The departure board at Venice's Marco Polo Airport. The first flight left at 6:35. followed by 20 others before this list came up at 10:07.

I went to the airport one morning two weeks ago, and there I discovered that there is a dark side to cruising.  The only thing surprising about that is that I was surprised.

Going home from vacation is never very much fun, but it would seem that Marco Polo airport was designed to get you accustomed really fast to the fact that the fun is seriously over.

As I have often mentioned — sorry if I’m becoming repetitive, maybe I should set some of this material to music and we could all join in on the chorus – Venice has become a mega-major passenger port.

The wall on the right is where the line of check-in counters is placed. The left edge of this photograph is where the line at each counter ends.

Cruise traffic in the last ten years has quadrupled.  Expressed in bodies, that comes to 1,420,980 in 2009, which represented a 16.9 per cent increase over the previous year.  Venice is now the fourth busiest port in Europe, and the first in the Mediterranean.

The first ship on the dance card this year was the Costa “Deliziosa,” which arrived on January 30 (I don’t know from where — maybe there’s a cruise-ship launching platform somewhere around Queen Maud Land).  The last one scheduled this year is the MSC “Magnifica,” which will depart on December 27.   The word “season” has taken on new meaning: It’s every month of the year except January.

But until last Sunday, I hadn’t really given any thought to what these numbers might portend, not so much to the ships as to the airport.

The space from the man in the yellow shirt on the right and the red suitcase on the left is the space allotted to walking to your check-in counter, or wandering aimlessly.

After all, passengers mostly arrive by air.  I’ve often seen the young women who serve as cruise-passenger wranglers waiting in the Arrivals area at Marco Polo airport, holding up their signs for Princess or Costa or whatever the cruise line might be, to help them gather their arriving clients, each of whom appears to bring about ten metric tons of luggage.  The common idea about cruises is that people go on them in order to eat constantly, like blue whales (daily requirement: about 1.5 million calories).   But when I look at their bags, I think their main plan must be to pass the time changing clothes.

Anyway, it’s obvious that extraordinary machinery has been developed to keep these ships and their passengers and their supplies coming in and going out, doing a turnaround in the space of a day, for 11 months a year.

It doesn’t appear, however, that the same efficiency has been devoted to the airport phase of the experience.  Because when six or seven cruise ships come into Venice on a Sunday morning to finish their dreamy voyages, most of those people head for the airport. Where the party is definitively over.

Venice airport is the third busiest in Italy, preceded only by Rome and Milan.  This makes the airport people very proud, as well it should. But while their annual numbers might be impressive on the page, they’re not nearly as impressive as the struggle all those thousands of people have to make in order to leave Venice in something like a four-hour window of time.  Certainly there are early flights where the density of humans is less — the first departs at 6:35 AM. But no cruise company in the world would put its passengers on the airport bus at 4:30 AM, unless it were docking in Murmansk.

Another glimpse of the space for walking around, or staring at the Departures board, or trying to figure out what to do next. The width of the area is theoretically compensated for by the fact that it extends for 60 check-in counters. Doesn't feel like quite enough, though.

So as I say, I went to the airport on a Sunday morning to meet some friends who had debarked from their cruise and were flying out that night.  When I slid off the escalator on the Departures level, what greeted me was an appalling combination of the last day at summer camp (when all the kids are milling around being picked up by parents) and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West featuring Annie Oakley.

That morning there were 20 flights scheduled between 9:50 AM and 12:15 PM; that’s one every six minutes.  And three of those flights were to major US destinations, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York.  I mention that only because I presume that one flight to Atlanta involves more passengers than three flights to Palermo.

When I think back on the previous facility 15 years ago (a nostalgic reminder of the Oneida County airport at Utica, New York  in 1968), the shiny new version is something of an improvement.  But one has to ask oneself (I’ll stand in for “one,” in this scene), what they were thinking when they designed an airport that has more space for the planes than for the people.

Take the check-in area on the Departures level.  It is beautifully long, but ludicrously narrow.  There are 60 check-in counters, and the designer(s) evidently assumed that each check-in counter would serve a line of no more than 25 calm, lucid, well-organized passengers with no luggage or children.  Then they left just a smidge of space at the end of the line so that people could get through who needed to go somewhere else — another counter, or the newsstand or the bar.

