Sometimes people ask me when the “tourist season” or “high season” begins, and I used to be uncertain. Uncertain no more: It’s Easter. Easter is like the starting bell at Churchill Downs — they just start coming. I can’t explain it, but it has never failed; even if Easter were to fall on February 3, November 5, January 22 — that would be the start of tourist season. But that’s not what’s weighing on me.
What’s weighing on me is how so many of our honored guests have come to behave as if they were in their own backyard, or garage, or abandoned lot behind a shuttered White Tower Hamburgers. Extreme bad manners, of which we’ve already had a few starter episodes, get into the newspaper. For example, the drunken Swiss boys cavorting naked in Campo San Giacometto at the Rialto — profoundly repulsive but not DANGEROUS — or the drunken boys (unspecified nationality) who jumped off the Rialto Bridge one night — HUGELY dangerous.
Or the perhaps not even drunken young men who still were jumping off the bridge by the Danieli hotel in full daylight, blithely unconcerned about barges and taxis and gondolas below. The jumpers could easily be injured when hitting the water or, more precisely, hitting something that’s on the water (recall the drunken New Zealander a few hot summer night years ago who jumped off the Rialto and landed on a passing taxi; after six months of agony, he finally died). Anyone in a boat passing under a bridge has to start thinking they’re in some shooting gallery where, instead of bullets, there are bodies coming for them. The prospect of six months of inescapable and increasingly repellent tomfoolery makes me feel tired and dejected.
We know about these shenanigans because people make videos on their phones and post them on social media. That’s the bass line in this chaotic cantata — showing the imbecility by doing something equally imbecilic. Everyone who reads these reports wonders why people are making videos instead of calling the Carabinieri. If you know the answer to this, please step up to accept your award. Right after you call the Carabinieri. But witnesses to the Danieli escapade say that the police were indeed called, and the police indeed did not appear. So there’s that.
In any case, one doesn’t need dramatic episodes to feel repulsed by tourists, and the daily deterioration doesn’t merit much of a story in the paper. Any neighborhood is bound to offer all sorts of examples of boorish behavior. Among various options, my current obsession is the evidently irresistible urge so many people have to just sit anywhere, plop down on the pavement or bridge, when the mood strikes. I realize this is not unique to Venice, because I’ve seen young people sitting on the floor in the airport, as if there were no seats anywhere. I’m not saying we should bring back the corset and the high starched collar, but the other extreme is worse. Why? For one thing, because they’re in the way and public space is already measured in microns. Second, because it makes otherwise normal people, who almost certainly have had some upbringing, appear to want to revert to life as Homo habilis once they get to Venice.
So much for the subject of quality (lack of). In my next post, some observations on quantity (surplus of). There will be interesting statistics.
8 Comments
Thank you again for another interesting post. However, I feel that must chime in despite the risk of being outed as a slob. I wonder if perhaps what you view as rudeness is simply not viewed as such by many of the younger people.
I can only speak from the view point of an Australian. However,I must admit to seeing little wrong with the actions of most of the people in your pictures (excepting the person camped out in middle of a crowd). To me sitting on the ground out of the way or on the edge of a fountain to wait would seem quite reasonable especially if my children were with me. This would be especially true if I was short on money or there were few parks which I could find to wait or picnic in.
I don’t say this to diminish your opinion (I can well imagine how annoying throngs of people walking endlessly through my suburb would be) but mearly to offer my view for your consideration.
I think we can take it as given that whoever is sitting on the ground doesn’t regard it as rude. The lack of places to sit is something I recognize, and I should have acknowledged more clearly in the piece. But let me repeat my reply to another reader: There was a lack of places to sit 20 years ago, and people weren’t sitting on the ground. I’m not objecting to people walking, which would be absurd, but it seems unreasonable to expect that anyone (not just residents, but I’ll stick to them) would regard sitting on the ground, or bridges, with a benevolent eye. Imagine taking a three-square-mile area of your town and filling it with 30,000,000 visitors a year. Each situation may be an isolated one, but the aggregate only makes an already difficult situation — getting around — even more so.
