This is a view of the typical vehicle (in England known as an articulated lorry, if that helps; in the US, it has various names, such as tractor-trailer). The situation here is another trip and boat, but I wanted to set the scene: water, crane, truck. Olindo is somewhere nearby, just outside the frame.
A few readers have asked how the Venetian boats travel to and from these foreign locations I keep jaunting off to.
In three words: Trucks, cranes, and Olindo.
In my first expedition with a traveling gondola, however, which we had taken to the lake of Bolsena for a big festival, we had the truck and Olindo, but no crane. I don’t remember how we got the boat into the water, but a whole bunch of us had to turn to in order to get the gondola back up into the truck by hand. When I saw what we were about to do (it was early in my shipping life), I thought it was impossible. When I think back on it, it still seems impossible. And yet, we did it.
I should mention that there were about ten of us per side. Maybe more. And at least two people — Olindo and Lino — understood the geometry and physics of the operation, so we weren’t relying solely on brute strength.
Obviously, picking boats up and pushing them around by hand is not ideal — for the boat, I mean, the heck with us. There are always plenty of XY-chromosome people hovering nearby, eager to show how strong they are. But we had no choice.
So the plan is simple. You row or tow your boat to Punta San Giuliano, on the edge of the lagoon where the bridge touches land.
Because there are three boat clubs there, there are also three cranes, of which I have only ever used the biggest. And the trucks will arrive, often driven by foreign nationals, often from somewhere in the Balkans. These drivers communicate by means of international truck-language, which is based on an assortment of gestures and shouts.
And there will be Olindo. He is the magus of boat transport, the scion of Chiarentin Trasporti, founded by his father in 1922 when boats still FAR outnumbered motorized vehicles. And because his father’s blood was condensed and consumed by hauling boats up the Brenta river by means of his own arms (until he could afford a horse), Olindo has inherited a mystic capacity of knowing exactly how to handle any sort of boat — positioned, braced, lashed, counterpoised, and otherwise settled for a long truck ride in such a way as to come out looking better than when it left. Or certainly not worse.
Some people understand animals, some people even claim to understand women. Olindo understands boats. The boat has yet to be born so big, delicate, or valuable that can ruffle him in any way. Usually it’s the amateurs who are trying to HELP that drive him over his recommended personal rpm’s.
So sending the boats to Orleans was pretty routine. The only thing that was different from other trips was the size of the crane brought in by the city to pluck many of the boats from the Loire and send them home. Its hydraulic arm could have been measured in football-field-lengths, and it could lift a maximum of 25 tons. I thought the Diesona was big; the crane thought it was a splinter.
The only living thing I know that could match that crane for strength, inch for pound for atmospheres, would be Olindo, actually. If they ever made him hydraulic, we wouldn’t need Archimedes’ proverbial fulcrum and level — he could move the world by himself.
Too bad there wouldn’t be a truck big enough to hold it. Though the shouts and gestures would probably be the same.
Here an eight-oar gondola is hoisted, ready to be placed on the truck which is about to back up for loading. The boat isn’t lifted over the side of the momentarily topless truck, but slid into it from the rear. This phase is accomplished very slowly, aided by shouts and gestures which essentially mean “go slowly” and “stop immediately.” Olindo is ready to grab the boat, arm already outstretched.So far, so good.The spare tires are strategically placed to brace the boat against jouncing.You can see why it’s important to calculate the boat length correctly. In this case, it was enough to unscrew and remove the heavy metal “ferro” on the bow of the boat. We were prepared for that.One small detail of the many strappings and lashings involved, none of which is at random, or accomplished with anything resembling “Well, let’s hope for the best,” or “It looks like that ought to do it.” More geometry, more decades of experience at work.On another trip, we had to use the famous metal sawhorses in order to carry two gondolas at once. More straps, more lashings.A rare glimpse of Olindo’s face (left); he’s usually moving too briskly and looking elsewhere to allow useful portraits.Last phase: Closing the truck’s top and sides.In Orleans, we weren’t there for the unloading, but we all stood by for the loading for the trip home. The mythic crane is in position, halfway between the river and the street, where a line of trucks was waiting for their cargo.
