Nature | Venice: I am not making this up

March blows into Venice

March 3, 2011 6 Comments

We were all peacefully plodding along toward spring when March burst through the door. Did the famous month come in like a lion? More like a pack of enraged jaguars.

On Monday night (February 28) the wind began to pick up. A very special wind, the bora, blowing from the northeast with gusts up to 54 km/h (33 mph).

IMG_4972 bora — At Sant' Elena, looking toward the Lido.

This went on all day and night for the following two days — as I write, the wind is finally subsiding to a polite 20 km/h (12 mph).

The scirocco, the fetid breath of the southeast, can impel acqua alta, but if you stand sideways to the bora it will blow your brain out of your skull. Not that you’ll be needing your brain at that point, because the survival instinct will have taken over the controls.

We could hear the powerful roaring noise with the door and windows shut. Women didn’t hang out their laundry, which told me more than even the messages being tapped out on our window by the desperate Venetian blinds. Normally you’d like a real breeze because it gives you a boost in the drying-laundry department, but here your housewife would have risked either seeing her underwear being ripped out of the clothespins and soaring away toward Sardinia, or clinging to the clothesline while being rent to rags, like a flag in a hurricane.

For me, not seeing laundry is more ominous than the dog that didn’t bark in the night.

IMG_4985 bora — The bora making its point along the Fondamente Nove.

But while all this is very exciting for Venice (well, for me, though it’s certainly not the first bora I’ve experienced), it set a record for Trieste, the city as famous for its wind as Venice is for its canals. They haven’t had a zephyr like this since 1954.

The Triestines endured this bora with gusts up to 163 km/h (101 mph). This is a speed which isn’t even on the Beaufort scale, and creates more damage and danger than 76 acqua altas put together. Some people in Trieste were literally blown over, suffering serious head injuries. The houses and trees went through something of the same thing. It’s quite a place where the weather person can breathe a sigh when he tells the viewers that the wind is dropping and that now it’s only at 70 km/h (43 mph).

Here is a view of the bora in Trieste at 150 km/h. This occurred in 2005, but it gives some idea of what 163 km/h might look like.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itcaETv705Y&playnext=1&list=PL35DE065227480E8F

Interesting fact that sounds like folklore, except that I can confirm that it’s true: No matter how many days the bora may last, it always ends on an odd-numbered day. Like today. Strange, I know.

I stayed home and made my once-a-year batch of galani, to gorge on today (“Fat Thursday”). They didn’t come out as well as they did last year, and I am convinced that I changed nothing. Of course we’re eating them, but they fall short of sublime, which is disappointing. If I’m going to eat slivers of fat and sugar, they ought to be at least irresistible.

IMG_5018 galani — The galani this year. Next year, even better.

Call me deranged, but I’m blaming the bora. Cold high pressure from Russia meeting warm low pressure from the southwest right over our little hovel. I’m just glad that the roof tiles didn’t get blown away. Though I suppose I could have glued some galani on in their place.

Boatworld, Nature, Problems, Water

Fogging up

January 17, 2011 No Comments

We’ve been having fog of various densities and persistence over the past – I’d have to check, it seems like a month or so. Or year. A long time, anyway. And the predictions are for more.

“How romantic,” I hear you thinking. And I agree. Fog can be hauntingly lovely here, all drifting shapes and softening colors and the complete evaporation of the horizon.

What you can't make out in this picture, along with many other things, are two special fog components: A persistent southwest wind to sharpen the fog's edge on your skin, and the many different sizes of drops which run into your face as you walk. — What you can't make out in this picture, along with most of via Garibaldi, are two special fog components: A tenacious southwest wind to sharpen the vapor's edge on your skin, and the many different sizes of drops which fall against your face as you walk.

But if you need to move beyond the visual and into the practical, fog can be a pain in the gizzard. Acqua alta may get all the emotional publicity, but I can tell you that acqua from above, in the form of atmospheric condensation, can be just as inconvenient. I suppose nobody makes the same sort of fuss about it because fog doesn’t come into your house. Or shop.

The vaporetto stop. Not a very promising panorama.

Example: Yesterday morning I was forced to abandon my plan to go to Torcello to meet somebody for an interview (assuming I do, or do not, succeed in re-scheduling said meeting, I will explain who, what and why in another post).

Like many plans — Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, say, or New Coke — it looked perfect on paper. Take the #52 vaporetto at 8:10 to the Fondamente Nove, change to the LN line at 8:40, change to the Torcello line at 9:35, and faster than you can recite the Gettysburg Address, I’d be there. Actually, you’d have to recite it 36 times; door to door requires an hour and a half, but I don’t mind. It’s a beautiful trip, assuming you can see where you’re going.

There's a church over there with a big bell tower. Trust me.

