Venetian Problems | Venice: I am not making this up

Big Ship reflections

June 28, 2013 No Comments

The "Zenith" carries stats stats — The “Zenith” in a happier moment.

Maybe all of you out there are sick of hearing about the Grandi Navi (Big Ships) kerfuffle, but it’s just about daily news here. It provides a needed (though I wouldn’t say “welcome”) break from the other endless topics, such as everything else that’s screwy around here.

But something happened two days ago which in my opinion changes the entire scheme of the bureaucratic/political/economic volleyball game between the Comune, the small but obnoxious band of protesters, and the Port Authority.

As you know, there has been and continues to be an exhausting back and forth between these factions about What to Do About the Big Ships. All these heated remarks and assertions, which keep fizzing and flaming like sodium dropped in a glass of water, are based on the conviction that a big ship is a clear and present and inevitable and catastrophic danger to Venice. Every remark on the subject, like acqua alta, starts from the unstated assumption that it is inherently hazardous.

As you also know, I am not convinced. Not being convinced doesn’t mean that I find the behemoths attractive, but there is a difference between something being ugly and something being bad. The protesters don’t want them in the city for reasons which have nothing to do either with the ships or the city, and so have created an issue where one didn’t exist before, and doesn’t have to exist now, either.

The subject has been twisted around in a way that brings to mind the observation of Seneca the Younger regarding the difference between the Roman and Etruscan outlook on the cosmos:

“Whereas we believe lightning to be released as a result of the collision of clouds, they believe that the clouds collide so as to release lightning: for … they are led to believe not that things have a meaning insofar as they occur, but rather that they occur because they must have a meaning.”

Because the big ships could be dangerous, we have to assume that they will be dangerous.

Don’t misunderstand. I think it would be a terrible thing if a big ship suddenly lost control and ran into the Piazza San Marco killing countless people and cleaving the Doge’s Palace in twain. I also think it would be a terrible thing if an eagle dropped a turtle on my head. So many terrible things hurt and/or kill people every day — abusive husbands, cigarettes, car crashes, malaria-bearing mosquitoes — that fixating on the big ships seems excessive.

But there’s good news!

Two days ago a sort of fire-drill occurred. It wasn’t planned, and it wasn’t fun, but in my opinion it demonstrated that the people who would have to deal with the much-dreaded emergency in the Bacino of San Marco are very much up to the task.

A Big Ship named “Zenith” (soon, I guess, to be rechristened “Nadir”) carrying 1,828 (or 1,672) passengers and 620 (or 603) crew members caught fire. That is, a fire broke out in the engine room. The ship was not far from Chioggia, in the first night of its cruise heading toward Venice. The fire was quickly brought under control, but the ship lost all power and was anchored ten miles offshore (seasick pills anybody?), in the dark, etc. Scenarios that are too familiar from recent Carnival line carnivals.

At 4:20 AM, after having spent ten hours trying to get the engines started, the captain called the Capitaneria di Porto for help and a flotilla of assistance was immediately thrown into action. Three large motor patrol vessels of the C di P began heading south, along with a large fireboat with firemen, two big tugboats (“Marina C” and “Hippos”), soon followed by another two (“Angelina C” and “Ivonne C”). Aboard the tugboats were more firemen and seamen from the Coast Guard. Also divers.

The tugboats managed to attach their towlines to the ship — not easy in a heavy sea — and tow her into the lagoon at Malamocco at about 4 knots/7 kilometers per hour. All this took most of the day. At 11:00 PM the ship was finally moored at the industrial zone at Marghera. Total elapsed time: 20 hours.

Why is this good news? First of all, the passengers lived through it and the experience didn’t last for days and days, as has been the case in some other similar events.

Second, and most important, the Venetian maritime system showed itself highly capable of resolving this emergency in admirable form.

So if they were able to accomplish all this in a long and complicated situation, why would they not be able to intervene immediately in the Bacino of San Marco if a Big Ship lost power, when two tugboats are already attached, and there are rarely waves or wind to match those of the open sea?

Maybe Seneca the Younger has the answer to that. My answer is that it appears they’d be able to do just fine.

Venetian Problems

Dogs ruling the roost?

