead. Three hundred final resting places have become public hazards.
I can hear the helpful advice now, as you set out with your little bunch of chrysanthemums:
“If you’re going to visit Uncle Max today, watch out — he could be throwing bits of rock and cement at your head.”
“He never liked me very much….. “
Veritas, the private agency that oversees the cemetery (and, let it be noted yet again, also disposes of Venetian garbage), says that the necessary funds for repairing the cemetery have been allocated by the Special Fund (money being spent on something that isn’t part of the MOSE floodgate project? Astounding) — but that the money hasn’t been freed-up yet.
“Dig we must.” It takes on new resonance when the guys are drilling and backhoeing around your family. So meanwhile, wear your hard hat. And try to ignore the fact that the stuff that keeps falling on your head will probably not be raindrops. It could be cousin Lola.
MOSE : no happily ever after
Posted by: | CommentsIt’s probably way past everybody’s bedtime, so I’ll wrap up this little philippic.
Imagining momentarily that a satisfactory conclusion could ever be reached in the Gordian convolutions of the “floodgate” project, permit me to make a few very brief observations.
First, let us make a concerted effort to ban all those irresistible emotional words that acqua alta seems to force from journalists’ subconscious. “Venice under siege,” is a common one. CNN said that the high water of December, 2008 had been caused by the Adriatic “bursting its banks.” (Banks? Bursting? Are we in Holland?). The Discovery Channel stated that the high water was “cannibalizing” the city’s buildings (OMG). And on and on. One could smile if this kind of reporting wasn’t cannibalizing common sense.
If the city can't manage to find some money for people, even when we've got MOSE we may no longer have any people. Good thing we have pictures.
When I think about it really calmly, it appears to me that it’s actually impossible for the planners and builders of MOSE to be able to make any promise (guarantee, statement, claim, whatever you like) about their creation that they can prove is accurate.
There are simply too many unknowns in the many different scenarios devoted to its use: How well it will function — that’s the big one – how much its maintenance (routine or extra) will cost, where the money for feeding and caring for it will come from, etc.
Every claim from its proponents is supported so far only by data assembled by them.
Probably the two major areas of concern for its success are:
First: How high the highest tides are likely to become. Some estimates only give MOSE 100 years of usefulness, after which the highest tides will spill over its maximum height. The frequency and duration of these exceptional high tides are also subject to interminable debate. But nobody knows.
I wonder who will hang out the laundry everybody (including me) loves to photograph. Maybe they'll hire somebody.
Second: How well the individual caissons will remain aligned. As I mentioned in my last post, if they begin to lose their perfect uniform surface (even if only one of them doesn’t rise as high as its neighbor, or the seal begins to leak), the strength of the entire “wall” of caissons will be compromised.
I have rowed against the incoming tide at the inlet at San Nicolo, in normal weather with no hint of wind or surge, and it is nowhere near being a joke. If the barrier isn’t perfect, the tide will come in whether MOSE is ready or not.
But let us not be downhearted. Let’s say that the machinery functions perfectly, precisely as planned. Let’s say that exceptional high water occurs ever more frequently. as expected. Let’s say that every prediction is fulfilled, even though there is no way to assume they will be.
Here is the real question: Has Venice been saved from anything except some water in the street for a few hours?
The true inundation, the most implacable and destructive, is the endless tide of tourists. The number increases 3 per cent every year; in 2009 it reached 21 million in an area of about three square miles.
No need to waste any time worrying about the old folks, they'll be gone anyway.
Whether this fact inspires emotion or not, it is more measurable, and predictable, than the inexact, politically driven “science” that has given birth to MOSE.
So let’s say that while assorted interested parties continue to water and fertilize the popular obsession which the press has with acqua alta, some very real problems continue to be neglected.
Young families will continue to move away because they can’t afford Venice (housing, primarily, though lack of jobs is a close second), the older generations eventually die off, and before MOSE has become obsolete the city will be devoid of residents. In their place will be the tsunami of tourists — tended to by merchants who mostly live on the mainland — which will finally render the city completely unliveable.
So even if MOSE performs perfectly, the Venice that has been “saved” will amount to nothing more than a collection of really old buildings, beautiful or not, according to your taste.
If no comparable effort is made to revive and protect the life of Venice, then even if MOSE turns out to be an engineering marvel to rival the invention of the arch, the once-thriving city will be as devoid of life as Machu Picchu.
When that happens, there’s won’t be much point in vilifying MOSE, or bewailing the triumph of politics and fear over basic municipal common sense.
But unfortunately, and perhaps even unwillingly, even the not-so-old will be gone too.
But it seems clear, even now, before the first button is pushed, that if the time, energy, and billions of dollars that will have been spent to hold back the tide had been dedicated to resolving the chronic, debilitating problems that Venice experiences every day, in 50 years there would still be a living city worth saving.
MOSE: yes? no? maybe? don’t know?
Posted by: | CommentsHaving reviewed the barest basics of acqua alta, and the barest technical outlines of the “floodgate” project intended to keep Venice as dry as the Nebraska Sand Hills, I’d better warn you that not everybody is on board.
“This is a way of funneling a huge amount of money to business allies of the government,” a city councilor told The Christian Science Monitor last year. “There are better alternatives but they were never considered. There is a big question mark over whether it will really work.”
