I promise and vow that I am not going to turn my blog into an endless series about the coronavirus. But considering how few people are out — and how we’re supposed to stay at least one meter away from them if they are out — and how, actually, we’re not even supposed to be out — the viral situation is the main thing on everybody’s mind.
She pauses to rub her nose with her arm.
Here are two definitely not-fun facts: As of yesterday, all hotels are closed until April 3, something which has literally never occurred in the history of the city. And as of yesterday, the gondoliers are no longer gondoling. I can’t conceive of this, but there it is: They all met, and concluded that the risk to everybody — gondoliers and passengers — was just too high. (They would have been ordered to shut down anyway, I have no doubt.) It wasn’t enough to have a bottle of hand sanitizer in the boat — people in gondolas are sitting closer than one meter apart, and the gondolier is helping them on and off at very close range.
And basically, considering that there are practically no tourists, there’s no sense in boating up. Venice without gondolas gliding along the canals, with their gondoliers yelling that kaleidoscopic badinage at each other, will have reached an entirely new level of strange.
Oh wait — it got stranger with the new decree last night: All restaurants, bars/cafe’s, and any stores other than the few essential ones (supermarket/food shops, pharmacies) and many offices are closed. Business in Venice at the moment is nearly in the condition of Monty Python’s dead parrot.
And speaking of lines, the enormous rush of trucks trying to get out of Italy toward Austria (and the rest of the world) via the Brenner Pass created an 80 km/50 mile backup. The police not only checked the temperature of every person in every vehicle (there were plenty of cars, too), they also verified that each vehicle had enough fuel to reach Germany without stopping. In fact, the only people permitted to enter Austria were either citizens or persons confirming that their travel did not include any stops in Austrian territory.
The governor of the Veneto Region, Luca Zaia, is maintaining the total shutdown until April 3. If all this seems drastic, it’s the only hope the Veneto has to somehow avoid reaching one million infected by the middle of April, if the rate of contagion continues steady. That would be one person in five.
And it’s not just closing shops that’s going to do the trick. We’re all now living whwat amounts to house arrest. Staying home is Plan A of a total list of one plan. “The people of the Veneto have to realize,” Zaia said, “that the main cure against the virus is we ourselves. Do not go strolling on the beach on the weekends, do not go to shopping centers, do not go to the piazzas, do not go anywhere that isn’t your workplace or a food shop. For me, 29 people who have lost their lives is already too many.”
19 Comments
I’m so sorry to hear of your poor city. I have been seeing lots of photos of Venice and it looks like a ghost town. We have pretty much decided to stay at our home and not go out unless absolutely necessary. The risk is just too great especially when Monte has respiratory issues and I have auto immune disorders and Pulmonary Hypertension. They have suspended the national basketball Association schedule indefinitely and the National Hockey League games indefinitely and they have closed Disneyland. My daughter is prepared for them to close her children’s school in Los Angeles at any time and she will homeschool them until it is safe to return back to school. Her husband will start working from home next week if all checks out with technology considerations. He’s works in the movie industry for Lionsgate Entertainment.
We have cancelled our trip to France at the end of May where we would have been visiting Paris and going to the French open tennis matches. Then heading south to the Dordogne region. We just don’t feel that it’s necessary to take the risk at this time. We had another couple that were going to go with us and they have done the same. We will get a credit on our airline charges and will be able to use the points at a later date up until a year from now. We have stocked up on supplies and don’t need to go out to eat, but am already missing my Mexican food.🥑🌮🌮
Keep me posted on how the two of you are holding up. Luckily I have my Kindle with lots of books loaded on my device. We are still putting things back in the house after our enormous Paint Job. It turned out really nice. We are taking our time, and de-cluttering as we go. We have rain today which we really need. Take care. Ronda
Oh our beloved Venezia! Thank you for keep us “venetophiles”posted on the current situation, it is surreal… stay safe and healthy.
At the moment, “stay safe and healthy” (thank you) translates as “Stay the heck at home!” The police are already giving out fines to the bright sparks who like to play the “Who, ME?” game with rules. Where do these people come from????? Sheesh!
Thanks for the updates — I’m trying to follow developments across continents! Steady as she goes…
Thank you so much for the update Erla, very good of you to take the trouble. You paint a vivid picture! Here in UK government appears to be doing nothing, except to tell people to stay at home if they have a cough or a temperature and for older people not to go on cruises!!
