Venetian Events

Redentore, the best we could do

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Some weather on Friday evening slightly bedraggled the lanterny lights that usually give a happy glow to alfresco feasting along the Giudecca. This in itself doesn’t ruin the party, but it doesn’t help.

When last we spoke, Venice was on the verge of its annual celebration of the feast of the Redentore (held last Sunday).  By now the festa has come and gone, but this year the difference between the two was minimal.  “Reduced form” is the boilerplate description, but if you reduce something past a certain point it just isn’t it anymore.

We did not have fireworks, as all the world knows.  Without fireworks, I discovered, the festa can’t achieve liftoff.  Yes, people did come to Venice — according to La Nuova Venezia, 108 tables had been reserved for the usual dinners outside (68 of them along the fondamenta of the Giudecca), and a total of some 15,000 people came to join the Venetians making some sort of merry.  Fifteen thousand may sound good compared to nothing (let us cast our minds back to the desolation of the total lockdown), but it represented less than a fifth of the number that crammed the city last year.  I used to hate the cramming, but without it the evening felt strangely deflated.  No, actually, it felt partially deflated, which is not much better.

Seeing that we did not go roaming the city in search of entertainment, I only know what I saw in our little lobe of land, or what the newspaper reports.  It says that there were people eating outside around the city, along fondamente big or small, or in their boats tied up in the Grand Canal or some other major waterways.  That sounds nice.

To warm the general atmosphere to an even happier level, four large boats bearing a total of some 30 Venetian musicians moved around the Grand Canal, the Giudecca Canal and the Bacino of San Marco.  Floating music has a long tradition in this festival, although in recent years it has been co-opted by the big party boats blaring music at levels that would pulverize a small planet.  It must have been wonderful to have a bouncier, smaller sort of soundtrack as the evening drew on (for the record, the participants were Batisto Coco, Josmil Neris and Laguna Swing, Pitura Stail and Ska-j).  All these groups are on YouTube, and here is a small clip that shows how little it took — at least, compared to the labor and cost of a 30-minute fireworks display — to get the party going.

It looks really sweet and I send huge compliments to the organizers, etc.  Unhappily for us, none of these boats made it down as far as via Garibaldi — or at least not during the brief period I was roaming the waterfront.  So if this sort of thing is ever organized again (and I hope it will be, though probably everyone will want fireworks again), the landlubbers need to lub somewhere further afield.

So I can only report on Redentore as observed south of the Arsenal and north of Sant’ Elena.  But I will throw in some of the races held on Sunday afternoon, and a glimpse of the Patriarch going to mass, if that will help liven things up.  We’ll hope for better and happier things next year.

The late afternoon scene was a little melancholy. At this point, in a normal world, this stretch of water would have been a turmoil of boats arriving and moving around and getting settled for the evening.
There was a moment when weather looked like it was working up some fireworks of its own, but then it moved away.
The Riva Sette Martiri is usually lined with enormous luxury yachts, driving the mobs crazy by blocking the view of the fireworks.  These obviously did not present a problem.  It was kind of touching, seeing yachts again, no matter how small and unassuming.  This marks a kind of milestone in the return to normalcy.
Getting ready for company, and lots of it, too. Via Garibaldi in the late afternoon seemed like one long table.
Most of the tables were reserved, even if they were merely the picnic type.
Individual tables have been separated, at least somewhat. But if your party consists of 30 friends and family, you’re not going to start measuring distances.
Many people were looking very nice indeed. Not what one usually imagines with the word “tourist.”

Almost all the restaurants add more tables and the police look the other way. But this is sublime! Need two more tables? There’s plenty of room in the middle of via Garibaldi. People can just walk around them.
And they did.
More expansion into the mainstream, cleverly delimited by fake boxwoods.
Just one more table? What a fabulous problem to have — needing more room — after the Long Closing of the spring.
The waiter is wearing a mask because he’s going inside so often. Also, he probably isn’t related to any of this group. Also, I think it’s required.
There was music here too — several places had live performers.  The night’s still young, so the band hasn’t set up yet.
Of course there are dogs. There are always dogs. But the street is uncharacteristically uncrammed.  It feels a little strange.