These men weren’t Olindo, but they got the job done with no wasted time or motion.The “Diesona” has been disassembled, and is ready to be lifted onto the truck. From here on, the process followed its immemorial phases.
This is the “Serenissima,” the crowning glory of the boat procession preceding the races — the image of the Regata Storica in everyone’s mind, not to mention on a million postcards.
I have no doubt that calendars around the world were marked REGATA STORICA (“historic regatta”) two days ago. It’s been held on the first Sunday in September for the past 500 years or so (since 1489, to be exact). Calendars by now ought to be able to mark themselves.
There were several aspects of this year’s edition which made it notable — even “historic,” if you will, though I suppose everything that happens qualifies as historic in one way or another merely by the fact of its having occurred.
Historic Point 1: Our rowing club had three boats in the races, and each came home with a pennant: first, second, and third place. More on that below.
Historic Point 2, with gold stars applied by me: There were no fights. No hurled epithets, no banshee curses howled at judges or fellow racers, no demerits for breaking any rules. I know. I must have been hallucinating. But it’s still true.
Let me elaborate on these points:
Our club had two pupparinos in the young men’s race; the pair on the orange boat won the race, coming home with the red pennant. The pair on the brown boat finished second, earning a white pennant. We also had the red gondolino, rowed by Roberto Busetto and his brother Renato, who finished third (green pennant). This is not only wonderful, but exceptional, considering that Roberto hasn’t finished in the top four in the Grand Canal for the past eight years.
A glimpse backstage: The three boats at our club on Sunday morning.The final touch is buffing the wax that you applied yesterday. Unfortunately, the wax isn’t necessarily the determining factor of your speed, as the boys on this boat discovered.
As for the harmony between the two giga-competitors of the past two eternal decades — Giampaolo d’Este and Ivo Redolfi Tezzat, and the Vignotto cousins (the “Vignottini”) — I don’t know what to attribute it to. But one does recall that after d’Este unburdened himself at the Regata of Murano of every opinion he ever had about the judges, he was penalized by having to sit out the next race. That might have had a slight sobering effect, not that I think that race was so important to him.
Or maybe the lack of conflict is an early sign of the approaching Millennium.
Or maybe they’re just getting tired.
Or maybe it was the unexpected exchange of views at the eliminations a few weeks ago. When the qualified nine teams were brought together to draw the color of their boats, d’Este announced, “I’d like to make a proposal. We eliminate the judges.”
To which one judge replied, “I’d like to make a counter-proposal. We eliminate you (meaning him and his partner), and the Vignottos. Because the only time there are ever any problems, fights, and general grief, it’s when you all are in the race.”
No more proposals were entertained and the meeting was adjourned.
But there had to be some sort of flaw in the ointment, as a friend of mine used to say. Everyone wasn’t humming like happy little tuning forks, as we discovered when the blood blister of rage broke in the mind of Davide Peditto, one of the boys on the brown pupparino. I say “boy,” but he’s 18 years old; not exactly a child.
He was so angry at not winning — horrors! finishing second!! has the world gone mad?? — that he wrapped himself in a cloak of fury so thick and black that no communication could reach him, and very little could come out. This is evidently an aspect of his personality already known to people who are closer to him than I am.
His only release was to take his white pennant and throw it onto the dock at our club and leave it there. “Carta daculo,” he snarled bitterly; toilet paper (literally, ass-paper).
This is not only an insult to Venice, to every racer who has preceded him, to every racer who competed with him (12 of whom would have loved to have had that very pennant, ten of whom would have loved to have had ANY pennant), but a real insult to his long-suffering partner, onto whose pleasure in this accomplishment he had just poured gasoline, so to speak, and then thrown a match.
One would like to help this splenetic young man re-think his ideas about winning and losing — or if not his ideas, at least his behavior. I’d suggest sending him the bits of the newspaper reporting the comments which were made by another racer who came in second on Sunday: Giampaolo d’Este, who had spent virtually the entire race head-t0-head with the Vignottos. When they crossed the finish line 95/100ths of a second ahead of him, he probably wasn’t any happier with the outcome than the young brat at our club — especially because he has enough red pennants by now to entitle him to think he might deserve another one.
