Venice doesn’t have a bishop — you may be fascinated to know — it has a patriarch. And as of last Sunday, it has a new one: Francesco Moraglia, who has now been launched to a higher sphere from modest but reverendable monsignor to patriarch and, very soon, to cardinal. Next stop? We don’t speak its name, but we know it’s there.
Three patriarchs of Venice in the 20th century were elected pope (Pius X, John XXIII, and John Paul I). Which means that one reason — perhaps the main reason — why it took six months to decide on the new occupant of the patriarch’s palace could be that the man needed to be considered papabile, as they say: “pope-able.”
As you can imagine, his welcome ceremony was a many-splendored thing, but the centerpiece — and the piece feasible only in Venice — was a corteo, or procession, of boats in the Grand Canal.
Corteos, if you do them right (as in: have lots of participants), are impressive when seen from the shore/bridge/parapet/balcony or wherever the viewer may be positioned. Certainly they’re impressive as seen from the vessel carrying the person being corteo’d.
The corteo finally begins. Some rowers, like the ones on the green boat, evidently have a different idea about what "dressing up for company" means.
Corteos, as seen from the boats involved, have a much different character. They are composed of friends — or people who know each other, anyway — and what may look like a stately progress is actually a continual jockeying for position in a limited space complicated by vaporettos, gusts of wind, and tidal forces. All of these factors conduce to moments of vivacious confusion which most of the rowers astern, responsible for steering, know how to navigate. I can promise you, however, that there will be at least one boat whose poppiere has a very uncertain grasp of the connection between the action of the oar and the reaction of the boat. Fancy way of saying: helplessly wandering hither and yon like a rudderless boat on the high seas. This person, whoever it may be, is always happiest right in front of us.
Don Marcello, the parish priest of San Giobbe, showed up to row in his cassock, just as he did for the previous patriarch, he told the Gazzettino, as well as Popes Benedict XVI and Paul VI.
The Gazzettino reported that there were some 200 boats in the procession, and I can believe it. I think most of them, though, were there for the event in its Venetian, rather than spiritual, aspect. I’m not saying rowers are godless, I’m just saying that the mass of participants seemed to be divided into two groups: Bunches of people along the fondamentas with welcome banners who were singing hymns , and us in the boats who were living another sort of moment.
The routine usually goes like this: The boats gather in the Grand Canal at Piazzale Roma. We go to the command-post boat if we’re due any bonuses (T-shirts, bandannas, small bags of rations usually containing a sandwich, bottle of water or carton of fruit juice, a small pastry or piece of fruit.) You lounge around and keep track of your friends. At this point in my evolution here, there’s quite a list.
We must have waited half an hour in front of the train station for Mons. Moraglia to conclude his prayers ashore. Half an hour is a long time when you're doing nothing.But hanging around did give me time to admire this young woman, seemingly no more than 15 years old, who was the master and commander of an 8-oar gondola from the Canottieri Mestre rowed entirely by people her age.
Small organizational point: Unlike most processions, which are in the morning, we were summoned to appear at 1:45 PM. This seemingly innocuous moment effectively wipes Sunday off your calendar, when you calculate the time needed to get to your boat, row it to Piazzale Roma, do the corteo, and row home. The fact that the timing effectively wiped your lunch hour off your calendar was also noticed. That’s why they gave us sandwiches. Not much to keep you going till dinnertime, but if you came, you’d already accepted this fact.
We get the signal to start, and we proceed down the canal to the bacino of San Marco, dodging taxis and vaporettos and gondoliers and each other’s oars. The principles of defensive driving all come into immediate play for the half-hour or so it usually takes to run this 3.7 km/2.3 mile route.
I’d never seen so many boats in a procession, not even when we put on the same event in 2002 for the recently-departed predecessor. The sun was shining, the breeze was generally docile, and we were going mostly with the tide.
The only drawback was the long wait for the patriarch to finish his invisible ceremonies ashore, board his boat, and get going. When the tide is pulling you along and large public conveyances keep jostling for space, you don’t really feel like hanging around, even for an Eminence. Rowers began to murmur and to comment.
But finally we were on our way. We managed to put on a burst of speed to get past the small boat slewing around in front of us. We waved to Lino’s sisters on the fondamenta. And when we passed under the Rialto Bridge and saw the straight stretch of Grand Canal covered with boats spread out before us, Lino actually got a little choked up. I can’t remember what he said, but I looked up and his eyes were wet. Just in case you think we get all blase and jaded about everything.