A few families staked out their own territory, the basic building block of the festival. Forego fireworks? If we must. Forego food with the folks? No. Just no.

Neighborhood folks haven’t yet been outnumbered by the visitors. With plenty dogs and kids, it’s just a normal summer night on the street.
The votive bridge got a reasonable amount of traffic, but as many seem to be going as coming. There was one balloon vendor, but no stands selling candy or cotton candy. No parish charity lottery, no stand selling products made by the prisoners. We were down to the bare bones.
However, there were more spectators at the races than usual. I heard several people remark on it.
Masks aren’t required outdoors, as you see. But plenty of people keep one on hand, if they should need to go into a bar/cafe, or take the vaporetto. Passengers aren’t allowed to board if a mask is not already in place.
There are three races: Young men on pupparinos, older men on pupparinos, and men on gondolas. The blue boat has just crossed the finish line, marked by the vertical cord in the wooden frame, which is aligned with a marker further out in the canal.

Andrea Bertoldini and Mattia Colombi winning for the second year in a row.  They were at least one boat-length ahead of their closest competitor.
The battle for third place came down to the last few seconds.
Well, that’s settled!

To enter the church required a line, of course; this year, a modest and very orderly line. Hand sanitizer on the table at the entrance, clearly marked entrance and exit (no more milling around), and monks with masks. It was all rather subdued.
The Patriarch of Venice (last seen at the festa of San Piero at the end of June), arriving to get garbed for the big ceremonial procession.

 

 

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Events, Venetian Events

Redentore up in smoke

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Waiting for the fireworks. Last year, this looked like a party. This year, it looks like a public health nightmare.  I hadn’t ever thought about it, but fireworks manufacturers must be hurting this year along with everybody else.

This just in:  The bridge is already under construction, and I’m sure the fireworks are already on the way, but like a launch at Cape Canaveral, mayor Luigi Brugnaro has scrubbed the mission.

This year, there will be no fireworks for the Redentore (July 19).  No fireworks, no party boats, no “notte famosissima.” It’s a blow, but there were already signs that caution was going to rule, beginning with the new regulation that spaces along the fondamente were going to be assigned only by booking.  But in the end, it was obvious that safe social distancing was going to be impossible to plan, much less maintain, on water or on land.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.  “Festa of the Redentore, on the embankments only by reservation.”

Here is the mayor’s announcement (translated by me):

“I do not have good news.  I have been awake all night, but unfortunately I’m forced to tell you that we are annulling the fireworks for the Redentore.  I can’t bring myself to make it work, I have tried everything.  In conscience I just don’t feel like it, for me it’s the most beautiful festa of the year.  We set up an incredible system for booking for the boats, we even invented a series of plans for limiting the flow.  It’s my decision, I take responsibility for it, but I cannot bring the city to risk it.  This is a safe city.”

If you come for the fireworks, you’re almost certainly going to want to eat something somewhere. Not a scene that bears repeating this year.

No news at this moment as to whether the races will be held on Sunday afternoon, or the mass.

However, I think it’s unlikely that the festal mass on Sunday afternoon is going to be permitted to proceed as in days of yore.
Winds of change, as the cliche’ goes. Hang tough, Venice.

 

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Venetian Events

Nobody stops San Marco

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Lino strung the two flags across our little street. Only we would have been likely to walk that way, so we just went ahead and bedecked the day.  It’s important to recognize that April 25 is also a national holiday: National Liberation Day, commemorating the end of World War 2, so bring on the banners.

Yesterday, April 25, was the feast day of San Marco, who is, as all the world knows, the city’s patron saint.  Always the occasion for grand festivizing — ceremony in the Piazza, laurel wreaths on the main monuments, high mass in the basilica, and the iridescent tradition of the “bocolo,” (BOH-ko-lo) or long-stemmed red rose, that Venetian men give to the dearest ladies in their life.

A friend with her bocolo a few years ago.
This year, not even the stray petal was to be seen. Except, I suppose, near the few people who had somehow managed to reserve their rose.

