The finish line of the Vogalonga may well be the only crowded place in Venice where your money isn’t at risk of being stolen. Please admire the black caorlina and, more to the point, its crew of Franciscan friars from the monastery at the Redentore on the Giudecca.
More advice on protecting yourself from pickpockets (other than staying at home, under the bed).
Where else is your wallet at risk? At the automated vaporetto-ticket machines. By the time you’ve finished deciphering and following the instructions, your worldly goods may well have moved on. If not yet, the pickpockets have seen where you put your wallet. Getting through the turnstiles is sufficiently distracting that you won’t notice that they are right behind you as you pass through.
“In very crowded areas,” my friend explained, “they get so close to you, you don’t even know they’ve opened your bag.”
Another thing: “Crossing crowded bridges is another way to get your bag opened up,” etc. etc. etc.
I have no doubt that all this information and advice is valid also in Florence, Rome, Milan, and any other city that attracts lots of people. They don’t have to all be tourists, there just have to be lots of them and the thieves have their cover.
Tour guides have been stolen from — one German guide was pickpocketed inside the basilica of San Marco. The spouses of tour guides have been ditto ditto. On especially busy days (for example, from now till October) there are hundreds of these incidents a day.
Don’t bother pining for the good old days under the doge and the Council of Ten. As Lino occasionally remarks, “They used to cut the thief’s hand off. He kept stealing anyway.”
This is just to set the scene, the mood, the atmosphere.
I don’t know who needs to hear this, but I’m sending out this information anyway. Short version: Cover your hand whenever you enter your PIN number at the ATM here.
A good friend has told me of her experiences tracking pickpockets who are tracking you. She’s one of many who’ve taken an interest in nabbing them, and I applaud her wholeheartedly. Seeing that she lives on the doorstep of the Piazza San Marco, she’s perfectly situated for maximum sightings. If she can’t intervene in time by shouting, she takes a photo and sends it to the Carabinieri. That’s the drill.
Back to you.
Everybody knows that they have to be super-careful of their wallets when out and about. I always advise visitors to not carry too much cash, and to separate their credit/bank cards from their wallet.
You still have to be super-careful, but the reason for it has accelerated. Because the thieves operate in teams, she told me. Their “work,” if we want to put it that way, goes like this:
One person — whom you will never see, just assume that person is there — watches you enter your PIN number at the cash machine. If you haven’t covered your hand, he or she will immediately memorize that number.
The next person in the team of thieves follows you and he/she, or whoever is next in line in the light-fingered relay, steals your wallet the old-fashioned way. They take your bank/credit card to an ATM, enter your PIN number, and withdraw as much as they can. Many banks here have limits on how much can be withdrawn in a day, but the limit is sometimes rather high. My friend told me of someone who discovered that 1000 dollars had been removed from his account in the time it took to report the theft and block the card.
So much about Venice seems designed to give thieves the advantage: Crammed spaces, lots to look at, and you not paying attention. You can’t do anything about the first two, but it’s up to you to handle the third. Pay attention to your wallet, and your PIN number. No need to be unduly alarmed. Venice is not unlike Antarctica or the Naruto Whirlpools: Things go better if you’re prepared.
I have seen a tourist. I have heard a foreign language. I have seen a taxi and a gondola. I have heard the muffled roar of an airplane taking off. I have seen a barge carrying bags of hotel laundry. And I’ve heard the deep crackling sound of a rolling suitcase. I noticed each one of these, over the past month or so, as a faint, flickering sign of a pulse that could mean that Venice is returning to life.
For anyone whose livelihood depends on tourists — that is, just about everybody — the sight of one must be like the sight of a dripping faucet to a person suffering the last stages of severe dehydration. And someone reading a guidebook instead of squinting at a phone seems like a vision from the era of the Grand Tour.Pioneers! (This was early July.)
Not to belabor the metaphor, but it’s one thing to survive a near-death experience, and another to get well. Things are still bad; tourism is making only a tentative, baby-steps recovery. It’s all very little, and for this year, too late for anyone to begin to feel good. But as I say, there are signs.
It was natural for non-Venetians to imagine that life here under quarantine must have been beautiful without tourists. Au very much contraire — it’s been a mar de lagrime (sea of tears), as they say here, because everything in Venice lies at some point on six degrees of separation from tourism.