But wait.  It turns out there are more than 25 people who need to line up at each counter, so they begin to clump together.  And hold on — we actually need lots and lots of space for the people who are walking from here to there because many of them got here the necessary two (or more) hours before departure but whose flight isn’t open for check-in yet.  So they wander (mill around, actually) or they sit, if they can find a place among the very designy but not very numerous seats.

Let’s talk about other things people need besides enough space to stand in a check-in line, or to sit and check their tickets and yell at their kids and or maybe take a snooze.

People need to go the bathroom.  There are two obvious bathrooms on the Departures level and one hidden away down a hallway.  I don’t know about the men’s room (men don’t care, anyway), but each ladies’ room has two (2) toilets.  That makes four stalls for women on a floor that is pullulating with hundreds and hundreds of people.  There are two ladies’ rooms on the Arrivals floor, too, so make that another four stalls on the ground level.  Eight stalls — I mean ten, if you count the hidden facility — for women in an airport that operates an average of 80 flights a day, or an average of one every 12 minutes.  (There must be a handicapped-accessible bathroom somewhere, it just doesn’t come to mind.)

Lest you think I am unreasonably obsessed with physiological needs (like, say, space to move around in and yes, to relieve oneself), I have some data from Robert Davis, an architect friend of mine.  He writes: “We have a rule of thumb for theaters which is ‘30 seats per seat.’ … So a 600-seat facility should have 20 fixtures, evenly divided male/female.”

Assuming that airport design is not radically different from theater design (some people spend more time in airports than they do in theaters, after all), if you have 600 people in the airport you would need ten stalls for the women.  So we see that the Venice airport is already in a bathroom deficit situation.  Because let’s assume there are more than 600 people in the airport at a given time, a pretty safe assumption based on the evidence of the other morning.  The people keep swarming in, but there are still only eight stalls. Just deal with it.

At the other end of the alimentary canal, there are two (2) bar/sandwich counters (one upstairs with no seating and one downstairs with some tables), and one multi-station buffet with very little space to move around in with your tray, and a batch of cramped tables and extremely little space for your luggage, assuming you’re snacking before checking in, or you feel like doing something other than wander and look for a place to sit.  The line for this facility stretches out to collide with the lines of people checking in at counters 59 and 60.

Then there's the way people come up the one escalator and then just stop -- to think, to look around, to consider the Departures board which is facing them on the other wall. Perhaps an up escalator and a Departures board shouldn't be in front of each other.

I have to say, pretty slim pickings for passengers at an airport which claims to be ready to handle 15 million passengers a year.  Especially considering that it is currently handling only about 8 million.

I’m not saying Venice’s aerodrome has to be like Frankfurt or Amsterdam airports, though I wouldn’t mind.  All I’m saying is that while everyone has been working night and day to increase cruise traffic, it doesn’t appear that anyone has been attending to how they will be accommodated (I mean wrangled) on the day they leave.  So far, Skytrax has not awarded any stars at all to Venice airport.  I wonder what that means.

So what advice could I give someone leaving their dream cruise and flying out of Venice airport in the summer?  Bring a book.  Your own food.  A folding chair.  A portable toilet.  Think of it as camping, in the middle of Times Square.  You’ll be fine.

The joy of cruising ends right about here. No looking back, no going forward, either.

I have taken some cruises, let me state for the record.  What follows is not a screed against cruises.  Sometimes a screed isn’t even necessary.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, cruises are one of Venice’s main sources of income — not from the paltry trinkets that the passengers may buy as they wander the streets on shore leave, or from the soggy sandwiches or slices of cold pizza they may eat while sitting on a bridge, but from the tax levied on each passenger of about 100 euros each.

Today I only want to share with you the sheer — there must be a word — sheerness of the sight which greeted me as I reached  the end of via Garibaldi this morning. 

We knew yesterday evening that a cruise ship, as occasionally happens, was destined to be moored at the Riva dei Sette Martiri, because the wire fence that serves as a minimal sort of barrier had already been set up.

What I hadn’t really noticed last night was that the fence stretched the entire length of the Riva, which I now know is about 970 feet, give or take.  Because the ship that is tied up there is officially 965 feet long and, by the look of it, about three miles high.

