Enjoy this moment from a few days ago, because you may never see it again. A lone person rowing his sandolo (the type normally used by professional sandolistas) toward the open lagoon, or possibly to the boatyard. He may be thinking he’d better be ready — who knows when a customer might suddenly appear?
During the past week or so life has finally “re-opened” after lockdown, and the process has felt strangely like the way you felt the first time you tried to skate.
Put another way, everything is still a little awkward.
I’m not saying this is ideal. Just saying it had become normal.
So we’ve been upgraded now to Normalcy 2.0: Shorter lines at the supermarkets, at least occasionally, and sometimes no lines at all (I do not understand this — under quarantine the lines stretched for miles. Have people stopped needing to eat?), but you still must wear a mask and gloves when you enter. Masks are required only in enclosed spaces where maintaining social distance is difficult, though many people, including me, are still wearing masks out on the street. More people are outdoors, of course — the end of lockdown and beautiful weather guarantee it. Cups of espresso are available everywhere. I must be dreaming.
Our favorite little restaurant finally re-opened, so we celebrated the other evening by stopping for dinner; we were the only — perhaps even the first — customers, happily munching undercooked pizza because we were so glad to get back in the groove, and also helping the owner do the same. She’d been closed since December, thanks to the apocalyptic acqua alta of last November 12 (anybody remember that?)
This sign didn’t stay up long, but was worth noticing: “Turn off the virus! Turn on your business!” This company uses ozone as disinfectant. The process evidently offers several advantages over other methods, especially in restaurants and salons where the odor of bleach or other chemicals is unpleasant.On the subject of signs, you recall that all the death notices during quarantine stated that funerals were very restricted (only closest relatives, no Mass, etc.). This is the first indication of some remediation: “On April 1 she was lost to the love of her dear ones” (standard), but it then continues: “Not having been able to celebrate the religious function on the occasion of the funeral, the Holy Mass of intercession will be celebrated at the Basilica of San Pietro di Castello Saturday June 13 at 11:00 AM.” It’s interesting that this was put up more than a week in advance.
A few tourists have begun to appear, which ought to be the best indication that the worst is over. And yet, although I know that the city needs a certain quantity of them in order to survive, seeing them inspires the same dread as seeing the water in the glass on the dashboard in “Jurassic Park,” quivering from the heavy tread of whatever dinosaur was approaching. Yes, I have just compared tourists to saurian predators. Funny how you think you want something and then it turns out you really didn’t.
And so one of the prime features of Normalcy 1.0 is still active: The slob tourists. Some people were hoping that now, seeing that the decks had been cleared, the city could attract the elite tourist (how many times have I heard this dream? About as often as I hear how we’d spend the millions we’d win in the weekly lottery, and with the same probability). Of course we want tourists like Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, but instead we get two German men who went swimming in the Grand Canal a few days ago.
Odd, in that this stunt is usually the specialty of drunk American boys in the hottest depths of summer. But who can search the intricate pathways of the touristic brain? And this pair was not the first to succumb to the lure of the canals. On May 26, back in the early days of Phase 2 when travel was just beginning to be permitted within the Veneto, two young women from near Vicenza were seen lounging in their swimsuits on a fondamenta in Cannaregio, enjoying the sun and evidently anticipating a little dip in the rio degli Ormesini. Offended locals alerted the police, who came to explain the situation to them and impose fines (250 euros / $282) on each of them.
As for the German men, their being 40-something adults complicates the equation, as well as their not being intoxicated, as does their sang froid in answering a bystander’s question as to what the heck they were doing with another question: “What the hell does it matter to you?” (freely translated). Yes, they managed to have their little swim, and I hope it was everything they’d dreamed of because they were nabbed, each fined (450 euros / $508) and marked as forbidden to return to Venice.