As the patriarch debarked at San Marco, the gathered boats gave the customary alzaremi, or raised-oar salute. It’s spectacular when done right, or even just sort of right. The annoying part for the executors of this feat isn’t the weight of the oar as you haul it upright (I discovered a trick) — it’s the way the water runs down the shaft and onto your hands. I have no picture of it because I was busy with my oar.
Then we row back to the club, across the bacino of San Marco, which will always be full of big heavy clashing waves. You may well also have the wind and tide against you, so by the time you get the boat ashore you’ve forgotten how much fun you had.
The prow of a mega-gondola is a magnificent place from which to view the corteo. But I still can't figure out how the man is sitting. There's exactly the same area available on the right as you see on the left of the little flag. Where are his legs? Are his feet trailing in the water?
But enough about me. I can tell you that the new patriarch has already remarked that he believes one of our main priorities needs to be to make children happy. He put that in his short list of things we need to take more seriously, like create more jobs and be more just and fair in our dealings.
My inner Protestant (I.P.) finds this an amazingly dim recommendation. If making children happy is a goal, I can turn over and go back to sleep, because that must be the easiest thing on earth to do. Unload a dump truck full of sugar and fat and iEverything and then leave them alone. My I.P. — who is as devoted to children and their well-being as anyone, even him — would have preferred to hear something a little less fluffy. If happy children are what we want, I think our mission should be to make sure they’re educated, healthy, disciplined, kind, at least bilingual and don’t smoke. I suspect that happiness would be within their own grasp at that point, and wouldn’t have to be provided by a squad of round-the-clock muffinbrains.
Feel free to pass this observation along to him.
More hanging around waiting, this time in front of the basilica of the Madonna della Salute, while the patriarch went inside to pay his respects to her. The golden curly thing is the stern of the "Dogaressa," the ceremonial boat that carried the pope last May. A good sign?
Some of us managed to find a parking place in front of the church, so we could relax during the interval.
Lack of food? Overcome by emotion? Meditating? Or just saving his strength for the next leg of the journey?
The "disdotona," or 18-oar gondola, belonging to the Querini rowing club, is easily the most spectacular boat in Venice and is always the sign of a Truly Important Event. The only drawback is finding a parking place.
The patriarch comes out of the basilica to wild acclaim. Wild, anyway, to everyone except the woman seated with her dog on the steps, reading the paper.She’s probably reading the big article about the patriarch's arrival and wondering when he's supposed to show up.I love this woman! She is totally impossible to impress! She's looking at her DOG.
"Just be patient -- he'll be along sooner or later."Setting off on the last leg of the trip, across the Grand Canal to the Piazza San Marco. The police escort is an impressive touch -- we never see these zippy little craft except on big occasions. The firemen have them too. The men probably draw lots because everybody must want to drive them.
He looks happy and that makes me feel good. And he gets ten bonus points for standing up in the boat, a position he maintained, according to the Gazzettino, for the entire corteo. I have to say, that's cool.
A reader named Alberto recently responded to my lament about the silence of the blackbirds so far this spring (bulletin: I heard two yesterday evening — but the dawn is still voiceless). He said he was thinking of making a video of their concerts.
As it happens, I was so enthralled by the morning recitals last spring that I recorded loads of them. Here is a sample — which I have taken to listening to in the meantime, just so things will seem more normal. Click here 11042001.
I wonder if playing this really loudly at 4:00 AM would encourage at least one to give it a try. Or maybe they’re on strike. If so, they’re the only creatures in the old bel paese, except me and Lino, that have never gone on strike at some point. I suppose there’s something noteworthy about that. I wonder if I should put “Never gone on strike” on my resume.
A male common blackbird (Turdus merula) on the island of Gran Canaria, Spain. (photo: Juan Emilio.) The bird obviously has a right to sojourn where he wishes, but hanging around other birds' islands isn't going to keep the operation going here in Venice.
I’m sorry I didn’t think to check on the exact instant of the equinox in order to give Venice an appropriate little salute. I knew this anniversary was imminent and now I’ve discovered it was two days ago.
In any case, most of the signs have been with us for a while now. I can report that March came in like a lamb, but seeing how screwy the weather has become, I have no idea what sort of animal its departure is going to resemble. Maybe a bumblebee bat or a star-nosed mole. I’ll let you know.
Despite the polar blitz of February all over Europe, the peach blossoms from Sicily have made their annual appearance at the Rialto market. They've turned out to be more reliable than the blackbirds.Little bouquets of carletti making their brief appearance at the market. I'll be honest: They have no flavor. The joy in making risotto of them rests (in my view) entirely on the fact that they are so few and so fleeting.