So has anybody spoken up? Only thousands of people. The project been protested, sued against, blocked and stalled in all sorts of ways for 30 years (yes: it’s taken three decades to get this thing to where it is today), and even now the arguments pro and con continue to be lobbed back and forth between the opposing believers.
Construction proceeds at the inlet at San Nicolo, the one closest to Venice. The artificial island in the middle, built to accommodate construction equipment, has already affected the tidal flows. It will not be dismantled.
There have been a few times when it appeared that perhaps the project would be annulled for various reasons: lack of money, the bizarre absence of the required Environmental Impact Statement, legal loopholes that kept being found and then quickly closed. But nothing has been able to stop its implacable progression toward completion. It’s like throwing gravel at the Kraken.
By the end of 2009, despite all the myriad stops, starts, and slowdowns, 63 percent of the project had been completed. There isn’t enough money to restore historic palaces and churches which are visible every day, but somehow money has been found to block exceptional high water, an event which might occur four to seven times a year. Or maybe not at all. You may have noticed that the weather is not operated by the Swiss railway system.
But doesn’t everybody in Venice want to save their city from the sea?
In a word: No. At least not everybody in Venice wants this to be the way to tame the tides. In fact, it is difficult to find anyone who is not directly benefiting from the project who thinks it’s a good idea. Quite the contrary.
There are four general categories to which most objections belong. Let’s look at the them:
Political: Not much to say here, because this is a sphere in which nothing is ever resolved. The political fortresses from which accusations have been hurled like stone cannonballs are very well defined: right, left, extreme right, extreme left, and a mass of foot soldiers in the middle with all sorts of commingled ideas. But if you don’t belong to some group, nobody will ever listen to you (not that they listen so much anyway). Only thing is, each group has an agenda which includes lots of other issues as well, so if you join one to reject the MOSE project, you could find yourself on mailing lists as being against a batch of other undertakings as well. Maybe you’re not against those, maybe you don’t even care.
The lagoon has no idea there is a famous city sitting out there somewhere.
Others point out that the Special Law for Venice, by which federal funds are earmarked for the city, specifically authorized interventions to stop pollution and re-establish the morphologic equilibrium of the lagoon. It doesn’t appear that MOSE will satisfy either of those requirements. Au contraire.
Even more important, each side considers it a good day’s work if it has managed to frustrate or thwart the other. No other result is really necessary. This reality is the cholesterol in the political metabolism, hardening and constricting the arteries through which ideas and energy and good will might otherwise have flowed to produce something beneficial to the organism (the city and the lagoon) as a whole.
Economic: Every enormous public work since the Great Pyramid of Cholula (and perhaps even that one) has exceeded its projected cost. The original date of completion was given as 2010. This has now moved to 2014. Hence the costs have also changed. MOSE was budgeted at $4.5 billion, more or less, depending on whose estimates you follow, a number which it has now overtaken without even slowing down to wave. In 2008, the cost had risen to $7 billion.
There is also the cost/benefit aspect to consider. I think it’s fair to say that anyone who is not personally involved would concede that the costs and the benefits of this colossal undertaking do not come anywhere near matching up.
One foreign newspaper reported that $30 million a year is lost in business each time the Piazza San Marco floods (meaning that these 40-some shops can make $30 million in six hours, when the tide is in? Wow…. ). But let’s say acqua alta does cost $30 million, even if that number is cited only by the people who would benefit from the effects of such a prediction.
MOSE, as already mentioned, not only has cost $7 billion by now with 35 percent and two more years to go. Few if any mention is made of the estimated cost of annual maintenance of this behemoth: a mere $11.5 million. Of course, this will be eternal income to the interested parties. The project will be finished, but maintenance is forever.
Plenty of people would like to keep living here, if they could. But to the locals, it can seem like it's one of the great forgotten cities of the world.
But that isn’t the crux of the objections to its price tag. Simply put, it’s that money dedicated to MOSE is lost to anything else.
Stories which focus on the cost/disturbances inflicted by a few hours of water on the ground don’t tend to refer to the financial scorched earth the MOSE project has made of the quality of daily life for everybody everywhere in Venice, not just the shopkeepers around San Marco. Paying for this project, which might bring a temporary benefit to the city a couple of times a year, has deprived the city of the money required for numerous, more humble needs (schools, ambulances, restoration of monuments and private buildings, etc.).
Just about every facility or service which is important to city life, more important than the occasional need to put on the Wellies, has been cut in some way. The administrations’s constant cry “We have no money” tends not to explain why.
Environmental: When UNESCO designated Venice as a World Heritage Site in 1987, it specifically included the entire Venetian lagoon. It is the second-largest wetland in Europe (Europe has lost 2/3 of its wetlands in the last 100 years). It is vital area for plants, fish, and birds, some of which are already endangered. Every year some 200,000 birds winter, nest, or pause here in their twice-yearly migrations. One could make a reasonable case that the lagoon has a value which rivals that of Venice.
Local, national and international environmental groups have raised countless alarms about the effect of this project on the lagoon environment. Prominent among these are the World Wildlife Fund, LIPU (the bird people), RAMSAR (international wetland protection), Italia Nostra, and more, down to a local citizens’ group called simply “NoMose.”
In one of many reports, Italia Nostra summarized its concerns: “The dams will render permanent the Lagoon’s environmental imbalance: The deep channels dredged in the last century through its outlets will become concrete. The erosion that is now eating away the Lagoon’s precious wetlands would become permanent, and this rich coastal lagoon, protected by European law, would be transformed into an area of open sea.”
