November 1st and 2nd pack a one-two punch here, though the first is a holiday and the second isn’t (every year I struggle to remember that because it seems wrong to me). (I think they should both be holidays.)
My most recently discovered saint: St. John of Nepomuk, here adorning the prow of the 14-oar gondola of the club Voga Veneta Mestre. He is a national saint of the Czech Republic, and protector of gondoliers and anyone in danger of drowning. He was martyred on March 20, 1393 by being thrown into the Vltava River in Prague.
November 1 is All Saints Day — shortened here to “i santi” (“the saints”). There is no special way of observing this feast, other than going to church which for some people is asking too much. I know men who will proudly tell you that they haven’t been to church (or put on a tie) since their wedding day. Strangulation seems to be the theme.
The cemetery island, San Michele in Isola, is in the upper right corner, just on the way to Murano.
November 2 is All Souls Day — shortened here to “i morti” (“the dead”). This is a day (even if it isn’t a holiday) which Venetians observe with more attention. The vaporetto to the island of San Michele, the cemetery island, is free. In the not-so-old days, within Lino’s memory, a bridge on boats was constructed for the day from the Fondamente Nove to the island (a distance visibly shorter than the Giudecca Canal, whose bridge for the feast of the Redentore was also on boats). Many people make a point, at least once a year, of visiting their relatives’ graves, tombs, loculi, and if you’re ever going to go, this is the day. The florists on the Fondamente Nove make some real money.
The "bateon" for the dead was in use till the Seventies. It was black, of course, decorated with gold. In fact, there were several of them, kept in a canal by the church of the Madonna dell'Orto. If one must die, this is a superb way to make your exit. A new initiative is being launched to build a new one and put it back into service. Public contributions will be welcome.
I’ll write more about death in Venice some other time — it’s an interesting subject about which there is plenty to say, partly because of the age of the population. Funeral homes are probably one of the few businesses here that are immune to the global economic situation.
The traditions still associated with this feast-day naturally have mostly to do with food. For about a week before November 2, the pastry-shops and cafes put on sale little bags of what appear to be roundish colored styrofoam blobs, like lumpy cherries, colored white, pink, or brown. These are called “fave” (FAH-veh) and come in either the small (Trieste) form or the larger (Venice) form. It’s inexplicable to me but the Triestine are everywhere. Seeking a sack of Venetian fave will cost you some time and effort.
There are differing recipes, but the one I picked had only three ingredients: powdered pinoli nuts, sugar, and egg white, baked for an hour at low temperature. For the record, I tried making them yesterday and while the simplicity of the recipe was part of its appeal, I can confirm that if you halve the recipe, you’d better make an effort to halve the egg white. They were a spectacular failure.
However, from one of my favorite Venetian cookbooks, A Tola co i Nostri Veci by Mariu’ Salvatori de Zuliani, comes a recipe that makes more sense.
First of all, he makes the point quite firmly that coloring the fave is a newfangled fad; the classic Venetian version is always plain white. Remember that if you want to be a purist.
Venetian Fave for All Souls Day (November 2)
These are typical small bags of fave, of the Trieste style. They are priced by the "etto," or 100 grams. Here the merchant has cleverly offered two sizes of bag: One etto for 3 euros, and a two-etto bag for 6 euros. It's like trying to understand a pun in a foreign language -- I just don't get it.
200 gr almonds, 300 gr sugar, 125 gr flour, pinch of ground cinnamon, 20 gr butter, 2 whole eggs, lemon zest.
Leave the “peel” on the almonds and pound them in a mortar with the sugar, then sift. Add the flour, a pinch of cinnamon, butter, eggs, and the lemon zest and mix well with your hands.
Divide the mixture into blobs the size of walnuts, arranging them in lines on a baking sheet that’s been buttered and floured. Press each one lightly with your finger to flatten it slightly — the purpose is to make them resemble as much as possible the normal amaretto cookie.
Bake at “moderate heat” he says; I’ll take that to mean 150. He doesn’t say how long, either (I love the old-fashioned way of writing recipes).
Of course you have already been thinking, “But a fava is a kind of bean.” This is true. So why call these “beans” and why this particular composition, and why on the Day of the Dead?