They were like this for almost the entire race. The screaming of the crowd was deafening.
But he did not compare his white pennant to anything else. Here’s what he said:
“Well, that’s the way it went. Either we or the Vignottos could have won, and they won. No recriminations — it was a beautiful race and it’s always beautiful to be its protagonists.”
He might have meant it, which would be excellent. But he said it anyway, and that’s about 95/100ths even more excellent. But if it’s too hard, in the glaring heat of the moment, for a youngster to say something that mature, I’d suggest that the next-best option would be silence.
And I don’t mean that thick black silence, either. I mean the silence in which the image, the shape, and the hope for next year’s race would already be forming in his mind, spirit, and gizzard. As far as I can tell, that’s the only way that true athletes, or humans of any stripe, manage to get those bitter pills down and keep going.
The indefatigable Dino Righetto on the stern of our six-oar balotina. The “bissone,” or fancy boats, are coming up behind us to start the procession.
These are racing gondolas belonging to the city, which are decorated to evoke the boats and passengers of the original regata in 1489.The procession is moving slowly upstream, with the current, toward the “volta de Canal,” or “turn of the canal,” where the finish line has always been for races here.On the left is the colossal platform from which the RAI 2 national television company is ready to broadcast live. The “Machina,” or reviewing stand, is just behind it on the left. Not only does it accommodate notables of every shape and sort, it is where the prizes will be awarded.I know nothing about this very curious boat but it certainly was worth a look. The model of the Rialto Bridge isn’t the only odd feature; the stern has been re-made in a strange way; the prow has been altered in an even stranger way, and the forcola isn’t the typical design for use on a gondola; it’s been dragooned from either a pupparino or gondolino. And although there used to be a tradition of decorating some of the boats with fruits and vegetables, this is the only one I noticed this year. If this assemblage is intended as a tribute to the late Joachim Vogel, it’s unusual to use eggplants and chili peppers along with the wildflowers from the barene. But hey.After the boat procession, we get down to the party. We park the boat and pull out the food and drink, and wait for the races to start. Beer foam presents no problem.The winning mascareta in the women’a competition; Giorgia Ragazzi (bow) and Luisella Schiavon leave the rest in the dust, so to speak (actually the next boat is about five boat-lengths behind them), and win their fifth consecutive Storica. They are only the second pair of women ever to attain thereby the status of “regina del remo.”And here come the Vignottos and d’Este-Tezzat, speeding down the home stretch. Here’s something peculiar: In both the boys’ and men’s races, the first two boats were orange and brown, but the order of finish was inverted. I wonder what it all means.
And let me not slight Renato and Roberto Busetto, flying toward a fabulous third place — note the absence of other boats nearby. They were definitely in the groove. However, sharp-eyed readers will notice that there is a gentle swell of waves beneath their boat, left by the passing jury boat. The wave issue is something that seems impossible to resolve. Not because nobody knows how, but because of some other reason I can’t come up with.As soon as the gondolinos cross the finish line, all the spectators’ boats try to leave at once. It’s about as convenient as everybody trying to get out of a movie theatre within five minutes after the end of the film. With the added element of lots of choking motor exhaust fumes. Yes, hundreds of rowing fans go home in boats powered by engines. But then again, so do fans of horse-racing. So I’m not sure what my point is. All I can say is that there’s a big clump of traffic for a while.
The prize ceremony at the regata of SS. Giovanni e Paolo, and all the races this year, is sponsored by the Graspo de Ua, a restaurant which is in the process of becoming a small empire. Their sponsorship covers innovations such as the podium, the logo-laden T-shirts, each colored to match the corresponding pennant, and the bottle of bubbly to spray everywhere. Prize money? Not so much.
I have been brooding on the struggle between the Venetian rowing racers and the Comune, and I think some numbers might be illuminating.
I know I said in my last post that the racers don’t need the money, but the laborer is worthy of his hire, and the payments this year hover somewhere between risible and offensive. If I were a racer, I would indeed be angered by a city office named “Tutela Tradizioni” (protection of traditions) which does so little to keep this tradition going.
This year the city looked under the cushions of the divan and found some loose change, which permits them to offer prizes which would not be enough to pay for a fill-up at a gas station in Correctionville, Iowa.