What is so elegantly called a cavaliere d'Italia (knight of Italy), in English is merely the black-winged stilt. Still beautiful, though.
The deepening of the channels to accommodate the cement frame for the caissons has already intensified the tidal flow — I can see and feel it every day. Faster and stronger tides mean many things: More erosion of the bottom sediments (one of the defining characteristics of a lagoon environment), consequent damage to the eelgrass which serves to anchor the sediment and which provide a habitat for many small marine species, and so on up the chain.
My favorite of many favorite ducks is a wintering species called a "tuffetto" (little diver). Their arrival and departure are parentheses around the winter.
There is also great concern about the physical impact of the materials used, specifically the caissons’ zinc plates (zinc is forbidden by European law) as well as the anti-fouling paint, which contains many toxic chemicals such as TBT compounds, assorted heavy metals, and solvents. Coats of anti-fouling paint have to be periodically renewed, so that will contribute another dose of this stuff to the environment. Damage to the lagoon and the Adriatic is seen as virtually inevitable. I must mention that the builders deny this.
Data and forecasts which justify the project have been questioned by many different sources. Some of the data does not appear anywhere but in the builders’ documents.
Engineering: Plenty of engineers from assorted countries, those who are not directly involved in the project, have always voiced doubts about whether it’s likely to work the way it’s supposed to.
Another perspective on the system, which clearly shows the the caissons fitting snugly together, forming a perfectly even wall. It will be great if nothing shifts or leaks.
Some of their concerns are:
- It has never been completely tested.
- The only positive assessment rendered by an independent panel of engineers was restricted to saying whether the design could function as intended — that is, whether it would work as designed. Virtually all other independent evaluations have been extremely cautious, if not negative. No engineers except the builders, to my knowledge, have risked saying whether it should be built. Maybe that’s not what engineers are supposed to do. UNESCO wrote an analysis in 2003 which concisely evaluated the project’s drawbacks, including the meteorological predictions on which it is based.
- There are discernible aspects of the design which must ALWAYS function PERFECTLY (difficult in a salt-water environment),or they won’t perform the way they’re supposed to. For one thing, there is a high risk of the seal between the caissons not being watertight. If water begins to pass between the caissons, the wall they form could be dangerously compromised (fancy word for “weakened”). If the caissons for any reason do not align perfectly, ditto.
- If for some reason encrustation of any sort remains on the caissons and/or their anchoring hinges (salt-water is great for fostering encrustations of minerals and critters), the barrier may not rise in the manner or at the rate necessary.
- If sea-level increases fulfill the darker prophecies, not only will the caissons have to be used more often and kept in place for longer periods of time than predicted (undergoing stresses for which they were not designed), but eventually their maximum height may not be enough.
- After decades of legal battles, the design was already obsolete before construction even began. Thirty years is an eternity in engineering terms. (Imagine buying a car designed 30 years ago.) Whatever its flaws, it should have been modified or updated in some way by now. But no.
Perhaps most important, critics point out that this titanic construction flouts several principles sacred not only to the hydraulic engineers of the Venetian Republic (not exactly amateurs) but also to commonly-accepted principles of environmental and engineering prudence. Those principles are:
- The project should be gradual, to permit evaluation of the results obtained at each stage and, if necessary, permit changes to the original plan. This obviously isn’t the case here.
- The project should be reversible. MOSE obviously isn’t.
- The project should be experimental. By “experimental” the Special Law clearly intends that a project should be tested experimentally before it is definitely approved and funded and built. That never happened.
How did this project ever get approved?
I can’t swear that I know. Here is what I do know: That the project was assigned to the Consorzio Venezia Nuova, a consortium which the city has exclusively authorized (some have used the word “monopoly”) to intervene in the lagoon. This consortium is made up of more than 20 Italian engineering and construction companies — in a word, businessmen. Scientists who promote or defend the project are often consultants for the consortium.
So here we are. It’s too late to be any use, but I’d like to recall a comment by Wendell Berry, the farmer/writer/environmental critic.
“A good solution to a problem,” he said, “is one which does not create new problems.”
Seems kind of obvious, when you think about it.
Next: How will it all come out?
Acqua alta: MOSE will fix everything
Posted by: | CommentsNow that I have pounded the subject of acqua alta into unconsciousness, you may be wondering if there are any solutions. It’s not unreasonable, I guess, to want to suppose that there could be some action(s) that would limit or even prevent water from inconveniently covering your street, even for only two hours.
Certainly many of the articles which continue to appear, year after year – there must be a workshop in a cave where some crazed Geppetto keeps producing stories on how Venice is being engulfed — tend to make it sound as if Venice’s health and future happiness depends almost exclusively on keeping the water out.
This is not acqua alta, it's just acqua.
So let me urge you, before we continue, to disregard, as far as you can, the drizzle of extravagant statements drenching almost every article about this project. Such as comments by journalists in love with their clever way with words (”…soaked Bruno Maglis have become more the rule than the exception…” You’ve got money for Maglis — or for any kind of shoes – but you haven’t figured out that you can take them off to keep them dry? Wow… And by the way, it isn’t true), or this, by an Italian professor of physical oceanography at MIT: (”"The gates are really the only solution.” Really? The only?), or the claim that high water really, really distresses the old people. All the old people I’ve ever talked to are the ones who make the least fuss about it of anybody.