Having said that — just as an aside — don’t think that the economy of the nation is built only on gelato and selfies at the Leaning Tower. Here’s a fun fact: Italy is the second-ranked industrial country in Europe; in 2019, over 75% of the EU’s value of sold industrial production was generated by six Member States: Germany (28% of the EU total), Italy (16 %), France (12 %)… Of course, tourism is called an industry, too, but I don’t think you can say a country produces it in the same way it produces eyeglasses, machinery, pharmaceuticals, clothing, cars and — wait for it — robots.
But let’s get back to tourists. (Yes, it’s unfortunate that you can’t have tourism without them.) Italy is the fifth country in the world, and third in Europe, in terms of international tourist arrivals. In 2018, tourists from abroad made up 86.6 percent of all visitors to Venice. (Domestic tourist arrivals in 2019 were a small, but perfectly formed, 747,000.) Arrivals from anywhere in the world since March, 2020: …. Five? One official estimate suggests that Italy won’t be back to pre-pandemic levels of tourism before 2023.
The lure of sitting on the fondamenta’s edge has endured, but, at least at the beginning of the reopening, there seems to have been an improvement in the visitors who succumb. (For the record, two German ladies.)The earliest days of the reopening saw many more families coming to explore, though they still arrived mainly on the weekend, and often stayed only for the day. And a higher number than usual were (and still are) Italian.And a few daily tourist boats have begun to return, bringing a few more hardy souls. As the numbers increase, ever so slowly, the percentage of barbarians seems to have remained the same. I read that in Campo Santa Margherita some people are back to using the streets as a latrine; in the sestiere of Santa Croce, tourists have been seen washing themselves and their laundry at one of the fountains.
Many hotels are now open, but with reduced staff and reduced numbers of guests, too. The shops are offering dramatic sales, from 50-70 percent off. Gondoliers are working at ten percent of their usual summer load; instead of working three days and staying home two, their normal scheme, they’re working two and staying home three to allow everyone to make at least some money. A friend who has a small jewelry store near San Marco has been opening only two days a week. Many museums are not fully reopened. Baby steps.
True, towns and businesses all over Italy (and world) are undergoing the same crisis; it’s not just Venice, obviously. But I noticed it more vividly via the gondoliers. Not that I had any special concern for or about them, but I had never reflected — nor had they, I suppose — on how dependent on tourism that they had become. I suppose a taxi-driver can adjust his fares, because taxis are always useful. But nobody has to take a gondola.
So: First there was the collapse of tourism following the acqua granda of November 12, 2019. That cataclysm terrified tourists, who cancelled bookings for fear of finding themselves floating out to sea if they came here. Then the quarantine. The faucet (to return to my symbolism) that had seemed to the gondoliers to be perpetually open suddenly shut completely. And therefore the same crisis has struck the three gondola-builders. After the damage inflicted by the high water/hurricane, their business has also stopped. One builder told me that he has had five cancellations of orders for new boats, which amounts to the income of an entire year.
So we’re not what I’d call happy without tourists, no.
No mask is going to stop her wearing her mask.On the bright side, some of the tourists I’ve noticed have been uncharacteristically charming. Instead of the usual heat-stunned shoals of debilitated desert explorers fitted out by sports companies, there have been gems like this couple. What always bemuses me is that no matter how much effort the female component has put into her look, the male component is almost always dressed pretty much like this. But this young lady is visiting Venice in a way that I frankly admire. High heels and a tiny purse! What world is she living in?Not glamorous, but so remarkably in tune with each other that it’s a pleasure to see them. It’s in the shoes that we see them marching to their separate but equal drummers.
Two months have passed since the end of the lockdown and businesses are struggling. Judging by how many restaurants there are here, I’d have thought people come to Venice just to eat, but “The restaurant situation is extremely serious,” says Ernesto Pancin, secretary of Aepe (Associazione Esercenti Pubblici Esercizi, Association, or Association of Public Businesses),with some 800 restaurant/bar members in the historic center.
“Today between 60-70 percent of the restaurants have reopened,” he said, “but they have only 30-40 percent of the work and income they had last summer. They can’t manage to cover expenses — especially the rent — and the personnel is reduced. The absence of customers is really felt during the week, while the weekend flow is hanging on. But the weekend earnings aren’t enough to make ends meet.” People who have been working from home don’t go out to lunch; people on unemployment don’t have the money to eat out, and people in general are less inclined to go out, period. In some restaurants, the owner is waiting tables.