Our news is so xenophobic that we don’t hear half of what is going on in the rest of the world, I have to go to CNN and Euronews to find out more. I am planning to stay home with the dogs, who are on a dose each day of Echinacea for dogs, to try and protect their immune systems, although dogs are meant to be exempt but no one really knows, until it is too late.
How strange Venice looks without crowds or cafes. I’ve been meaning to ask: is the Rialto market open? It is a supermarket, after all.
New York is slowly catching up with you in the business of shutting down. Broadway is dark until further notice, museums are closed, the Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall are quiet, universities have gone online. (the Met Museum says it is doing a hospital-level sanitizing. Having been in hospitals recently – nothing major- this does not impress me.) As a donna anziana, I ought to be staying at home and cooking soup. But tonight I went to my Italian lesson (in a taxi instead of the subway, which is a crowded and fetid swamp). I met with my insegnante, Elena, in a classroom of a parochial school in Greenwich Village. On the windowsill there was a liter bottle of hand sanitizer and two cans of spray disinfectant. Both of these items have been out of stock in the stores for weeks and I was sorely tempted to sneak one out of the building. But the images of religious personages on the walls dissuaded me: in these troubled times I didn’t think it was a good idea to make an enemy of Our Lady of Pompeii.
May all this disruption lead to better times on both sides of the ocean. Salute a tutti.
The market at Rialto is open, according to the newspaper. It is, after all, a food supplier. But I doubt that many people are going — the other day it was almost deserted, and I imagine it’s even emptier now. It’s not only the difficulty of justifying buying something there that you can get from the store(s) near home, but the fact that it would be difficult to enforce the one-meter-distance-between-people rule in all those spaces. There is also what I intuit is a general unwillingness to travel on the vaporetto (clean? infectious?), even though they are almost empty, and the increasing probability of being stopped by an officer (Police, Carabinieri, whoever) interrogating you as to where you’re going and why. We’re all supposed to stay the f*#k home already. That’s what’s going on. As for your trip in the cab, are you sure the driver wasn’t contagious? How about the surfaces inside the cab, all those were okay? Same questions about the cab going home. And by the way, are you contagious, by any chance? What about your teacher, she’s all clear? Things aren’t quite as simple as they might appear, unfortunately. One begins to think in a different way — at least here.
Toilet paper is flying out the door in supermarkets around Australia. Those shops with stocks are restricting sales to one small pack of toilet rolls per person, but most supermarkets have rows of empty shelves where toilet rolls used to be.
One day I hope we will all laugh at the panic and paranoia this has caused, and see things in perspective.
Let me know when that moment arrives, I’ll be glad to know we can laugh about it. I read an interesting article about why people panic in these sorts of circumstances, and it has to do with fear of loss of control, which is profoundly embedded in our mental and emotional makeup. We can’t control the contagion, so we try to control what we can (toilet paper is inherently funny, of course). But I don’t know if time is any remedy — you read about the extreme behaviors of people during the Black Plague, and they still don’t inspire smiles because you can sense, even after centuries, the bottomless terror they were living with. We haven’t gotten there yet, and I devoutly hope that we don’t.
When the Saint Patrick’s Day Parades were cancelled ( we have three), I suspect Covid-19 got the attention of any non-believers left in Chicago. As Illinois’s state-wide response ramps up, a limit on the size of all public gatherings was instituted yesterday; however, taped lines delineating “personal space” have yet to be implemented. If it does come about, it should be entertaining as many of we Sout’siders already have problems landing squarely between the lines in parking lots.
Paper products and food all seem readily available but, no doubt, “Hand Sanitizers” are the new Holy Grail(s).
Missed this year’s local “Irish Film Festival”; perhaps just as well. I don’t know if I and my neighbors – Dave ‘n’ Ed – could simultaneously battle both the resultant deep depression and the virus.
As always, thanks for keeping us entertained and up-to-speed Ms. Zwingle.
This is unimaginable!
Appreciate the chilling update on our beloved city.
We in NYC have not reach this level but there is a panic I have not seen before.
Take care!
Tim
Oh dear…. it’s all getting curiouser and curiouser, isn’t it? England’s got bumbling instructions, not terribly helpful, (as one might expect, given the leadership,) we did our usual supermarket shopping trip this morning, – interesting which shelves were empty, and the chap on the veg stall in the market said he was delighted to have bought a 6 pack of ‘loo rolls, earlier … but he’d plenty of nice veg for us. I’m bemused at the rush for ‘loo rolls – the virus doesn’t have a need for extra ‘loo roll as one of its symptoms, does it?
