History | Venice: I am not making this up

Venice salutes its Madonna

November 22, 2010 6 Comments

Of course you already know that “La Madonna della Salute” does not mean “Our Lady of the Salute.” She is Our Lady of Health, and every year on November 21 everyone in Venice who can walk, and even some who can’t, make the pilgrimage to her church to offer a candle and say however many prayers are filling their hearts.

Just like the feast of the Redentore, a votive bridge is installed -- here spanning the Grand Canal. It is intended to carry the faithful piously over the water, but it's also an excellent vantage point for snapshots. — Just as at the feast of the Redentore, a votive bridge is installed -- here spanning the Grand Canal. It is intended to carry the faithful piously over the water, but it's also an excellent vantage point for snapshots.

Yesterday was not a propitious day, meteorologically speaking. For two or three days the Gazzettino had been feverishly predicting acqua alta of 120 cm [four feet] that morning. (It didn’t happen.) There was plenty of water, however, in the form of a frigid rain. It wasn’t heavy, but it was determined, the kind of rain that isn’t thinking about anything else. And it got dark early.

Perhaps they look innocent enough to you here. That's because you can't smell them. — Perhaps they look innocent enough to you. That's because you can't smell them.

There had also been an anxious sub-theme, which began circulating several days early, on the impending castradina famine. Castradina the basis of the traditional dish for this festival, a soup made of cabbage and a haunch of mutton which has been dried, smoked, aged, slathered in dark malodorous spices, and possibly even beaten with sticks and dead-blow hammers. It’s an impressive little piece of meat.

But this year, the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha, or Festival of Sacrifice, fell in the same period. Which meant that the general supply of castradina — which has never been huge, seeing as the tradition had fallen into general disuse — had suddenly shrunk to almost nothing. I have now learned that Muslims favor this foodstuff for their religious observance, and that they offered a better price to the few remaining wholesalers who carry it.

This is amusing, in a way (it takes so little to amuse me), because for years many people didn’t care about castradina. We’ve had Venetians over to dinner who had never eaten it. We’d see these hunks of black flesh hanging in the butcher shops and would wonder what they did with the ones they didn’t sell.

But in the past year or two, castradina has come back into fashion. So Venice, according to the Gazzettino, was pullulating with desperate people seeking castradina by any means, in any place, at any price. I can’t think of a credible substitute. You couldn’t fake it even with tofu.

Getting ready for the big day doesn't mean just cooking castradina. It means getting the area ready for every contingency.

Back to the weather. It was cold, dark, and wet. Just what I think of as perfect weather for this feast, though the women in the mink coats were thwarted by the rain. As you know, they come out in force on this day even in the driving sun. The need to show off their fur is just too strong. If you’re wearing beaver or seal, fine. But minks do not like rain any more than their humans do. I kind of missed seeing these self-contented matrons in their luscious garb. They do love it so. Lino calls this the feast of Our Lady of the Fur Coats.

And the delivery of several hundredweight of neatly boxed candles.

There are at least five stands and they all sell exactly the same thing. I don't get it.

This year, to my surprise, we got into the church without having to battle a rugby scrum, and we walked right up to the candle-lighting station and handed over our candles. This was an odd but very pleasant sensation. Last year there was such a crush of people that I honestly thought we’d be trapped there holding our candles till Christmas Eve.

Then, as usual, we joined the file of people who elected to walk past the high altar and venerate the little Madonna on the other side, crossing themselves and tossing some cash, and walking out through the sacristy. We found two seats in the heavy wooden choir stalls and sat down to watch people go by. Even though there weren’t massive crowds, the flow was steady. So far, so normal.

You can’t force pious thoughts. If you try, they just slide off your brain. So I sat there not thinking at all, somewhat lulled by the rosary recitation floating over from the other side. And then a thought came to me — more a realization than a thought. I realized that we were being faithful.

All those thousands of frantic, distraught Venetians had been watching people die of the plague all around them till all they had left to offer in exchange for their lives was to promise the Virgin that if she would intercede and save what was left of the city, they would build her a church and come to offer her candles and gratitude every November 21 forever. And after 380 years, people (us) who are so far away from the original promisers that their vow could be thought of as symbolic, or even meaningless, are still maintaining that vow.

Crumpled-up little old people, children of every shape and temper, families of various nationalities, teenage boys, an assortment of tourists — anybody who was there formed another link in the chain tying us to those helpless, despairing people who made a promise that they believed we would keep.

