My personal account of living real life in real Venice, and more
One of the best things about walking around Venice is that you are always discovering things, the littler, the better.
Here is a smattering of recent surprises, in no particular order. The important thing is that they made me smile.
I’m very glad to have had so many responses to my last post about seeing/not seeing the photos on my blog. There seems to be consensus on the theory I had begun to form.
In the words of one reader: “I have a simple solution, I just scroll to the bottom of your post and click on the link “Venice: I am not making this up” and it takes me to your blog page and I read your post there.”
Other readers, you’ll see in the Comments, have said the same. Would any previous non-seers let me know if this solution works for them?
It’s probably just me, but after years of seeing Lino run into people he knows for one reason or event or phase of life over the past eight decades, it strains belief to think that there could be people in Venice who don’t know him. In my opinion, we should probably just rename the most beautiful city in the world LinoLand.
Late one morning we were riding the bus down the Lido toward Malamocco. Lino nabbed a seat near the back — he got the aisle, and a youngish man reading a book was sitting by the window. The bus was crowded, there was the muted tension of people clumped together in the summer heat. The bus pulled up at a stop, the man closed the book and moved to get off. Climbing over Lino on his way out, he said “Ciao, Lino.”
Instant of silence; everyone was wearing masks, so recognition stalled. Then he lowered his mask and it was smiles all round. Not only had Lino collaborated for years with the man’s father on the Committee of the Festa de la Sensa, but yep — Lino taught him (man, not father of) to row when he was a lad.
Change of scene: A few weeks ago we were struggling home on a Sunday evening from the regata at Murano. After the races people literally disappeared because a deluge had struck the city that had evidently swept every other humans either home or out to sea. Lino and I trudged through drenching gusts of rain (umbrella? Of course not!), and climbed aboard the vaporetto heading toward San Pietro di Castello. Cold. Soaking wet. Must mention that this is far from the first time Murano has celebrated its big day with Noye’s Fludde — two years ago it was an apocalyptic hailstorm.
Miserable, waterlogged, we were just stepping ashore on the dock at San Pietro di Castello when the vaporetto pilot pulled down his landward window, leaned halfway out, and called out “Ciao Lino!”
So, yet again, I saw that neither snow, nor rain, nor dead of night, etc., stop people from saying hi to Lino. In this case, the man was not someone Lino had taught to row — astonishing, I know — but instead is a former naval seaman at the Military Naval School F. Morosini where Lino teaches rowing, as all the world knows by now. So of course he would have seen Lino thousands of times. Lino doesn’t remember his name, but names are optional in these encounters.
Speaking of Morosini, we were there one afternoon a few weeks ago, working on some of the boats. The sun was shining, the cadets had gone home for summer vacation, officers were only intermittent. Around the corner came one of the commandants with an older couple and grandon in tow, obviously a prospective student being shown around.
They all stopped for the usual brief introduction (“And yes, we also offer Venetian rowing to the students,” etc. etc.). The grandfather looked at Lino and said, “Wait. I know you. But how?” The briefest checklist of where/who/when revealed that they grew up in the same neighborhood mere streets apart. Lino was a few years older than this person, but not by much. So we all took a break to listen to them riffle through who they knew, who their relatives were, EXACTLY where their houses were located, and so forth. This was one of those rare cases where teaching somebody to row wasn’t the link. It was something better: Family! Childhood! Memories! Neighborhood!
Let’s go back in time — it doesn’t matter how far, because these chance meetings have been going on forever. In fact, LinoLand is everywhere. Take Mogadishu, Somalia, just to pick a place at random. Lino was living there for four months in the mid-Sixties, with a crew from the Aeronavali which was repairing and maintaining airplanes and teaching (I think you might say that was what was happening) local mechanics how to take over when the group went back to Venice.
Lino and his colleagues were billeted at a modest hotel run by a couple from Bologna, the kind of place you’d expect to find flight crews from Alitalia on layover. And yes, one day a young man in Alitalia uniform stopped in the lobby. “Ciao Lino!” Who was he? They’d been in the Boy Scouts together. They didn’t say “So it’s here that we meet again, bwahahaha.” They said some variation on “What the heck are you doing here?” And together they could have replied, “I’m working. What are YOU doing?”