So refreshing, so expensive, so … illegal. (galileusweb.com)
It’s something to ponder: Back in the olden days of last year, the loutish tourist (turista cafone) seemed to appear as the occasional freak in the midst of the masses. You think, well, when there are 50,000 visitors a day, it’s probably inevitable that a few boors will slip through. But evidently the boors are free spirits who have no need of concealing themselves. I’ve begun to wonder if there could be a factory somewhere that manufactures these people and sends them at random around the world. Do they have homes and jobs and normal lives? I just cannot picture them in some regular place, like regular people.
Why am I going on about this? Because it seemed like we wanted tourists to come back. Now I, secretly, am beginning to rethink that. Of course businesses want them, I understand and respect that. More about that in a later post. But on a personal level, I’m going to confess that despite the many uncomfortable and inconvenient aspects of lockdown (starting with the fear of falling ill, or maybe dying, and ending with the total lack of cafe’s), I’ve already begun to feel a guilty little tremor of nostalgia for the peace and the quiet.
Yes, I realize I could find all I want in the Gobi Desert. But I like the canals as much as everybody from Germany and America and Italy and Belgium…..
In fairness, these visitors are from the Veneto, by which I mean there is some typical tourist behavior that is not unique to foreigners. I know this because the city was full of families and groups that sunny Sunday afternoon (May 31), as the restrictions on travel within the Region had just been lifted.Along the Riva dei Sette Martiri, there were couples and family groups just walking along, enjoying the sunshine.The vibe was somehow like a really relaxed “Su e Zo per i Ponti” (scheduled for April 19 this year, but obviously canceled). It’s an event that is a great excuse for groups, families, clubs, etc. to get out for the day, explore Venice, benefit a charity, totally clog up many narrow streets, etc. It always seems like a party, which is very nice. I’ve never participated because I go up and down the bridges all year long.
The vaporettos have reached their standard configuration now, with red labels indicating the places you are not permitted to sit. So this person is standing. It’s wonderful.And on the other side of the same boat, I watched this lady just plunk herself down on top of the miraculously invisible red label, and make herself comfortable. She was not a tourist; I’ve always said that plenty of Venetians can be just as uncivilized as foreigners.
As it happens, I saw the same thing happen on the big #1 coming down the Grand Canal yesterday, but I intervened.
The interior of the cabin is organized with three seats facing three seats, etc. and in that case I had the free seat in the center of one row, but the seat facing me was red-labeled. The window seat was occupied, and the aisle seat was free. A woman enters with her young son, who might have been eight or nine years old. She parks her shopping trolley in the aisle, parks her son in the seat next to it, and parks herself in the forbidden seat in front of me. (Beat. Beat. Beat.)
“Why are you looking at me?” she asks. “Because you’re sitting in a seat with a red label.” She then rebuts, not unpleasantly but with complete conviction, that she has to sit there, she has no choice, because something something son something aisle. I say “The seat has a red label, you’re not allowed to sit there.” More reply. “So,” I say, “if everybody just does whatever they feel like, there’s no point in having the labels, is that right?” And I get up and walk over to Lino across the aisle, and just stand until another seat opens up.
Later, when I explained why I had been standing there, he said “Wrong! You should have told me!” (Unchain the Lino!) Or I could have gone to tell the marinaio, who ties up the boat at each stop, and he would have come and enforced the rule. They actually count how many people disembark at each stop, and count the same number of people boarding, after which they close the barrier.
I’ll keep these options in mind for my next experiment in the new order of things. Glad to know I’ll have backup. The new normal is looking kind of interesting.
Walking home, I see this. But what is it? A man with a … lamp? If life were normal, I’d immediately have understood it to be some piece of modern performance art as part of the Biennale. I say “performance art,” because the art wouldn’t have been the lamp. It would have been the man in a boat, floating around with a lamp. Nowadays, though, invoking the Biennale is obviously impossible.Mystery solved: It’s moving day, and he got stuck with the torchere, or a cult object from some indigenous Amazonian tribe. Something too valuable to have been loaded onto the other boat with everything else. The fact that whoever it is has finally been able to move in is a great sign of the return to normal life.This is our normal: Rowing out in our boat to the Great Hunting Grounds where Lino seeks clams. It’s like meditation or something for him, he totally loses track of everything. You must imagine the thought balloon over his head: “Just one more…..”.