And we did. And we will.

Events, Food, History, Venetian-ness

Saint Martin strikes (Venice) again

November 11, 2010 1 Comment

: Classic weather for the feast of San Martino, probably designed to send you indoors to eat the classic roasted chestnuts.

As I may have said before, one of the many things I love about being here is the way life crosses the stream of the year by stepping on a series of metaphorical stones, which are the assorted holidays and feast days of some saints I hardly knew (that means “never knew”) existed. Now I know more about them than could ever be regarded as useful or even, dare I say it, interesting.

I used to think it was so exotic the way that people in the Middle Ages, according to assorted novels, would always be talking about events according to their nearest feast day: “We’ll plant the corn after St. Swithin’s Day,” “The marriage took place before Candlemas,” and so on. Now I’m doing it too.

For example, everybody knows that you don’t broach the new wine until St. Martin’s Day, which is today, November 11. The seppie begin to head out to sea after the Feast of the Redentore (third Sunday in July). I could go on, but St. Martin is getting restless.

The essential costume must include headgear, usually a crown. This item deftly connects all the symbols, which is San Martino with a sword on his horse. — The essential costume must include headgear, usually a crown. This item deftly connects the essential elements, which are San Martino, a sword, and a horse.

The festivities almost always take place on the eve of the official date of whatever the event may be. Therefore, yesterday via Garibaldi was strewn with small children in their “San Martin” garb — clever crowns, sometimes capes, often a bag for the candy they strongly urge people to give them — and carrying whatever bits of kitchenware such as pots and pans (or their covers) to bang and clang as they sing the vaguely threatening San Martino song. The gist of this ditty is that if you don’t give them candy, they will invoke a variety of unpleasant reprisals. Pimples on your butt is one of the favorites.

The essential elements for the traditional cookie are pastry dough and candies stuck on with icing. This is the minimalist version, reduced, simplified, symbolic. And small.

I like to think about all these people who stroll across the Venetian calendar. The Befana (Jan. 6), Santa Lucia (Dec. 13), the Madonna della Salute (Nov. 21), San Marco (April 25) and now San Martino (Nov. 11). Of course there are many more, when you add in every parish’s patron saint. Just imagine them all getting together at their annual convention: “International Marching and Chowder Society of Saints of the Venetian Year, this year meeting in Mobile, Alabama. Before registering, make sure you’ve paid your dues.” It’s just an expression. Saints, by definition, have long since paid them.

Where was I? Via Garibaldi. So yesterday afternoon hot chocolate and the crucial cookie called a “Samartin” (Sa-mar-TEEN) were distributed to the children by the good men of the Mutual Aid Society of the Caulkers and Carpenters. When they ran out of children they gave cookies to everyone else, mainly grandmothers and aged aunts who had been circling like buzzards.

Today, the late morning was clanked and clattered by groups of schoolchildren, manic little locusts in impromptu costumes swarming the shops and vendors. They were banging on their cookware and singing the San Martino song, or at least some of it.

The onslaught begins as the older children head for the next shop --which in this case will be a fruit and vegetable vendor.

It's nice to see the horse getting some recognition. All he did in the original story was stand there.

They had also prepared a series of posters depicting San Martino at his greatest moment, the encounter with the freezing beggar by the road and the division of his cloak with his sword.

A little tourist girl meets San Martino -- or more precisely, the beggar on the ground. — A little tourist girl meets San Martino -- or more precisely, the beggar at his feet.

I believe he did a few other things in his life which had deeper and longer-lasting importance, but they don’t make anywhere near as good a story. Or poster.

Considering the ludicrous prices of the cookies on sale around town — a rough estimate tells me that regardless of size they cost 250% more than last year, when the prices were already too high — I think San Martino ought to cut the cookies in half.

Funny how in these pictures it's never winter. That sort of mitigates the whole freezing-to-death part of the story. But this is obviously prettier.

41 euros is $56. The size of this supposedly mega-cookie (#5) can easily be understood if you know the size of a Perugina "bacio" chocolate. (Hint: It contains one hazelnut.) I realize that 14 chocolates are not cheap. But if you're going to spend $50 on something, I wouldn't be thinking of chocolate but something more in the precious-metals line. Gad. — 41 euros is $56. The size of this supposedly mega-cookie (#5) can easily be understood if you know the size of a Perugina "bacio" chocolate. (Hint: It contains one hazelnut.) I realize that 14 chocolates are not cheap. But if you're going to spend $56 on something, I wouldn't be thinking of chocolate but something more in the precious-metals line. Gad.