June 13, 2013 4 Comments

There is a strong local conviction that bottles of water prevent dogs from whizzing on public surfaces. Doorways, walls, and even wells are often defended by these bottles. Whether it works or not, it's better than attacking the animals, not to mention their owners. — There is a strong local conviction that bottles of water prevent dogs from whizzing on public surfaces. Doorways, walls, and even wells are often defended by these bottles. Whether it works or not, it’s better than attacking the animals, not to mention their owners. Just another example of the struggle to coexist with the neighbors without resorting to weaponry.

There has been so much madness-by-the-metric-ton here lately that it might have been easy to miss a small but perfectly formed fragment of recent craziness.

The stories in the Gazzettino kept the city apprised, moment by moment (translated by me):

STOP THE CHILDREN’S BIRTHDAY PARTIES AT THE PARCO GROGGIA THEY DISTURB THE DOGS

Not made up, I’m sorry to say.

There is a large, luxuriously verdant park in the farther reaches of Cannaregio known as the Parco of the Villa Groggia. It is understandably a favorite place for families, children, and the occasional canine to frolic and gambol. You might have thought that this would be the Venetian version of the Peaceable Kingdom, missing only a chorus of singing begonias, but you would have thought wrong.

I have expounded elsewhere on the passion of Venetians for their dogs. But there is a subtle line that divides passion from obsession and some people have clearly crossed it.

Many dog owners — which is not a correct term, because it’s obvious that many dogs own the people — firmly believe that their pets were born with certain inalienable rights, including running around off the leash and often doing more tangible and disagreeable things. But apart from the repulsive and unhealthy reminders of this fabulous freedom, there is also the potential for an uncontrolled dog to harm a child. This may seem obvious to you and me, but not to a dog’s bipedal slave. The kind of person who refers to herself as the dog’s “mamma.” I heard it just this morning. I don’t know how men of this mentality — and there must be some — characterize themselves. Maybe they call themselves “Uncle” or “Cousin.”

This conflict at the Parco Groggia started a while back, when a balloon, pursued by a tyke, popped, thereby “terrorizing” a certain lady’s little dog. “From that moment,” said Tiffi, a mother of three who has a dog, too, “everything the kids do is under attack.”

The dog slaves — or at least this one belligerent lady — have made many complaints about the children to Franca Caltarossa, the director of the local playroom called the “Grasshopper and the Ant.” They want the children to play inside, preferably (I’m imagining this) in the dark, in the cold, with the windows shut and sealed by duct tape.

Next headline:

NOW THERE IS A PETITION FOR THE VILLA GROGGIA

Citizens and mothers, to the number of 120, signed a petition protesting the requested ban on alfresco birthday parties. It’s not easy to find nice green open public space here, for one thing. For another, Franca Caltarossa revealed that this is only the latest in a series of disagreements with certain neighbors. “This isn’t the first time that we’ve had problems with the dog owners. We’ve had to call the police more than once because they let their dogs run free, endangering the children.”

While the dog-slaves are fixated on how disturbing children can be, they evince no awareness of how phenomenally disturbing their dogs can be to most of the rest of us, even if we love dogs, on the whole. They bark, they shriek, they scuffle, while their human lackeys either ignore or abet them by smiling. It would take Nanny McPhee with a blunderbuss to re-educate them to the notion of living civilly with other people.

The story even got big play on the newsstand billboards: "Stabs to death his neighbor's dog." A fantasy of many fulfilled by one? — The story even got big play on the newsstand billboards: “Stabs to death his neighbor’s dog.” A fantasy of many fulfilled by one?

Speaking of armaments and their usefulness in re-educating the neighbors, just the other day an unidentified man living at Stra, up the Brenta River toward Padova, decided to handle things his own way.

The headline yesterday was: “Stabs to death the dog that attacked his.” Two mutts leaped on his Springer spaniel and he couldn’t get them to stop, so he pulled out a knife and stabbed both of the dogs, killing one. The carabinieri arrived before he could play an encore on the enraged owner of the two dogs. He has been cited for illegally carrying a dangerous weapon and for killing an animal, while the owner of the victims was charged with not controlling his dogs.