The rituals associated with death are so ancient there’s a point where explanations fail, but offering food to the gods on certain occasions, especially death, goes back to when people were cooking on stones. In the Mediterranean a great deal of attention was paid to the cult of the Parche (as they were called in Rome), or Fates, who were the goddesses of destiny. (The Greeks also had them under the name of Moirai.) Nona spun the thread of an individual’s life, Decima measured its length, and Morta was the one who cut the thread. Hence they were revered as, among other things, the goddesses of death.
It became known (I always wonder exactly how) that the Parche especially like fava beans. There are undoubtedly reasons for this — I’m guessing spring and fertility, that seems to be what motivates many divinities. So since real fava beans are impossible to get this time of year, or have been — I suppose nowadays you could fly them in from Zanskar — these little nubbins were invented to symbolize them. Sweetness, I seem to recall, was also an important element of some funerary offerings; often honey was used, which also embodied a raft of symbolic meanings.
These fave don’t really have a flavor, unless you count sheer, unadulterated, industrial-strength sweetness as flavor. They’re pleasant enough in the mouth, but as they go down they sort of close up your throat behind them. After two and a half you won’t want any more till next year, and you’ll be vaguely sorry you ate that extra half.
Next year I’m going to try Zuliani’s version, and I hope the Fates will be kinder to me in the kitchen, if nowhere else.
Another treat that shows up in late autumn (not associated with life, death, or whatever is in between) is "cotognata." It is essentially quince jelly, hardened in a mold. Zuliani says that it once was common in houses all over the Veneto, where it was a popular snack for children. He also mentions that some Venetians would turbo-charge the recipe by boiling the quinces in wine instead of water, then adding a touch of vanilla. He says this recipe has fallen into disuse. I'd be willing to try to bring it back.
A detail from one of innumerable paintings of the battle; in contrast to the artistic hyperbole of many renditions, this gives clear information on the geography. To the right (east) is the narrow entrance to what is here called the Golfo di Lepanto (now the Gulf of Corinth); to the west is a scattering of Ionian islands, primarily Kefalonia and Ithaki.
Nafpaktos on a modern map.
We’re back from our excellent adventure in Greece, and to tell the story in even its most rudimentary form will require a little time and a certain amount of context. I’ll try to keep the pace brisk, but we’ve got a lot of ground to cover. Stragglers will be shot. Deserters also.
Practically every town and village in Greece has its special annual event, but there aren’t many anywhere whose local festa commemorates an event crucial to the history of Europe and, I think one may say, the world.
In the gondolone outside the entrance to the harbor at Nafpaktos, your correspondent rowing on the stern. Behind us, the entrance to the now-tiny fortified harbor, backed by the four-walled Venetian fortress.
We went, eight of us with the faithful gondolone “San Marco,” to a town called Nafpaktos (NAHF-pak-tos), just inland from Patras on the west coast of Greece, to participate in the annual spectacle which commemorates the victory of the Battle of Lepanto. The Venetians modified the town’s other name, Epaktos, into Lepanto (LEH-pan-to), and this is the name by which the epic naval battle of October 7, 1571 has gone into the annals. Nafpaktos means “place where ships are built,” but judging by its history — eight battles over two millennia — it more likely means “place where ships are blasted to flinders and their crews killed and maimed.”
The territory of the Ottoman Empire at its maximum moment.
This clash was arguably the most important sea battle to be fought in the 900 years separating the one at Actium and Trafalgar. Why do we say this? Not only on the basis of the numbers involved, but because the battle put an end, once and for all, to the efforts of the Ottoman Turks to conquer the Adriatic and thus open the way for their further expansion into Europe. If the coalition fleet, powerfully bolstered by the Venetian contingent, had lost, Europe would soon have had many more mosques than churches. To put it tactfully.
Let me pause to say to any Turkish partisans out there that I adore Turkey and admire large chunks of its history and culture and would willingly go there at any time for any reason. But when an empire wants to grow — which is a given, considering that once you start an empire, it’s kind of hard to stop until somebody stops it for you– some hideous things can happen. I believe we can all agree on that.
The walled harbor of Nafpaktos, clearly much smaller today than in 1571, though the Turkish fleet never completely fit inside. The two massive fortresses which the Ottomans built on each bank of the entrance to the Gulf of Corinth made the region safe enough for them.