Take care, both of you. Thanks for the news.
Hi Erla! We appreciate your articles on Venetian life under the CoronaVirus restrictions and hope you will continue with them. Here in the States, the media states how Italy is under quarantine, but usually just shows someone in a mask walking down a deserted street. Your photos and narrative make it so much more real, especially to those of us who have had the opportunity to walk through the city! In addition, you’ve always covered daily life and events in Venice; like it or not, this seems to be the norm for your city and our state now. Please keep on sharing as you can (without getting into too much trouble with the law). After all, this pandemic is something the world hasn’t experienced since the Great Flu epidemic of 1918. Do Lino or his friends remember any stories from their folks or grandparents about 1918? Were the experiences then similar to now?
Meanwhile, here in Michigan, all the schools have been ordered closed by the Governor. Virtually all plays, concerts, entertainment and sporting events are being cancelled and there’s no toilet paper to be found locally. (I hear there’s some in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.)
Take care of yourself and Lino.
Your friends,
Joe and Sherri
Great to hear from you! I can’t speak for Lino’s friends; he says that he never heard anyone in his family talk about the Spanish Flu epidemic. The encyclopedia says that the disease struck virtually all of Italy in three “waves,” causing about 400,000 deaths. Closer to Venice, another source says that the flu was rampant in Chioggia, down at the southern edge of the lagoon, and there must have been fears for Venice because in November 1917 the commmander of the Arsenal drafted a plan to evacuate the city (which never happened) because of the epidemic. At Chioggia the military hospitals were overwhelmed with cases, the people being already weakened by hunger and lack of medicines. In 1918 there were 650 more deaths in Chioggia than the previous year, almost all of which were caused by the flu. As for toilet paper, Venice seems not to have succumbed to this particular mania — no shortages anywhere. Suddenly I feel that we’re going to be all right.
Can’t seem to post the link here, but The Guardian has a wonderful story about little kids in Bari blanketing the city with charming artwork declaring “Andrà Tutto Bene.” Apparently it has gone viral, which does not seem the most felicitous expression under the circumstances, but you might be able to find the original online The Guardian’s blog posted Friday, 3/13, at 8:15 EDST.
Lovely. See my blog post today, showing what’s on display in via Garibaldi. Not much, but bear in mind that we have far fewer children in Venice than in Bari. There may be more in other parts of the city, but we are definitely not going on a treasure hunt to find them. As I understand it, the project, and the sentiment, are aimed at reassuring children, many of whom are ranging from perplexed to panic (made up). It can’t be at all easy, not only to keep the kids at home, night and day, but to get them, so to speak, with the program without scaring them. Hope this helps.
Hi from Washington (state, the good Washington)! I’m so glad you’re continuing to update and I don’t mind at all that it’s about Covid-19.
We’ve tickets to Italy in September (when the ubiquitous “they” are predicting the second, larger rise in numbers. Oh boy.
Stay safe, don’t touch anything, and enjoy the quiet (if you can, knowing that businesses are hurting from it).
True about the smaller percentage of children in Venice. One of my serendipitous pleasures is to be in Campo Santo Stefano when school lets out. There’s an explosion of energy as the bambini rush past the shepherding nuns, say a quick “Ciao” to the parents who came to take them home, and proceed to clamber up the bookish statue of the very literary Tommaseo. Another pleasure: coming upon a class of primly uniformed girls spreading gingham cloths on the stained stones of Campo San Vio and settling down for an al fresco lunch. The scarcity of children in Venice makes their presence more precious, their current danger and “imprisonment” more poignant.
Thanks for the good wishes, it’s very heartening. It’s not easy to enjoy the quiet, regardless of the troubles of the businesses, because the quiet is in our house. We are staying home. Like everything that sounds like it might be fun, like having time to hang around the old domicile and do things we keep putting off, it’s not very enjoyable when you are forced to stay there and have no alternative. Of course we comply, there’s no question about it (at least for us — 4,000 people in Italy so far have been arrested because they were out swanning around doing what they wanted for no good reason). But I repeat: Being compelled to do anything inevitably changes its nature. And on we go…..