But of course, things would never reach that point in the Parco Groggia, especially if we were to herd the little kiddies into a cellar and push a big stone on top of the door.

Is there a special circle in hell for the Grinch, Ebenezer Scrooge, Silas Marner, Captain Ahab, Edward Murdstone, and their ilk? There must be plenty of room left for the dog-owners of Cannaregio. Or rather, “owner.” A statement from the Comune referred to “complaints from a user of the park.” It doesn’t take many to get the wild rumpus started and evidently this person is already well-known for his or her grievances.

The first official voice of reason was heard from Erminio Viero, president of the municipality. “The park of Villa Groggia is for everybody,” he said. “The park is under our responsibility and there is no preclusion of children. Dogs can circulate only on the walkways and on the leash.” This must be the first time many of the dog-people have ever heard of these rules and I’m sure they think it’s a fable.

“THE ALARM” WITHDRAWN FOR THE PARTIES AT THE VILLA GROGGIA

The city’s statement on all this is: “There has never been a prohibition (against children in the park). Children’s parties will continue to be organized by “The Grasshopper and the Ant” utilizing the park of Villa Groggia, just as it has been established by the City Council deliberation of October 2, 2003 which is still in effect, which permits and regulates the parties, even for birthdays, of the city’s playrooms (“ludoteca“).

That’s pretty clear, but Mr. Viero couldn’t resist chiming in, with all the ardor of a Russian provincial functionary in a story by Chekhov: He denied “in the most absolute manner that there is any provision whatever put out by the municipality with the purpose of prohibiting or limiting the children’s parties at Villa Groggia, parties which the municipality is more than happy to host in its territory. Common sense and the most elementary civic manners suggest to the owners of dogs to always keep them on a leash.” (For those dog owners who may lack common sense and the most elementary civic manners, there is also a city ordinance — see above.)

The last word goes to Tiziana Agostini, city councilor for education: “If there is a happy place for children , it’s Venice, and in Venice, it’s the Parco Groggia.”

One dog is on a leash (inexplicable), while another is roaming free with no owner in sight. This is typical.

This busy little spaniel was released on his own recognizance for while.... no owner in sight..... — This busy little dog was released on his/her own recognizance for a few important moments…. no owner in sight…..

Then he was very civilly attached to his leash while his owner went into the cafe. Manners are a great thing, but they work better when you use them correctly. — Then he/she was very civilly attached to the leash while the woman who owns the dog went into the cafe. You see? She did know what she was supposed to do.

This little dog is never on a leash, and has a shrill, shrieking bark with which it defends itself against everyone and everything. It's unbearable, espcially when the owner is sitting for hours with her friends at the next table at the cafe. — This little dog is never on a leash, and has a shrill, hysterical bark with which it defends itself against everyone and everything. It’s unbearable, especially when the owner is sitting for hours with her friends at the next table at the cafe and every moving object the dog can see needs to be screamed at.

I like everything about this scene: The calm, the tranquillity, the equilibrium, the leashes. But especially the calm. It’s possible that this woman hates children and everything they stand for, but at least her dogs aren’t being used as pawns in some silent struggle.

Venetian Problems

Carnival for everybody else

February 14, 2013 3 Comments

IMG_5318 snow — Monday night looked sort of like this, except that the water was much higher and there was more snow, which was lifted up in large undulating slabs like polar icepack. But this is just our little corner of the universe. Multiply all this by quadrillions and you can imagine the Piazza San Marco. Still, the real problems weren’t where there was water, but where there was snow. And ice. And so forth.

You know the old saying: “Expect nothing and you won’t be disappointed.” (Is that an old saying, or did I just make it up?)

Following that bit of wisdom gave me a Carnival which was modest to the point of self-abnegation. With lots of fritole. The only unpleasantness was the acqua alta, but it did not reach the predicted epic proportions. (In fact, let the record show that one positive aspect of the imminent threat of water in the house is that, when all the stuff was piled on our two pieces of furniture, I cleaned and washed and dusted objects and places which hadn’t seen the hand of man since we moved in.) We had no plans or projects or desires or dreams or anything which could have been frustrated or ruined. And we didn’t lose power.