This is the stern of Cunard's "Queen Victoria," as proud a protuberance as one (though probably not the erstwhile Empress of India herself) might wish. Don't think for a minute that the highest deck you see is the highest deck there is.

I gave up trying to fit the entire vessel into one frame. If you want, I can send you the pieces and you can make a collage.

Of course this is a modest optical illusion. The campanile of San Marco (that tiny belltower in the distance) is 325 feet high, while the "Queen Victoria" is a mere 205 feet high. I wouldn't want to fall off either one.

Cruise ships come in and out of Venice virtually every day from April to October (plus a little bit on each end).  On weekends it’s the March of the Pachyderms when as many as seven arrive in the morning and depart that evening, a turnaround system that would dazzle the Ferrari pit crew.

My impression, standing by this behemoth, was that this is the largest thing afloat that isn’t an iceberg.  But the facts are otherwise (fancy way of saying I was wrong).  In fact, I must be really easy to impress, considering how far down the list (34th) of behemoths she ranks. 

I tried some snaps from the water side, but still can't make it look like anything less than what it is.

The “Queen Victoria”’s stats are:   965 feet long and carries 2,000 passengers.

The “Oasis of the Seas,” which has yet to grace Venice with her presence, God forbid, measures 1,181 feet and carries 5,400 passengers.

I’ve seen plenty of ships which are essentially the same size as the Queen Vic:  the “Norwegian Gem” (965 feet), MSC “Musica” (964), “Costa Serena” (952), and the “Ruby Princess” (951).  So I really shouldn’t have been so stunned — it’s just that the others moor in the maritime zone and I only see them underway at some moderate distance from the shore.  Walking past the “Queen Victoria” is like walking past the Great Wall of China.

Nope. There is no angle from which this vessel looks like anything smaller than the Matterhorn.

And then I got to thinking.  It carries 2,000 passengers and about 1,000 crew (I like that ratio, by the way).  And it’s got so much square footage that I don’t want to stop to figure it out, amusing as that might be. 

All I was thinking is this:  The proportions are essentially ludicrous, in the same way that it’s ludicrous that a vehicle has been invented (a car) which weighs 2,000 pounds in order to carry me, which weighs 125.  Now we have this leviathan of the seas carrying a mere 2,000 people, which probably means that each person rates 4,500 square feet all his or her own.

Or look at it this way: All 2,000 of those passengers, none of whom is any larger than the crumblike humans in the photographs, are the only thing keeping this mutant mammoth alive.  If it weren’t for the assortment of tiny plantigrade mammals I saw descending the gangway in the rain, this colossus would just starve and die. 

The idea that something so big could be so vulnerable is nothing new.  Other behemoths come to mind, such as the Temple of the Jaguar Priest at Tikal, or the Hill Complex of Great Zimbabwe.  But we keep building them all the same.  Maybe it makes us feel slightly less crumblike.

We were on the Minoan Lines ferry waiting for whichever Princess that is to back out of her parking space and leave room in the world for us. I'm starting to love those little crumblike humans. They're so cute.

Before the month of May disappears in our mental/emotional/devotional rear-view mirrors, here’s what we did on May 31.  Which is not, obviously, Memorial Day here, but the last day of the month dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary, as I’m sure you know.  Or at least, as you know now.

Our neighborhood is one of the few which is still inhabited by enough people who care to maintain certain religious habits which used to be pretty common in most parishes in Venice, but now are virtually extinct. 

An example was the evening of May 24, the Feast of Santa Maria Ausiliatrice (Holy Mary the Helper): A few hardy men hoisted a large statue of Mary, surrounded by little lightbulbs, on their shoulders, and carried her from the church of San Francesco della Paola on via Garibaldi all the way to the church of San Pietro.  She and her native bearers were followed by a long procession of parishioners, including the children who had recently been confirmed (they wore their white robes and little garland crowns).  As they walked, they recited the Litany of the BVM.  The priest would say his phrase, then they would respond with theirs, and so on, occasionally interspersing various prayers.

