I had an interesting dream last night, set in Venice; nothing particular happened but I did awaken with this thought: It’s not the canals that make Venice so particular (special, different, beautiful, strange, etc.), it’s the corners.
Why is that? Because there are so incredibly many of them, and when you turn one, or two, or more, you either move ahead or you somehow find yourself pretty much back where you started.
That’s my new metaphor for Venice. As far as I can tell, after the enormous difficulties and turmoil caused by two years of Covid, somehow it seems that we’re back where we started. You might think that could be a good thing (“Back to normal!”) except that it’s not (“Back to normal!”). Things keep happening, but almost nothing really changes. Names change occasionally, but the headlines seem to be set on “replay.”
There are now fewer than 50,000 Venetians living in the historic center of Venice. (In 2021, there were 50,434). This is a threshold many people dreaded crossing, but it has been crossed nonetheless. I have no idea what this means in real life, because supermarkets continue to open. Who are their customers?
When the mayor uses the term “Venice,” he is referring to the general metropolitan entity, the preponderance of which is on the mainland. Everybody knows he really only cares about the mainland: “The future of Venice,” he said openly, “is Mestre.” Take that, Venice-lovers! The future of Milwaukee may well be Sheboygan, but to someone who thinks of the Piazza San Marco when he/she hears “Venice,” Mestre is a bit much. Still, this is how it’s going. Eight of the ten city councilors are from the mainland. The ninth is in Venice itself, the tenth lives on the Lido. And of course the mayor too is from the mainland, where he has business interests. So voices speaking up for the dwindling historic center are faint and few.
Meanwhile, daily life is made up of stores closing, stores opening. Unpredictable transit strikes and all-too-predictable wailing by ACTV, we have no money we have no money. Tourists: We want them, but they’re making us crazy. The sudden drought of Russian tourists has torn a new hole in the city’s financial fabric.
Cruises: Big ships are banished from the Bacino of San Marco. The cruise ships will enter the lagoon at Malamocco, toiling like container ships up to the raggedy docks in the commercial port zone of Marghera.
The MSC “Sinfonia” opened the season by docking at Marghera on April 9, the first of the 200 cruises scheduled for this year. Sound good? Not when you compare it to the 565 cruises that stopped (or started) in Venice in 2019. But those days are gone.
MOSE: There will never be anything new to say about this. Work stopped, problems found, money gone, problems found, money arrives, work starts again, problems found, date of completion always on the horizon.
The thing is that headlines blurt out news that any Venetian already knew years ago. Example: Barnacles. Lino mentioned the inevitability of barnacle encrustation to me back in 1994. It would be impossible to astonish anybody who has kept a boat in the water here. This is as much a fact as that water is wet.
Still, somebody finally noticed the problem. In 2018, an article announced the discovery by an underwater drone that the MOSE barriers were rusting and encrusted with barnacles. Time passes, nothing is done. In 2022, another headline: Barnacles!! Or to be even more precise: Mussels.
Turns out that the gates that have been lying in their assigned position underwater awaiting the call to block the tide have not been receiving the required and agreed-upon maintenance. The money for maintenance was allotted some time back, but it seems to have not been spent on maintenance. If the crud was predictable, so was the fate of the maintenance money.
Years ago, the cost of annual maintenance was forecast to be some 15 million euros. Then estimates of maintenance costs rose to 80 million euros, and now they’re projected to be 200 million euros per year. Where do these numbers come from? Are they breeding in dark corners, like wire hangers? In any case, vast amounts of money can’t ever sit still long enough to be spent on what they’re supposed to be spent on. When you actually need the money, somehow it’s just not there anymore.
There’s no need to read headlines, this has been going on for generations now. The big hold-back-the-tide project began in 1973, when the Special Law for Venice allotted money for a competition for designs (held in 1975). When the first stone was laid in 2003, the end was promised for 2010. We were all so young, so innocent… Then the 2014 deadline came and went, then the middle of 2018, then the beginning of 2019. The “acqua granda” of November 2019 broke several financial logjams, and work picked up with the promise of concluding in 2021. Sorry, I meant 2023. Endless years pass of “We’ll get there! Give us more money!” Lack of funds closed the works for the entire year of 2021. Rome sends millions, then more millions. And yet, somehow there is never enough.
Tourism: They’re baaaaack. Intermittently, and more often on weekends, still more often just during the day. There were a few Carnival crush-fests in the San Marco area, but nothing noteworthy. I suppose it just wouldn’t be Venice without 100,000 or more visitors in a day. And just now, on the cusp of the Easter weekend, we are back under siege again.
This is supposed to be good (even as we see the interminable lines at the vaporetto stops for boats to Murano and Burano). Venice has got to get back in the game, seeing as it’s the only game there is.
Last year sometime there was a brief quiver of excitement over the resurrected idea of installing turnstiles to control the flow of tourists entering the city at certain points. That idea has been mothballed. I think we don’t want to slow them down. The eternal subject of the selling a ticket to enter Venice has also been put aside. But these ideas will be back. They’re like the swallows going to Capistrano.
Biennale: Yes, it is opening this year — April 23 to November 27 — and the vibrations are palpable. The small park on the Riva dei Sette Martiri tends to host more light-hearted works. I’ll just call them “works,” because I can’t bring myself to say “art.” I honestly don’t know what they are.
So here we are, caught in the endless cycle of everything. Maybe there will be something new around the next corner (or ten), but I’m not counting on it.
