I recently remarked on the extraordinary eagerness of people at every compass point to name some local enterprise for Venice (I exclude the Venetian Casino Resort Hotel in Las Vegas and/or Macao as being too screamingly obvious to be interesting).  And I offered the Trattoria Citta’ di Venezia in Conegliano as an example.

A reader e-mailed me a brief note in response: “Just to prove your theory,” she said, and as evidence presented the photo below, taken in Krakow, Poland.

If any other hardy readers want to join the scavenger hunt, I’d be very glad to get a photo of whatever Venicely-named establishment or undertaking you come across.  For possible, even probable, publication here.

Note: No fair doing any searches and uprooting photos from websites.  The only rule is that it has to be a place you’ve seen with your own eyes. If you can’t take a photo of it, for some reason, I’ll accept a postcard.

This business earns one extra point for throwing in an extra non-Krakovian placename.

Finding Venice everywhere is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

The first day of autumn came and went as decreed by the cosmos, but around here summer didn’t get the memo.  The heat wave that began some two months ago is still enjoying itself thoroughly, lolling on the beach, gleaming on the Alpine peaks, bringing  joy to the daring hoteliers who risked staying open and not unconsiderable damage to the farmers.

It was the hottest September on record; on average, nearly 3 degrees above the norm. In Piemonte, Torino registered 30 degrees C (86 degrees F), a September temperature it hasn’t felt since 1753. Rainfall has become a distant memory.

The farmers are not amused.  Not only are the crops lollygagging along for lack of rain and excess of heat, but the harvest, whenever they manage to make it, is going to be puny. Ten percent fewer grapes, and they’re already fermenting — unheard of.  Tomatoes and olives and rice are down 20 percent.

No matter where you go, there will be some business named for Venice. In Conegliano Lino paused in front of the Trattoria "Citta' di Venezia," but I discovered a Cafe Venezia in Casablanca. Anyway, there isn't a Trattoria Citta' di Conegliano in Venice, which I think is narrow-minded.

But one crop is still going strong: The Adriatic beaches continue to pullulate with tourists even though the kiosks are closed and the lifeguards have all gone home.  Some wag had his picture taken under his big umbrella holding a batch of chestnuts, two seasonal icons which have never met and probably never even heard of each other.

But let’s make the proverbial hay while the proverbial sun is still proverbially glowing.  Even though school started two weeks ago, Gianni Stival, vice-mayor of Caorle (a beach town) is dreaming of a bumper crop of late vacationers and has proposed — not for the first time — that the Veneto postpone the first day of school for two whole weeks.

“It would be good for tourism,” he explains, “because now when the first school bell rings at the middle of September, families are compelled to go home.” And take all their money with them.  Never mind if little Bepi never learns the names of the European capitals or the definition of plankton or that when a girl says “no” she’s pretty likely to have meant “no” (oh wait — they don’t teach that). Whatever is good for tourism is, by definition, good for everybody, assuming that little Bepi has somehow learned to count past 20.  Or maybe that doesn’t matter either, now that cash registers calculate the correct change.

Last Saturday we decided to become tourists, in our own small way, so we took the train to Conegliano, a small but prosperous provincial town just 58 km (36 miles) from Venice.  Conegliano is  famous for Prosecco and a painter named Giovanni Battista Cima (1460-1518), nicknamed “da Conegliano,” or “from Conegliano,” so we don’t confuse him with all those other Giovanni Battista Cimas.

I ate cappellacci di zucca, or "big straw hats stuffed with pumpkin," which were bestrewn with smoked ricotta and drenched with butter. This is a typical autumn dish -- note the pumpkin -- of the area around Ferrara, but it tasted fine here too. Three of these will give you the strength to harvest another five acres, if you can manage to stay awake.

It was a heavenly day — sorry for the farmers, but we loved it, even though we were thwarted in our intention to browse the weekly market, which spreads along the main street and its tributaries offering everything from socks to handmade baskets.  Don’t assume that Saturday has been ordained by God, or the mayor, as the perfect day for a big market.  Turns out they hold it on Friday. In case you ever need to know.

Members of a local mycology club were setting up an exhibition of just-collected local mushroms ranging from delectable to fatal. The drought made a serious dent in this harvest, as well; there ought to have been several times more than these.

The backdrop of tiny wild apples and unshelled chestnuts (the green spiky ball) made a very attractive arrangement

The chestnut squad at work: One man roasting them, two others sitting by bags of chestnuts from Cuneo, slitting their shells, one by one, to prevent their exploding in the heat.

A classic autumn assortment (though no pumpkins). Clockwise from bottom left are walnuts, plums, chestnuts, giuggiole (jujubes), persimmons and grapes.

Mirtilli, or wild blueberries, at only 12 euros a kilo ($8 a pound). Pretty cheap, considering these are all picked by hand in the woods.

 

These mushrooms, on the other hand, are absolutely for eating: "Galletti" and "finferli," also uncultivated. Delectable.

 

This is fall? is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

A situation has been brought to light — actually, had light suddenly and dramatically shone on it — that ought to be noticed more clearly than by the faint gleam discernible over here.  Allow me to step in with at least a couple of highway flares.

A few paragraphs in the Gazzettino recently revealed that the basilica of Santa Maria Assunta at Torcello is falling apart.  Brief and brutal, but there it is. This news may not have interested very many people here because the paper is full of stories, depressingly often, about the ways in which Venice is falling apart.