Empty Venice. It exists, but you have to get up really early to see it.
Another headline repeats what is becoming accepted wisdom: “Tourism is killing Venice, but it’s also the only key to survival.”
Apart from my inborn tendency to balk at the word “only” (in this case, is it true, or is tourism the only key you’ve come up with?), the phrase itself makes the same sense as “We had to destroy the village in order to save it.” “The operation was a success, but the patient died.” “Arsenic can kill you, but it’s the only thing we have to treat your late-stage trypanosomiasis.” Why do I keep linking tourism to death? That’s not good.
The quantity of tourists, as so many things, can be measured as “enough,” “more than enough,” and “far too much.” Sometimes these estimates are subjective (“I personally can’t find a seat anymore at my favorite cafe’, therefore there are too many people here”) to the clearly objective, like those overloaded Asian ferries that sometimes sink.
This has not been Photoshopped; it was 6:00 AM on a May morning and it was divine, but only if you see this scene as empty of tourists. If you see it as empty of Venetians, not so much.
Venice’s plight is not unique. There are increasing numbers of places which are now under pressure from what once was a good thing, and they are trying different ways of managing it. Easter Island, if you’re interested, recently faced the fact that it was being subjected to a “veritable invasion of foreigners.” The 8,000 residents held a referendum and agreed to limit a tourist’s stay to 30 (as opposed to the previous 90) days, and soon will decide on a maximum number of tourists to allow at any one time, period.
Tourism to Iceland — a slightly less remote place — has increased five-fold since 2010. The population of Iceland is 332,000, and last year counted some 2,000,000 visitors. A tax is being discussed which would be applied in various ways to protect the spectacular natural environment from what amounts to six tourists for every resident.
Consider the gorgeous Croatian coastline. Rovinj, to take an example at random, has a population of 15,000; in 2017 there were 490,000 arrivals. Istria, the Croatian peninsula nearest to Italy, contains 208,000 residents; in 2017 there were 1,022,171 tourists from Germany alone.
Well, you say, when the shock has subsided, those are mostly summer destinations; obviously there’s breathing room there in the winter. And that’s true. But Venice is mostly a summer destination too.
Venice, so fragile, so small, obviously is facing its own perils, many based on chronic perplexity as to how to manage a place which has too many visitors to permit normal life, but which stubbornly insists on maintaining normal life anyway. Plans for peaceful coexistence that are hopefully suggested usually run aground on the reef of how to implement them. And there’s no way to ever make the city larger than three square miles.
One almost can’t recognize places that aren’t full of people.
Studies have shown that the sustainable limit of tourists to Venice is 19,000,000 a year. Last year 28,000,000 came, which is almost 50 percent more than the limit. The above study calculates that therefore Venice can sustain 52,000 tourists per day. We now have 77,000 per day. My own personal studies confirm that they will all be on the #1 vaporetto heading uptown on Sunday afternoon.
Speaking of vaporettos, they’re not your only option if you want to be crushed. Now the buses to Mestre in the late afternoon are reaching critical mass. So many tourists are packing the buses heading back to their much-less-expensive hotels, apartments, campgrounds, or wherever they’re staying on the mainland, that daily commuters literally can’t get on.
And if this is happening now, let me draw your attention to the several enormous hotels being built right next to the Mestre train station. Presumably their guests are going to want to go to Venice sometime, and even come back from Venice, on the already insufficient buses and probably soon-to-be-insufficient trains. Anybody is welcome to defend tourism, but I urge you once again not to say “Oh, but Venice lives on tourism” to any of the exhausted Venetians trying to get home as they watch the bus pull away without them.