The backstory: Turks and Venetians had been fighting and making up for centuries by the time the fateful year of 1571 arrived. But the situation had become increasingly desperate, as one after another the Ottoman forces conquered many of Venice’s prize possessions in the eastern Mediterranean and moved ever deeper into the Balkans. Then came the appalling siege of Famagosta in Cyprus, which dragged on for ten months between 1570 and 1571, thanks to the bulldog resistance of commander Marcantonio Bragadin who had absolutely no hope of reinforcements. On July 31, 1571, not only was he was finally forced to capitulate, he was then flayed alive and his skin stuffed with straw to make a sort of effigy which was paraded through town on a donkey before being sent as a victory trophy to Sultan Selim II. The humiliation, rage and grief of the Venetians pushed them to the head of the line when the chance for revenge came just two months later at Lepanto.
That, and the fact that there had already been not one, but two, battles at Lepanto (1499 and 1500) with the same cast of characters and plot line, both of which Venice had lost. If history is geography, Lepanto is clearly on one of those strategic power points.
One of countless renderings of the battle as depicted by the victors.
The combatants: The Ottoman fleet, obviously, on the one hand. On the other was the combined forces of The Holy League, organized by Pope Pius V and comprising ships from Spain, Genoa, the Order of St. Stephen (Pisa), assorted towns of Dalmatia, the Knights of Malta, the Papal States, a healthy assortment of Italian noble ruling families (de’ Medici, Gonzaga, Este, Farnese, della Rovere), the dukes of Savoy and of Tuscany and, of course, Venice. The commander in chief was Don John of Austria, who despite being only 25 years old showed himself to be a brilliant tactician. The Venetians, who supplied a good half of all the ships involved, were led by Sebastiano Venier.
The position of the two fleets at the beginning of the battle. The Christian forces are to the left (west), with their six huge, cannon-laden galleasses in the center. Armed with dramatically more accurate guns than the Turks -- weapons designed by an Armenian engineer, Antonio Surian, in the Venice Arsenal -- the Venetians quickly disabled or damaged many of the enemy vessels virtually at the outset.
The two fleets engaged at 10:30 AM on October 7, in the waters outside the entrance to what is now called the Gulf of Corinth. The area was near a scattering of islets known as the Curzolari; for this reason the battle is also occasionally (pedantically) referred to as the Battle of the Curzolari.
The numbers involved vary so widely among the many accounts that I’ll just give them all and let you pick the ones you like best.
The League had 284 ships (or 195, or 300) of varying types — half of which were supplied by Venice — carrying 1,185 guns, 12,920 sailors, 43,000 rowers and 28,000 soldiers. The Ottomans had 277 ships but carried only 750 guns and 25,000 soldiers, including 12-15,000 Greeks taken prisoner for this purpose and 2,500 janissaries, the only troops equal to the Spanish infantry.
A contingent from Spelonga joined in, with a replica of the Turkish battle flag which one of their ancestors brought home from the battle. The original doesn't travel.
Approximate casualties: Whatever the true totals, the difference between the two sides is obvious.
The Holy League: 7,500 (or 9,000, 12,000, or 15,000) men, 12 (or 15) ships sunk and one captured.
The Ottomans: 30,000 (or 20,000) men, 8,000 taken prisoner, 113 ships sunk and 117 captured, some of which were in good enough condition to be used by the victors. The only prize the Turks snagged was one Venetian galley.
I’ll pause for a second to attempt to imagine what 45,000 casualties look like, especially when they all die in the space of five hours. The attempt has failed. Let’s go on.
The victory monument atop the entrance to the Arsenal in Venice. The inscription reads VICTORIAE NAVALIS MONUMENTUM MDLXXI. No further details needed.
Meanwhile, at Venice, the campanile of San Marco was being manned continually by lookouts awaiting some sign of the battle’s outcome. The Venetians sent word by their fastest galley, the Angelo, which entered the lagoon ten days later, on October 18. The instant that the lookout could make out that the ship was draped with Turkish flags, he cried “Victory!”
Every bell in the city began to ring. Total strangers kissed each other in the streets. Shops closed in celebration, some owners slapping signs on the doors saying “Closed due to the death of the Turks.” The debtors’ prison was emptied. Permission to wear masks was given. And so on and on. A triumphal arch was constructed over the entrance to the Arsenal, and every year on October 7 (feast-day of Santa Giustina), from 1572 till the fall of the Republic in 1797, the Doge and the government would go in procession to the church of Santa Giustina, where the captured Turkish standards were brought out for all to see.