As per tradition everywhere in Italy, at least according to my experience, the priest’s prayers and cues were spoken with aid of an amplification system which would be happier if it could be a mule and just stop working altogether.   There are inevitably random breaks in the connection, so the flow of piety is punctuated by sudden silences, and the occasional electrical shriek. 

Getting ready to row also involves a little badinage with one of the off-duty parish priests (right), in mufti.

A week later, on the evening of May 31, the visit’s over, and this imposing statue has to go home.  But this time she goes by boat.  For several years, the local rowing club, the Remiera Casteo, has organized a corteo, or boat procession, loading the priest, acolytes and sound “system” on two sturdy caorlinas, followed by whoever wants to join in.

Getting her aboard requires steady nerves and a strong back, and someone ready to keep her from toppling backward.

The first year we participated, Lino and I came in two sandolos rowed by cadets from the nearby Morosini naval college.  That was the best version of all.   

Then the priest comes aboard.

The acolytes are already in place. They don't have much to do, but they look great.

First, as we rowed under the wooden bridge leading to San Pietro, someone standing on it was tossing rose petals toward the boats as we passed.  We rowed through little eddies of petals in the shining twilight water.

And the caravan begins to move out.

The ecclesiastical contingent had to be divided onto two caorlinas. The microphone was on the first, the loudspeaker on the second. Maybe this explains something about the sound quality.

Second, after the statue was safely ensconced in her church, we rowed out the rio di San Isepo and into the Bacino of San Marco to get back to the college.  The moon was so full it had completely overflowed, pouring a river of silver along our path.  Then the boys started singing.  I have no idea what the song was, though I do know that none of them will be appearing at La Scala.  But their singing was wonderful because they were happy. 

A number of people had decorated their windows with festive hangings, or even small candles on the windowsills.

This year there was the usual chilly breeze — not strong, but insistent, highly annoying – and no rose petals.  No cadets, either.  Lino and I rowed a two-oar mascareta from the club, which we have now joined.  The modest amount of singing was instigated by the priest, who as we turned the corner of the rio San Daniele to head down the long waterway flanking the Arsenal, segued into the classic “Mira al tuo popolo, O bella Signora” (Gaze upon your people, O lovely Lady). 

Along the rio di Sant' Ana, past our house, flanked by a mass of parishioners walking along the fondamenta.

Even in the best of times (whenever those are), this hymn has a lugubrious undertow which gives piety a bad name.  And in this case, the priest didn’t know many more of the lyrics than I do, and after the first verse he began to mangle even the bits he could remember, with the occasional improvisation.  Lino snorted.  A priest who doesn’t know the words (A) should turn in his badge and keycard or (B) not sing.  This was one situation, though, where the sudden microphonal silences didn’t really do much damage.

Two boats ahead of us, two boats behind. That was the procession. I still think it looked great.

  Madonna safely ashore, we rowed back to the club.   There was still just enough light left in the darkening sky; we could see without having to turn on the warning flashlight, and better yet, there were hardly any motorboats out now anyway (it was going on toward 10:00).   We glided over small smooth waves lifted occasionally by a few larger ones, which gave me the sensation that the lagoon had just breathed a deep sigh of satisfaction.

Or maybe that was me.

Ready to turn left down the rio de la Tana, past the Arsenal walls.

Getting her back on dry land is only slightly less tricky than bringing her aboard. I saw somebody almost get brained by an oar.

You may recall my bulletin from the neighborhood cafe about the unknown-person-or-persons, as the police would say, who left a pineapple in the cafe’s bathroom.

Buying a fresh pineapple (not cheap, hence a person with a little extra cash) with the intention of leaving it behind (disturbingly antisocial) — or just to have the rush of buying it (a person easy to entertain) — or even someone who has lost track of how forgetful or easy to distract (”Squirrel!!”) he or she has become, the episode maintains its prominence on my list of recent curiosities.

But it does indeed get better.

After talking with the cafe owner, the portrait of the unidentified perpetrator muddies and darkens.

Because not only did the person/s leave the pineapple, he and/or she tried to flush it down the toilet.

Let’s pause while we all picture that.

So now we have a person (I’m presuming it wasn’t a dog or an iguana or battalion of fruit flies) who is malicious and/or also slightly estranged from the world we label as real.