Yesterday we rowed to Sant’ Erasmo to forage for some carletti. Unhappily, we didn’t find any at all, which is slightly disturbing (check one “sign of spring” off the life list). So we brought home a big bag full of dandelion greens instead. Lino’s happy because he says it’s good for “purifying the blood.” My grandfather did the same, he said, by dosing himself with blackstrap molasses. That’ll wake you up, no matter what it may do to your blood. I intuit that this instinct is somehow related to the rousing-from-winter-lethargy/hibernation process we watch on the Discovery Channel.
Bruscandoli, or wild hops, deliver more flavor, but at a price: 4 euros per "etto," or hectogram. This works out to about $25 per pound -- not that you'd buy a pound. You might as well buy a hectogram of red diamonds.
Speaking of rousing, though, I am still awaiting one fundamental sign of spring, which is the blackbirds singing at dawn. Every year I have heard one — evidently assigned to our neighborhood by the Chief Herald — which began to sing exactly at 4:00 AM. It was uncanny. I’m not saying I’ve been getting up at that hour specifically to hear it, though it would certainly be worth it. But considering that I’m up anyway, its solitary cadenzas always made the morning beautiful even while it was still dark.
So far, I’ve heard one (1) blackbird singing at 6:30 PM. Of course it can sing whenever it wants to, but I cannot fathom why I’m not hearing any before then. Frankly, I don’t understand how the sun — or me, for that matter — has managed to rise without it.
For those who may be craving an animal announcing spring, look for some seppie. This is a beautifully fresh one. If it could sing, I wouldn't be missing the blackbirds so much.
At any rate, my favorite phase of spring is already past. Anybody can love spring when the flowers begin to bloom (I’ve already seen early blossoms sneaking out of their buds on a few plum and almond trees, and of course there will be a deluge of jasmine and wisteria before long). But I love spring when the weather is still cold and unfriendly but you can just begin to detect tiny wisps of earlier sunlight and see even tinier buds on the trees just beginning to expand with their extremely tiny leaves, awaiting some signal I’ll never detect.
Once the daffodils come out, spring is so obvious that I consider it to be essentially over.
You can set your "Now It's Spring" watch by the Easter eggs in the window at Mascari, which displays the handmade Ur-egg each year. This phenomenon is roughly the size of an egg laid by the Great Elephant Bird of Madagascar (not made up), though it probably tastes better.
Out in the lagoon, there's plenty of room to go around. On land, the situation changes.
Some time ago I embarked on a series of what were going to be five posts, each dedicated to one of the classic senses, and how I indulge them here.
I haven’t yet shared my thoughts on the remaining two (sight and touch) and I’ll be putting that off for a little while longer.
What has pushed ahead of them in line are few non-traditional senses which have inordinate importance here. If you awaken these senses, the benefits ought to be many, such as helping to increase your enjoyment of Venice and, at the same time, minimize your impressive ability to spoil it for others.
By “you” I originally meant “tourists,” and much of what I’m going to say is, in fact, aimed at people who are just passing through. But I have to say that Venetians themselves can be astonishingly oblivious to the world around them. I just want you to know that I recognize that, in case anyone is tempted to retort “Well what about them?” Fine: They’re guilty too. But this is their city, and their country, too.
So today I present the sense of space. There isn’t much of it here. The city covers only about two square miles, and I estimate that 97 percent of that area is occupied by buildings or water. So you can see how tricky it’s going to be to fit everybody, particularly 20 million tourists or so, into a town not much bigger than New York’s 41st Precinct.
And it’s not useful to imagine there’s any difference between “public” and “personal” space. All the space here is personal. I mean public.
This street, Ruga Giuffa, is actually something like a major artery. The value of not taking more than your share of space is easy to see here.
Venice has always been crowded — in fact, it was once almost three times more populous than it is now. But that didn’t particularly bother anyone, if the songs are to be believed.
There are many which praise some aspect of the city’s beauty or the beauty of life here. I’m not aware of a modern song praising Venice. (I do not regard “Ciao Venezia” as a song, even if it is transmitted by human vocal cords.) Maybe I should try to write one.
Anyway, one particular Venetian song (which naturally sounds better in Venetian) contains this refrain: “Long live this great immensity/only Venice is beautiful/only our city.”
“Great immensity”? Besides being redundant, it seems crazy. This is a city that’s all twisted up in lots of skinny little streets and random knotty open spaces swarming with people pushing children in strollers, dragging overloaded shopping trolleys, brandishing large open umbrellas, or merely groups standing stock still at the exact point where there is no room to get around them.
