Venice: I am not making this up

Secrets? Where?

August 10, 2010 No Comments

Someone told me the other day that I should look at a blog called Venezia Nascosta (Hidden Venice),so I did. It’s as attractive as several others which are more or less on the same beam, but it appears to concentrate primarily on history. I’m as interested in Venetian history as the next person, perhaps even more than many (if I may say so), but not when it’s the same old history that turns up in so many books, over and over, like the turkey for weeks after Thanksgiving. And adding a title which is even more trite only makes it worse. “Hidden.” Oy.

It's not Venice that's mysterious, it's people. Any people, anywhere.

But what has driven me to mention it is because it’s yet another in an infinite series of examples of the insatiable need people seem to feel to refer to Venice as “hidden.” “Secret.” “Mysterious.” Despite scores of other worthy adjectives (I like “peerless,” though “incomparable” is also good), people can’t resist using these exhausted banalities to describe a city which evidently was built, not on a batch of marshy wetlands, but on quivering Jungian swamps of the unknowable. Maybe it’s Carnival, with everybody in disguise, that has doomed Venice to be labeled “mysterious.” Maybe it’s the fog. Maybe it’s the wonders of low tide.

I object to this tendency for several reasons. One, because it is a cliche, and cliches annoy me. The image of the city as an enigmatic, unfathomable, a faintly (or overtly) sinister place, an amniotic sort of realm ruled by inscrutable forces illuminated by a faint but lurid aura of romanticism, began to germinate in the 1600s, when visitors began to be interested in the city less as a political or commercial power and more as a place of intrigue, decadence, and general dissipation.

Pigeons have a refreshing outlook -- the only mystery in their world is where to find food.

Mystery, in fact, is a quality that was promoted by the city itself, whose patrician families and government (which were the same thing) knew that secrets had real power. Discretion and dissimulation were serious weapons of self-defense in a world composed of much larger and more dangerous nations, all of which wanted to hurt, or, if they were having a very good day, to kill you at some point or another. This much we can certainly appreciate.

“The first who wrapped the city in mystery were the Venetian rulers,” Espedita Grandesso, a Venetian writer and historian, told me once. “Because the Serenissima was a little bijou in the midst of iron barrels. So this state of things made the nobles and merchants keep everything secret, even the most foolish thing. They weren’t completely mistaken. All they needed was the rumor of something going wrong, and all the governments of Europe would be breathing down her neck.”

“All the secrets of the crafts had to be protected, like the secret of making scarlet dye,” costume designer Stefano Nicolao added. The same paranoia applied to the techniques of glass-making, and many other trades, such as the formula for the best teriaca in Europe. (Teriaca was the all-purpose medicament of choice for centuries, but the recipe has been lost. Would that be a mystery?) There were obvious commercial reasons — survival reasons — for relying, not on a hearty handshake and a call for another round of drinks, but merely the shimmer of a sideways glance, a tiny shrug. Did that little frown mean yes or no?

Sometimes even Venice takes the easy way out. Anything looks mysterious in the fog, even me taking this picture.. — Sometimes even Venice takes the easy way out. Anything looks mysterious in the fog, even me taking this picture.

But by the Romantic era, the idea of Venice’s inscrutability had gotten completely out of hand. Once secrecy had become the way of life, aided by the custom of wearing masks up to half the year, it didn’t take long before the entire city came to be viewed as a fantastic decoction of intrigue, deception, and eventually — why not? — erotic adventure. But I still don’t see how all that adds up to “mysterious.”

Which leads me to my second objection to this cliche, which is that I don’t understand how a city which covers just three square miles, with only 59,000 inhabitants, and is visited by millions of people every year (though admittedly in very short bursts of time and attention), can possibly be presented as retaining even the tiniest shred of a secret.

Tokyo has 35,676,000 inhabitants and covers 5,200 square miles– you could make a very good case for there being a mass of secrets as big as the Sears Tower hidden in there somewhere. Probably a much better case than you could make for Venice.

Would this be an image of some hidden mysteries? — "Mysterious" means something that can't be known or understood, not something that only appears perplexing.

Maybe the force governing these Venetian so-called secrets is the city’s beauty. But why should beauty have anything to do with secrecy? I’d be willing to bet money that there are as many, or more, secrets in Lincoln, Nebraska, as there are in Venice. But nobody indulges in reveries about the secrets of Shreveport, or contemplates the mysteries of Walla Walla. Why?

And another thing. If there were to be secrets here, how have they managed to stay secret all this time? Amazon.com lists 11,696 books under the keyword “Venice.” Secrets? Where?

My opinion on the subject can best be expressed by Sherlock Holmes’s astute comment to Dr. Watson: “You see, but you do not observe.”

This wasn't hidden, it was sitting right there where people could walk straight through it.

Why insist on seeking something ephemeral and perhaps even indefinable? If you really want to discover Venice, don’t go looking for secrets; look at exactly what there is. Anything you can see in broad daylight anywhere in the city is going to be as complex, as brilliant, as astonishing as any rumpsprung old “secret” foisted off on you by yet another Venicemonger.