The good news: There is no lack of useful and feasible ideas on how to limit or prevent high water in the city. In fact, we have been inundated by a plethora of proposals, many of them simple, easy, not damaging to the environment and cheap.
The bad news: Only one solution has been chosen, and it is none of the above. Sometimes referred to as the “floodgate project,” this savior is called MOSE. It is the biggest, most expensive, most drastic, most irreversible, heaviest-impact-on-the-lagoon-as-a-whole solution that anyone could have imagined. I say that because if there were a solution that could have been more drastic and more expensive, they would have picked that one instead.
What is it?
MOSE stands for Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico, or Experimental Electromechanical Module. It consists of a sequence of a total of 79 steel caissons — boxes, really – lying on the lagoon floor, which can be raised to form a wall which will block an exceptional incoming tide.
A view from the Adriatic, looking over the Lagoon and the three "mouths," or inlets, through which the tide comes and goes every six hours. (R to l): San Nicolo, Malamocco, Chioggia.
The Venetian lagoon is enclosed by a long strip of barrier islands which block the Adriatic Sea except at three inlets (called “bocche,” or “mouths”) through which the tide passes every six hours, coming in or going out. This exchange of water is crucial to the lagoon’s ecosystem.
How does it work?
Each of the three “mouths” of the lagoon has been dug to accommodate a concrete frame installed on the bottom and sides of the channel. Attached to this frame, by means of hinges, are the aforementioned 79 metal boxes which normally will lie on the channel bottom, filled with water.
These diagrams show the steps involved. Note that one caption states that there 78 of these caissons; there are 79.
If an exceptional high tide is expected (or more than 110 cm [3 1/2 feet]) above median sea level, the water will be pumped out of the boxes and compressed air pumped in which will cause them to rise up and form a wall preventing the water from entering the lagoon. When the tide subsides, these caissons will be filled with water again and they will return to their dormant state on the inlet floor.
When will it be used?
The job of this colossal construction is to prevent — not just any high tide, but an exceptional one — from reaching the city. The frequency of a tide of this magnitude is predicted by the city as being four times a year.
Therefore, any high water up to 110 cm is going to come ashore just as it always has, and we will continue to break out the boots and merchants in low-lying parts of the city will continue to stow their merchandise and keep their squeegees at hand to sweep the receding water out the door. Their keening laments will also be primed and ready to go.
Who thought this up?
As with many large public works, it is the love child of politicians, engineers and builders. In this case, an assortment grouped together as the Consorzio Venezia Nuova (New Venice Consortium). These are not lagoon-huggers. Many of its members are in business, often doing the sort of work that MOSE requires.
1973: The Special Law for Venice is passed, which declares the city’s welfare to be of “preeminent national interest.”
1975: The Ministry of Public Works announces an international competition for project designs which would limit high water. Five projects are accepted for evaluation.
I will leap ahead here and spare you the year-by-year chronicle of yes/no, he said/she said, did so/did not, claims and counterclaims. It’s like Jarndyce and Jarndyce. A full account of this 30-year struggle would be a ponderous assortment of lists of names and companies and government agencies and ministers, environmental organizations, suits and countersuits at every level, from Venice itself to the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. By now, the only people in the world who have not been involved in this in some way are you and me.
By now, 63 percent of the work is finished. But the controversy is still very much alive.
Next: Why everybody isn’t excited about it
Acqua alta: reviewing the basics II
Posted by: | CommentsHere are two elements of high water which aren’t usually — perhaps not ever — mentioned, much less interpreted, in the typical story, the kind that likes using emotional words like “invade.” ( As in, “The water invaded the city.” Stormed the battlements. Conquered the kingdom, wrought havoc, death and destruction, setting towns to the torch and sending everyone into slavery. You know, the usual high-water scenario.) Where was I.
Venice is not sitting at mean sea level. That wouldn't make any sense.
One is what the numbers actually mean. Venice does not float like a lily-pad at sea level. The lowest area in the city, the Piazza San Marco, is already 80 cm above the water’s surface when the water is at mean sea-level. Therefore any height that’s reported isn’t as high as it sounds if we were just standing on a street somewhere, measuring upwards from our feet, because the starting number isn’t zero.
Example: 110 cm converts to three and a half feet, which sounds scary. But someone standing in the Piazza San Marco will have water reaching up only 30 cm from their feet, or roughly just below their knees (11 inches). Someone elsewhere in the city might well not have it even that high. Or at all. Because of Point Number Two.
Surf's up near the Rialto Market by the eponymous bridge. Just behind me there's no water on the ground at all, except for some rain puddles.
Point Number Two: Headlines blaring “VENICE IS FLOODED” imply that the entire city, all three square miles of it, is going under for the third time. In fact, a tide up to 110 cm will dampen 14 percent of the city. Not a huge percentage, I think one must admit. Up at 140 cm (the relatively rare Code Red, “exceptional high water”), it covers almost 50 percent of the city, which is more impressive, except that the frequency of a tide this high is fairly low — five times in the ten years between 2000 and 2010. And still, one isn’t referring to every square inch of Venice. Amost half of the city is still high and dry.