Yesterday, we were bocolo-deprived.  Plant matter was represented mainly by the laurel wreaths, installed a few days early.  As for the bocolo, there were and there weren’t.  Of course we knew that the usual freelance vendors staking out via Garibaldi and environs would be nowhere to be seen, that was to be expected.  But don’t be downhearted: The Gazzettino published a little article on Friday saying that a few florists were not only going to be selling roses, they’d deliver them to your doorstep.  Wonderful!  But the article did not publish any names or phone numbers of these florists.  Saturday — the day itself — an article appeared repeating the plan, with the names and numbers of the participating florists.  Lino immediately called to order one for me (and to discover the heretofore unknown cost, which I estimated would be 3 euros for the rose and 40 euros for the delivery), only to hear “Oh no, you had to book them.”

So this little misadventure will be filed under “You had one job!”, for the florists as well as for the Gazzettino.

This year, San Marco’s day was on Saturday.  Shops now are usually closed on Sunday, so this means shop-owners got a rare two-day weekend.  Were they happy?  Well, Luca and Massimo on the fruit and vegetable boat apparently were — early on feast-day morning, we saw the remains of some pre-feast-day festa left behind where the bananas and apples usually reside.

But no matter!  We had a fine day, sunshine, breeze, empty streets, sepulchral silence broken by the occasional bellowing and screeching of dogs passing in the street or on the bridge outside our house.  (If you don’t believe that a dog can screech, you haven’t met that long-haired dachshund who evidently can’t stand anything about life, and whose owner must be deaf.)

We took our usual early-morning walk along the waterfront to the end of Sant’ Elena and home again (2.7 miles, for the record), plus our ten crossings of the bridge outside — our personal stone Stairmaster.  And we feasted on little kidchops — removed from young goats, not the usual lamb.

We then “went to the beach” after lunch, which is what I call our hour of sitting on the edge of the canal a few steps from our front door.  We’ve had two straight weeks of sunshine, so this interlude is a high point of the day; even though we aren’t tanning in any meaningful way. we’re stoking our Vitamin D.  And we look at our little boat tied to its pilings directly across the canal, and the lush greenery that is growing on the bottom of the hull, and wonder when we’ll ever row her again.  The easing of some restrictions are expected to begin on May 4, but we’ll know only on May 4 if that will turn out to be true.  Or, if the Gazzettino is really up to speed, we’ll find out on May 5.

Friday was “Oh my God, we have to get the shopping done because the stores will be closed Saturday and Sunday!”  Lines of people here are waiting to enter the only-two-people-at-a-time bread bakery and detergent/cosmetics store.  The fruit and vegetable boat (covered by the awning seen in the middle distance) also had an unusually long line.  As did the wine shop and the fish stall and the butcher.  In the afternoon, there were 50 people in line outside the Coop, which now is closing at 7:30 PM instead of 10:00 PM.  I, with my now-finely-honed skills, did the supermarket run on Thursday evening at 7:00 PM when there were only five people in line ahead of me.  Of course, by then lots of shelves had been depleted (that’s the trade-off for coming late), but I was able to get what we needed in record time.  I’d rather do without a few things than spend hours standing in line, even though it may be a great excuse to be out of the house.
People are willing to do this. I don’t understand it, but I respect it. They’ve obviously got reserves of stamina and patience I can only dream of.  (The supermarket is about 15 more people-lengths behind me.)
Friday morning, long-overdue repairs to the wall damaged by the disastrous acqua alta of November 12, 2019, were suddenly underway.
Saturday morning, everything was perfect again.
Friday morning, the men were cleaning the monument to “La Partigiana” with hammer and tongs, so to speak, but more obviously rakes and scrapers. Spring cleaning at last?
Saturday morning (which was also National Liberation Day), the finishing touches were applied with high-pressure water. The arrangement of roses reveals the mystery of the sudden attack of cleaning — at 10:00 AM Mayor Luigi Brugnaro offered the flowers in token of the city’s respects to the dauntless women of the Resistance.
After the ceremony, these offerings remain: Roses for the partisan women, laurel to symbolize victory, and two long-stemmed purple iris that represent wisdom and royalty (it says in this book).  The iris are an interesting departure from tradition.  I wonder if we’d have had better luck calling up to order them instead of a rose.
And laurel wreaths are bestowed on the major monuments. Here, Giuseppe Garibaldi, who was important for much more than the street.