Of course, this was a windfall for one of the local plumbers, who had to come in and, I believe she said, break the toilet in order to free it.  (The plumber had to come in?  Oh wait a minute…… ). 

The trail is now cold and the identity of this pineapple-wielding misfit (”Did anyone have a grudge against you, Manuela?”) may never be known.  This annoys me even more than the blocked plumbing.

Trying to flush a pineapple down a toilet.  Is some kid, or kid-like adult, trying to imitate some irresistible television ad, a kid perhaps unable to have read the fine print saying “This pineapple-wielding misfit is a professional.  Do not try this at home”? 

Naturally I will be posting updates, if there are any.

I'm not supposing the same person left this panel of plastic-covered glued sawdust on our bridge. Just wanted to illustrate the dark urges that drive a certain sort of person in our part of the world. You find yourself with an inconvenient object? Just put it down. There.

The following was not written by me, nor is it set in Venice; it was written by a friend whose gifts far outstrip the recognition they have received.  And because this small but perfect jewel has become part of my own personal Christmas tradition, I am giving it to you here.  Happy Holidays to all.

                                                                                             THE LATECOMER

                                                                                              by George S. Nammack

It was after 10 o’clock on Christmas Eve and I was 12 and wearing my first long trousers.  I never had been permitted to attend midnight mass, but I knew that 10:30 was the latest one could be sure of seating at St. Mary, Star of the Sea in Far Rockaway [NY].  After that, you  hurried across the dark schoolyard to claim a folding seat in the Lyceum, actually the school’s auditorium, where you would participate in what was perceived to be a somehow second-cabin rite known as The Overflow Mass.

Mother had made her traditional pronouncement that those who chose to go to midnight services were in a state of less rectitude and grace than were those clear-eyed parishioners who led their scrubbed and shining families to the front pews on Christmas morning.  My father, splendid in the swallowtail coat that he wore as well to medical society meetings, paced before the fire.  He lectured and charmed in favor of the late mass and, finally, prevailed.

It was five minutes before midnight when we were shown to our seats.  Mr. Phelan, a huge detective who looked like the legendary John L. Sullivan and was certainly the heavyweight champion of Far Rockaway, was ushering.  He smiled at my father and leaned in to speak.  “Gee, Doc, you’re just under the wire.  Sorry about the seats.” 

“That’s all right, Eddie,” my father said.  “Even the kings were late.”

The altar was centered on the stage, its snowy linens seeming to move in the dancing candlelight.  On a raised platform of red and green two-by-fours, James O’Brien, known as far away as West Hempstead for his rendition of “Bill Bailey, Won’t You Please Come Home,” was playing “Silent Night” on the small organ.  Jockey-size and florid of complexion, he was blessed with a golden tenor.

At four minutes past 12, the popular veteran priest, Father Shine, commenced the celebration of midnight mass.  Following communion and the Special Christmas Collection  — “I trust we’ll have a lovely soft collection…I don’t want to be hearing any silver!” — Mr. O’Brien launched into his showstopper, Adolph Adam’s beautiful “O Holy Night.”

We sang along, but softly, because it was Mr. O’Brien’s moment.  As he reached the somewhat imperative line about falling on your knees, the back door of the Lyceum opened to admit a javelin of frigid wind and, right behind it, Mr. Mitt Gaffney, who lived in an unheated bungalow near the beach and on handouts from saloon keepers, the kitchen ladies at the hospital and the limited largesse of Long Island Rail Road commuters, many of whom had been his classmates in better days.

He stood there for a moment, listening to Mr. O’Brien and filling the already close atmosphere with the unmistakable aroma of cheap muscatel.  Mr. Phelan’s neck was turning purple as he looked at Mitt Gaffney’s head.  It was covered with a drooping red Santa Claus cap, the peak of which terminated in a once-white pom-pom that fell across the left shoulder of his stained Army overcoat like a medal awarded for congenital innocence. 

 Mr. Phelan whispered as only a 300-pound man can when he needs to make a point but doesn’t want to disturb the world at large.  He said, “Mother of God, Mitt, you’re late and mass is nearly over, and you got a helluva bun on and take off that damned hat in church!”