For all of Venice to be flooded, the tide would have to rise well beyond 200 cm (the epochal acqua alta of November 4, 1966 reached 194 cm). The city’s tide office doesn’t estimate above 200 cm, at which level 86 percent of the city would be underwater. I don’t say that would be entertaining, but it would be so rare that I’d suggest saving the doomsday vocabulary for it, and not waste the drama on more mundane tidal events.
This is the only example of this extreme solution to acqua alta I've seen so far. What it implies to me is that whoever owns this property isn't expecting to be available to sweep out any water. Or that whatever's inside is so valuable that it probably should be in a vault somewhere. My own experience leads me to wonder if a seal this tight wouldn't potentially force the incoming water up inside through some hitherto unnoticed crevice.
Our little hovel is safe up to the three-tone level. At four tones, it’s time to take the tarps off the lifeboats. We discovered that last December 1 at about 9:15, when the water reached the four-tone level and began to slide under our front door. Then I discovered it was also coming through a fissure in the wall under the kitchen sink, as well as up through a fissure in the stone flooring. That was more exciting than almost anything I can remember. So please don’t suppose that my viewpoint is the result of my not having to worry about water under the bed. I just want to recalibrate the popular perception of this phenomenon. Obnoxious. Not catastrophic.
We have a calendar, on sale at any newsstand, which traces the predicted tide levels each day of the year. But those are only estimates based on what’s normal. For more timely updates, I check the data on the city’s Tide Center website. You can also sign up to be alerted of the rising tide via text message (SMS) on your cell phone.
All these advisories are what make it really hard for me to feel sincerely sorry for anyone who might find that water had caused any damage to goods or appliances. It’s not like it comes like a thief in the night.
I leave you with the key phrase which ought to simplify the whole business if you’re here long enough to need to know it: Hip waders. Just do it.
The fact that the pump is working demonstrates the limitations of the barrier across the door. However, it's clear that without the barrier things would be much worse. I assume he's doing rough calculations of the power of the pump relative to the speed of the rising tide.
Acqua alta: reviewing the basics I
Posted by: | CommentsLet’s start with the most basic fact of all: Venice is sitting in the middle of a tidal lagoon. This means surrounded by water that rises and falls. I don’t mean to keep harping on this, because I know it sounds really dumb, but not much dumber than all those stories that get published and broadcast that make it sound as if water on the ground here were stranger and more upsetting than four sharks singing “Shine On, Harvest Moon.”
How high the water will rise might vary from the official prediction based on a few factors, but when it’s looking imminent I’ve definitely got at least one eye on the barometer, the wind sock (on the computer) and the moon. Wait, that makes three eyes. Well, you know what I mean.
This shopkeeper near the Piazza San Marco is keeping his high-water records this way.
Data on the tides began to be recorded regularly after an exceptional high water in 1867 (153 cm above average sea level). In 1908 various monitoring stations were installed to more precisely measure the height of the tides, and in 1914 the pertinent data on the barometric pressure and the direction and force of the wind were added.
For events longer ago, historians can only turn to various chronicles and accounts in which the quantities aren’t always easy to assess. As in: “The water rose high enough to ruin the wells.” A flooded well would, in my view, be much more distressing than some water on the floor, seeing as the supply of fresh H2O in Venice was not infinite.
The main high-water factors are the following:
The season. If the acqua is going to be alta, it will usually be between September and April. Articles which refer to its frequency are often misleading because they use aggregate numbers which give the impression that it’s a monthly occurrence all year long. While there might be pesky clusters of high water events in winter (as happened this year), the likelihood plummets to June; it has never been recorded in July and August.
Phase of the moon. The tides are highest and lowest when the moon is full and when it’s new. Actually, the moon is the only component to this phenomenon which isn’t even the tiniest bit likely to swerve from the forecast.
Atmospheric pressure. When it’s low, the water is high. When it’s high, the water is low. If we tap on the barometer and see that it’s gone to the bottom of the scale, there’s no getting around the likelihood that the water will be high. The barometer won’t tell us how high, but we can look out the door and make a guess. A barometer is a great friend to have because it cannot tell a lie.
Wind. If the scirocco is blowing, it will definitely aggravate the situation. The scirocco is also obnoxious because it’s warm and humid (get one blowing in the summer and you’ll wonder if you took the wrong exit and ended up in Amazonia). But as it’s from the southeast, it will blow into the lagoon and — putting it very simplistically — push against the tide and prevent it from going out in a timely and efficient fashion. On the contrary, it seems to work very hard to keep all the water in the lagoon all at once. I try to avoid anthropomorphizing the natural world here, but I have to say that sometimes it seems like the wind just does it on purpose.
When a strong scirocco is blowing, I don’t hear wind so much as I do the heavy surf rolling up in close-order-drill on the Lido’s Adriatic beaches. It’s a deep, rumbling sort of roar off in the distance, impossible to mistake for anything else.
Yes, the water is rising in the Piazza San Marco. But the owner of the cafe clearly is not too concerned, otherwise he wouldn't have bothered setting up all those chairs and tables.
There is a warning system to alert the city that within an hour, water will be rising in the Piazza San Marco (the lowest point in the city) and, by extension, at other various low-lying areas. This information comes from a monitoring system at the mouth of the lagoon at San Nicolo, and at other points in the lagoon.
Until two years ago, the citywide warning system was a few sirens which emitted a sequence of rising wails. The first time I heard them they woke me from a deep sleep in the middle of the night — a sudden violent tone swooping upward, overlapped by another one just following it, and then by a third. Scared the hoo out of me — it was like the Three Weird Sisters in Macbeth going mad.