The basilica of Santa Maria Assunta is on the left; the smaller church of Santa Fosca to the right. May I mention that despite many notations to the contrary, "basilica" and "cathedral" are not synonymous. A basilica describes a building with a specific floor plan, which could just as easily be your school gym. The world is full of basilicas which aren't cathedrals; they don't even have to be churches. A cathedral is the church where the bishop has his cathedra, or seat, which could just as easily be in an Airstream trailer. The cathedral of Venice (also a basilica, as it happens) is San Marco. (Photo: necrothesp)

Pieces of stone drop off facades (November, 2007, a 110-pound/50- kilo chunk fell from the Palazzo Ducale and grazed an elderly German tourist; November, 2008, a 15-inch/40 cm bit of marble from a house in the San Marco area grazed a Swiss tourist as it headed earthward; March, 2010, a 132-pound/60-kilo piece broke off the convent of Cristo Re near the Celestia; October, 2010, a bit of stone decoration fell off the Court building and struck an employee…..).  Roofs collapse, bell-towers are braced, and so on. The reason?  All together now: No ghe xe schei. The mayor himself has said that he may have to ask for money, not for the sake of the buildings per se, but for the sake of public safety.

But back to Torcello, a lovely, almost uninhabited little island famous for the aforementioned basilica, which is arguably one of the gemmiest of the gems of Venetian history, art, architecture, and above all, mosaics.

Life is hard on Venice in so many ways, from high water  to tourist trampling. But let us not overlook what may be the most dangerous hazard of all: Neglect.

Torcello’s parish priest, don Ettore Fornezza, recently drew attention to one example of what neglect can lead to: The floor mosaics are breaking up.

I went to Torcello the other day to see don Ettore and the situation that he was describing.

The ten-minute walk from the vaporetto stop to the church has never been so lovely.

For anybody who loves Torcello, or who believes that there is no place within 50 miles where you can go to escape the tourist tidal waves, I cheerfully recommend you visit the island early on a freezing, windy, gray Sunday morning in January.  Yes, it was colder than I don’t know what. (Down side.) But there was literally no one and nothing in sight. (Up side!) I’ve been going to Torcello for years and I have never seen it utterly deserted.  The lagoon was empty too.  It was so astonishing that it was worth not being able to feel my feet.

Looking toward Burano, normally a scene of motor-driven anarchy.

People go to Torcello to admire the mosaics on the walls.  But the floors are no less valuable, and they get a lot more punishment. You can see the evidence of this deterioration everywhere, in the widening spaces between the bits of stone and even in grotty, dark empty areas as big as salad plates and as much as an inch deep. Unchecked humidity, for one thing, has gradually loosened the tesserae (as the bits of stone are called) and made them vulnerable to other forces.  Like people and their footwear.

A view of the interior of the basilica. Note the condition of the floor in the foreground. This is nothing.

And so it was that during a recent stroll around the church, don Ettore saw a tourist not only dislodge a small piece of 1000-year-old mosaic with the heel of her shoe (regrettable but not intentional), she then picked up the loose bit and made to put it in her pocket.  Or purse. Anyway, to take it away.

When he asked her what she was doing, she replied, “I wanted it as a souvenir.”

Somewhat thunderstruck, he suggested she consider leaving it behind, so it could be kept, if not actually returned to its native habitat.

She gave it back.

When don Ettore reached this point in the story, it occurred to me that it was too bad he hadn’t replied, “Well then, I’d like to take your shoe as a souvenir.”  Just a thought.

A detail of damage to the floor mosaics. I would have taken photographs, but it's strictly forbidden, not that that would have stopped me. But the girl on guard that morning made nabbing me her mission. My admiration and appreciation to the intrepid visitors who managed these images. (Photo: ezioman).

But this is no time for gay repartee.  The incident of the tessera was merely one random event in a long and all-too-evident decline.  Because for some time now, the heels of the shoes of thousands of tourists a day have been weakening what is, in fact, a very fragile creation.  All it takes is for one piece to go, and the discussion shifts from what is happening to merely how long it’s going to continue.

For don Ettore, this moment was, as he put it, “the spark” to bring to light the larger, deeper, wider problems of the basilica.

“We can’t go on like this,” he said. “People come from all over the world, and they see the deterioration and they come to tell me.  I can’t do anything, because I”m responsible for the spiritual side. But I have eyes, and I see the things that don’t go well.  Torcello could be reborn, with a little attention. With the love people have for this place, this would be the pearl, not only of Venice, but of the world.  It’s worth the trouble to insist on this, because Torcello is worth it. We don’t want Torcello to die. If it were up to me, it would have been resolved already.”

There are so many distressing aspects to this situation that you can pick any one at random and ruin your day.  Given that the present mosaics (not the first mosaic flooring, by the way, which was laid in the 8th century) date from 1008, it’s obvious that they will now be in need of constant and expensive care.  Just like a person, actually, when you think of it.

But here we have an ancient and irreplaceable work of religious, historic, and artistic value; we have uncontrolled masses of people using it every day for most of the year; and we also have lack of personnel, lack of serious interest, and — no need to repeat it, but I must — absence (they say “lack”) of money to do anything useful to deal with it.  Here, too, the skeletal hand of chronic poverty is tightening its grip.

Speaking of poverty, however, let me insert some startling observations made to me in Hyderabad, India by Mr. P.K. Mohanty, then Commissioner of the city’s governing body.  (I was there for my article on “Megacities,” National Geographic, November 2002.)