The “immensity” praised in the song about Venice refers, I believe, to its environment: the lagoon. Anyone who has ever gone out in a boat even a quarter mile from the city realizes that this extraordinary city is floating in the center of a vast amount of water and sky.
My experience, and — I deduce — that of countless Venetians who have come before, shows that the lagoon is not only the matrix of the city but the only known antidote to its compression.
A not unusual sight on the biggest vaporetto there is, the #1 local going down the Grand Canal. Theoretically, the correct thing would have been to have made a pile of his baggage in the outside area and stayed with it. What the picture doesn't show is that he or his things are occupying all three seats, and the aisle.
But even if your only chance to feel this spaciousness is from a vaporetto (which will be crowded….), I hope you will somehow feel the enchantment and, yes, immensity of the city’s surroundings.
In any case, you’ll have to go ashore eventually, which is where your sense of space is going to have to get to work. Because your awareness of where you are, and what you do there, is going to have a really important effect not only on how you feel about Venice, but how everybody around you — especially any Venetians, if you care — feels about it too.
I respectfully recall to your attention the fact that Venice, small as it may be, at its apex was both the home and the workplace of almost 200,000 residents, not to mention an uncounted number of visitors, here on either business or pleasure or even displeasure. Among other things, Venice was a major port for pilgrims headed from Europe to the Holy Land. They could have been here as long as a month, waiting to find a berth on a ship (no reservations, obviously). This was much longer than the average modern tourist’s visit, and there were periods in which there were 50 ships leaving in a single month, or roughly two a day. (Not made up.) Which adds up to a fairly crushing quantity of people.
Furthermore, if you think the city is crowded now, spare a thought for the old days, when everyone who had a choice lived as much of their lives outdoors as they could. Except for sleeping and eating, families (which were numerous) spent most of their day out in the courtyard or the street, or somewhere other than home, where there also was no space.
This lady decided that her carryon bag would be more comfortable on the floor in front of the central seat rather than in the aisle. You want to sit there? Good luck with that.
And then there was the cargo: Vast amounts of often really space-intensive items being offloaded and transported from A to B. Bricks. Blocks of marble. Lumber. Bales of wool. Imagine yourself walking down a street behind three people who are carrying enormous wicker backpacks loaded with coal. So it’s always been pretty cramped here.
Nevertheless, today we have all sorts of modern ideas about comfort and manners which make Venice demanding in an equally intense way.
Having said all that, I’d like to offer a few fundamental suggestions as to how to minimize the crampage. If you accept them, you have a chance at making life more pleasant for you and certainly for everyone around you. If you don’t really care — and there seems to be an abundance of visitors in this category — then you may fire when you are ready, Gridley.
Equal time here for Venetian transgressions: The woman on the right has claimed the space (single seat and open area) intended for people in wheelchairs with a friend. Since her trolley needs all that space, the tourist in the wheelchair has to sit half-out in the aisle.
There are three situations in which you have no choice but to share space outdoors: Walking, standing, and sitting.
Walking: To keep everybody, including you, moving in even some semblance of progress, try to imagine that you’re driving your car. The same general rules apply here when you’re walking.
If you’re moving slowly, keep to the side. Do not make sudden stops. Do not make sudden turns. Do not stop in the middle of the street and just stand there. Check your rear-view mirror often, because it’s very likely somebody is coming up behind you intending to pass you. In which case, move aside and let them. You’d be astonished at how many people do not do any of those things.
Forget the car metaphor and keep in mind that you are living in three dimensions. Fingers: Tempting as it may be, try to avoid suddenly pointing at something, no matter how surprising or beautiful it is; for some reason, a person pointing is often indicating something dangerously close to eye level. Elbows: If you stand somewhere with your hands on your hips, you’ve just taken space away from the persons on your elbow side for no clearly necessary reason.
If somebody wants to get past you, they will most likely start with a polite “Permesso.” (Or “con permesso.”) Venetians may say this as many as three times; if there’s no reaction, they push. The international language. If it happens to you, there was a reason.
Standing: If there appear to be too many people, you can be sure there will be far too much of their stuff. If you need to stop to check your map or hold an unscheduled meeting of the family committee, make an effort to put your boxcar-load of baggage somewhere out of the way. Slalom races are fun if you’re aiming for a medal in the World Cup, but not for somebody trying to get somewhere that’s important to him, like his accountant or home to his kid who’s running a fever.
This curious construction behind the wheelhouse is, in fact, an excellent place to stash your baggage. Just so you know.
On the vaporetto, try to organize your bags in as little space as possible. A person (for example, me) shouldn’t have to explain that you could put your smaller bag on top of your larger bag, instead of next to it. I mean, when you think about it.