The city government is struggling to find solutions to all this; it’s not like they don’t see what’s going on. The mayor recently announced that in the busiest periods he might close certain sections of the city to further entry. Something like this was tried a few months ago with “gates” at critical points, such as the Calatrava Bridge and the entrance to the Lista di Spagna, which were to slow, and redirect, the flood of arrivals heading toward San Marco from Piazzale Roma and the train station. It got mixed reviews and now the gates have been removed, though New Year’s Eve and Carnival desperation may require them to be reinstated.
Every time the topic of some form of entry tickets is raised, a thousand objections are heard. Entry is certainly easier to control at Easter Island, which is reachable only by means of a five-hour flight from Chile, but there must be at least 20 ways to get to Venice if you really want to, including, but not limited to, swimming.
I suppose winter could be considered one method of crowd control.
Managing crowds is an art and a science; the most striking example I know of is the reorganization of traffic in Mecca during the seven days of the annual hajj. Venice hasn’t reached the point where individuals are being trampled to death, but that was already a danger for the 2,000,000 Muslim pilgrims all trying to get to the same places together. A system has now been created to manage the flow better, so now we know it’s possible. It’s a fascinating story; here is a link to an interesting article on this amazing feat.
The lions awaiting the daily surge.
But “too many tourists” isn’t just numbers, it’s the ripple effect they have on Venetian life. I have recently noticed three effects of escalating tourism that are profound, even if not immediately perceived as such.
The first effect is the astonishing recent increase in supermarkets. A supermarket used to be a novelty, now it seems to have become a human right. There are even two, virtually side by side, on the Riva del Carbon near the Rialto Bridge.
I thought it would be interesting to find a map, or a list of the total number of supermarkets, but I didn’t and I don’t really care. They’re everywhere now. There’s the De Spar at the ex-Cinema Italia and literally two steps away is a Coop. Not literally ten steps away is a Conad, which used to be a Billa. Prix has inserted itself into all sorts of interesting corners, making it a challenge to find some of them although the lower prices make the search worthwhile, and there is a chain called Simply and something called Crai and so on.
If one knows — which one does — that the population of Venice is inexorably shrinking by about 1,500 people per year (despite a recent light touch on the brakes), it’s obvious that all these supermarkets haven’t been opening to support the few remaining locals. But when you consider the extreme increase of apartments being rented to tourists, voila’! I get it!
It’s clear that the dwindling population, including me, benefits from the supermarkets too. My point is merely that there wouldn’t be this number of emporia if locals were their only customers. Even I can understand that. But as I stand in line at the drastically expanded Coop on via Garibaldi it’s obvious that more than half of the people with me are tourists. And as I dodge their backpacks (yep, still on their backs, just like on the vaporetto) as they navigate the narrow aisles, I ask myself where the Sam Hill they all came from. I don’t mean what countries, I mean why are they all here now when five years ago there were so few? It’s like there’s a factory somewhere on a dark side street that’s manufacturing tourists.
There are many, subtle, and increasing ways in which the rise in tourism can be seen. In this case the butcher, who usually writes his notes in either Italian or Venetian, has added a word of English. It can’t be there for the locals.
The second effect is the astronomical increase in apartments for short-term tourist rentals. By now this is not a new theme, but as I have often observed, you can hate AirBnb all you want (and it is far from the only outfit in this business), but if apartments are constantly being added to the supply available to tourists (and tourists respond by renting them, of course), why are these apartments being offered? To make money, naturally. And who is offering them? The Venetian landlords, naturally. While everyone is excoriating tourists for killing Venice, one should recognize who is handing them the ammunition. The shots, so to speak, are coming from inside the house.
One starts with the fact that there is very little space for locals to rent. The available space, which is increasing, is now primarily offered only to tourists. Some years ago, when Lino and I were requested to vacate the apartment we had rented for ten years, the landlady said she needed it for her cousin, or somebody, moving to Venice from Sicily, or somewhere. Any excuse will do, because of course she planned to rent it to students, which she did, demanding four times the rent we paid. Not made up.