“What we need in India isn’t money,” Mohanty said. “Large cities of the Third World are reservoirs of wealth.  We need political reforms, bureaucratic reforms. The problem is one of poor management. If cities are properly managed, there cannot be resource problems.”  I’d guess that the same could be said of large cities of the First World.

As for the mosaic floor of the basilica, nobody can consider spending the money that would be needed to complete a serious restoration — they say there’s no money even to pay for a protective carpet like the one that often covers the floor of the basilica of San Marco.  But anyone who has visited the Roman-mosaic-blessed former churches at Aquileia and Ravenna will recall that their mosaic pavements  are kept in near-perfect condition. Aquileia and Ravenna have mysteriously found a way to acquire the schei necessary for their mosaic maintenance.  Or maybe, as Mr. Mohanty observed, the problem isn’t really schei.

Small gaps between the stones; you can just imagine where this is going to go.

Back to Torcello. I would like to blame mass tourism, because obviously masses of tourists are not helping the situation.  But I hesitate to use a term which is so general that it could describe almost everything except plants (no wait, those travel too) to describe just one certain type of tourist.  Of course there are cultivated, intelligent, sensitive tourists who leave a very faint footprint on the delicate, peerless places and cultures they visit.

But there is the clueless tourist who tends to come in chaotic herds, and who passes through leaving behind not much beyond a few sous and a lot of accumulating wear and tear on the places and people he or she has encountered.  And some trash, usually.

Taking away pieces of Italian history is  nothing new.  The Italians themselves, over the centuries, have removed tons of pieces of their monuments for use in other projects.  And there are, unfortunately, still too many tomb-robbers who steal and sell priceless artifacts from lost civilizations.

And let us not forget the famous advancing barbarian hordes, who pillaged and burned and wrecked large parts of Europe and its treasures. Also bad, but at least you can fit this damage into the category “Conquer and Dominate,” which does make a kind of sense.

But we’re talking about tourists.  They have been known to dislodge and remove, as far as they can, pieces of the Roman walls built by Marcus Aurelius.  Tourists climb over altar railings and try to take away historic sacred vessels.  (I am not making any of this up.)  I learned more than I ever wanted to about this for my article “Italy’s Endangered Art” (National Geographic, August 1999).  These are not necessarily evil people, nor even people seeking to make money by selling what they take.  They just take. Why?

The lady at Torcello admitted why she did it: She wanted a souvenir. Instead of buying something that had been manufactured, she impulsively felt that something genuine would be better. But how does this work?  You take a little piece of old stone, dislodged from its context, dislodged from its reason for being, specifically in order to be reminded of the place you’ve just despoiled?  You don’t run to the ticket booth to say “The floor is coming apart!”? Or does the fact that the piece is loose mean that it’s now free pickings?

I pause here to recognize that there may be an insignificant difference between a souvenir and spoils of war; the Elgin Marbles, which I suppose you could regard as a sort of monumental souvenir, come to mind.  But if the possessors of cultural patrimony have finally come to recognize at least some of the value of their heritage, it ought to follow that visitors ought to value it even more, otherwise why are they there? They could just as well be sitting under an awning somewhere, eating gelato.

To many visitors, a trip to Torcello is mainly a good excuse for a jaunt out into the lagoon. When they're done here, they go to Burano and buy lace-like objects. Real souvenirs.

All this makes my  brain hurt.  Because I am convinced that whatever bits of stone or wood or pottery get carried away — a bit that really mattered where it was born — is going to get lost.  Thrown away. Forgotten. Hidden under stuff in the attic that nobody ever looks at until they have to sell the house and by then nobody remembers what the thing is, or why it’s there. So what was the point?

Wait!  Let’s say the person takes it home and puts it in a beautiful box or frame to display it.  This means that either they are capable of spending the next 50 years looking at something they stole, which probably won’t remind them that they stole it, or they want other people to admire it. So they can say, “Yes — I contributed to the destruction of an irreplaceable landmark by stealing this. Nice, isn’t it? I’m glad you like it.”  Then they send money to protect the dolphins or save the rainforest.

If you’re still reading, you may be edging toward the door.  But I’m not crazy.  Or if I am, I’ll never be as crazy as the tourists.

But let’s be fair. Even if the tourists were all made to tiptoe around the church in cloth slippers, it wouldn’t do much to stave off the inexorable damage caused by humidity, salt in the groundwater, storms, subsidence, and many other factors that are part of life on this planet and whose effects are all too visible at Torcello.

The point isn’t that people want to take bits home, it’s that the church isn’t being protected and cared for. It’s just sitting there, enduring what it must till another piece breaks off.

And by the way, the same thing is happening in the church of Santa Maria e Donato on Murano (first building, 7th century, flooring completed 1140), an edifice equally rich in mosaics.  Don Carlo Gusso, the parish priest, is also ringing the alarm bells.

So far, though, it appears that nobody but you and me have heard them. Or at least have recognized that they’re not the dinner bell.

"The Pavement San Marco" by John Singer Sargent (1898). Who would ever have thought that even here, the floor would have been left to deteriorate like this? I'm not referring to the undulations, but to the holes. But if they could fix the floor here, I'm not clear on what's stopping them at Torcello. Did they have more schei back in 1898?