If you’re carrying anything larger than an empty messenger bag, handle it with the awareness that wherever you put it, it’s taking precious square inches away from somebody else. I know it’s really hard to haul all that baggage down cramped streets and over bridges and so on. I know that there is little or no space on the vaporettos for anything larger than you, and often not even that. But the fact that many people devote more attention and concern to their steamer trunks or Himalayan-expedition backpacks than they do to their fellow passengers is something that baffles, and can often irritate, any nearby Venetians, especially if they’re trying to get past you (see: “slalom,” above).
What to do?
First: Minimize the space you occupy. For example: Do not put your suitcases/duffel bags/backpacks on the seat next to you. Seem obvious? Apparently it isn’t. “Hey! Empty space! It’s mine!” Actually, it’s not!
For a while, these signs were up on many of the vaporettos. As Einstein said, Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. Judging by the public response (which was nil), this design is so simple that almost nobody understood, it.
Second: Take off your backpack. They’ve even made it a rule on the vaporettos, but the simple sense of this little act continues to elude nine and a half out of every ten people. If it’s on your back, take it off. Even a daypack is a huge nuisance to everyone around you. You may think it’s part of you, but the only person who wouldn’t annoy their fellow passengers with something protruding from his or her spine would be the hunchback of Notre Dame. If you can take it off, do so immediately and put it at your feet. Or in a corner. Or maybe don’t even bring it. How far could it be to the next oasis?
Third: Get out of the way. Every day, oblivious people stand right where everybody else needs to pass. On the street, on the vaporetto, wherever. On the vaporetto dock — particularly, for some reason, at the Accademia stop — masses of eager people who want to get on fill the entire area needed for the arriving passengers to get off. If there is an explanation for this, it will have to come from the realm of astronomy, where matter retains all sorts of contradictory characteristics. Here, though, matter occupies space.
Then there are people who find a spot that works for them and just……you know…..stand there….as if nobody else existed. They block doorways, they block aisles. It’s not as if their kid is having an asthma attack and nothing else matters. They just stand there. Even the fact that you have to contort yourself to get past them doesn’t make any impression whatever. That’s where they are, just deal with it, Maude. I have never understood what attracts people to standing in the vaporetto doorway. Go out, or stay in. Why are you trying to do both? Are you not able to decide where you want to be?
Then there are all those time when you must force your way onto a vaporetto because it’s crammed with people in the open middle space where boarding and exiting takes place, while the interior of the boat is almost empty. I realize that visitors want to be outside where they can look around and take pictures. If you’re determined to stay outside, please do everything in your power not to block the only area available for getting on and off.
I cannot grasp the idea here: We'll just sit here blocking the street right near a corner. No one else exists.
Sitting: People between the ages of 12 and 18 seem to have decided that the floor is their tribal territory. Sitting or sprawling in groups on the ground anywhere that appeals to them is not merely the best thing ever, it has become something like a right. I’ve seen teenagers literally lying on the ground where lots of people need to walk. One memorable pair of girls (American) was stretched out across the wooden dock in front of the ramp leading to the vaporetto dock. Hundreds of people needed to walk there. (See: “slalom,” above).
It all seems so obvious.
But wait! — I hear you cry — what about all those rude Venetians who do all those rude things (except for sitting on the ground), as if WE didn’t exist?
I know. I know they’re there, and I know they do those things, and they don’t have any more of a good excuse than anyone else.
I know theyalso position themselves in the exit area of the vaporetto dock so that they can get on the vaporetto first.
I know they somehow manage to slither past you to claim that minuscule empty spot in front of you. You might feel that they’re jumping a queue, but they don’t see a queue. I have finally concluded that a person who does this has decided that since you’re not occupying that space, that means you’ve relinquished it and it’s available to anybody who wants it. Now I actually do it myself because it makes sense to me — seeing how little space there is around.
So what solution is there to the problem of trying to put 100X of people and things into just 1Y of space?
Be aware. Be courteous. Create as few problems for other people and you will simultaneously be creating fewer problems for yourself.
That’s the only possible solution.
Just like on the highway.
There's not an abundance of space in the canals, either, and parking your boats like this is guaranteed to cause problems. No tourists are guilty of creating this situation, I just wanted to show another way in which ignoring other people can make life challenging. It annoys me, not because I need to pass through the eye of the needle here, but because I simply can't grasp the concept at work. .
To drive a barge here you need a Ph.D in geometry, and a tote bag full of tranquilizers. And the tide chart, too.
Or you can just go back out into the lagoon, where you can breathe.