The statue of Miguel Cervantes within the harbor walls was given by the Spanish government. In addition to the wreaths tossed into the water, one is usually placed at his feet, as well as at the memorial plaque on the nearby wall.
Another trophy — if one can call it that — of the war was Miguel Cervantes’s left hand. He fought at Lepanto aboard the ship Marquesa, and when another writer later derided him as being “old and one-handed,” he replied: “What I cannot help taking amiss is that he charges me with being old and one-handed, as if it had been in my power to keep time from passing over me, or as if the loss of my hand had been brought about in some tavern, and not on the grandest occasion the past or present has seen, or the future can hope to see. If my wounds have no beauty in the beholder’s eye, they are, at least, honourable in the estimation of those who know where they were received….”
So who were the real victors? Morale soared on the European side: It had finally been shown that the Ottomans could be defeated, something which after about 100 years had begun to appear unlikely. On the other hand, Venice never got Cyprus back. And although it was wonderful that they had destroyed the Turkish navy, it was back to its previous strength within a year.
“I would have you know the difference between your loss and ours,” the Grand Vizier Sokullu Mehmet Pasha told the Venetian emissary. “In wresting Cyprus from you, we deprived you of an arm; in defeating our fleet, you have only shaved our beard. An arm when cut off cannot grow again, but a shorn beard will grow all the better for the razor.”
All true. But the Ottomans never succeeded in conquering the Adriatic, which would have jammed the door open to many unhappy events. I consider that to be the verdict on Lepanto, and so did most of the delirious victors.
Let’s move up to last week. For the third year in a row, we were invited to participate in an hour-long show broadcast live on Greek television commemorating this event. Obviously nothing anyone can do today could match the event itself, so it came down to a kind of audio-visual creation heavy on symbolism (I think that’s what it was) and mood. And fireworks. You can never go wrong there.
The acrobat rehearsing, suspended over our boat.
Our assignment was to row around the tiny fortified harbor, providing a Venetian/nautical tinge while all sorts of things were happening around us: Strobe lights and projections on the stone walls enclosing the port, acrobats climbing long strips of fabric and creating dramatic human shadows that moved sort of like combatants, a procession of costumed Venetians from C.E.R.S., flames shooting from the battlements, as well as from a Croatian two-masted ship which also poured white fireworks into the sea, and finally, an acrobat in a white bodysuit suspended over the water who danced to a melancholy song which even though it was in Italian, I couldn’t understand. (Our material contribution was to carry the girl and her assistant to and from the point of performance.) Coming at the end, her silent contortions gave an elegiac quality to the event, which was almost immediately canceled out by the fireworks that followed.
The icon, now considered miraculous, of the Madonna of Nafpaktos, to which the Greeks prayed before and during the battle.
Entertaining as this was (and I have to say that the editions of 2008 and 2007 were much more elaborate and imaginative — evidently the economic crisis has bitten deep into the budget here), for me the much more important and moving ceremony occurred the following morning.
After a long commemorative Orthodox mass in the cathedral, a procession formed to march to the harbor: An armed honor guard and military band, a few bishops and other clergy and a large icon of the Madonna (who is credited, much more than Santa Giustina, for the victory), the mayor and city councilors, and representatives from most of the nations which contributed to the battle.
After a short speech by the mayor, and a series of prayers by the bishop, a moment of silence was called. I know this because suddenly a silence fell on the harbor and everyone in it which was something exceptional. This silence wasn’t just the absence of noise, it was as if the world had literally stopped. Whether you wanted to or not, your thoughts (mine, I mean) had to go straight to the battle and especially its victims, among whom I willingly remember the Turks, who naturally did not send a representative even though their troops were just as dead as ours.
The representative of Venice offers the city's wreath.
Then each nation’s official took a laurel wreath — I counted ten — and one by one, tossed it into the water. Last year this segment was enriched by a cannon blast before each one and the playing of that country’s national anthem by the military band, which I found tremendously affecting. This year, no cannon, and evidently not only money but even time was in short supply because after this brisk sequence the ceremony closed with only one piece of music, the Greek national anthem. We, as always, raised our oars in acknowledgment of the prayers and the anthem.
I’m not going to risk attempting to close with some profound summary. All you have to do is consider even the barest outlines of the conflict and then, as Job admonished his friends, “Be astonished, and lay your hand upon your mouth.”