Torcello mosaics: Help yourself. Take two. is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Days — and I suppose nights — can become as routine (fancy way of saying “monotonous”) here in the most-beautiful-city-in-the-world as they can in Tick Bite, North Carolina, or wherever the daily round has worn a groove into your Day Planner, however gorgeous the surroundings may be.

I love January here for many reasons, and one of the big ones is that nobody else seems to.  Which is to say that almost all the tourists are dormant somewhere, with the kids in school and the budget busted by Christmas and Crisis, and dark coming on early and so on.

Exhibit A:  The #1 vaporetto on the Grand Canal last Friday morning. In a month or so, Carnival will be here, and if you can find a way to force yourself into the crush on every vehicle in the city then I admire your spinal cord, or your love of your fellow man, or your skill with a flooring chisel or Irish shovel, or whatever.  I would gladly supply a photograph of this inescapable fact of life here, but I never use the vaporettos during Carnival, except maybe at dawn.

And not long after that, the Tourist Season will be declared open, and the vaporettos will become troop transports loaded with brigades of touristic infantry loaded with all their battle gear — suitcases, duffel bags, backpacks, strollers, children and dogs. If there were a way for them to bring their pet guppy to Venice, people would do that too.

So this scene, which may look to you like just a lot of plastic seats, is a Thing of Beauty because those seats are empty.  This vision is so rare and wonderful that it’s almost worth getting on the #1 to go nowhere for no reason just so you can savor it, like a 1997 Brunello di Montalcino, but for a lot less money.

This is what the #1 looks like at 11:00 AM in January, coming up to the Rialto stop, one of the busiest points in the city. There will always be shopping carts, but seeing only two is remarkable. And not seeing strollers loaded like hopper cars hauling iron ore, and ponderous rolling suitcases, and monstrous backpacks, is simply amazing. Plus the fact that everyone in this vaporetto, as far as I can make out, is Venetian.

This time of year doesn’t call to mind mere metaphors involving food and drink.  The real thing is at hand.

Last Saturday I was in a big supermarket on the Lido and came upon this heavenly vision of something wonderful about Carnival, the quintessential Carnival pastry. You can get the same items in pastry shops, naturally, for more money, naturally, but the important thing is, they’re here.  The galani have returned, like the migrating monarch butterflies landing in Milwaukee.

Crostoli. It's not a trick of the lighting that makes them look so good. They are so good.

As you see, there is freedom of expression in naming this delicacy, whether baked or fried.  ”Galani,” “crostoli,” (CROSS-toh-lee) and “chiacchiere” (KYAK-er-eh) all translate as “irresistible and addictive slices of fat and sugar.” Historically, you are allowed to begin eating these any time after Epiphany, right up to Ash Wednesday.  Some culturally degraded but economically advanced vendors continue to sell them during Lent, but they must be related to the C.D. but E.A. vendors who sell Carnival masks and hats all year long. There is something odd about seeing teenagers wearing big plush multi-colored harlequin hats in August, but hey.  It’s no odder than seeing people selling them. Venice must be the city where selling was invented.

As for the galani, I resist buying them.  But it’s entirely possible that I will give in at some point and spend an afternoon making a batch of these crunchy morsels.  I did it last year for the first time and boy, was that a mistake. We ate them all in two days.  True, I could make just half a batch, but that seems unpleasantly intelligent.  Why eat only three pieces of something that’s bad for you?

This version is being sold as "leaves of KAMUT," a relative newcomer to the grain bin which is the commercial name of khorasan wheat. This ancient variety is supposedly richer-tasting and infinitely better for you than more usual wheat. I don't know quite what the point would be in using a healthy ingredient in an item like this, but I'm certainly willing to try it.

Don’t answer that. It was a rhetorical question.

More crostoli.

And more.

Let's throw powdered sugar on them. That ought to obliterate any remaining traces of nutrition.

Can't decide? Buy them all.

Or wait for me to make some, she said modestly.

Venice in January is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

To be fair, it’s not just Venice: It’s all of Italy.

Brace yourselves, because I’ve got some news.  At the post office today I noticed a sign giving the new postage rates.

To mail a postcard — not your novel, not the story of your life — a measly little postcard, from Italy to the U S and A now costs 1 euro and 60 cents.

Not only is that double the previous rate (already high, in my opinion), it is the equivalent of $2.08.

Two dollars and eight cents for one (1) stamp to mail one (1) postcard.

The woman at the window told me that it wasn’t Italy that shot the rates into outer space, it was My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.  I have no idea how these things work, but I do know what it feels like to knock your elbow against the edge of the door, and this is like that.

What I hear now is the sound of text messages and e-mails flying around the stratosphere bringing greetings from your Italian vacation to Aunt Bertha, your twin sister, your niece, your dog.  What I also hear is the sound of postcards not being sold, and stamps not being sold, at least to Americans.

You had to know, and better now than later.  Now you can plan to spend the money you would have paid for stamps and postcards on something else.  Like buying a house.  Or a horse.

Venice goes postal is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

It’s not exactly the swallows returning to Capistrano, but a few mornings ago saw the arrival of a modestly historic moment in the calendar: The amusement park began to set up shop.

One of the ferryboats that normally plods between the Lido and Tronchetto makes a special run (and there will be more) loaded with trucks that are going to turn into irresistible rides, games and food stalls. Irresistible if you don't mind the cold weather, and the prices.