12 Comments
We always stay in Dorsoduro, between the Accademia and the Guggenheim, and I always carry our trash to the garbage boat at Ponte San Vio. How hard is that? Especially when I can stop for a macchiato on the way home.
You are obviously at the Expert level of Venetian traveler, in part because this system is convenient to you, in part because you somehow have found out about it (not easy if your landlord hasn’t left a memo). But what is true in your corner of Venice isn’t necessarily true elsewhere. Furthermore, the garbage boat isn’t at Ponte San Vio 24 hours a day; let’s say you are departing at some time when the boat isn’t there. That’s kind of where I started this whole discussion.
The problem of sacks being left outside at all hours because their people (I include residents) were too lazy to wait till the morning when the trashmen pass reached serious proportions several years ago. The city decreed that it was forbidden to leave the bag(s) outside your door at any time, and wait for the trashmen to ring your doorbell. This has worked very well, on the whole, though there will always be people (residents too) who just believe that somehow their trash isn’t theirs as soon as it’s outside their door. Honesty compels me to note that the trashmen do not linger; if you’re not ready, they’ll be gone. Also, there are people who are deliberately beyond the reach of the trashmen — I’m going to say it’s a resident — and who occasionally leave a bag at the Ponte de Sant’ Ana at 10 AM on Saturday morning, long after the time the collection has been made, and it will stay there till Monday morning.
There are collection points in numerous campi, where the typical big wagon for each type of trash will be placed for several hours in the morning. Again: If a person is interested, and/or informed, that person can adjust his/her/their disposal of garbage accordingly.
Yet there again: If you are leaving your place at 4:30 AM to get to the airport, it’s no use to know when the collection point will begin to function because it won’t be functioning.
If you have a solution to this problem that does not involve a convenient garbage boat that just happens to be conveniently waiting near your dwelling, I would be very glad to hear it.
Meanwhile, one could peruse the Veritas website to find out where is your nearest collection point, if one knows Italian. Why it isn’t in English (or French, or German) is yet another question that will forever go unanswered. https://www.gruppoveritas.it/comune/venezia-centro-e-isole/domestica-non-domestica/rifiuti/la-raccolta-dei-rifiuti-venezia
I love these photos!
Wonderful if slightly depressing, as always. Keep up the great work
Never mind the time of day. If we’re leaving on Sunday, paper/cardboard/tetrapaks have to go in the bins or into the boat on Friday, and glass + nonrecyclables on Saturday. We just plan ahead, so the only waste we have left in the apartment on Sunday is a small amount of nonrecylables. (Yes, this means we don’t eat or drink in the apartment on Saturday/Sunday but the Corner Pub is open after 8am until late at night, so that’s not a huge inconvenience.)
We leave the small amout of nonrecyclable waste behind, in a clean tightly secured plastic bag along with a note of apology and a couple of Euros, in addition to whatever we’re tipping the cleaning service.
BTW, I’ve downloaded the Veritas app to my phone and it is in Italian and English. Besides the garbage pick-up information it also shows the location of public toilets and drinking water on a map of the city. You can search by sestiere or just view the whole map.
Impressive.
I’m not writing to signal my virtue, but to suggest that it is possible for visitors to respect the customs and challenges of life in Venice with a bit of research and some thoughtful planning.
I have seven Venice-specific apps on my phone, along with several website links:
AVM Venezia
Veritas
Hi!Tide
Che Bateo?
iZioleti
Venice Art Guide
Venice Art & Culture
I love your posts, for the nuanced observations of quotidian detail, the clarity and smoothness of the writing that, to the reader, never seems labored (which, to me as a writer, signals a lot of meticulous labor!), and, of course, the wit. Your keen eye helps me see more wherever I go, even in my own home town. Thank you so very much.
This is just about the perfect compliment to a writer — a thousand thanks for taking the trouble to give me an amazing boost. I’m really pleased that you are seeing more, even in your own home town (which is…..?). A professional photographer friend from my days at National Geographic told me that his approach was to treat the foreign as if it were familiar and the familiar as if it were foreign. I think it works.
I’m originally from New England, where I worked in history museums (not as tranquil as it sounds), then moved to Tucson and worked in economic educaton (not as frightening as it sounds). Both careers were fun, but I’d still rather be studying the mosaics in Torcello or enjoying a Biennale installation’s poke in the eye with a sharp stick, 0r reading your posts about how things work… when they do.
You always open our eyes ( and our minds) to how things really are. We continue to thank you.
“Eppur si muove” as Galileo Galilei alledgedly said after being snubbed for talking crazy talk about the world not being the centre of the universe and allsorts. I guess the world will keep on spinning, whether we like it or not so we might as well find a way to enjoy the ride. After the pandemic one would have hoped for some sort of normality but then mr. Putin decided otherwise. Your pictures and stories are wonderful as usual, Erla!
I hope that Mohamed’s barber shop will thrive and I also see that siór Bianchi has put up a new awning, which I choose to take as a positive sign (maybe he just washed the old one but, hey, let’s not ruin a good story with facts). I hope to be back again this summer to check tings out but in these times it’s hard to tell.
A fun fact is that the swedish words for art, “konst”, and the word for strange, weird, odd, “konstig” are very similar. That seems too much of a coincidence to me. Your picture from some years ago with the fellow with the mackerel and ice remains my favourite so far.
Give my regards to Lino as well.
All the best from Solna
/Andreas