“Go easy, Eddie, easy,” smiled Mitt, removing his droll topping and stuffing it into a pocket.  “We’re not in church, we’re at The Overflow and I just overflowed in for a peek.”

Mr. Phelan said, “I’ll give you a peek and more, Mitt, if you don’t shut up and behave yourself.  Now hush!”

The latecomer managed to balance himself behind the last row.  As the last lingering note rose in the accepted direction of Paradise, Mitt Gaffney stepped into the main aisle and acknowledged Mr. O’Brien’s tour de force.  “Bravo, Jimmy!  Bravo!  You sounded just like an angel!  Honest, kiddo, an angel!  A real angel!”

Mitt was teetering from side to side, applauding his friend, his enormous freckled hands crashing into each other.  Mr. O’Brien stood and stared through his rimless glasses at this display of uninvited support.  His expression was akin to the kind you see at the zoo, when a child sees a rhinoceros for the first time.  I believed he was about to faint.

The stunned faithful turned as one to fix the speaker with glares, and Mr. Phelan was puffing back from the front of the auditorium.  My father reached out and gently but firmly navigated Mr. Mitt Gaffney into the only empty seat in our row.

The glares gave way to head-shaking, then to snickers, which built to a great wave of relieving laughter.  My father put a protective arm around the old Army overcoat and told its frail occupant to be quiet.

Father Shine took a deep breath and spoke.  His brogue was as soft as rain on pebbles, and his large blue eyes seemed to hold all of the light.  “All right, then, settle down all of you.

“Given the fact that I found his somewhat-demonstrative approbation a bit unusual, given the fact that in these parts we’re not given to applauding the sacred music, I must say that I wholeheartedly concurred with Mr. Gaffney’s apreciation of Mr. O’Brien’s divinely inspired performance.  You did sound just like an angel, Jimmy.  And Mitt, if you’re to clap and bellow again in church — and you’re in church, Lyceum or not — I’ll have Mr. Phelan cart you off to the hoosegow.  Now then, the mass is ended.  Go in peace.  God bless you all, and drive safely.”

On the way home, my mother said that the interruption was disgraceful, but my father said that things don’t happen unless they’re supposed to and that Mr. Mitt Gaffney had brought a unique gift to midnight mass.  Not only that, but he had caused everyone to open it and share it right there at The Overflow, and pity those over at the main church who missed out.

Later, in bed, I thought about the red Santa cap and its almost-white pom-pom, and Mr. O’Brien’s facial expression, and Father Shine’s forgiving eyes, and my father.  I gazed out into the starry night and wondered if Mr. O’Brien would sing one day as an angel in Heaven and if Mr Mitt Gaffney would be there to applaud him, and I thought that their chances were pretty good.

We’re sitting here holding a sort of tense little domestic vigil awaiting the end of the world, which is predicted to reach Venice some time tonight. 

Acqua alta doesn't necessarily have to come pouring over the battlements. As here in the Piazza San Marco, it often comes up through the drains.

Briefly, a huge weather system is moving across Italy and will be bringing high winds, torrential rain, and acqua alta, or high water, sometime tonight.  I say “sometime” because Things Might Change (at least slightly — maybe the wind won’t settle into the southeast after all, for example) but we’re going to be getting wet.  Just how wet is the question that is keeping the lights burning in our little hovel.

The tide is going to turn and begin to rise about 3:00 AM.  Which means we can expect to hear the municipal high-water warning sirens begin to wail not very long after that. 

The tide forecast is: Maximum at 9:30 PM tonight at 75 cm [29 inches above mean sea level] ; minimum at 2:25 AM at 45 cm [17 inches]; maximum at 8:35 AM at 130 cm [51 inches]; minimum at 3:40 PM at 20 cm [7 inches].   

This is Lino on December 1 last year, watching the tide rising outside our front door. This is me, taking the picture, still hoping that the tide will stop here. It didn't. And the barrier didn't do anything useful to keep it out.

My only hope and prayer at this point is that the tide will only reach the three-tone level, because that means we’re still dry.  We discovered last December 1 that when we hear four tones, we’re basically doomed. 

We had water in our very own domicile; what was unnerving wasn’t so much its height (I guess it never exceeded an inch on the floor) as its inexorability.  I can’t recall a sensation to compare it to: The realization that you can’t do one single thing to stop it.  I suppose going into labor might be something similar.