Admittedly Venice, in its long history, has often seen its embankments loaded with heavy objects destined for commerce -- timber, marble, and bricks come to mind -- but there is something a little startling about trucks.

The rides and games, not to mention the  stands selling cotton candy, fried dough slathered with nutritional hot-air balloons such as Nutella, caramelized peanuts, and anything else that can emit a powerful odor of imminent obesity, started to disembark, all folded up inside the trucks, on the Riva dei Sette Martiri at the head of via Garibaldi.  They will be open for business on Saturday and will remain until the end of Big Famous Bloated Carnival, which this year will be March 8.

Just to avert any possible misunderstanding, BFB Carnival is known here as, well, Carnival, or if you prefer, Carnevale.  This little county-fair assortment of playthings is generically called a “Luna Park.”  Probably after an Ur-version somewhere bearing that name which I have been unable to identify.  It’s no competition for Coney Island or the Prater in Vienna but as everyone knows, available space in Venice is calculated in millimeters.

Till last year, this annual event was set up on the Riva degli Schiavoni between the Arsenal and the next canal on the way to San Marco.  But the residents’ complaints about noise, confusion, smells, and garbage finally overrode the carny-people’s desire to be as close to the center of the touristic hurricane as possible.

You can't just drive ashore -- you must prepare the way very, very carefully with damage-blunting boards. Even so, the fondamenta when they're gone is pocked with cement patches where the stones have somehow disappeared.

So last year they were moved just a little bit downstream, to an area beyond the invisible demarcation line separating Tourist Motherlode and Just Somewhere Else in Venice.  Hence we now have residents here in this new strip of space that are just as unhappy as their predecessors were over the way, plus unhappy carny-people because they’re missing out, they believe, on loads of business.

They probably have a point (and they ought to know, considering that they’re the ones standing out there in the freezing cold for hours waiting for customers). Whatever their dreams may be of cashing in on the typical tourists, my impression is that this amusement park is frequented almost exclusively by locals.

Which means: Parents and grandparents with small children, and shoals of bored teenagers who will go anywhere in any weather as long as they can hang out with each other and not be home.  Of course weekends are the prime moments, but the stands are open every day from mid-afternoon till about 8:00 PM, even though there are few things on earth as unappealing as an amusement park in the middle of a weekday afternoon.  The magic of this extraordinary collection of stuff and stimulation, at least for people over ten years old, is that it happens in the dark under glowing, flashing lights. Otherwise this wonderland is just Norma Desmond before her coffee, so to speak, even if it is in the most beautiful city in the world.

This is so much what the stand-owner doesn't want to see. He's thinking about making it up on the weekend, and during Christmas, and Epiphany, and the two weeks of Carnival.

In any case, next year, if the plan is fulfilled, they will move to yet another location, at Tronchetto.  This will have the advantage of offering more space, and will solve the problem of irritating the locals with the noise, etc., because there are no locals.  I have deep doubts that they will make anything like the money they do here, because Tronchetto is about as convenient to everybody in the city, tourists as well as Venetians, as Whitehorse, Yukon Territory.

I’ll be sorry to see them move away, because no matter how funky it may be, this Luna Park  does a lot to sparkle up the winter atmosphere, at least in a neighborhood like ours where the minute you go out the door you run into the same old people doing the same old things making the same old comments.  I can tell you that it’s as much fun to watch all the goings-on as it is to participate (I speak as a veteran of the kiddies’ roller-coaster, who last year appalled and offended the two little girls in the car ahead of me not only because I’m an adult but because I screamed on the turns.  One of them turned around and asked me scornfully, “Aren’t you a little old to be on this?” This made me laugh, which by the look on her face was not her intention).

Correct answer: Of course I am.  So sue me.

Sunday afternoon during Carnival in the sunshine. This is more like it.

Marie Antoinette is training for Monza.

But even if after three months you've grown completely used to it, an amusement park in Venice is still a very curious thing to have.

A different Venetian carnival is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

I saw something today that I have longed — longed – to see, and had despaired of ever seeing. Ever. And had ceased to believe that my grandchildren, if I ever had any, would see it either.

Signs.  They have finally installed signs showing route maps on the vaporettos indicating each blessed stop of the blessed line being ridden. You can’t believe it?  I can’t either, but there they are.

The Big Cities I know have always done this on their buses and subways: New York, Paris, Moscow, London, Rome, San Francisco … I think Oslo, too, but I can’t remember at the moment.  Probably. Norway’s supposed to have the highest quality of life of any place on the planet, and I’d put bus maps right up there with free flu shots in the Great Scheme of Human Development.

In any case, it’s such an obviously simple and useful thing to do that not doing it must have required an impressive amount of density and sloth on the part of everybody here who could have made it happen.

But then again, there are countless things in life that seem so obvious, so simple, so helpful, and even so inexpensive, that it seems impossible that there should be people who can’t see the need or find the means to do them. Kissing your kid goodnight, say, or putting your hand on your heart when your national flag goes by, or running to help somebody get up who’s just tripped on the sidewalk.

But in Venice, the obvious and the simple have found an oddly inhospitable environment, where “We have no time,” “There is no money,” “The guy who knows how to do it is on vacation/ retired/dead” smothers a very large number of ideas on how to make daily life just a little bit more liveable.

This sign is a thing of true beauty. I wouldn't put it in the same league as the ABAB sonnet, but it's close.