But let that go. When we went looking for another rental somewhere — we weren’t fussy — no agency would talk to us because Lino’s Venetian (hence, theoretically impossible to dislodge). My being a foreigner was fine, as far as that went, but the point is that we weren’t in a position to pay the tourist-rental rates of — I think one agent said — 1,000 euros per week.
We managed, in the end, to buy our little hovel (we gave up on the rental idea), but we could manage. Yet there are extremely aged Venetians (a retired 90-year-old professor, in one case) who are being summarily evicted by their landlords because the apartment, which has now become a four-wall gold mine, is wanted for tourist rentals. The landlord says “I want my apartment back,” and a person who has been living in the place for 50 or 60 years is out on the street. There is no recourse. I am not making any of this up. A friend of mine told me a similar story of an elderly person in her building, “And the landlord is renting two other apartments already.”
This often-tragic upheaval is a clear response to the sheer quantity of tourists, but fingers in the press are pointed at the tourists. Why? As Lino puts it: “Who is forcing the Venetians to leave? The Venetians!” Therefore, if you look around and all you see is tourists, there are reasons.
A group called Occupy Venice has come forth with the goal of re-appropriating empty apartments (that is, those whose fate has not yet been sealed by tourism). A friend has sent an article which you can peruse.
This lady is definitely not from around here. There’s nothing wrong with what she’s doing — in fact, I envy her — but her non-local characteristics are (A) being alone and (B) reading a book. I wouldn’t say that being outside is unusual; people here certainly enjoy hanging around outdoors, but they’re virtually always with friends, and that precludes book-reading. If they manage the Gazzettino it’s already something; taking time to savor “The Polish Bandit; Or, Who Is My Bride?,” or whatever she’s reading, is a foreign custom.On the other hand, while it’s possible that a tourist might wash sheets, it’s impossible to imagine that he or she would take the time to wash curtains and a collection of fabulous doilies. I’m putting my money on a Venetian here.
The third sign of increased tourism may not matter to anybody but me, so you can skip the next few paragraphs if you want.
I saw it on the day of the Regata Storica. This event focuses on four races which gloriously but inconveniently occupy the Bacino of San Marco and the Grand Canal for a total of three hours in the afternoon. This deranges the vaporetto routes, of course, and this year it was decided (one always wonders by whom) that this derangement was no longer acceptable. Therefore, for the first time in at least 100 years, the traditional “boa” in front of the train station was moved further downstream to just before the Cannaregio Canal.
“So what?” you ask. The “boa” is a temporary object which the racers turn around in order to head back down the Grand Canal toward the finish line. Tradition has always placed it in front of the train station, where there’s plenty of room for the boats to maneuver and plenty of room on the piazza in front of the station from which tourists can watch this usually dramatic moment. Win-win for everybody?
Of course not, because now there are enough tourists (or even some locals, I guess) who don’t care about the races and who are inconvenienced by not having vaporetto service from Piazzale Roma up the Cannaregio Canal during those few hours. One might regard the Regata Storica as the city’s festival, but no longer does the entire city celebrate.
Therefore moving the boa enabled the vaporettos to continue to navigate the upper reaches of the Grand Canal, unhindered by those pesky races. So another intangible, but no less real or important, piece of Venetian life has just been distorted (I didn’t want to say “eliminated,” but eliminated) for the benefit of I actually do not know whom. Because for many decades this temporary interruption of service didn’t create insurmountable problems for anyone. Does this change mean that now the number of “anyone” has superseded the number of those who want to see the Regata? Evidently yes.
The newspaper chronicles the craziness of the tourists, but crazier things keep happening below the proverbial radar. As in the case of the Fondaco, it’s the people in offices who actually have the destiny of the city in hand, and it will be a cold day in the Inferno when any regular Venetians might be consulted on the matter. But why consult them? Before long they’re all going to be dead. So bring on the tourists!
We need to move out of this dark tunnel now; I have a happy story to tell you.
Summer dawn. What more can one say?