 

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Venetian Events

Life as she is lived

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This isn’t our window. Could be anybody’s — or everybody’s — at this point, now that “out” has become “in.”

We are at the beginning of Week 4 of detention, and we are holding up remarkably well, all things considered.  The memory of the way life used to be has begun to fade slightly, like an old fax on thermal paper, if anyone remembers those.

Our exercise regimen is simple:  An early-morning walk ten times over the bridge outside our house (five minutes), and the same around 5:00 PM.  I go up the street to get the Gazzettino.  After lunch, if there’s sunshine, we sit on the edge of the fondamenta at the end of our little calle for a half-hour — not exercise, I know, but real-world air —  replenishing our vitamin D stores and seeing humans passing on the other side of the canal at a very safe distance.  Yesterday, being Saturday, there was a continual procession of people with shopping trolleys, sometimes one person even had two — it was like the migration of the wildebeest all headed toward the Prix supermarket.  We heard the thudding of the overloaded trolleys on the return descent of the bridge all afternoon.

Sitting outside is like vacation; I call it “going to the beach.”  As soon as the weather really warms up I anticipate doing this in my bathing suit.  (I made that up, though shorts and a tank top could work.)  Meanwhile, I make do with workouts via YouTube, like everybody.  If I don’t get sick, I may come out of this in the best shape of my life.

Yesterday morning around 9:00 AM I was making my way down via Garibaldi from the pharmacy — finally scored some masks; they seem a little sketchy, but they’re certainly better than nothing.  It was the last pack they had.

I counted 31 people in line (more than one meter apart) waiting to enter the Coop supermarket.  In the Old Days I would have predicted that some enterprising individuals would have begun to offer their services as stand-in-line-for-you-ers, for a small consideration.  But now I realize that the longer the line, the happier people probably are: More legally permitted time outside. Who needs to be in a hurry anymore? Hurrying is becoming a quaint, old-timey custom, like carving butter molds.  Have to wait an hour to get into the store?  Great!  Who the hell wants to be rushing home?

(If anyone cares, I personally haven’t reached that point, after a lifetime of honing my skills to avoid lines.  I went to the Prix supermarket at 8:00 AM on Friday specifically to avoid standing in an eternal line on Saturday — supermarkets closed Sunday again — and I went right in.  Now that I’ve written that, it will never happen again.)

Doctors and nurses are beginning to die.  Appeals have brought in extra doctors from Russia, from Cuba, from Albania.  Thank God these countries  had some extras available, but when it’s their turn to begin running short I have no idea what they’ll do.  Call these people back home, I guess.

The nursing homes are on super-lockdown.  We have two elderly relatives in the same facility, and nobody is permitted to enter the front door, not even the closest relatives (think: only son).  If he’s bringing clean clothes to his ailing mother, the staff will open the door just enough to let him pass the bag to them, without touching anyone.

If you want to talk to your ailing mother and she doesn’t have a cell phone (not made up), you have to have found somebody on her floor who has a phone.  I wanted to talk to Lino’s phoneless 91-year-old cousin on the ground floor, and my only option was to call her friend from a few rooms down the hall.  At least now she understands why we’re not coming to see her anymore; she deserves to know we haven’t abandoned her en masse.

Robberies are down.  No surprise there — everybody’s at home.  Also: Let’s imagine you’re a thief on his way to break into somebody’s house.  The police stop you and ask where you’re going.  What are you going to say?  “To work”?   Try that and they will, as required, call to verify this.  But instead of calling your boss at Universal Tool and Die Co., or whatever, they’ll have to call who?  Your victim?  There’s a funny sketch in here somewhere, but I’m not the one to find it.

Words to live by.

 

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