This modest palazzo in Campo Santa Maria Formosa in Venice was the house of Sebastiano Venier, commander of the Venetian fleet. He was unanimously elected doge several years later, in 1577, at the age of 81.
The plaque on the facade reads: "Questa e' la casa di Sebastiano Venier Vincitore di Lepanto. La Marina Militare Italiana nel IV Centenario della Battaglia 7 ottobre 1971 pose." ("This is the house of Sebastiano Venier Victor of Lepanto. The Italian Navy placed this on the 400th anniversary of the battle 7 october 1971.")
The green line shows the border of Dalmatia in the time of Diocletian; the line in fuchsia show the historical/cultural area of Dalmatia; the yellow line indicates its "physical/geographical" boundary.
As I understand it, Dalmatia no longer exists as an entity under that name (though the dogs haven’t had to change their passports to read “Croatian”). But there are still many Italian-speaking people in the world who refer to themselves as “Dalmati” (DAL-mah-tee.) The reason for this is pretty complex, but I’ll give you the basic outline here.
Venice dominated most of the eastern coast of the Adriatic for about eight centuries. After the fall of the Venetian Republic in 1797, Dalmatia was subject to a succession of landlords, and by December, 1944, all of what had been termed Dalmatia ever since it was a Roman province was under the control of Tito. The struggle between Tito’s Communist/Slavic partisans and the Italians living in an area carved out as the Governate of Dalmatia, combined with the actions of the Italian army in the region, led to a program of reprisals by the Communists against the Dalmatian-Italians which was indistinguishable from ethnic cleansing. Most of the Italians who survived, fled by any conceivable means — some 350,000 of them — many to Italy, but not only.
(Let me note that the Dalmatian identity still exists for some ethnic Croats as a way of distinguishing themselves from other Croats for several reasons, and also because they have a distinct cultural identity that is the result of the Italian contact as opposed to the Austro-Hungarian contact in the northeast.)
And so a group was formed, the Association of the Dalmatians in the World, under the flag of Dalmatia, language, and unfathomable store of historic culture and personal memories. (This is one of some 30 Dalmatian heritage/cultural/ political groups in Italy alone). This group has a huge reunion every year, and this year it was held at Trieste from September 14-20, AND, the faithful gondolone of our rowing club, the Canottieri Diadora, was invited to participate in the festivities. So off we all went to Trieste for a beautiful weekend which involved listening to speeches, a concert (did you know that Franz von Suppe’ was Dalmatian? Remember that the next time you hear “The Light Cavalry Overture”), eating, drinking, some walking around, and about a half-hour of rowing. It was great.
Were we invited because we — by which I mean mainly the “San Marco,” our 8-oar gondola — are so amazingly beautiful? But naturally, mon capitaine. But our beauty in the eyes of the Dalmati consisted primarily in the fact that we were already linked with them in history and in name.
The gate to the old city of Zara (Zadar) bears the winged lion of San Marco, relic of the Venetian domination of the city.
Our club, the Circolo Canottieri Diadora, was founded in 1898 in Zara (now Zadar, Croatia), and after the appalling events alluded to above the club essentially disappeared. But a number of “exiles,” as they sometimes term themselves, decided to re-establish the club in 1962 on the Lido in Venice. (One of our more senior members was born in Fiume, now Rijeka, Croatia.)
Designer Ottavio Missoni (second from right, just under the "O"), joins the crew for a group portrait. He was born in Dubrovnik, then known by its Latin name of Ragusa.
Trivia du jour: One of our honorary members is fashion designer Ottavio Missoni, born in Dubrovnik. True fact.
So at 11:30 on Sunday morning, we rowed in a stately way across the Bacino of San Giusto on the waterfront of Trieste, heading toward the waterfront where a crowd had gathered and a band was playing famous Triestine songs, such as “The Bell of San Giusto.”
Seated in the bow of the gondolone was Franco Luxardo, president of the association and also “Mayor of Zara in Exile,” and Carlo Zohar, one of the men who re-established the Diadora in 1962.
When we reached the embankment, we performed the traditional oar-raising salute, the alzaremi, and they went ashore. Our two guests of honor were beside themselves; in fact, many people were deeply moved. We had been billed as the “gondolone from Zara,” but that was a bit of poetic license — actually, it would have been excellent to have arrived by sea, rowing from Zara. It wouldn’t have been that much of a big deal — it’s 205 kilometers, and we can make around 9 km/h, so that would be….22 hours. I think we should have done it.