But what they didn’t tell you back then was how much water was going to come ashore.
Two years ago, the system was refined. Now there is only one siren-swoop, after which comes a steady tone which indicates the maximum predicted height. One tone = 110 centimeters above sea level. Two tones = 120 centimeters. Three tones = 130. And four tones = 140 and above. This is what they sound like. I can tell you they’re very effective. There may not be any way you can ultimately prevent water from coming indoors, but you cannot possibly say you had no warning.
This tide-level notice board at Piazzale Roma gives the height of the tide in real time, indicates whether it is rising or falling, and what time the next maximum (or in this case, minimum) will be. And how high or low. Very useful, if you happen to be at Piazzale Roma.
Acqua alta: some plusses and minuses
Posted by: | CommentsI realize it may sound strange to refer to there being “plusses” to acqua alta. Let me just say I don’t mean “plusses” in the sense of winning a large chunk of the lottery. But there are in fact some positive aspects to it.
The tide has dropped and left our street looking clean but feeling a little icky under our feet.
For instance, many Venetians have told me that acqua alta is a good thing because it washes the streets. This is true. Unfortunately, it also deposits a fine layer of silty slime. And while it does remove some of the dog poop, it also leaves detritus behind, so the general landscape isn’t much prettier than it was before the water rose. So, you know. We could go on like this, pro and con, all day.
But let me point out something that is hardly ever remarked on, in the many and varying accounts of this event: Acqua alta is actually a very good thing for the barene (the lagoon’s marshy wetland islets). If we can focus our minds briefly on something other than our own immediate convenience, it’s worth remembering that the lagoon has its own needs which are being met ever more rarely. So if it likes a good soak, I don’t see why it (by which I mean the whole ecosystem: microorganisms, plants, birds, etc.) can’t have it. Also — speaking selfishly — rowing when the water is high is magic.
A view of one of the nearly submerged barene in the northern lagoon, enjoying its bath almost as much as we're enjoying rowing around in a little Venetian sandolo.
Back in town, here are a few of the positive and less positive aspects of acqua alta, as I see them:
- It doesn’t last long. Acqua alta is a tidal event. Unlike your raging rivers, it has a predictable time frame. The tide comes in for six hours, and goes out for six hours. True, sometimes it doesn’t go out as much as it should, but it eventually does go out. This coming and going means that it’s really bothersome for only about two hours.
- It’s fairly tranquil. Inexorable, I grant you. Anyone who hasn’t watched the water rising near one’s front door (as we have) hasn’t fully grasped the fundamental meaning of “Time and tide wait for no man.” But the typical reports of high water in Venice make it sound as if Niagara Falls is pouring through your living-room window (CNN once referred to the “Adriatic bursting its banks.” Banks? Bursting? Are we suddenly in Holland?), when in reality it’s more like the bathtub slowly overflowing. Water in both cases, I agree, but not really the same.
- It is predictable. True, raging rivers are also predictable, but some of the factors influencing acqua alta, such as the direction of the wind, can change. In addition, we get plenty of warning. If you don’t want to wait for the sirens to blare, just look at the barometer. (You do have a barometer, don’t you?) The lower the pressure, the higher the water. Check the sky: Full or new moon? There will be more pronounced highs and lows. Wind from the southeast? Not good; it will prevent (or slow) the regular retreat of the tide. We want a southwest wind (garbin) or better yet, northeast (bora). Those will settle acqua alta’s hash.
I’ll tell you what’s really annoying about acqua alta, apart from the distraught articles that keep getting published. It’s not that you have to put on boots for a few hours. It’s that:
- When the tide goes out, it leaves all kinds of detritus
This is a modest example of a street not long after the tide has gone out. Clumps of eelgrass and bits of reeds are unavoidable and even not so ugly. It's the other stuff, pieces of plastic and styrofoam and general junk littering every wet street that are ugly. Unavoidable, fine. But there is no telling when, if ever, someone is going to sweep it up.
all over the sidewalks. Stuff that was just floating gently comes to rest on whatever pavement was just below it when the last inch retreated. Also, if anyone puts out a plastic bag of garbage the night before (yes, despite the warning sirens — dumb, I agree), that bag will be floating around the street and either settle on the pavement somewhere or drift out to sea. Neither case is highly desirable, though obviously the second is worse.
Once the water lifts your bag of garbage, it's not yours anymore. So hey, let it go wherever or however it wants to, who cares.
- The garbage-people will be extremely slow in collecting the trash and/or — make that just “or,” they can’t seem to do both in the same day, even when the sun is shining — sweeping away the detritus, which means the streets look more or less like a slum. The garbage-people are slow because … I’ve tried to understand this… It may be because they are already so desperately overworked that high water adds an insuperable burden (you’re believing this, yes?), and because they are otherwise urgently and industriously occupied in setting up or taking down the temporary walkways over the high water (sometimes yes, mostly no). But they seem to get a special pass on their normal work when the acqua is even moderately alta. I can’t explain it, except to compare it to the mysterious sore throat which a kid who doesn’t want to go to school suddenly develops when it rains or snows.