The winner of the race pictured above — SS. Giovanni e Paolo, young men rowing gondolas solo — took home 221.20 euros ($293.67). The man who won the Regata di Murano, which is arguably the most important race of the year, scored 347.20 euros ($460.95).
The woman who won the Regata di Murano earned 221.20 euros ($293.67). The boy who won the same race took home 66 euros ($87.62). The boy who finished last got 33 euros ($43.81). And there are people in the city government who say they’re worried about the future of the races because so few boys show up to try out.
It gets better. The first four women to cross the finish line of the Regata de la Sensa got a pennant and a gold medal, which I think is nice, though money has a more immediate appeal. The other five women in the nine-boat field got zip. Niente. Zero. Same thing for the Regata di Malamocco.
And so it goes. The city manages to scrape up more for the Regata Storica, usually around 2,000 euros per man for the winning pair on the gondolinos, and downward from there for the other finishers.
This is so stupid that I can’t decide who to yell at first. It’s like inviting somebody to dinner and telling them to bring their own food.
But comes a ray of light glinting from a chest of gold doubloons, so to speak, from a faithful reader and friend (full disclosure).
This friend is American, by the way, which may explain why he sees ways to make money that the tired Old-World city government hasn’t yet considered. Evidently, what’s doable out in the big old vulgar tradition-free world beyond the bridge doesn’t seem so simple in our little tin-cup-rattling economy.
Let me say that I’m all in favor of the races being pure — whatever we think that means. But I don’t like them being poor. And I especially don’t like them not being, period. In case there was any doubt about that.
So here are some possible solutions:
He writes:
“It seems to me that an infusion of crass commercialism could get things back on track. E.g.:
1. All boats will bear corporate logos like Nike, Taco Bell, Trojans, Depend Diapers, whatever … and thus a ton of ad revenue will get directed into the “Rowers’ Pot.”
2. All rowers will be adorned with shirts and caps similarly garnished and bearing internet addresses of the race sponsors = more ad revenue for the RP.
3. TV rights will be sold for live distribution around the world on the Nat Geo channel, thus tapping Rupert Murdoch for the RP.
4. Buxom cheerleaders for the various teams, scantily clad, no doubt, will cheer and bounce around in unison on the waterfront.
5. Observers will be barraged with logo items for sale by shoreside vendors who’ll remit 20% to the RP.
6. There will be time-outs between races to run commercials for said products – so more RP dough.
7. Travel agents throughout Europe will be tithed on airline ticket sales to Venice during June each year to create yet more moolah for the RP.
8. Racers will be paid the same amount in cash by divvying up the RP (estimated at about 4.5 million euros per rower annually); trophies made of various precious metals and gems will signify winners, losers, etc. (Here I balk: The four pennants — red, white, blue and green — have to be maintained. IT’S TRADITION.)
9. Racers will get lifetime supplies of all products advertised during the regata.
10. UNESCO will declare the race a World Heritage Event, thus assuring it United Nations funding in perpetuity.”
I cannot think of one reason why not to do any or all of the above. The one thing everybody agrees on, racers and city, is that they all want more money. So if the city can’t seem to discover any way to get more money for the races (though they were pretty clever at getting 5 billion euros and counting for MOSE), then we should just face it and play the game the way it’s supposed to be played.
So the Graspo de Ua has paid for the podium (arguably unnecessary, though I understand that the company’s logo has to go somewhere); paid for the T-shirts (ditto), paid for the bubbly, which is nice, but everybody’s been fine without for about a hundred years, and paid for the pennants. What’s missing here is cash for the racers, which the Graspo, no less than the Comune, does not feel able to provide. Impressive sponsorship.
We joined Richard Winckler to row his gondola from the boat-launching area up the Main River toward Frankfurt. It’s not a bad combination: one of the oldest forms of boat in the world in a certified “alpha world city” which lives and breathes the future. Not only is Frankfurt a mere 40 kilometers (24 miles) west of the geographical center of Europe, it is the largest financial center in continental Europe, and the home of DE-CIX, the largest internet traffic exchange point on the planet. It’s also the tenth most expensive city in the world, though maybe that’s not something to be so proud of.