A few days ago Lino and I were on the vaporetto going down the Grand Canal; it was late afternoon, that delectable moment in which you feel the heat of the day almost imperceptibly begin to subside and the faintest zephyr of coolness sweep over your sticky skin.
There were seats along each side of the boat’s bow, and everybody wants to sit there, of course: the view, the breeze, the general feeling of being the figurehead of the ship. The four forward-most seats on our side were occupied by a family, with the boy and his father on the left, the girl and her mother on the right. They weren’t talking much, mostly just relaxing and looking at the incomparable panorama as we trundled along. Tourists, of course, but calm, coherent tourists, acting like normal people.
As we passed the Customs House Point, where the Bacino of San Marco opens up to splendor on every side, the man reached across and touched his wife. She looked back and took his outstretched hand, and they silently squeezed, and smiled, gazing out at the glory.
Watching this, everything fell back into perspective and I was suddenly glad they were here. They weren’t just another four tourists, they were people who saw the beauty, and they were happy. It seemed that so many thoughts and emotions were being exchanged in that instant and I unexpectedly could imagine myself in their place, and I remembered how Venice made me feel the first time I came here, and I wanted that for everybody.
If all those too-many people who came to Venice could feel what they felt, then maybe we could find another word for them and stop calling them TOURISTS.
Just another madcap tourist before he jumps off the Rialto Bridge the night of August 14. No law against being madcap, but there is an ordinance against jumping off bridges here, one dictated by the mayor and one by common sense, but they’re clearly not strong enough. Police don’t seem to be much of a deterrent, and passersby even help out by snapping more pictures. But a commenter named lagiunela came up with a promising solution (I translate): “White sharks and piranhas in the Grand Canal!” (Photo: Facebook page goldon)
There are two fundamental problems concerning tourism here: Quality and quantity. They don’t blend any better than water and wax, but every year their doomed struggle to combine creates quite a spectacle.
Today the subject is “quality.”
We are beginning to reach the end of the Hating Tourists season, and I’ve been ruminating. I’m astonished to realize that by now even people’s most facepalming antics somehow don’t anger me anymore. I never thought I’d say that, but reading the headlines has become like watching a sitcom with the sound turned off. Honey, didn’t we already see this episode?
Perplexity, though, has replaced anger, because I still can’t understand why so many normal 21st-century people, when they find themselves away from home, so often revert to behavior that is usually discouraged in kindergarten. And it’s not just here — the same things go on elsewhere, in what seems to be a sort of Grand Tour of slobs and boors. In Rome the other day some young men/old boys were caught splashing and frolicking in the fountain by the Altare della Patria, whose centerpiece is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Yes, we were in the depths of an appalling heat wave, but still. This would be like someone toasting marshmallows over the Eternal Flame in Arlington Cemetery. I mean, just don’t.
Hence the question in the title — does tourism make people crazy, or do they already have to be crazy in order to tour in that special rude way they do? I still can’t decide.
I bring all this up because my recent post about the Fondaco dei Tedeschi (wrongness of) has inspired a number of emails from anguished Venice-loving readers who somehow feel guilty — their word — for being a tourist because by now the word seems to connote only those who behave in an uncouth, ridiculous, repulsive, or even dangerous way. They’re concerned that simply being a tourist means that they’ll be lumped with the rest of the herd.
Let me reassure you that anybody who can feel guilty for another person’s sins is not related in any way, even geographically, to that other person. I’m not sure it can be justified even theologically; I’ll have to check the fine print.
Would you have thought of wearing your bathing suit to Piazzale Roma? Or on the vaporetto on the way? Is that a shirt she’s carrying? Why isn’t she wearing it? Is this real craziness, or just an early warning sign?
To make my point another way, let me ask my conscience-stricken readers (I love you, by the way): Would you string up a hammock between the trees at Sant’ Elena to take a snooze? Would you set up a camping tent on a fondamenta for the night? Would you steal a gondola at night (stealing is bad) without even knowing how to row (this is dumb)? Would you jump off the Rialto Bridge in a pink leotard (jumping is idiotic, as is the leotard, also that it’s pink) on a bet (bets are also stupid)? Extra points for the danger in this stunt, to yourself and others below you. No extra points for having a physique that’s worth showing off, though it’s well worth perusing, and points deducted for asking passersby to take your picture.