Why — I have asked myself ever since I first came here, back in the Bronze Age –why should public transport have been made so thrillingly complicated for ordinary people who, let’s face it, comprise 98 percent of the world’s population and 99.9 percent of the visitors to Venice? (I made that up, but it could still be true.)

I don’t know the answer.  But I do know that many, many people whom I have seen with these very eyes have struggled not only with their luggage and their hysterical offspring and their own fatigue and lack of fluency in Italian, but with a bus system which gave you no intelligent means of knowing where you are or how to get where you’re going.

I have seen frantic people with big suitcases pull up to the Lido stop and ask the vaporetto conductor, “Is this the train station?”  Not only is the correct answer “No, it’s not,” but the full phrase is “The station is at the other end of town and it will take you 50 minutes to get there.  Sorry about you missing your train.”  (Actually, they don’t say “Sorry.”)

Then they decided to put another map further back in the cabin, showing both of the routes which this type of vehicle is likely to take, plus the N, or night-time abbreviated route which begins around midnight, depending on where you are.

In any civilized settlement in the world, from Scott City, Kansas on up, the traveler would have had some means of confirming his progress by consulting a conveniently placed and easy-to-read map, then looking out the window at the name of the upcoming stop.  It takes less than half a second to know if you’re headed in the wrong direction.

Of course there are plenty of maps around.  Tiny, Gordian diagrams in guidebooks or given out by the hotel, with supposedly helpful colors and numbers of lines, but the colors twist themselves into macrame and some of the numbers no longer exist. You can spend a long time waiting for the #82 before you find out that it doesn’t run after September 13. And that it is now called the #2.

Or the route map on the bus-stop dock.  It would be an intrepid traveler indeed to be able to read, and remember after boarding, what the next stops are called which lead toward one’s destination as one struggles through the wildebeest-migration that occurs on most docks.

Say what you will about the not-so-new mayor, Giorgio Orsoni;  he seems to have put a few people in positions of authority who not only have intelligent, grown-up ideas on how to make things work, but have figured out how to bring them to pass before the next Ice Age, which by the way is probably never going to happen considering which way the climate is going.  But you see my point.

So I give two thumbs-up to Carla Rey, the new councilor (or as I translate assessore, sub-mayor) for Commerce, Consumer Affairs, and Urban Quality.  I don’t know that she is behind this leap into the future, but what she has done so far in other areas leads me to believe it’s highly likely. Hers is a title which never existed before and has a bracingly modern, Big-City ring to it.

“Urban”?  Little old us?

So what’s my next Impossible Dream?  Large to Very Large public trash bins placed everywhere.  To be specific, I want there to be at least one large trash bin no further than 50 feet from any point in the entire city where you may be standing.  Wherever you stop, you need to be able to see a trash bin. This is not, I can assure you, the case at the moment.

I know, it sounds like crazy talk.  But now there are route maps on the vaporettos.

This changes everything.

Venice vaporettos: give me a sign is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

I started scribbling this yesterday to the sound just outside the window of a lot of people going by in a hurry. Sometimes a large hurry. I could hear the thudding of feet, the puffing of lungs, and incoherent voices of various ages and genders that sounded either baffled or urgent, or both.

This went on Saturday and Sunday.  ”This” was the 31st edition of the Venice Orienteering Meeting. Each year, on the second Sunday of November, our neighborhood is besieged by people who’ve come from all over Europe (though I’m sure you’d be welcome no matter where you live. Pitcairn Island?  Cool!).  They are competing in a timed race armed only with a map and a compass, and a list of checkpoints to cover in the correct order in the shortest time possible.  That’s my homespun definition of orienteering, an undertaking which has now reached the level of a sport.  It even has a federation.

When an activity passes from being a game to a sport, things get serious. (A shout-out to Ernest Hemingway, who said “There are only three sports, bullfighting,  motor racing and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”) Frankly, some of the orientators didn’t look so serious to me.

The famous division of labor: The men do the hunting, the women do the talking about clothes and makeup.

In a way, much more than boating or swimming, orienteering is the city’s natural sport.  In fact, I’d say it was Venice’s destiny to present itself, not merely as the repository of historical and artistic magnificence, but as a serious challenge to the brains and legs of people who are looking at it as terrain.

However willing your team may be, doing anything as a group always takes large amounts of time, as anyone who has traveled with a couple of friends or relatives can attest. These girls are about two minutes from the starting line and already there is discussion and doubt.

What, after all, are mere forests and torrents and ravines compared to the seductive complexity of dark, narrow streets, canals, dead ends, and bridges to everywhere?  Any newbie who has ever set out for a specific destination armed only with the primitive map the hotel gave out can tell you that there may be moments here when negotiating forests and ravines would be simpler.

Two things about the course: First, it was designed by a German man. I don’t comment, I merely  note it. Make of it what you will.

However, being on your own doesn't appear to make it any easier.

Second, there were many different courses, divided according to the gender and skill of the orientizers. These courses varied in length and in “dislivello,” a complicated topographic term which I can only manage to remember as being the distance in the difference of the heights of any two points. (Perhaps a humorous idea in Venice, but deeply meaningful in the mountains.  If you’re running in the mountains, it probably interests you much more to know how far up and down you’re going to have to go than the kilometers to cover.  If you live in the Lincolnshire fens or downtown Houston, it is a totally foreign concept.)