- Transport gets all scrambled up,
not only for taxis and barges but also some vaporettos and/or motoscafos. They have to change their normal routes because the high water prevents them from passing under certain bridges. There are alternatives by which they resolve this temporary dilemma, but it adds inconvenience to your own trajectory. As for heavy work boats and taxis, they either have to pick another route from A to B, or wait for the tide to turn. Tiresome, true, but hardly the stuff of calamity. - Your front door swells. If you have been so unfortunate as to have even an inch of water come inside (and for many people, this just means it has reached the edge of a staircase leading up to their apartment, not the apartment itself), and your front door is made of wood, it will soak up the water and then want to stick. It will take a while to dry out. Like, maybe weeks. You may end up having to sand it down some. Irritating. Not disastrous.
Acqua alta? We'll just put that lamppost up higher. This was one of the more clever responses to the big one of November 4, 1966. Also, you can see that the dogs love it.
I think if you’re going to live here you need to accept the fact that you’re sitting in the middle of a tidal lagoon. If that creates really too many problems, it might be good for you to consider moving. At least to the second floor, or maybe across the bridge to the mainland. No more worries about the tide coming ashore over there. All you have to deal with there, even as nearby as Mestre, are rivers and rain and totally inadequate storm drains. Which leads to flooded basements full of water that actually has little or no natural urge to recede. Fun.
No emotional articles about that, though. Who cares about a foot of water in somebody’s garage? Nobody — at least not until that somebody snaps a picture of a person rowing around the car or trailer.
Acqua alta: here we go again
Posted by: | CommentsIf there’s one thing people everywhere know about Venice, it’s that sometimes those romantic canals try to barge into your house.
This is the kind of image that is often presented as "the end is nigh" for Venice. As you see, the man is having hysterics.
Rather than “flooding,” Venetians call this acqua alta, or “high water” (literally “high tide”). Or, depending on how deep it’s likely to be, sometimes they call it “acqua in terra,” or “water on the ground,” which is less dramatic and often more accurate.
I’ve got water on the brain at the moment because night before last, the warning siren sounded again. It indicated the lowest predicted level, one out of four, which was nice, and in the end we barely got any at all. With rare exceptions, acqua alta, more than being some kind of apocalyptic affliction, as it is often portrayed, is really a low-grade nuisance. If it happens often, as it has this winter, it becomes as annoying as any other uninvited guest who doesn’t realize it’s time to go home.
There are so many notions people have about high water, based on the generally inaccurate and overwrought accounts in the press, that I thought I’d review and readjust a few of them.
- It’s always happening, or likely to happen. Not really. This winter we’ve had more acqua in terra (again, not really what I’d call “alta”) more often than many other winters. On the other hand, there have been years when I haven’t put my boots on even once. Yet all kinds of claims keep being thrown around in stories written about this little phenomenon. The website of the basilica of San Marco states that water begins to flood the Piazza San Marco, just in front of the church, 250 days a year. Check my math, but that works out to 8 months. A photo caption on the National Geographic website claims that Venice has high water ten times a month. That’s crazy talk.
- It creates, or will create, really big, really bad problems.
If for some reason your kids (or somebody else's) don't have boots, high water can be somewhat demanding. Then again, why don't they just go barefoot? I've done it and I'm still alive.
I’m not sure what people think those might be, but the words “acqua alta” seem to inspire a lot of hyperventilating outside Venice (and even inside Venice, mostly from merchants around the Piazza San Marco). I’m not saying that having to put the stuff in your store up on higher shelves isn’t annoying, or that having to sweep out the receding brackish water and then wash the floor with fresh water isn’t annoying. But in 9 cases out of 10, the situation doesn’t exceed the annoyance level — not much worse than having to shovel the snow out of the driveway for the fiftieth time this winter.
- It’s going to be alarmingly deep. Those fun photos of people rowing boats in the Piazza San Marco don’t ever show how deep the water actually is. (In fact, those boats can be rowed in four inches of water.) Venice isn’t flat as a griddle — the streets undulate as much as the water does, which you discover when the water comes ashore. There can be dry spots even in a wet street.
- The entire city’s drowning. The municipal tide center reports that when the tide is predicted to reach 110 cm above mean sea level, 14 percent of Venice has water on the ground. And that that might not be a depth of more than an inch or two. Fourteen percent doesn’t strike me as an immense area, and several percentages of that would always be the Piazza San Marco, the lowest point in the city.
When the water starts to rise in the Piazza San Marco, it looks like this. Sometimes it doesn't get any higher than this amount. I guess you could say Venice was flooding, but there are still plenty of dry spots left.
- It’s going to hurt you, or hurt something. Not that I’ve noticed. Acqua alta is nothing like real floods. Rivers overflowing their banks in torrential rainstorms are dangerous; tsunamis are dangerous. With acqua alta, nobody dies. People survive, buildings survive, art works are fine. The water rises very gently, even politely. Despite the distraught tones in which the event is almost always reported, I still don’t understand why the mere term seems to have acquired such a menacing overtone.
If the water rises near a low sidewalk, it flows over the edge. It's even more common -- as here in the Piazza San Marco -- for it to come up through the storm drains. Naturally it also goes out the same way.
Acqua alta is not dangerous. It’s not even especially upsetting. In my experience, if it happens more than a few times, though, it can begin to seem like a two-year-old who’s gotten into the “Why?” groove. Nothing wrong with it, really, except that it gets to be irritating. The kid turns three, and spring and summer come, and all of this fades from memory.
In my next post: A few real-life aspects of acqua alta which tend to mitigate its fearsome reputation.