Would you slide into the Grand Canal in broad daylight and swim out into the traffic and wave happily at the passengers on the passing vaporetto?
Not made up. The headline merely states “Loutish summer.” (Il Gazzettino)
If the answer to any of the above is “Heaven forfend,” then we need to find another word for you, because you’re not what people have come to mean when they talk about tourists.
The city government is flailing around, trying to find a way to prevent all this. Fines! Twenty-four hours in jail! Banishment! (Not made up, though it’s not clear how the offenders would be identified on future visits.) Locals have been known to call the police when they see people jumping off bridges, and the police have been known not to show up.
It’s like whack-a-mole — the only thing these punishments are likely to accomplish is to assure (maybe?) that that specific individual won’t transgress again. As for the deterrent quality of punishment, I don’t think it exists if (A) the tourist doesn’t read the Gazzettino and (B) if the tourist believes that, seeing that lightning has struck someone else, they’re somehow exempt from being caught. Shame? Embarrassment? What?
So by now we’re all pretty accustomed to tourists jumping off bridges, but a few days ago one jumped off a vaporetto. A ticketless 18-year-old American girl traveling up the Grand Canal noticed that the ticket controller was beginning to pass through the crowd, and she realized that not having a ticket meant a 60-euro fine, plus the 7.50 euros for the ticket itself. Flee!
By which I mean: Jump into the Grand Canal! Which she did! Quick thinking! And expensive thinking! Because she was almost immediately plucked out of the water by a passing boat, and when the formalities were finished she had paid a fine of 528 euros ($611) — 450 for immersing herself in the canal, plus the ticket price and fine thereof. So she clearly had the 7.50, and even, if need be, the additional 60. (For the curious, the Gazzettino made a point of saying that her credit card had survived the saltwater bath.) But where did she think she was going when she made that big splash? She said she didn’t know it was forbidden to swim in the Grand Canal. It needs to be forbidden? It’s certainly forbidden to create problems for traffic, and that goes for boats who get in the way, too. Brain tired.
There are several simultaneous Venices at any given moment, and they don’t necessarily have to intersect. To Venice-lovers: Whether you stay for a day or a month, you’re going to be called a tourist. But you know there’s a difference between you and the oafs, and Venetians know it too.This not-atypical Venetian on a summer morning is more interested in the Gazzettino than the swells disembarking from a luxury yacht. And, of course, vice versa. Peaceful coexistence is indeed possible if everybody cooperates.
You don’t even have to do anything drastic to appear a little crazy. A friend who owns a pizzeria/bar at Sant’ Elena told me the other day that this has been a very unprofitable season so far; plenty of work, but little to show for it.
For instance, “A family of three came and ordered one pizza,” she said, “and a few drinks” (not alcohol, but something fizzy). “The bill came to 11 euros, and they complained. They wanted to know why it cost so much.”
People have begun to bring their own beverages to the table, she went on, or ask her to wash their bag of peaches so they can eat them there. Apart from the rustic quality of these requests, she points out that the law prohibits customers from consuming something not provided by her for the obvious reason that if something were to go wrong (food poisoning, etc.) she could unjustly be blamed. On a less legalistic level, customers like these make her tired and disheartened, because she’s working and they’re acting as if she’s just standing around asking for money.
But before we leave the topic of “quality,” it should be noted that there must be plenty of times that tourists behave strangely, but not enough to deserve a mention in the news.
A recent example: We now have two tourist apartments in our little snippet of street, and it isn’t easy for the occupants to follow the new scheme for garbage collection. The apartment owners leave some kind of instructions (it’s not clear how clear they are), but there are complications in that the normal squishy garbage is collected every morning except Sunday, while the recyclables are on alternate mornings (plastic on Tuesday, paper on Wednesday, etc.). There are other regulations too but I won’t go into them, because the point isn’t that there are regulations but that some people just find them intolerable.