Events, History, Venetian-ness

Armistice Day in Venice

November 4, 2010 1 Comment

November 4 Street. This is simpler than "End of the war at last, thank God" Street.

At 3:00 PM on November 4, 1918, peace returned to Italy. After 41 months of brutal battles on the Eastern Front, Italy and its allies had defeated the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

The Armistice of Villa Giusti had been signed the previous day by representatives of the Italian and Austro-Hungarian governments at a country house outside Padova, and it stipulated the precise moment at which hostilities were to cease. It sounds so elegant — “cease hostilities” — so much more imposing than saying “No more blowing millions of young men to splinters and shreds.”

May 24, the date in 1915 that Italy entered the war.

The armistice between France and Germany which ended the War on the Western Front was signed in Compiegne, France on November 11. I remember commemorating Armistice Day on that date, before it was transformed into Veterans Day (decreed on June 1, 1954). In Italy, November 4 is observed as the Day of National Unity and the Armed Forces. Meaningful, but not poetic at all.

Of course I’m in favor of honoring everyone in uniform, but labels that are so generic muffle the profound resonance the end of the Great War, or as it’s sometimes called here, “The War of Fifteen-Eighteen,” had — and I believe still has — in European culture and history.

A weekday morning in Sant' Elena. You might not even guess that this was Venice, but after the hell of the battlefields, this must have looked heavenly.

In Venice, part of the war’s aftermath was the construction of housing for veterans on a large swathe of empty land on the island known as Sant’ Elena at the easternmost end of Venice. It has always seemed a fairly bleak area to me (especially on one of those dark, foggy winter evenings).

But what the neighborhood may lack in charm it more than compensates for in the echoes still reverberating through the names of its streets — names of battles or battlefields, or generals, or dates so crucial that they need no explanation whatever to anyone in Italy. And certainly not to the families moving in.

Lest anyone imagine that Venice might have escaped any effects of the war, let me note that the city was bombed by the Austrians more than once. Buildings were damaged, and so were many of their inhabitants.

Campo Santa Giustina after the bombardment on February 26, 1918.

On October 25, 1915, an Austrian bomb hit the church of the Scalzi, next to the railway station.

At 10:15 this morning, the flags were raised in the Piazza San Marco. Maybe a hundred tourists stopped to watch the half-hour ceremony, performed by detachments of the Army, Navy, and Carabinieri. The Prefect reviewed this modest array, some recorded band music was played (the Hymn of San Marco, and the national anthem), and letters from the President and the Minister of Defense were read. The veterans marched in and marched out.

And the flags were raised — Italian, European, and Venetian.

It was not very impressive. But in a way, it didn’t need to be. All anyone had to do to be impressed was to stop for 17 seconds and try to grasp what the ceremony represented. I’ve never been able to come close to grasping it, but I try.

The text of the “Bulletin of Victory,” issued by General Armando Diaz, supreme commander of the Italian army, is cast in the form of a bronze plaque made of melted enemy artillery, and is displayed in every City Hall and barracks in Italy. Here is the text (translated by me):

SUPREME COMMAND, 4 November 1918, 12 o’clock

The war against Austria-Hungary which, under the high command of His Majesty the King, the Italian Army, inferior in numbers and means, initiated on May 24, 1915, and with unwavering and tenacious valor conducted fiercely without interruption for 41 months, is won.

The gigantic battle engaged on the 24th of last October and in which took part 51 Italian divisions, three British, two French, one Czechoslovakian, and one American regiment, against 73 Austro-Hungarian divisions, is finished.

The rapid and daring advance of the XXIX Army Corps on Trento, blocking the enemy’s means of retreat in Trentino, overwhelming them on the west by the troops of the VII Army and on the east by those of the I, VI, and IV, determined yesterday the total ruin of the adversary’s front. From Brenta al Torre the irresistible surge of the XII, the VIII, and the X Army, and of the cavalry divisions, drove the fleeing enemy even further back.

On the plains, His Royal Highness the Duke of Aosta rapidly advanced at the head of his undefeated III Army, longing to return to the positions which they had already victoriously conquered and had never lost.