I can tell you that the garbagemen are working an extra shift right now, setting up the temporary walkways in the parts of the city which will certainly be submerged to some extent, especially around the Piazza San Marco, the lowest point in the city.

There is also absolutely no doubt that Paolo Canestrelli and his band of hardy forecasters are working the lobster shift at the Tide Center, refining their predictions probably minute by minute.  What they really, really hate is to turn out to have gotten the numbers wrong.  People may snicker at them when the tide doesn’t rise as high as they thought it would, but people rage and snarl and shriek when they estimated too low.  Not a job I’d be at all interested in having.

For the record, a normal tide (measured in height above mean sea level) is between -50 cm and +79 cm  [minus 19 - plus 31 inches.]   One siren tone.

Code Yellow (”sustained tide”) is between +80 and +109 cm  [31 - 42 inches.]  Two tones.

Code Orange (”very sustained tide”) is between 110 cm and 139 cm  [43 - 54 inches.]  Three tones.

Code Red (”exceptional high tide”) is over 140 cm [55 inches.]

Here I was last year, standing in our little street and contemplating the mysteries of the universe, still not convinced that the water was going to rise any further. Shortly after this, we stopped taking pictures and started bailing.

In case anyone has heard about the MOSE floodgate project (perhaps to be operational in 2012), intended to block high tide from reaching the city, I want to point out that it is intended to be used only in the case of Code Red.  Which means that for 3/4 of the high-tide events, we’re still going to be pulling on our wellies. 

Another point: The numbers don’t really tell you much because Venice is not uniformly level.  So a number in one place isn’t going to signify the same experience in another — sometimes even just 50 yards down the street.

More tomorrow, at some point.  Going back to doing laps around the rosary.

This just in from Milan — and it’s too good to keep to myself even if it didn’t happen in Venice. 

A 32-year-old Somali man is in Italy illegally.  This isn’t news.  He is arrested and found guilty of the crime of “clandestinity” (being illegal) and slapped with an expulsion order.  Normal so far.  A large number of illegal immigrants who are arrested and sentenced to return immediately to their country of origin just put the document in their scrapbook and keep on with whatever they were doing.

So he doesn’t leave Italy.  But he does need to do something.  So one night he makes his way into somebody’s apartment to steal stuff.  For reasons difficult to determine from where I am, instead of nabbing some valuables and getting the hoo out of there, he is overcome with somnolence and sits/lies down on the sofa and falls asleep.

I grant that it’s easy enough to fall asleep on the sofa at night, especially in the dark (which I presume the room was) even if you’re not watching Formula One racing (oh wait — people think that’s exciting) or a bridge tournament or a Japanese political debate. 

But in any case, Morpheus sneaks up on him like a thief in the night and out he goes.

Meanwhile, the homeowner has heard something suspicious (snoring?), discovers the interloper and calls the police, who appear in a trice.

The patrol-people’s first question is not “What the hoo are you doing here?”  It’s ”May we see some ID please.”

So he reaches into his pocket or scrapbook and gives them a piece of paper.  Sure enough, it’s got his name on it.  It’s an expulsion order.  I have no idea how long he’d had it, but it’s not a document you’d normally consider flashing to somebody in a uniform, given that if you do have one you’re not supposed to be lollygagging around the country that doesn’t want you, you’re at least supposed to be at the airport pretending to look for a flight to somewhere else. 

In any case, you’re not supposed to be busy committing yet another crime.

And then I ask myself, “How exactly do you manage to fall asleep when you’re in somebody else’s house committing a crime?”  I mean, it’s not as if he turned on the TV and started watching a bridge tournament.

So now I presume he has another expulsion order, possibly one that categorizes his status a bit more forcefully.  To go in his scrapbook.

I regret the recent interval of silence –now we’re on the road again.  For the third year in a row, we are going to Lepanto (Nafpaktos) Greece, to participate in a spectacle commemorating the victory of the Battle of Lepanto (October 7, 1571 — I remember it as if it were yesterday…). 

I’ll be back in a week, full of anecdotes and photos, one hopes not too out of focus.  The anecdotes, I mean.