So we learned from our Venetian neighbor upstairs that this morning he saw one of the current occupants of the facing apartment — for the record, usually rented to French people — walk out the front door with a backpack, peering importantly at his cell phone as he walked away. Our friend has a window looking out the other side as well, so he watched as the tourist walked to the far end of the dead-end street beyond, opened his backpack, took out a bag of garbage, and left it on the street.
When my friend confronted him (with descriptive gestures) to convey that this was not only not allowed, but was wrong in every way, the man just made similarly descriptive gestures to signify “I don’t understand” with those special gestures which indicate “And I totally don’t care.” This was probably not an isolated incident, and sirens go off in Venetian brains when foreigners warble “Oh, but Venice lives on tourism!” as if that makes everything okay.
The issue of “quality” was frankly acknowledged in a headline in the Gazzettino: “The chaos is keeping the elite tourists away.” That’s pretty blunt, and to say it must have been painful for the officials who annually express their longing to somehow induce the elite to return to Venice in a more regular, and abundant, manner.
I can’t remember why he was laughing, but I’m fairly sure it wasn’t because somebody said “Elite tourist just behind you!”
If there’s one thing I feel safe in saying, it’s that the elite are not attracted by chaos, unless you count the occasional quaint festival of the picturesque peoplefolk, which we seem to be short of (quaintness and peoplefolk). So, considering that the elite are drastically outnumbered, they’re going to have to renounce Venice and go spend their millions at Portofino or Porto Cervo or Portobuffole’ (not an elite spot, I just threw that in because I love the name), or wherever they go. But the city officials can’t accept defeat, so every year we read the same wistful statements about how much we miss the elite. They never write, they never call.
To sum up: To be a “good” tourist you don’t have to care — or even know anything — about Tintoretto or the 76th doge or how to make bigoli in salsa. You just have to know not to put your suitcase/backpack/house on the seat next to you on the vaporetto, or not to lie down to sunbathe in the middle of Piazza San Marco (or anywhere), and any other shenanigan that cannot be justified to your mother. If that seems unpleasantly restrictive, and not at all vacationlike, you should go to a real theme park, like Aqualandia, and leave Venice alone.
Therefore, to any visitor with misgivings about being a tourist: People here don’t hold it against you that you’re foreign. They hold it against you if you behave as if you come from the planet of failed experiments in genetic modification.
In my next post: “Does tourism make you crazy? Quantity”
Almost exactly a year ago, a huge pair of hands was installed in the Grand Canal in such a way as to appear to be pushing against Ca’ Sagredo, once a magnificent palazzo and now a magnificent hotel. They were evidently one of those bits of visual badinage so beloved of the Biennale, which was about to open. I seem to recall they got lots of notice.
But badinage is effective only when it’s fleeting. You can’t have the same old badinage every day, it would be like living in “Groundhog Day.” And yet that’s exactly what we had for a year, to the point where one long since ceased to laugh, smile, or even notice it.
On May 12, 2017, the hands were raised.
On May 8, 2018, the jig — or the contract, or the parking meter — was up, and down they came. And now I discover it wasn’t supposed to be humorous at all.
What goes up must come down, even if it means drilling and sawing all day. Some people, including the artist, are hoping they’ll come back, whenever they can find another place to prop up.
As reported by “La Nuova Venezia,” Lorenzo Quinn, the artist has said that “They’re my son Anthony’s hands, and they’re as important as the message they give.” There was a message?
Of course there was a message! I was totally mistaken to regard this construction as humorous. Because the message is a serious one (no points for saying “Desperate need for renovation of old buildings”). The message of the hands was to draw attention to the problem of “the constantly increasing global warming. We have to save the world” — that’s the message of the hands, and if you didn’t know that before, now you do.