Reading the rundown in yesterday’s Gazzettino, though, I get a picture of a Carnival which for lots of other people — most of whom had needs far surpassing ours, primarily to travel in some way or to some degree in the culminating days –should have been called, not “Live in Color,” but “Going to Hell in Color.”

If you wanted to come to Venice on Monday night, with or without an expensive costume — or more to the point, if you really wanted to leave Venice on Monday night — you’d have found yourself involved in a sort of Ironman Triathlon: Riding the Train/Bus, Crossing the Square, and Finding Your Way Home in the Dark.

I could write a long post full of details, and I’ll keep the paper for a few days in case anybody asks me for more information.

But the headlines howling from a few pages of the paper tell enough. The thing to keep in mind is that island Venice covers some three square miles; mainland Venice covers some 21 square miles (Mestre is 8 square miles, Marghera is 13 square miles). It’s not Mexico City. It’s not even Hampton, Connecticut.

Translation: How hard could it be to clear away some snow and keep the buses and trains running?

Answer: Hard. Very hard. Harder than building the Eupalinian aqueduct. Especially since it appears that nobody believed this storm was really going to hit.

There is a rundown in the paper of how many squads were working, and how many snowplows and salt trucks. Unfortunately, they must have been phantoms; hardly anyone seems to have seen either them or evidence of their passage. In fairness, I note that there were people out working to deal with it all. Not enough, but some.

The second thing to keep in mind is that this large and violent storm, with snow and high water thrown in at no extra cost, was forecast for at least three days. And it had already hit the west coast of Italy, and much of the south. In other words, it wasn’t some bizarre anomaly which struck without warning.

In the order in which they appear, starting on page one of the local section (translated by me):

Under the snow, the inefficiency of the Veneto. The prefect calls in the chiefs of public transport. Consumers resort to the Procura (that is, the court. The prefect is the local representative of the President of the Republic, and pretty much outranks everybody.)

The precipitation caught just about everybody unprepared, from the Comune of Venice to the trains and at the airport. There were photos of people deplaning and struggling across the slippery slush covering the tarmac to get to the terminal. The baggage handling system went haywire. And so on.

There were blackouts all over the place, including the train stations in Venice and in Mestre. Not only tourists, but lots of commuters were either stranded or left to wait indefinitely for trains that were late, late, and late.

SNOW PLAN, everything has to be redone. If you read the whole article, you’ll ask yourself what they think “plan” might mean, when you consider how it worked out. The plan is ten years old, for what that’s worth. And why, you ask, does the municipality keep a plan that has to be dusted every year because it’s never used until it’s useless?

Acqua alta, a night of terror. The wind saves Venice and Chioggia. As previously noted by me, but without the “terror” part, at least in our little hovel.

Bad weather freezes the arrivals; Fat Tuesday for 60,000. This would only concern people with something to sell, because it’s less than half of the numbers which were expected. Having fewer people around was the only good news I can see for emergency crews or any other group which had to contend with the breakdown of the plan. I mean “plan.”

Transport chaos: the prefect isn’t having it. Ca’ Corner (headquarters of the prefect) retorts to the accusations of the transport people and wants to shed light on the reasons for the inconveniences (meaning no excuses).

“Crushed in the few buses which left Piazzale Roma.” Needs no explanation except why there were so few buses, something the prefect also will be wanting to know. But remember that the buses to the mainland are operated by the ACTV, which has shown such impressive skill in managing transport by vaporetto.

Burano: Blackout on an island which finished under water — volunteers at work the entire night. High water doesn’t affect only Venice, when you stop to think about it. The people on the islands have to get out the mops too. In this case, they had to do it in the dark. Fun.

Between water and blocks of ice; the fear finishes at midnight. Bridges and streets slippery, people walking with tall boots alarmed (the people, not the boots) by the prediction of 160 cm. Merchants on alert. Nobody could help that there were blocks of ice floating around, which actually were more like heavy slushy shards; the street outside our door looked like the polar sea in spring, and so did the Piazza San Marco. Unlike the last acqua alta, there were no bare-chested tourists frolicking blithely in the gelid waist-deep water.