We have been to Venice 10 times, last in Sept 2017. Usually we are more into the off-season so as it was still summer-ish and Biennale, there were far more tourists than we usually encounter. What amazed (appalled?) us were the bridge-sitters. We were in (mostly) quiet Dorsoduro but had trouble at sometimes navigating to our temporary home because so many people were camped out on bridges, sprawling, eating, and on their f-ing phones. We are 65 and 74 and do not need to sit down nearly as often as these poor tired younger people. When we do need to sit we get a coffee. I loved seeing Biennale but next time, we’ll come in December again.
I completely sympathize with your feelings and comments, Erla, and would feel the same way if I lived there. My perspective, however, is as a traveler who has been to Venice numerous times, and one there to savor and learn, not just drop in briefly, do the typical things everybody does, and check it off my bucket list.
One, in an age in which standards of behavior, starting with and stemming from the so-called leaders of our world, have dropped precipitously, I have noted that the more people there are crowded together, already exhibiting various more and more prevalent forms of idiocy and meanness, the more there are, the more many feel entitled to go even lower, feeling no responsibility to anyone but themselves, so there’s little that can be done about it in the confusing mess. Given Venice’s genuine attraction and easy accessibility, you must understand the inevitability of this. Kick the cruise ships out and things will get somewhat better.
Two, all over Italy there is notably little accommodation for public seating, benches or whatever. Whether by custom or conscious intent, this is Italy’s right, but as a confirmed serious walker, one who is old but fit, and still gets tired, it’s a problem. I can handle it, but I sure would like greater opportunities to take a load off and rest. So you can’t be surprised, or even legitimately offended, if the too many people there rest where they can.
The only solutions to these problems is limiting access. Tricky, with no ideal answer, but how else other than a lottery, or a likewise limited number of reservations for entering the city, first come, first served? But it must somehow not exclude, and perhaps even favor, those of ordinary means. Probably impossible.
Perhaps the number of “accidental” drownings might go up, especially of people exhibiting the most egregious forms of behavior, and the crazy rumors would scare many of the blind followers of fashion and media trends away. I mean, why are you worrying about the well-being of these cretins, anyway? Let them reap the natural results of their actions, and thin the herd.
I agree with Andrew. It’s particularly silly to get up in arms about the fountain: sitting on the steps of a fountain is a welcome and time-honored tradition, at least in Western cities, maybe around the globe.
Erla almost gets to the heart of the problem in her comments on take-out eateries. There are simply very few public benches in the city. Outside of vaporretto stops and a few parks, there is simply no public place to sit.
I guarantee it is no one’s first option to sit on the ground, but the city has left them no choice. Invest in some benches and you’ll see a lot less of this “rudeness.”
The lack of places to sit is not lost on Venetians, nor is it lost on me, and I believe most reasonable people would agree that more benches are more than necessary and would be more than welcome. I hinted at that realization in the caption to the photo of people sitting on the bridge. But one does need to ask oneself why people didn’t sit on the ground ten or 20 years ago, but now they do. Any insight there would be very welcome.
Sigh. If it any consolation, I too am offended when tourists behave as if they were at a theme park when visiting other’s home-towns or cultural capitals or sacred places.
Whether walking in front of a pulpit with a selfie-stick during a sermon, or climbing Uluru with their cleats on, tourists’ cluelessness about their immediate environment, and insensitivity to meaning of place to local residents astonishes me.
Condolences on the seasonal take-over of your beautiful city.
If it’s any consolation, I should say (and I will say it somewhere in a post) that I know that not all tourists behave this way. The “good” tourists (for lack of a better expression) are invisible. I’m glad there are people who love Venice, or who discover something wonderful when they come here. It’s hard to perceive, by a lot of behavior, that the visitor is experiencing the city in any thoughtful way. (I don’t mean “considerate,” I mean “thinking about.”)