This ad was prominently displayed last fall to publicize Vodafone, the European telephone behemoth. Here they are helpfully informing us that they are sponsoring at least some of the restoration of the church of San Bartolomeo, just underfoot near the Rialto Bridge.
Their main message, though, is to promote their new package of special rates for calls to the people who matter the most to you — in their shop just underfoot, etc.
Whatever you may think of them or their packages, their advertising agency is above average.
The line says: “The most beautiful things are done in pairs (literally, ‘in two’.”
This shred of philosophy made me smile, though probably it doesn’t stand up to heavy pondering.
I am usually able to dominate my conscience in a fairly effective, and moderately long-lasting, way. But I realize that I have let silence reign for longer than intended here on my own little Planet Blog.
I’m not in Venice this month. Which doesn’t mean I still can’t blog about Venice, but that my energies and activities are not centered on the so-called most beautiful city in the world. In fact, they’re not even close. Sorry.
I will do my best to write something before long. Just didn’t want anyone to think I had lost interest, or forgotten, or — God forbid — had run out of things to say. Like that could ever happen.
Nor have I been stolen by people in ski masks who forgot to leave a ransom note.
The last two weeks of August here contain some of the most predictable events ever found on earth, right up there on the list next to sunrise and the last Saturday at WalMart before school starts.
Our predictable events in this period are the preparations for the Venice Film Festival (this year August 31 to September 10), which involve what always look like amazingly late and chaotic preparations of the main theatre known as the Palacinema and its environs, plus truckloads of complaints and accusations of waste and inefficiency from everybody except the organizers. There are also preparations for the Regata Storica, whose five days of eliminations conclude tomorrow, which proceed in a more organized way. This may be because they are, in fact, better organized, or only because they entail fewer people and matter less to the world at large, by which I mean there’s less money involved.
But these are events which you can ignore if you’re not particularly interested. What nobody can ignore is the afa.
If you can make out any land at all on the horizon, that would be the rest of the world. Or maybe it's a mirage.
The afa currently sucking the life out of the lagoon and its denizens also qualifies as an annual event and you don’t even have to go to it. It comes to you. “The afa came down like a wolf on the fold,” as Lord Byron didn’t say, and its cohorts, if it had any, are definitely not gleaming in purple and gold. They’re not gleaming at all, theyre practically naked and most of them are neck deep in the exhausted tepid water of the Adriatic.
In fact, a morning view of either the sea or the lagoon gives the impression that these bodies of water are not made of water at all, but of glycerine, heavy and smooth, a colorless liquid that barely has the strength to form even the tiniest wave.
I know how it feels. When the alarm sounds in the shapeless sodden dawn, the term “primordial ooze” comes to mind, by which I don’t mean the world, I mean me. It isn’t a good feeling to be either primordial or oozy and to be both is depressing even if I know that evolution will eventually bring me the opposable thumb and the sextant and the sonnets of Shakespeare.
Looking toward Venice, the most beautiful city in the world, if you can make it out.
A Saharan front is pressing down on the Veneto region and also much of the rest of the old Belpaese, and it’s the longest and hottest heatwave around here for the last 20 years. Good for beach tourism, I suppose, though not good for other activities like farming.
One Bosnian truckdriver was completely unimpressed by all this. He stopped in a supermarket parking lot at Crocetta del Montello near Treviso yesterday, and all that sunshine immediately made him think of catching some of those rays.
This may not have been precisely the form of the truck in question, but it still doesn't say "beach" to me.
So he climbed up onto the roof of his cab, I suppose on some kind of towel to avoid completely crisping, with a supply of drinks at hand. Voila! His own little beach!
Then he took off all his clothes and stretched out. Evidently Bosnian truckers hate those bathing-suit lines as much as anybody.
A cashier in the supermarket saw the naked man tanning himself up there and called the Carabinieri. End of tan.
I don’t know if Venice has ever experienced a monsoon, but I can tell you we’re all waiting for one.
As I’ve often remarked, one of the things I love about being here is the faithful return of certain events — moments — throughout the year. Of course there are events everywhere upon which one may confidently depend — tax deadline day comes to mind — but I’m talking about here.
One occurrence which is so predictable that I don’t even have read the paper, much less even wake up, to recognize it is the double-edged event known as THE EXODUS.
Trieste is only 7 km/4 miles from the Croatian border. From then on, time and distance take on new meanings.
No, it has no Biblical overtones, unless one is thinking of the famous Plagues. In fact, now that I think about it, this could possibly be a worthy candidate to join the frogs and the flies that afflicted Pharaoh. But since we’re living in a democracy, this little plague afflicts everybody going on vacation. And everybody goes in August.
So the first weekend of August inevitably sees an outbound migration of massive proportions clogging the highways — The Exodus. On the last weekend of August, there is the equally appalling Return Exodus.
This is what Croatia looks like from the Italian side of the border. You can be sitting and looking at this for quite a while. But of course, you're not seeing this, you're seeing what it represents: Fabulous beaches, great food, maybe even no people.
We could call it the Plague of Traffic. Or, if you’re sitting on the highway in a monster backup, the Plague of Everybody Else on Earth. And the only thing that changes from one year to the next is the length — from unbearable to inconceivable — of the backups at the Italian borders and Alpine tunnels. Last Saturday the backup at the border dividing Slovenia from Croatia reached about 40 km/25 miles. Ah yes, Croatia: Gorgeous! Near! Irresistible! Cheap! Also: Small! Mountainous! Not Many Roads!
This Exodus traffic is funny to people who aren’t there, like me, and to people who are funny wherever they are, like Lino Toffolo.
Lino Toffolo is an actor/standup comic from Murano who writes a column every Sunday in the Gazzettino. He’s usually right on top of the main subject of the day, which last Sunday was The Exodus.
Here is what he wrote (translated by me):
Instead of facing the usual five kilometers of tailback [in Italian, merely “tail”] to go to Jesolo, why don’t we go to Croatia or Dalmatia or along down there, where there are bound to be fewer people?
Perfect idea! Let’s go! 40 kilometers of continuous tailback! Basically, when the last person gets there he just turns around because his vacation is over.
Every year, right on schedule, other than the drama of the “checking the stomach on the beach I swear I’m never eating again” is the one — unsolvable — of “where to go” and above all, “when to leave.”
The imagination is unchained! At night, at dawn, at mealtimes like telephone calls [local people scribbling ads often say “call at mealtimes”]. Every so often somebody has the idea of the “intelligent departure,” which they reveal only to their friends who — as with all true secrets — they pass along to one friend at a time, even on Facebook.
The result: Everybody is stuck in the backup, everybody is complaining.
Grandpa Tony thinks that the laborers working on the highway are tourists who just got bored sitting still and figure this way they can at least be doing something…. Sometimes you can watch plants growing.
“But — it is obligatory for us to do this?” “No! That’s exactly why we’re doing it! If it were obligatory, we’d all stay home!”
And the Croatians? Where do they go? Italy? Gorgeous! Near! Irresistible! Expensive!
This is a glimpse of the Croatian coast. Worth the voyage, as the Michelin Guide might put it.
This is the Italian coast in Puglia.
Croatia.
Italy. The only difference I can see that might make it worthwhile to sit in a car for hours to get to one instead of the other would be that Croatia is currently a hot destination, while Puglia has always just been there.