On the Giudecca, fondamente in the dark because the electricity was out.

Chemical toilets (port-a-potties) adrift in campo San Polo. Wow….

A storm of protests; the snow plan has to change. The Comune demonstrates the efforts made to deal with Monday’s weather emergency, but even City Hall admits that in the future it will be necessary to do much more. Brains on fire! Smoke coming out of their ears!

No buses at the hospital (in Mestre); the employees forced to sleep in the hospital.

And so on, and on, and on.

There are 220,000 Scouts in Italy; surely somebody in the Comune must have been a Scout at some time. But “Be Prepared” seems to have been replaced by “Let’s just hope for the best.”

Venetian Problems

The water never stops

January 4, 2013 3 Comments

IMG_7872 damp — This photograph was not made in black and white. That’s the way it looks when water comes to Venice not from below, but from all around. I would hazard to say that this winter we’ve had more days and nights of fog than we have of acqua alta. I’m not going to check the records, but that’s my impression.

Do you know how to say “lots of water” in Venetian? Even though we live at street level, at our house it isn’t “acqua alta.” It isn’t even really “motondoso.” It’s “Happy New Year.”

For some reason, water events seem to prefer holiday periods. Not just in our little hovel, but in Venice in general.

Example: Some years ago, when we were living in a rental hovel on the other side of Venice, our New Year’s Eve afternoon was enlivened suddenly by the sound of running water. As we were one floor up from the ground, it wasn’t the rushing of high tide. A quick stupefied glance revealed that it was the rushing of water from the bathroom of the tenant just above us. Water coming down the wall and forming a pond. Happily, it was clean water. Unhappily, it was bringing part of his floor/our ceiling with it.

We were able to call our landlady (this was in the epoch before cell phones, so it was a certifiable miracle that she was at home, and answered the call. I say this because if you were a landlady and your phone rang on New Year’s Eve, would you answer it?).

She came, she looked, she called some mysterious shadow-dwelling plumber she undoubtedly paid sotto banco, as we say here (small, unmarked bills….), because a plumber with all his papers in order and tax receipts arranged by date would have been unreachable till Epiphany.

He stopped the flow. That’s really all that matters to our story. The rest of the work got done in a scheduled sort of way, and I made the most of the chaos and dirt to sand the kitchen walls and repaint. Tiny apartments are so annoying, until you have work to do. Then you’re really glad that you have so little space.

Years pass, and we’re in our new hovel. I think it was the day before New Year’s Eve a couple of years ago when Lino remarked, “Do you hear a noise in the kitchen?” (Why is it always the kitchen? Maybe we should wall it off and cook outside, like nomads.)

Behind the tiled wall under the sink, there was indeed a liquid sound, the sort of sound that is so soothing when you have it on your white-noise machine. In ErlaWorld, it’s a sound soon to be followed by hammering and cracking. We found a plumber by urgently appealing to the man at the Bottegon, our mega-hardware-and-everything-else-except-jars-of-buckwheat-honey store. My “urgent appeal” look must be something like the eyes-getting-larger-and-more-pathetic of Puss in Boots in the Shrek movies. Added to which gaze would be desperation and a tinge of threat.

Yes, there was indeed a porous pipe behind the wall, joyously leaking water out of the conduit and onto our water bill that month. The plumber fixed it. He didn’t fix the hole in the wall, though. It’s still there, as are a couple of the tiles. He had to get home for the rest of his holiday and we had no intention of paying a plasterer to make it all perfect again. Besides — what if we needed to get at that pipe again?

This year’s event didn’t involve water that you could fill a glass with, but water there was. Our refrigerator door came off, so the warming machine gently released liquid from here and there. No, the door didn’t come off just like that; it had been giving every sign of imminent prostration for months. If it had been a mule, we’d have just kept hitting it on its rump and yelling. As of New Year’s Day, no more rump, no more yelling.

So the day after New Year’s we went to buy a new consumer durable. If we didn’t have all that fish frozen, I’d have suggested we experiment with living without a fridge, at least till summer. (Lino would certainly have considered that an americanata).

Consumer durables after Christmas usually mean plasma TVs and other glamorous frippery. We’re just as happy with our new appliance. It was delivered this morning, and we’ve washed it and re-stocked it, and its own mother couldn’t be more proud of it than we are.