The longest course was, logically, for the serious athletes in the Elite  Category.  For the men, it covered 10,500 meters and 80 meters of dislivello (six and a half miles and 262 feet). Winner: Alessio Tenani of Italy, who finished in 1 hour 9 minutes and 51 seconds.  The last in this category came in at twice the time: 2:20:23.

For the women, the Elite course covered 8,700 meters and 73 meters of dislivello (five and a half miles and 239 feet).  Winner: Sarka Svobodna of the Czech Republic, who made it in 1:08:27.  Last to come in here clocked 2:00:41.

Behind all these paladins were large squadrons of students of assorted ages, and a richly variegated quantity of people — couples with small children, some of whom could race like the wind, or quartets of young adults, or pairs of roundish older people taking the whole thing at a pace that could have been calculated in phases of the moon.

Three cadets from the Francesco Morosini naval college forge ahead. John Paul Jones would have been proud.

But while we’re talking about walking, you should know that there is another annual event that might be more appealing, or at least less competitive.  It’s called “Su e Zo per i Ponti“ (Up and Down the Bridges), and groups turn out in hordes.  Here too there is a laid-out course to follow, but no need at all to use your brain. I’ve seen pods of people as they go by and most of them seem more interested in laughing and talking than in getting home before dark.

Next year’s “Su e Zo” will be on April 10 (2011) and if you’re going to be here it could be a very diverting and different thing to do.  After all, if you’re going to be tramping around from hither to yon anyway, why not join the masses of people who are so cheerfully blocking the streets?  You’re going to have to mingle with a lot of them anyway, and if you register you get refreshments and a medal, which you can’t say every day in Venice.

If there are tickets left you can register the morning of the event, at the departure point in the Piazza San Marco.  It costs six euros, less than a vaporetto ticket.  I think you should do it.

A runner punches his ticket at whichever checkpoint this is and is off again.

I myself have never thought of participating, mainly because walking around Venice takes up so much of my daily existence that it would seem bizarre to do what I do every day with a batch of people who regard it as entertainment.  I’m not saying I don’t love walking around Venice, it’s just that I usually do it in second or third gear.  I need to get places.

If I had any free time on a Sunday, I’d be taking a nap.

No rules against participants carrying their beloved stuffed creature.

Running around Venice is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

The following message is brought to you by me, your common sense.  Have you not heard my voice recently?  I’ve missed you too.

It was about 4:30 on Sunday afternoon, October 3 (the date is unimportant, because events of this sort occur all year long — but the factors of Sunday and Afternoon are significant because they are synonymous with “lots of people in a limited space not paying attention”).

“People” as in two American tourists.

“Not paying attention” as in “had 2,400 euros ($3,347.28) in cash and eight credit cards stolen.”

A moment of respectful silence would be appropriate here.

I'm just guessing that their money is not what this family is thinking about right now. I wouldn't have the least idea where to start digging for it, but I'm not a professional.

The reason I want to relate this event to you is not because I assume you’re going to travel with all that cargo, nor is it because it is so unusual. The only thing that makes this story worth telling is not that it happened, but the electrifying amounts involved.

Pickpocketing is by far the most common crime here in the most beautiful city in the world.  There could be as many as 200 events a day in high season, usually accomplished not by gypsies with babies who are easy to identify, but by professionals you will never see but who are all too well-known to the police.  They even have nicknames.

So, back to October 3. The vaporetto #2 was trundling along the Grand Canal and was coming up to the Accademia stop, an important node where there are typically many, many people getting on and off the waterbuses.

This is a vaporetto on a mere Thursday afternoon, one stop before "Accademia." It's a beautiful sight to the purloiners.

The vaporetto was, as usual, crammed with people, most of whom are usually thinking about lots of other things (whether they’ll make their train, where to find a bathroom, what to have for dinner, how to get their kid to stop yelling) than the people around them.  This is perfect for thieves.  In this case, a youngish Rumanian couple.

According to the report in the Gazzettino, they lifted the wallets of the two Americans smoothly and quickly (two crucial elements of the craft), but not sufficiently secretly, because the deed was observed by a few passengers, including — this is a nice bit — an American policeman.

As soon as the vaporetto tied up to the bus-stop dock, the Rumanians fled, but the alarm had already been given, people were running after them, the police were alerted, they sent two boats, and all these people plus two employees (I don’t know what sort) of the transport company managed to nab the crooks.

Seeing that only minutes had passed, the swag was still warm, and was returned in its entirety to its rightful owners.

One wallet contained  three credit cards and 1,300 euros ($1,813.11) in cash; the other contained five credit cards and 1,140 euros ($1,589.96) in cash.

Of course you would feel safer if the streets all looked like this. But what fun would that be?

So now my questions shift from the dark imponderables of the life and mind of a pickpocket, to the more vivid imponderables of the two extremely lucky victims.  My questions are perhaps also yours: Why would anybody be carrying that much cash?  Especially if they’ve got five pounds of credit cards?  Or do people with that much money not need to think?

Here’s another thing I wish I knew: Do pickpockets have any idea of how much plunder any particular pocket or bag is likely to hold? I realize that heavy gold jewelry and fistfuls of shopping bags from Ferragamo and Fendi might be pretty good clues.  But most of the tourists I see out there are not the Ferragamo/Fendi sort, nor are they bedecked with any accessories more noticeable than a backpack, water bottle, map(s), hats, and anything else needed for a trek across the Empty Quarter.  Or do all those tireless Fagins now recognize this get-up as the perfect disguise for people carrying hundreds and hundreds of crisp crackling banknotes?