And while we’re ranging far afield, let’s go to Muggia, a village on the east coast of the Adriatic just below Trieste. Lino knows it well, so we decided to take a daytrip one freezing Epiphany a few years ago. The voyage took much of the morning. We get the bus in Trieste. We get off the bus in Muggia. We walk to the small central piazza (Piazza Galileo Galilei, if you’re playing along at home) where the very economically sized duomo sits sideways. Pretty.
“Ciao Lino!” It came from behind this time. Turning around, we see one of our favorite ex-cadets from the Morosini coming toward us. Gad! We’re 176 km (109 miles) from Venice and yet even here there’s SOMEBODY WHO KNOWS LINO. Since we last saw him he’s become a naval officer, has commanded a submarine, and gotten married to a girl from Muggia, which now explains everything. It’s not like people follow Lino around by satellite tracking. It’s just that they seem to be everywhere.
And in conclusion…What was probably the first of these numberless experiences was the day in Lino’s early adulthood during the five-year period when he worked at Ciampino Airport in Rome, repairing and maintaining planes.
He was riding on a bus somewhere in the central area of the city. The bus was crammed full of people, naturally. All of a sudden from the back of the bus comes the ebullient voice of a woman in the broadest possible Venetian accent: “OH VARRRRRREMENGO, VARDA CHI CHE GHE XE!” (“Good Lord have mercy” — a hopelessly bad translation but I’m trying to convey the intensity of the amazement because va a remengo is the absolute maximum Venetian exclamation.) “LOOK WHO IT IS!” These were the days before “Ciao Lino” took over.
Everybody turns to look at Lino, who has instantly gone tomato-paste red with embarrassment. She didn’t stop. “XE EL FRADELO DE LA VANDA!” (“It’s Wanda’s brother!”)
“TI SA CHI GHE SO MI?” she cheerfully demands. (“You know who I am?”)
Tiny embarrassed voice responds: “La Gegia.” The lady’s name was Teresa, but the nickname in Venetian is Gegia (JE-ja.)
That’s where the story ends; I guess he got off at the next stop, whether it was his or not. He doesn’t remember further details, but that voice has been incised in his brain. Little did he know normal all this was going to become for him. Now he just turns to me and either tells me who it is, or asks me. Me? You think I know? As they say here, I just got here tomorrow.
Happy Mother’s Day. We pluck this day out of the calendar to slather mothers with excessive adoration, usually ignoring the reason why we feel we have to exaggerate (the reason is simply those 364 preceding days of incessant but unthanked lion-taming that mothers perform every waking and often non-waking hour.) Looking past the holiday to the reality of your average Mom’s year, you’ll have to admit that it’s not made of flowers and chocolate and lace-trimmed cards laden with poetry. Lion taming (the lion being life, not merely the children) can become un-poetic very fast, no matter how tough your mother is.
I especially want to recognize mothers’ uncanny ability to say so much using so few words. And the truly amazing thing is that mothers say the exact same things in each of the 7,139 languages in the world. The universal language is not Esperanto. It’s Momspeak.
Any Venetian of any age will recognize the common expressions listed below — as will you — either from having said them or, as a child, having heard them. And if some of these apothegms seem unreasonably violent, just remember that she was almost always driven to it. By you. If we’re being honest.
So as you read, send a silent salute to your mother, wherever she is. And I’d love to hear from anyone who was, in fact, born in a barn.
Threats:
Vardime co te parlo. “Look at me when I’m speaking to you!”
Col vien casa to pare ghelo digo. “I’m telling your father about this when he comes home.”
Come che te go fato, te desfo! “Just like I made you, I can unmake you.” (My favorite, a sort of global, all-encompassing threat coming from the elemental source. This was one of Lino’s mother’s major standbys.)