IMG_8251 damp — If Jean Dujardin were coming to lunch, I’d really try to do something about this hideosity. As is it, till a solution is found, there’s no point in applying paint that’s just going to fall off again.

But there’s more, and it doesn’t involve New Year, as in the holiday, but the New Year, as in 2013, I fear.

The latest low-grade chronic water event to moisten our lives is a blocked tube or pipe passing from somewhere upstairs (there are two storeys above us) down into the ground by our front door. This tube, like many tubes in Venice, is concealed in the wall, which makes dealing with it unpleasantly inconvenient.

But we know it’s there because its oozing dampness is deteriorating the wall indoors, and outdoors as well. I’d be willing to overlook the humidity outside, but what we see inside isn’t good.

The retired builder living on the top floor came to look at it, and deepened his investigation by knocking open a hole. This was intended to release the humidity (otherwise known as solving the problem). He wanted very much not to have to theorize that the water might be blocked at his level. However, Lino went up to see his apartment, and says there are more humidity-releasing holes in his walls than the perforations in the proverbial Swiss cheese.

Rising damp in Venice is implacable, and capillary action here evidently is constrained by no force we know of. We can see it in the bathroom wall, if you’d like to know. If there were a building in Venice that went as high as the exosphere, there would still be dampness in its walls making those ugly blister bubbles.

I appreciate that the man upstairs didn’t really want to go so far as to discover the location of the blockage, in case it should turn out to be on his floor. So he left the hole to do its dehydration work (or not), and now he gives us fresh fish occasionally when he comes back from a session out in the lagoon. I interpret this as hush money to prevent us from pursuing the subject. So far, it has worked very well. The wall just stays as it is, and we eat the fish. I guess this will be fine till the wall falls down.

IMG_8255 damp — I look inside this hole and it’s like looking into a dissected frog. I have no clue as to what’s going on here or how it’s supposed to work. If anybody can enlighten me, don’t hold back.

Seeing how catastrophes prefer holidays, I figure that whatever is likely to happen next won’t be before next New Year’s Eve. I suppose we could take the Situation in Hand and apply ourselves seriously to Finding a Solution, but everything here is just too much trouble. Or expensive. Or both.

IMG_8256 damp — The mark of internal humidity is uncomfortably clear outside the front door. But you get into a frame of mind that interprets “Not getting worse” as “Everything’s okay.”

This, in a microcosm, is one explanation of the picturesque degradation that makes Venetian houses and streets so charming to everybody but their tenants. Small problems don’t get fixed in order to prevent their becoming large problems because if you’re going to have to be hugely inconvenienced and impoverished by the expense of repairs, you might as well wait till it’s utterly unavoidable.

Water from below doesn’t afflict only the humble residents. The city got a direct shot of it just a few days ago when a water pipe busted under the Riva degli Schiavoni. In minutes a sort of vortex had deranged an area of pavement between the Danieli Hotel and the Londra Palace. And the residents of those, and nearby lodgings, found themselves without water.

There is something a little droll about living in the middle of water and not having any when you need it (of course it’s not the same water — I merely jest). And I suppose I’m sorry that people spending hundreds of euros a night should not be able to turn the tap and brush their teeth, or whatever. A quick-witted person prone to philosophy might have said, “This is great! It’s just the old days, when doges roamed the earth and people got their water in buckets from wells.” But probably nobody said that.

We experienced a brief period of low water pressure, that was all, and the water wallahs installed a shunt in record time. One has to be reasonable; that particular pipe was 130 years old, like a number of pipes still slaving away under the paving stones. Eventually, like our fridge, it just couldn’t do it anymore.

We went for a walk toward San Marco the morning after. “Well,” said Lino; “let’s go see where they struck oil.”

IMG_7859 damp — Too bad it was only water and not black gold that burst through the street here. Maybe then the city would stop saying it has no money.

IMG_7862 damp — I agree that a water event of this nature doesn’t have the glamour of acqua alta, but it’s got a lot of extra negative aspects to it. At least when there’s acqua alta you can still brush your teeth.