If I knew any thieves, I’m sure they could explain.  But  meanwhile I’m left with the urgent desire to flip the switch on a large, blinking, neon WARNING sign for you that says:

Do not carry anything with you out of your hotel room that you would really miss if it suddenly  were to be gone.

And don’t think just because you’re not in the Piazza San Marco with a batch of mass tourists that you can’t get stung.  A friend of mine from Chicago who travels a lot was visiting and we went to the weekly market on the Lido, a large assemblage of vans selling everything from fresh fruit to buttons to wine-making equipment.  Hardly a touristic site, but there were — yes — large numbers of people crammed into small spaces thinking about something else. And her wallet was stolen. (What?  She’s no tourist, she’s with me!). So we spent one of her two days here dealing with reports to the carabinieri and phone calls home to work out a cash transfer.  Fun.

And don’t think you’re sneakier and smarter and more alert than they are.

And don’t think that there are somehow “safe” zones, the way certain stores are for lost children.  A German tourist guide had her wallet stolen while she was with a group.  In the basilica of San Marco. (There it is again: Lots of people not paying attention.)

Still, if you were to have your wallet lifted while you’re on a vaporetto, you’d actually be in pretty good shape.  Because as soon as you notify the mariner (who ties the boat to the dock at each stop) or the driver, he will stop the boat right there in the middle of the water and call the police.  If that had been possible in the case of the two Americans, it would have saved a whole lot of running like crazy.

So let me suggest this, even though I do not want you to come here thinking you’re putting yourself at some appalling risk.  Just imagine that your wallet gets stolen in Venice.  Then think about what you would be thinking about when you realize it’s gone.  You’d be thinking about what you should or shouldn’t have done.  So before you go out the door, do or don’t do that.

Now get out there and have a great time.

Watch your back, and your front, and your sides is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up

Last week saw the arrival of yet another signal of autumn.  It wasn’t the tuffetti, my favorite ducks, though that is an important moment for me. Nor was it the first chestnuts, jujubes, and persimmons appearing in the market. (Ignore the persimmons — it’s too early. These are clearly interlopers from some hothouse.)

It’s the arrival, if you can put it this way, of the mega-ramps constructed over the bridges that stud the route of the Venice Marathon, an event which is always held on the fourth Sunday in October. (For a look at the route, see here.)

Of course it takes longer to go up the ramp than to climb the steps, but there are obviously compensations. Note: The object at the foot of the bridge is a pigeon preparing to land. Wings are certainly better than feet for dealing with bridges, but they're not allowed by marathon rules.

Perhaps you never thought of Venice as being suitable for a marathon (do they use water wings? Must be one of the oldest jokes around).

No, the magic word for Venice, in the world of runners, isn’t “water,” it’s “bridges.”  Specifically, the 11 bridges between the mainland and the finish line way down at the Giardini not far from us. (I don’t include the Ponte della Liberta’, from the mainland to Piazzale Roma, nor the temporary pontoon bridge set up between the Salute and San Marco,  because they have no steps and present no special challenge beyond their simple existence.)

I can’t tell you where Venice ranks in the world of marathons (there are 72 marathons in Italy), but thanks to the ramps it’s a great thing for everybody who isn’t a runner — who has trouble walking, or has to schlep a heavy suitcase or shopping cart or child-laden stroller or any object involving wheels, which means just about everybody. The marathon closes after six hours, but here, schlepping is forever.

A view of the last bridge before the finish line, buttressed by its somewhat temporary bridges.

October 24 will be the 25th edition of this event, so there will be a small celebratory change in the route, which for the first and only (they say) time will be detoured straight through the Piazza San Marco.  It will obviously be a publicity agent’s dream.  If you’re trying to get around the Piazza that morning, it may be somewhat less dream-like.  But at least now you know. Make a note also that the vaporetto schedules will be deranged.

Of the 24 Venice marathons to date, seven were won by Italian men, 11 by Italian women.  Since the year 2000 it has been pretty much dominated by Ethiopian or Kenyan runners.  If you’re a runner, you may already have known, or surmised, this result.  I see by the statistics that during these 24 years the elapsed time for the men’s race has shrunk from 2:18’44″ to 2:08’13″.  A similar drop has occurred among the women.  (If you care, the world’s fastest marathon was four minutes shorter: Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia holds the record for his finish at the Berlin Marathon in 2008 at 2:03’59″.)

Let me repeat, for us mortals the marathon doesn’t mean glory, it means an annual drop in the Daily Fatigation Factor.  Because they leave the bridges up till Carnival is over, which means almost six months of ramps.

Yes, they’re ugly.  No, I don’t think it would be great to leave them up all year (at least not this version, though a design for a permanent wheel-friendly modification to some bridges was recently  proposed).  But when they’re gone, it takes a while to get used to doing steps again.

I know, steps are better for you.  So go climb steps somewhere else.  Try this: Drag your suitcase from the train station to your hotel at the end of the Strada Nova (four bridges).

And remember, to be really annoying a bridge doesn’t have to have a lot of steps.  It just has to be narrow, and steep.  There are 409 bridges in Venice, and as soon as you have something heavy and clumsy to carry, even just one will be too many.

The last ramp before the finish line. A vision of heaven to 6,000 runners.

Venice marathon, ramping up is a post from: Venice: I am not making this up