But once again, I discovered — standing there without a Plan B — that the real problem isn’t the fog itself, but the way the ACTV, the transport company, deals with it. The ACTV seems to have wandered beyond a reasonable concern for public safety and into the realm of phobia: “An irrational, intense, and persistent fear of certain situations, activities, things, animals, or people.” I don’t think the ACTV has a fear of animals. Otherwise, fog fits the phobic bill. The solution? According to the dictionary, “The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive and unreasonable desire to avoid the feared stimulus.” In this case, fog.

But the ACTV exists to be outdoors. Much as it might wish the case to be otherwise, it can’t function anywhere else. And more to the point, by now almost all the boats have radar. Yet it seems that the the more radar the company installs, the less willing the company is to trust it.

May I note that there were a good number of people out rowing in the fog yesterday morning, on their way to a boating event at Rialto. I myself have been out rowing in the lagoon with a compass, as has Lino, as have plenty of people. Lino rowed home one time in a fog so thick he couldn’t see the bow of his boat. Just to give you some idea of what is, in fact, feasible.

The board continued to show the vaporettos and their expected arrival times. I stood there and watched the times change as no vehicles passed. Somebody was either doing it on purpose, or didn't care, neither of which was too helpful. When Venice finally sinks beneath the waves, all that will be visible above the surface will be the angel atop the belltower of San Marco, and a board on which the departure times will continue to advance. — The board continued to display the vaporetto numbers and their expected arrival times. I stood there and watched the times change as no vehicles passed. When Venice finally sinks beneath the waves, all that will be visible above the surface will be the angel atop the belltower of San Marco, and a board on which the vaporetto departure times will continue to advance.

In yesterday’s case, all the vaporettos were, as usual, re-routed up and down the Grand Canal, even those — like the one I wanted — which normally circumnavigate the city’s perimeter. If I’d known in time that the fog was that thick out in the lagoon (as it wasn’t, outside our hovel), I wouldn’t have walked all the way over to the vaporetto stop at San Pietro di Castello. Because once I realized that the boat wasn’t coming, it was too late to activate the most reasonable solution: Walking to the Fondamente Nove to get the boat to Burano. Although there again, even if service were maintained to the outer reaches of the lagoon, it would almost certainly have been on a limited schedule. Like, say, once an hour.

Pause for the sound of the perfect plan drifting out to sea, and the first stifled shriek of the day.

Fog does show the spiderwebs to their best advantage. There is that.

I can’t understand several things. If the boats have radar, why does it not inspire confidence in its operators? And more to the point, if the vaporetto captains can manage to navigate along the shoreline and up the Grand Canal, with or without radar, why could they not, by the same token, circumnavigate the city? The route outside takes them just as close to the shoreline as it does inside — in other words, whichever route they take, they’re not exactly out on the high seas, but within eyeshot of any palaces or pilings or any other landmark that they need to keep track of.

Once again, my sense of logic has run aground in a falling tide on the mudbanks of municipal management.

But one last question: If the city (and by extension, its transport company) is so willing to confront a temporary meteorological situation (fog) with the attitude, “Suck it up, people,” why has it not been willing to confront another temporary meteorological situation (acqua alta) with the same panache?

Answers do suggest themselves, but they are cynical answers, composed of bitter little thoughts about human nature. Best to leave them unexpressed.

If you've ever wondered what "It is what it is" might look like, this is an excellent illustration. All those women have long since accepted the fact that their laundry is going to be wetter by noon than it was when they hung it out.

Note to people flying, not floating, yesterday. I’m sorry if your flight was delayed. I realize that flying in fog is stupid and dangerous. But slowly driving a boat in fog, hugging the shoreline, isn’t.

But as I say, if you don't have to drive or fly in it, the fog does have a certain fascination.

Nature, Venetian-ness

Venetians in wonderland

December 18, 2010 3 Comments

It snowed yesterday, which was about time, considering that the rest of Europe and even large parts of Italy have already had far more than their share.

IMG_3763 snow — This time it wasn't fog that was obscuring the Minoan Lines ferry's 2:00 PM departure for Greece. It was snow blowing in every direction.

I realize thousands, maybe millions, of people would be happier never to see snow again; Italy in the past two days has been overwhelmed by the white stuff and its icy relatives, which have blocked trains, closed airports, inflicted autostrada catastrophes involving heavy tractor trailers (one monster rig went sideways on one of the main north-south superhighways, not only preventing motorists from moving forward but also making it impossible for the snowplows to get through), and stranded travelers everywhere who finally were put up overnight in assorted improvised shelters because they couldn’t move in any direction and the temperature was sinking steadily below freezing.

Treat these strips as you would any untamed creature: keep your eyes open and pretend you don't care. They can sense fear.