That title doesn’t actually mean “report on the hot dog,” though it would be easy to misconstrue.
Anyway, I made it up; I don’t know German. I studied it for a year, but it rejected me, as if I were a foreign body somebody had tried to transplant into the corpus of what is, in fact, a hugely expressive language.
However, you might be interested to know that “Frankfurt” means “the ford of the Franks,” therefore the various people who named their town Frankford, who I used to think were embarrassingly ignorant, totally nailed it.
There was a mixture of rowers who came for the three-day “Days of Venetian Rowing” on the Main River, organized by the Comitato Internazionale di Voga Veneta (CIVV). Some from France, some from Venice, some from Treviso and Padova, and some individuals from here and there around Germany, a few of whom brought their own boats. The rowing club at which the CIVV is based, the Germania Frankfurter Ruder Gesellschaft, provided a very glamorous and historic base of operations.
We went, we rowed, we ate, we basked in what we were assured was spectacularly unusually beautiful weather, and we saw some interesting things. Lino drank beer, I drank enough apfelsaft (apple juice) to drain all of upstate New York. It was the simplest non-alcoholic option: cheap, ubiquitous, easy to pronounce.
Here are a few snaps of what went on, and who went on with it. I’d have made many more, but that would have cut into my eating, drinking, and seeing-interesting-things time. Choices have to be made, and they were.
Soon I will return to your regularly scheduled Venice.
The Canottieri Sile from Treviso brought a gondolino and this unusual craft, a four-oar s’ciopon.Launching and pulling the boats out of the water was simplified by the roller on the dock. Unfortunately, then we had to pull the boat across the park, up a ramp, and across a two-way street.
This view from the terrace of the Germania Frankfurter Ruder Gesellschaft club, our home base, ought to give some glimpse of the distance we had to cover taking the boats to the river every day. It’s not that it was so far, it was just more complicated than one normally expects. Even if one normally expects things to be complicated.
We were also earnestly urged to keep our ears open for the sinuous sound of one of these barges which might very well be coming up behind us; their braking capacity is measured in miles. This picture shows the first half of the vehicle.This is the second half. This would be the nautical version of the 500-pound gorilla: Wherever it wants to sit…We had a surprising three gondolinos, perfect for a race. Getting the boats lined up takes time, though.Two minutes after the start, we could see how the boats were going to finish. Rowing upstream means that the boat closer to the shore will almost certainly do better than the others. Victory to the white gondolino of the Canottieri Sile; the red was second, and the blue was third.Having only two mascaretas meant holding a series of quarter-finals, semi-finals and the final. Here the rule about being closer to the shore also applies, added to the fact that the boats were not equal. The longer boat would have gone faster in any case. Luck of the draw was taken to new heights out here.This jaunty little coracle took the serious edge off the proceedings. It’s a floating barbecue, the food being cooked in the middle.Comment would be superfluous. Or however you say it in German.We rowed up the river to another rowing club where we sat and rehydrated. This young woman told me the flowers weren’t for any particular event; just prettying up the place. I’d certainly say so.The locks at Griesheim handle 60 honking big barges every day. They made room for our jaunty little fleet, rowing down to Hochst for lunch on Sunday morning.Just to show the comparative length, beam, and tonnage of our respective vessels. I was told that the lock-keeper (automated, somewhere else) was going to empty our lock verrry slooooowly, so that the force of the outrushing water wouldn’t hurl the boats to kingdom come. I freely translate from the German, which I don’t speak but which looking at the lock I could completely understand.And as you see, it worked.Hochst is like a three-dimensional postcard.Jurgen Hoh, a geography teacher from Bamberg and a good rower, as well, explained that one amazing thing about the slate roofs (and even walls) of many houses is that this stone isn’t local; historically, that has all sorts of importance. Me, I just kept thinking about how much the whole thing weighs.
The financial center retains a few 19th-century buildings which survived bombing in World War II.
And who says Germans have no sense of humor? Unless some heartless non-Teutonic person went and stole that doll from its innocent little owner.So farewell, Frankfurt. Your airport’s spectacular and your history is first-class, but my happiest memory may well be the firemen on their mid-day ice-cream break.