Verzo la scatola de le tangare. “I’m opening the box that’s full of smacks upside the head.” (A tangara is a smack. This is sometimes said as a very early warning using a delicately menacing tone. Sometimes it’s enough just to say “Verzo?”)
Dai, disi calcossa! Prova parlar se ti ga coragio!!! “Come on, say something! Try to speak if you’ve got the courage!”
Ti pol pianzer in grego, tanto no te lo compro. “You can even cry in Greek, I’m still not buying it for you.”
Vara che te cambio i conotati! “Watch out, I’m going to change your face” (“conotati” are the features of your face, thus “beat you up”).
Vara che quela xè la porta. “Look, that over there is the door.” (Meaning you’re invited to depart by it.)
No sta far che vegna là to pare! “Don’t do it or your father will be coming over there.”
Vara che te meto in colegio! “Watch out, I’m going to put you in the reformatory.”
Domestic remarks:
I to amissi no ga minga na famega? “Your friends haven’t got families?”
Ti ga sentio quelo che te go dito! “Did you hear what I just said?”
Ma ti credi che mi fassa i schei de note? “You think I print money at night?”
Mi a la to età gero zà stufo de lavorar. “At your age I was already fed up with working.” (This sounds more like something a man would say to a slightly spoiled or slothful child, but I wouldn’t doubt that a mother might say the same thing.)
No sta strassinar i pìe. Also: No sta savatàr. “Don’t drag your feet.” “Savatar” is a verb created from zavata (ciabatta), or house slipper. Thus “Don’t scuff around as if you were wearing slippers.”
Te par che xe ora de rivar? “You think this is the right time to arrive?” (that is, come home). Said sarcastically when the obvious answer is “No, it’s screamingly late and I have no excuse.”
Ti vedara co no ghe sarà più la serva. “You’ll see (how things are) when you don’t have the servant (female gender) anymore.”
Cò moro mì ti mor da la fame. “When I die, you’ll die of hunger.”
Magna e tasi! “Eat and be quiet.”
Questa xè la casa de la lasagna…. Chi che no lavora no magna! “This is the house of lasagna — who doesn’t work doesn’t eat.” The point is the rhyme as much as the statement.
Ti ga proprio ciapa’ esempio dai piu’ sempi. “You’ve really taken the dumbest people as your example” (that is, of all the people you could have copied, you picked the dumbest ones).
General insults:
Bon da gnente come el pantan! “Good for nothing, like mud.”
Varda el trio paloma: dò inseminii e uno in coma! “Look at the paloma trio: two idiots and one in coma.” The point is obviously the rhyme, but hitting three victims with one invective is motherly target practice at its best. “Inseminio” (in-sem-eh-NEE-oh) is a very common, usually friendly, insult. Nothing to do with insemination, it comes by way of scimunito, meaning fool. It’s a low-voltage jibe, which one source says is used “when a person near you does something irrational based on ignorance, little knowledge or inexperience.”
Te vorìa un poca de Russia a ti. “What you need is a little bit of Russia.” This is heavy artillery. The inference is from the Second World War, meaning that you need to be seriously squared away, perhaps by intense discipline, suffering, defeat — any aspect of the appalling experience the Italian Army suffered during Operation Barbarossa (the doomed German attempt to conquer the Soviet Union that ended hideously in the depths of winter, naturally). This expression may be losing some of its power by now, as the generations pass, though its significance is still clear enough. Father Gastone Barecchia, who was priest of the church of San Sebastiano and passed away in 2016 at the age of 102, served as military chaplain in Russia from July 1941 to March 1943.
Vergognite che xè ora e tempo! “It’s about time you were ashamed.”
No ti te vergogni minga! “You’re not the least bit embarrassed.”
Varda che te tendo. “Look out, I’m watching you.”
Gò un fio solo e anca ebete! “I’ve got just one son and he’s even dimwitted.” (Pronounced EH-beh-teh.) The implication is “Not only did I have only one child” (bad), “he had to be dimwitted too” (even worse). In other words, she’s saying she got screwed twice.