(Left to right): Franco Luxardo (waving a small Dalmatian flag), Carlo Zohar, Flavia Antonini, Matteo Paganini, Marco Monetti, Elisa Facciotti, Giovanni Annese, Roberto Buccianti, Erla Zwingle, Lino Farnea. Evviva la Dalmazia! (Photo by Paola Vianello.)
I was working at my desk at home here that afternoon around 3:30, I suppose, when the phone rang.
It was my friend Cristina, who was living with her husband and twins not too far away. “Have you heard what’s happening?” she asked. Not having a television, my obvious answer was no. “Some plane has flown into the World Trade Center. It’s on TV now.”
I immediately ran over to her house, trying to think of what she had said and what it could possibly mean. Then we sat on the sofa and watched the second plane and everything after that live on TV. I was crying. The children, who were maybe only five or six years old, wandered in and out.
That evening, Mario d’Elia, one of Venice’s more eccentric lawyers and fringe political personalities, went to the Piazza San Marco and raised an improvised flagpole with an American flag in the center of the space of the three large permanent ones in front of the basilica of San Marco.
Shortly thereafter, an assortment of local and regional politicians gathered on a temporary platform to express their thoughts and emotions — primarily solidarity — in front of a growing crowd, even though many passing tourists couldn’t understand what was being said. The alacrity and sincerity of the moment was something I found very touching.
Afterward, Lino and I went to see Patricia Michaels, a Native American friend of ours from Taos Pueblo (New Mexico) who had been living in Venice for two years. Her daughter Margeaux was four years old, I suppose, and greeted us looking very solemn and unusually subdued. “Somebody dropped a bomb on our village,” she announced. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings.
September 1, 2002: The Regata Storica. As usual, boats were milling around the Bacino of San Marco before the corteo preceding the races. The most remarkable one was a caorlina rowed by six of the Venice firemen. (Historical note: In the days — centuries — before motorboats took over the world, the firemen always responded to a call aboard their caorlina, which had the pump set up in the center.) It’s the only time I’ve ever seen this boat.
Like firemen everywhere, the Venice "vigili del fuoco" are the city's guardian angels. They decorated the bow of their caorlina with a neatly rolled firehose, and two faux-banners with inscriptions.
The large banner says "Honor and glory to our fallen colleagues 11 September." The smaller one is the insignia of the firemen's sports club.
September 11, 2006: To mark the fifth anniversary of the attack, a special mass was celebrated in the basilica of La Madonna della Salute (Our Lady of Health); a delegation of firemen was present, along with representatives of most of the armed forces — Army, Navy, Carabinieri, and so forth.
Firemen entering the church; one is carrying the staff with the Italian flag, which is decorated with a blue ribbon honoring the firemen for some particular service.
The high altar, and the framed collection of portraits of all the firemen who were casualties of that day.
The heading reads: "New York City Fire Department members who made the supreme sacrifice in the performance of duty at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 at Manhattan box 5-5-8087."
As we left the church, we saw a gondola in the Grand Canal just in front of us, specially decorated for the occasion, rowed by gondolier Vittorio Orio and a colleague and escorted by one of the fireboats. Orio is full of interesting initiatives, and he did the same thing (without fireboats) the following year, as well.
The banner along the gondola's flank reads "To not forget the victims and heroes of New York Venezia 11 September 2001 / 11 September 2006."
Lino often tells me how similar Venetians and Americans are. I take this as a compliment, but he states it as a fact.
Many Venetians were especially outraged and sympathetic. Except for one young woman at our rowing club, who when she was told the news (not by me) responded: “So?”
She’s not with us anymore; maybe she returned to her home planet in some other galaxy, where there is no air or water.
nd so a group was formed, the Association of the Dalmatians in the World, under the flag of Dalmatia, language, and unfathomable store of historic culture and personal memories. (This is one of some 30 Dalmatian heritage/cultural/ political groups in Italy alone). This group has a huge reunion every year, and this year it was held at Trieste from September 14-20, AND, the faithful gondolone of our rowing club, the Canottieri Diadora, was invited to participate in the festivities. So off we all went to Trieste for a beautiful weekend which involved listening to speeches, a concert (did you know that Franz von Suppe’ was Dalmatian? Remember that the next time you hear “The Light Cavalry Overture”), eating, drinking, some walking around, and about a half-hour of rowing. It was great.