Let me wish myself bon voyage: kalo taxidi!

The Carabinieri — like the firemen — are always on hand whenever something hideous has occurred.  Wrecks, suicides, etc. are always dealt with by this remarkable corps; think of them as the Police Who Must be Obeyed.  (Not like all the other police around, or at least so it seems.)  The Carabinieri are serious, get-it-done officers, and never mind all the jokes at their expense.  (Example: Why do carabinieri always go on patrol in pairs?  Because one is the one who knows how to read, and the other is the one who knows how to write.  Ba-dum.)  Let me add, before anyone else does, that they are a serious military entity on serious military duty in several places in the world, such as Iraq.

But let’s imagine — actually, you don’t need to imagine it, because it happened a few days ago — that you are a couple who has just arrived, as per months-in-the-planning, to get married at the Villa Giustinian Morosini in Mirano, a lovely 18th-century villa in a smallish settlement along the Brenta river between Venice and Padova.  Friends — check.  Family — check.  Ring, flowers, photographer, check.  Celebrant?  Celebrant?  Official marryer-type person?  Hello? 

The minutes tick by, and while I suppose somebody might have ventured a jest about at least the bride being on time, the mood could not have been what I would call festive.  The groom especially was not amused.  Because while it appears that in a civil ceremony you don’t get to choose your celebrant, you know there’s supposed to be somebody standing in front of you asking you a batch of questions and then signing some papers.

The absence of the expected official quickly passed “annoying” and was on a straight trajectory toward “insane.”  Minutes were ticking by with no sign of anybody prepared to marry these two crazy kids.  And the kids were getting crazier.  

The Carabinieri look extremely fine, even in their everyday uniform -- as long as your conscience is clear, that is.

So the groom calls the Carabinieri.  I love this guy!  Because while I suppose that if he had been feeling slightly less tense, he might have called the firemen (my celebrant is stuck up a tree and I can’t get married), he knew that the Carabinieri are implacable.  They are both civil and military police, and Lino has told me that the humblest carabiniere outranks a four-star general and an admiral of the fleet. 

The Carabinieri take this seriously as any other official infraction, immediately contacting the vice-mayor to ask what’s going on.  (I’m thinking about how amused he was to get a call from the Carabinieri.)  He doesn’t know what’s going on, but he checks the list of who’s on duty that day as the mayor’s representative.   It turns out that it’s a town councilor named Luigi Coro’, and the problem isn’t him, it’s the person who was on duty the day before. 

Because while the bride and groom have been tapping their toes, and their watches, Mr. Coro’ has been wildly searching the municipal offices for the “wedding packet” which contains all the necessary documents, and the official register, and the tricolor sash (red, white and green, the colors of the Italian flag) which he has to drape across his chest to signify his official status as representative of the government of Italy.  No packet, no wedding.

So why can’t he find it? (I imagine him emptying wastebaskets, checking the refrigerator.)  Because the person who was on duty the day before forgot to tell anybody where he put it.  I know — let that sink in for a minute.  “Oh, just put it down anywhere…”  And then, as I say, he forgot to notify anyone.  Just…. forgot.  Quittin’ time!

Meanwhile, the vice-mayor himself has arrived — the Carabinieri do tend to get your attention – to try to keep everyone calm and the tarps on the lifeboats, and ready to step in as celebrant if Mr. Coro’ doesn’t manage to show up.  (The vice-mayor can do it without any of the accessories, evidently, or can produce his own, or something.)  

It must have seemed like years had gone by -- maybe even centuries -- before the celebrant finally showed up.

Forty-five minutes after the appointed time, which must have seemed much longer, Mr. Coro’ shows up with all his accessories, and the ceremony proceeds.  The vows are exchanged, the deed is done, and the two lovebirds can finally get on with the rest of their lives, starting with the reception and continuing on to the honeymoon and having kids and grandkids and trial separations and hip replacements and so on.

The town government was very nice about it.  They not only sent the couple  a telegram, they also gave them a 50% discount on the use of the room.

I’d like to think that the Carabinieri got some kind of acknowledgment — maybe even a thank-you – though probably they don’t expect it.  “Just all in a day’s work, sir.” 

Or maybe one of them caught the bouquet.  The one who knows how to read.