True, this was not one of our most amusing moments. And it didn't stop there, nor did our impressive barrier do much good to keep it out. But this has happened only once (for about two hours) in the six years we've lived here.
If you were looking for a new apartment and saw this, you might think twice. The barrier you could kind of accept, but a pump as well? Not good.
Carnival: mopping up
Posted by: | CommentsYou thought Carnival was over with the sprinkling of the ashes on penitential hairdos? Not quite.
Carnival doesn’t slink away under cover of darkness when the marangon, the basso profundo bell in the campanile of San Marco, tolls midnight on Martedi Grasso. Two things have to happen for it to really be over — in my opinion, that is. Two things which are more predictable than the swallows returning to Capistrano.
One of the regular car ferries is engaged for the carnival trucks.
The first is the pulling apart and hauling away of the traveling amusement park (what they generically call a “Luna Park” here) which has been gracing the Riva dei Sette Martiri since — I believe — early December.
These people (as in much of the world) are almost exclusively families which have dedicated many generations to the setting up, operating, pulling down, and rolling on to the next location of their ride or concession stand.
After three months, I’m going to miss the smell of the hot-doughnut-frying-oil and the screeching of the children. It was fun strolling along the waterfront late every afternoon to mingle and kibitz. And I am convinced that as long as there is at least one small child walking home carrying a small plastic bag containing water and a goldfish, the world will not come to an end.
All this concentrated traffic is a lot to ask of a stretch of walkway which is made of small stones atop packed damp sand.
Anyway, the men start work early on Ash Wednesday morning, and by Thursday morning the funfair is gone. The only sign they’ve ever been here are the patches of new cement filling the holes in the pavement where their big rigs (or something) went astray.
Speaking of itinerant carnies, I went to the small town of Bergantino a few years ago when I was working on a story about the Po River (National Geographic, May, 2002). This former farming town has, since the Twenties and much more since the Sixties, become dedicated to the design, construction, and (eventually) operation of carnival rides – merry-go-rounds, bumper cars, etc. Despite the town’s modest size — it’s really just a village of some 2,000 people, when they’re all there, I mean, and not out on the road — they’ve carved away a heavy slice of this international industry for Italy. One of the major markets for their inventions is the USA.
Well, wherever they’ve gone, I’m already missing them.
The second element of the end of Carnival is the orgy of articles, editorials, and letters in the Gazzettino reviewing, celebrating, and vilifying the festivities just concluded. I can tell you without even having opened the paper that there will have been too many people for this fragile city to support; that the managing of this predictable overload will have shown inexcusable organizational flaws and failures to resolve the most elementary large-event necessities (toilets, in a word); that the money taken in doesn’t justify the stress and expense to the city; that it will have lacked originality and creative genius, and that for the residents and shopkeepers of Campo Santa Margherita, the ten days just concluded have been nothing less than at least six of the nine rings of hell.
And every year, the apex of all the claims and counter-claims: That this event would be (or ought to have been, or next year definitely will be) the “Carnival of the Venetians.” I saw Venetians having a fine time carnivalizing in their own modest way in various neighborhoods of the city, but not in the Piazza San Marco. I’d have given you a cash prize if you’d found any Venetians besides Lino in the Piazza San Marco.
Going-home time near San Marco. I count eight launches ready to load up and head back to the mainland, and this picture is only one third of the traffic panorama. This traffic is not composed of Venetians.
So when this wish to involve Venetians is mentioned, as if it were obviously a good thing, I ask myself if the speaker believes that a “Carnival of the Venetians” would have the slightest probability of pouring the millions of euros into the municipal strongboxes that all those tourists do. After all, Venetians don’t spend money on hotel rooms, restaurant meals, fancy masks, or whatever else makes Carnival matter. So frankly, what would be the point of spending money to organize a ten-day carnival for the few remaining locals? Just wondering.
Let’s go to the videotape (so to speak). Here is a smattering of the Gazzettino’s overview of Carnival 2010, as published yesterday:
The organizers claim that 150,000 people came the first Sunday; 250,000 the second Sunday (let that sink in…) and 40,000 on Martedi Grasso. Altogether, they say a total of 800,000 people came to Venice during Carnival. Perhaps not much compared to Rio, but for a city that covers a mere three square miles, not bad.
They estimate that each visitor spent 50 euros, for an exciting total income of 40 million euros. Not sure where this number came from; a professor of the Economics of Tourism at the University of Venice says that the “bite and run” day-trippers spend an average of 30 euros each day, while the more solid tourist spends 150. In any case, let’s not quibble over a million more or a million less. Restaurants and hotels certainly made money, not to mention the ACTV and their spectacularly expensive vaporetto tickets.
One new comment is by the businesspeople (especiallythose of restaurants and cafes) in the Piazza San Marco — they don’t want a maxi-stage there anymore. I’m not sure why, but I imagine it’s because it takes up too much space which needs to be available for them to put out their tables and chairs.
I could go on, but it’s probably not that interesting. These few days following Carnival are mainly spent in a sort of emotional and mental scrubbing and disinfecting.
I am going to miss this, though.
The summary is fairly concise. Apart from numbers, claims, and counter-claims as to success or failure, as one reporter wrote, “Now the Venetians can give a deep sigh of relief and put their hands on their foreheads and say, “‘Once again we’ve lived through it.’”