“We’re living day by day,” said Bonifacio Brass, owner of the Locanda Cipriani at Torcello, told a reporter for La Nuova Venezia. “We’ve had Italian customers, above all… Naturally we’re working mostly on the weekend. Lots of Venetians are coming in their boats, but meanwhile there has been a cutback in the vaporettos.”
Before we leave this chapter in the saga of these days in Venice (Part 2 will follow as soon as I can), all the problems aren’t necessarily tied to tourism.
For those of us trying to live a normal life, there’s the looming problem of the 570 family doctors in the 44-commune “province” of Venice. The national health system requires you to be linked to some basic doctor — your choice — who is your first stop in the world of medical assistance. Any visit to a specialist requires what I call a “work order” from your doctor. Now we find out that within five years, half of them will retire.
Unless replacements are found in a timely manner, the remaining doctors could have as many as 1,600 patients on their rosters.
And speaking of retirement, here’s another economic thunderclap from an approaching storm: For the first time, Italy now has more retired people than actively employed people.
Meanwhile, daily life continues here on its mundane little path to parts unknown. The more banal or even boring an activity or object may be, the more I have come to treasure it.
Crises and catastrophes may abound, but the need for domestic appliances will never fail.
I would bet you money that every single person who has come to Venice in the past 200 years has said: “It looks like a stage set.” I’ve heard lots of people say it, as if it were an astonishing discovery. I heard myself say it, on my first trip here. I thought I’d said something original.
But empty stages, I’m here to tell you, aren’t interesting at all.
Walking to the Rialto Market yesterday morning was not a very pleasant experience. There were some people outside, here and there, but a promenade that I once would have savored as a delicious interlude of stolen calm was a wander across a disconcerting dreamscape; despite the gleaming March sunshine, it felt like we were walking through one of those vaguely ominous black and white Eastern European films from the Sixties.
Just some people taking their shadows out for a walk.Including us, and a flag pole. And trash bin.
Suddenly we saw a young couple having breakfast in the screened-in porch of the Pensione Wildner on the Riva degli Schiavoni – Honey look! Tourists! They were the only ones in the entire room, and I can’t say how I resisted taking their picture. Maybe I was afraid of scaring them away, like a barely glimpsed Javan rhino in the wild. (But if they’re in Venice these days, it’s probably impossible to scare them.) We passed a friend, a professional photographer, who was going toward San Marco, and I almost yelled “Tourists! On the Riva Schiavoni! Two of them!” as if he’d want to snap their picture for the Gazzettino before they escaped. This is not good at all.
Fun facts from the Gazzettino:
A review of 21 communes in the Veneto at the highest risk of hardship from the disappearance of tourists puts Venice at #16 (NOT #1), right after Livinallongo del Col di Lana (mountains) and right before Eraclea (beaches). The top six are all around Lake Garda, which depends a great deal on German tourists.
Speaking of Germany, the epidemic started there, it’s just been stated, and not Italy (so we can throw away our leper bells?). Just telling you for the record.
Vaporetto ridership is down 40 per cent. Actually, this is delightful for those who are still riding, but don’t say that to the ACTV officials who are beginning to consider cutting back on service. Yesterday morning we were on the #1 coming back from the Rialto and there were 13 people aboard, including us. Two (not one, but two) ticket inspectors got on, and went down the aisle, as required, checking if everybody had a valid ticket. It seemed just a little extreme; I’d say we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here, if the fine on one freeloader is going to keep the ACTV afloat.
In point of fact, a large part of the mountains of money from the vaporetto tickets are spent on the land buses; lack of tourists paying 7.50 euros per ride means that red ink will soon be leaking onto the accounting pages. The books are already a little bloodstained by the cost of the damage from the acqua granda of November 12: There are 9 vaporettos and 22 docks needing more or less major repair or reconstruction, (20,000,000 euros).
Also, every night 95 vaporettos, 300 buses and 15 trams are disinfected. That’s not free, of course — what is? Not that I have sympathy to spare for the ACTV, but I’ve only ever noticed the problem of too few vaporettos for too many passengers. It’s a surprise to find myself thinking, even briefly, about too many vehicles and not enough riders.
Stage-managing this city has always been a challenge. But now we not only have no audience, but hardly any actors, either. This is some spectacle.
Sitting on an empty stage, waiting for her cue. As are we all.