Still, even if vehicles in my world aren’t hindered much by snow, walking presents its own hazards. Traversing the space between two points here will inevitably require crossing a bridge. The bridges do not get shoveled and salted in a timely fashion, and the edge of each step of each bridge was helpfully bordered by some long-ago brilliant engineer with a strip of cream-colored Istrian stone (to resist wear? to clearly demarcate where the step ends?), and when this stone freezes it becomes one of the most treacherous substances on earth. Little old people dragging their wheeled shopping carts put many of their 206 bones at risk on the way home. And by the way, I too could slip and fall.

But I don’t care. Snow here is as magical as anywhere else, and watching little kids discover the myriad wonders of making and launching snowballs just makes it even better. The laughter, the occasional scream, a couple of gamboling dogs who can’t resist barking,the air which when the sun comes out is absolutely fizzy: I’ll take this as a great Christmas scene any day over ten shopping malls playing freeze-dried carols.

Sorry for all you holiday travelers, but I hope it snows again. And again.

The morning after is a great time to start doing things with the snow -- I mean, apart from shoveling it. A grandfather on the island of Sant' Erasmo created this with the sporadic help of his very small grandson.

Nature, Water

Venetian Lagoon reverie

December 12, 2010 5 Comments

Water is such an fundamental part of Venice’s fascination that it would be silly to imagine the city without it.

But if you want to discover something equally beautiful, you should look at the water without the city. Go out into the lagoon, preferably in a small boat with oars, and above all, do it in the winter.

Habit, if not logic, induces us to believe that a great day out on the water requires sunshine, heat, cold beer, and all the other appurtenances of a summer weekend. Or month.

But I have a Venetian friend — and I know he’s not alone — who, when the spring warmth begins to creep across his shoulders, shrugs and says resignedly, “Well, it’s the end of the beautiful season.”

The first time he said it, I thought he might be unbalanced. Now I say it too.

This is the only boat we saw, apart from a small sailboat. The good part was that they were gone really quickly.

Of course there are positive aspects to summer here. But when summer brings sun to the lagoon it also brings the sun’s entourage, which is everybody in the entire universe in loud boats with loud families, rampaging around, creating waves, havoc, and confusion. The waves in themselves belong to a particular species of confusion — aggressive, chaotic, senseless. You know how, if you drop a potato chip on the ground, in two minutes ants are swarming all over it? The lagoon in the summer is that potato chip to uncounted thousands of people, almost all of whom look alarmingly alike.

But as October blends into November, and into early December, as winter breathes itself into the year and we wake up to a world wrapped in filmy fog, the lagoon changes, or rather reverts, to its true self, an intricate, delicate, harmonious realm.

These are what I think of as the mother-of-pearl days, when the sky and water share a nacreous, faintly gleaming quality and the air is almost still. Days like this are the Japanese tea ceremony, Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites, of weather. Normal people looking out the window feel an urge to make hot cocoa and lie on the sofa. I can’t wait to get out.

When we go rowing in the fog, everything is beautiful — the sharp air, the little melody of the water passing under the boat (which thanks to the absence of motorboats one can actually hear), and the silence itself. It’s a soft sort of silence, that floats on swathes of water that are perfectly flat yet crinkled with myriad tiny waves which the imperceptible breeze has created and is now trying to smooth out again.

Simpliciti itself: You put a small crab into the trap, then jam the bamboo pole into the lagoon bottom. You go do something else for a while, then you come back, collect your haul, and start over again. You notice that the lagoon water is extremely far from murky; this degree of clarity is normal in the winter. — Simplicity itself: You put a small crab into the trap, then jam the bamboo pole into the lagoon bottom. You go do something else for a while, then you come back, collect your haul, and start over again. Notice that the lagoon water is extremely far from murky; this degree of clarity is normal in the winter.

We took the boat a few days ago on one of those perfect days: chilly, nebulous, with almost nobody in sight. We were aided in this solitude not only by the weather, but by the fact that it was a national holiday (the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for the record), which meant that people weren’t working, which cut down drastically on the traffic. Just to see so much empty space was like getting a present in the mail.

Before long, real winter will arrive, bringing frost, ice, snow, scimitar winds slashing down from Siberia (I did not make that up). One year we went rowing on the day after Christmas (also a holiday); it was during one of those Arctic snaps and in a few small canals a film of ice had begun to form, which my oar broke with a neat slice. Rowing back, the wind was so strong it blew the frigid spray over our mascareta, turning to ice on the bottom. It was like rowing standing on a skating rink. With each oar stroke I thought, “If I slip, I’ll never get my footing again.” Which led me to wonder how exactly we’d ever get home. These thoughts distracted me from the inconceivable coldness of the wind and the fact that it made absolutely no sense to be out there.

On those days the world is dazzling, cut by diamonds. Beautiful, sure. Anybody can see that.

But fog is insidious, seductive, gossamer, enchanting. Tranquil. Restorative.

I’m improvising here. None of these words, and not even all of them, can do this brief little season justice, but they’re the best I can manage.