Acqua alta: Reprieved

And the happy ending to the story of the predicted high water at dawn today is:  Reprieved!  Curfew shall not ring tonight!

The maximum was forecast for 8:45 this morning.  But we had already calmed down by then because at 8:00 we could see that  the tide hadn’t gone past the edge of our first step, and it was already  “getting tired,” as the saying goes here.  As the tide approaches its maximum height, whatever it may be, it begins to slow down.  And slow down.  Till it finally stops.  And, I suppose, draws a deep breath.  Then it begins to move back out, or down, or however one wants to think of it. Away, in any case.

The view from our front door, looking left.
The view from our front door, looking left. Wet but manageable.

At 8:55 the tide touched 136 cm [4.4 feet] above median sea level, a delicate little 4 cm [1.5 inches] less than the maximum forecast.  Not a lot less, but we like whatever less we can get.

The image below shows a thing of beauty.  (It also, I make a note, shows what 136 cm looks like in front of our little hovel.)

By 10:00 AM the street was empty of water.  Now we can get on with the rest of the day. Unlike the wretches freezing to death in Eastern Europe.

This is what the maximum acqua alta looked like this morning. This is also a picture of me smiling.
This is what the maximum acqua alta looked like this morning, just barely making it to the edge of the first step. (The line indicating moisture above was caused by the tide's attempt to pull itself up as high as it possibly could.) This is also a picture of me smiling.
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Water coming ashore

What is it about December that seems to call the acqua alta with a siren song of irresistible allure? Other people are already thinking about Christmas, but at the moment (6:00 AM) I am thinking about where to put all the stuff that’s on the floor for when the tide tops the predicted 140 cm.

The maximum is forecast for 8:45 and maybe, seeing that is very little wind, and it’s from the north, just maybe we will escape having the lagoon pay us a personal visit. Then again, maybe not.

High water gets here by any and all routes, not merely by spilling over the edges of the sidewalks.  It comes up through the drains.  And here you can see that it also comes up through any possible cranny.  I discovered this tiny hole in the pavement in front of our house only after I noticed the little ripples caused by the invisible jet of water beneath the surface.  Oh well.
High water gets here by any and all routes, not merely by spilling over the edges of the sidewalks. It comes up through the drains. And here you can see that it also comes up through any possible cranny. I discovered this tiny hole in the pavement in front of our house only after I noticed the little ripples caused by the invisible jet of water beneath the surface. Oh well.

I mention this for two reasons.

One, because a year ago, the first time the tide reached that height, it did indeed come indoors.  Of course we blocked the entrance, which I guess works for some people but for us it only slowed the arrival of the old H2O. And the barrier did nothing, as you may recall, to stop the water from coming in through the wall under the kitchen sink, or up through a fissure in the floor.

The butcher up the street doesn't look too concerned (Nov. 30, 2009).
The butcher up the street doesn't look too concerned (Nov. 30, 2009).

Two, because I don’t want you to think that when I scoff at the chronic drama suffusing reports of high water, that I am doing so because I am at no risk of having to sweep the lagoon out of the house, then wash the floors with fresh water.

I scoff because washing the floors is a good thing and I should do it more often. And also because last week we put the refrigerator and the washing machine up on wooden beams, three inches above the floor. Yesss!

And I scoff especially today because last night I read the weather news from Eastern Europe and it’s a goddam disaster out there.  An Arctic front has assaulted every country from Germany to Albania, visiting blizzards, icy rain, and record sub-zero temperatures on millions of people.  People trapped in their cars all night on the highways in the snow, people freezing to death, major airports closed, hundreds of cancelled flights.  Thousands evacuated from their flooded houses, and I mean really flooded; some of these dwellings are now ruined by more than three feet of water inside.

More severely undisturbed people getting on with the day (Nov. 30, 2009).
More severely undisturbed people getting on with the day (Nov. 30, 2009).

And then we read the forecast for Venice: Acqua alta.  I have to tell you, after the deafening symphony of catastrophe from out there, “high water” sounds like a little tune played on a baby’s xylophone.

An inch of water on our floor for two hours, if that’s what transpires, doesn’t deserve more than a few deep sighs.  Of course it will be higher in the Piazza San Marco — of course it will be inconvenient for people going to work (the tourists love it, so they don’t count) and will require walking on narrow walkways (I mean, if you  haven’t already figured out that you needed to put on boots), and the vaporettos will all be sent up the Grand Canal for a couple of hours because they can’t get under two of the bridges on their route, so people will have to walk somewhat further than they normally do to get from their usual vaporetto stop to wherever they’re going. Terrible.

The emergency forces are out all over Europe trying to save people’s lives. Here, by noon it’s all going to be over.

It’s almost embarrassing.

If you sell things that water could damage, you plan ahead. This shop also has the barrier across the front door, but the owners wisely activated Plan B (Nov. 30, 2009).
If you sell things that water could damage, you think ahead. This shop also has the barrier across the front door, but the owners wisely activated Plan B (Nov. 30, 2009).
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Venice vaporettos: give me a sign

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.

Not only does the sign exist, it has been placed in a useful location on both sides of the aisle, and it's legible. They thought of everything.
Not only does the sign exist, it has been placed in a useful location (there's another on the other side of the aisle), and it's legible, unlike the other supposedly useful announcements you can just barely make out stuck to the right-hand window. They thought of everything.

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 league as the ABAB sonnet, but it's close.
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 at
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.

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