The Austro-Hungarian Army is annihilated; it suffered grave losses in the fierce resistance of the first days and in the pursuit it has lost huge quantities of materiel of every sort and virtually all of its stores and warehouses. It has left in our hands about 300,000 prisoners with entire general staffs and not less than 5,000 cannon.

The remains of what once was one of the most powerful armies in the world is ascending, hopelessly and in disorder, the valleys which it had descended with such proud security. DIAZ

The monument in Valstagna to their fallen sons is heroic, a powerful reminder of how bitter the struggle was along the mountainous border with Austria. Soldiers' bodies are still occasionally found along the front. — The monument in Valstagna to their fallen sons is a powerful reminder of how bitter the struggle was on the mountainous border with Austria. Soldiers' bodies are still occasionally found.

Events, History, Tourism

Venice marathon, ramping up

October 8, 2010 1 Comment

Last week saw the arrival of yet another signal of autumn. It wasn’t the tuffetti, my favorite ducks, though that is an important moment for me. Nor was it the first chestnuts, jujubes, and persimmons appearing in the market. (Ignore the persimmons — it’s too early. These are clearly interlopers from some hothouse.)

It’s the arrival, if you can put it this way, of the mega-ramps constructed over the bridges that stud the route of the Venice Marathon, an event which is always held on the fourth Sunday in October. (For a look at the route, see here.)

Of course it takes longer to go up the ramp than to climb the steps, but there are obviously compensations. Note: The object at the foot of the bridge is a pigeon preparing to land. Obviously wings are better than feet for dealing with bridges, but they're not allowed by marathon rules. — Of course it takes longer to go up the ramp than to climb the steps, but there are obviously compensations. Note: The object at the foot of the bridge is a pigeon preparing to land. Wings are certainly better than feet for dealing with bridges, but they're not allowed by marathon rules.

Perhaps you never thought of Venice as being suitable for a marathon (do they use water wings? Must be one of the oldest jokes around).

No, the magic word for Venice, in the world of runners, isn’t “water,” it’s “bridges.” Specifically, the 11 bridges between the mainland and the finish line way down at the Giardini not far from us. (I don’t include the Ponte della Liberta’, from the mainland to Piazzale Roma, nor the temporary pontoon bridge set up between the Salute and San Marco, because they have no steps and present no special challenge beyond their simple existence.)

I can’t tell you where Venice ranks in the world of marathons (there are 72 marathons in Italy), but thanks to the ramps it’s a great thing for everybody who isn’t a runner — who has trouble walking, or has to schlep a heavy suitcase or shopping cart or child-laden stroller or any object involving wheels, which means just about everybody. The marathon closes after six hours, but here, schlepping is forever.

A view of the last bridge before the finish line, buttressed by its somewhat temporary bridges.

October 24 will be the 25th edition of this event, so there will be a small celebratory change in the route, which for the first and only (they say) time will be detoured straight through the Piazza San Marco. It will obviously be a publicity agent’s dream. If you’re trying to get around the Piazza that morning, it may be somewhat less dream-like. But at least now you know. Make a note also that the vaporetto schedules will be deranged.

Of the 24 Venice marathons to date, seven were won by Italian men, 11 by Italian women. Since the year 2000 it has been pretty much dominated by Ethiopian or Kenyan runners. If you’re a runner, you may already have known, or surmised, this result. I see by the statistics that during these 24 years the elapsed time for the men’s race has shrunk from 2:18’44” to 2:08’13”. A similar drop has occurred among the women. (If you care, the world’s fastest marathon was four minutes shorter: Haile Gebrselassie of Ethiopia holds the record for his finish at the Berlin Marathon in 2008 at 2:03’59”.)

Let me repeat, for us mortals the marathon doesn’t mean glory, it means an annual drop in the Daily Fatigation Factor. Because they leave the bridges up till Carnival is over, which means almost six months of ramps.

Yes, they’re ugly. No, I don’t think it would be great to leave them up all year (at least not this version, though a design for a permanent wheel-friendly modification to some bridges was recently proposed). But when they’re gone, it takes a while to get used to doing steps again.

I know, steps are better for you. So go climb steps somewhere else. Try this: Drag your suitcase from the train station to your hotel at the end of the Strada Nova (four bridges).

And remember, to be really annoying a bridge doesn’t have to have a lot of steps. It just has to be narrow, and steep. There are 409 bridges in Venice, and as soon as you have something heavy and clumsy to carry, even just one will be too many.

The last ramp before the finish line. A vision of heaven to 6,000 runners.