Yes, of course the city has an eccentric glamor, an insinuating fascination that can indeed sneak up on you and trap you. Venice is beautiful; to say that is to have said little more than that the sun rises in the east and water runs downhill. It is unforgettable, fatal, addictive, whatever you want. People become infatuated with it, or the idea of it. I offer myself as a case in point. But that doesn’t make it mysterious.

Now here's a Venetian mystery for you. Who is leaving their bag of garbage outside our house when they know perfectly well that it would be picked up from in front of theirs? And why? — Now here's a Venetian mystery for you. Who is leaving their bag of garbage outside our house when they know perfectly well that it would be picked up in front of theirs? And why?

So let me make a heartfelt, and I’m sure completely inaudible, plea for some new word to describe Venice that will take the place of any term that is synonymous with secrecy, concealment, enigma, or anything more subtle than a bowl of pasta and beans, or a couple of fried clams. Please. Just try.

Tourism

Update on cruising

August 6, 2010 No Comments

I stated in a recent post that Venice was now the number one cruise port in the Mediterranean. A new study reveals that the blue ribbon goes to Civitavecchia, the port about 46 miles/one hour from Rome. Two million passengers went through the port in 2009, according to EBNT (Ente Bilaterale Nazionale di Turismo).

For the record, the Port of Venice reports that 1,420,980 cruise passengers came or went in 2009.

"Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - Roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain." When all else fails, Lord Byron will supply the mot juste. — "Roll on, thou deep and dark blue Ocean - Roll! Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain." If all else fails, Lord Byron will know what to say.

I realize that you can make yourself verge on crazy by tracking each little item and what it means, but I thought it would be wise to update the hierarchy, lest anyone think I insisted on pushing Venice to the front of whatever line there is, just because it’s, you know, the most beautiful city in the world (TMBCITW).

Events, Problems, Venetian-ness

It’s summertime, and the time is right for doing something idiotic

July 30, 2010 2 Comments

Preposterous, ludicrous, and any other “ous”ly things that come to mind can happen all year long. But either the summer seems to produce more of them, like tomatoes and zucchini, or we’re more in the mood to read about them.

Here are some tidbits from the recent past, as reported by the faithful Gazzettino:

“THE FAMILY JEWELS IN THE BADANTE’S CAKE”

(Note: A “badante” is a paid caretaker, usually living with a little old person in need of assistance. They are mostly women, and mostly from Eastern European countries, not that that matters particularly to this or any other story).

“They wanted a piece of cake and instead they found a treasure. Too bad the treasure was already theirs and the cake was destined for somebody else. This is the grotesque misadventure of two residents of Castello, a mother and daughter, in what was supposed to be an ordinary domestic afternoon.

These ladies aren't in need of a badante yet. Maybe they're discussing alternatives, like having more children.

The culprit was a 50-year-old Polish woman who has been living in the district for some years….

“She seemed like a good person [said the daughter]; she stayed with my mother all day, sometimes she even spent the night. I trusted her completely from the very first; she did the shopping and cooking, and would take my mother out for walks.”

But one day the badante asked for money to buy the ingredients for two apple-cakes she wanted to make — one for the family, and one to send to her own people back in Poland. And so the cakes were made, and one was sent off to Poland.

The following afternoon — the badante’s day off — the mother and daughter decided to taste the cake…..which turned out to be fairly difficult to cut. “It seemed like cement,” said the daughter.

Then the discovery: In place of the apples, the cake was full of her mother’s jewelry, necklaces and rings of gold. “There was even my baptism necklace.”

The other cake had been sent to Poland by mistake.

It was an exquisite plan — the only thing lacking was execution. After all, there were only two cakes — it’s not as if there were hundreds to keep track of, like M&Ms. Anyway, that was the scene: What a lovely cake, let’s have tea and a large piece. The daughter takes the knife and cuts into it. Crunch. (Crunch?) And out come her mother’s 18-karat bibelots. Like party favors, only, you know, not. Not at all. I’m not sure how you say “D’oh!” in Polish, but the badante is probably going to be saying it for quite a while. If not to herself, to her folks back home who cut into their cake, imagining all the things they were going to buy with the money arriving via Betty Crocker, and who came up with nothing but jam and chopped walnuts.

I’m not sure which scene I’d rather have witnessed: The cutting of the wrong cake (either one), or the unsuspecting badante’s return home that evening. Not to mention the phone call from her family.

A tooth in the lung is no more mysterious than this wall, which someone decided was the perfect place to stick Chiquita banana stickers. I'm thinking it's some kind of secret signal. — A tooth in the lung is no more mysterious than this wall, which someone decided was the perfect place to stick Chiquita banana labels. I'm thinking it's some kind of secret signal. The fact that some have been partially removed is extremely suspicious.

“A TOOTH IN HER LUNGS MAKES HER SUFFER FOR 24 YEARS”

“Instead of swallowing it, which would have been simpler, luck would have it that the little girl unconsciously inhaled her milk-tooth molar, which had come loose, at the age, presumably, of 10 or 11. She didn’t realize [that she had done this], but soon afterward began to complain of a pain in her lungs. It would come and go, more or less frequently, more or less intensely, up until a few days ago. Today the little girl is a 34-year-old woman, married and the mother of two children. And by chance the other day, the pain having returned, she had a bronchioscopy and the cause was discovered: a milk tooth. An intervention at the hospital at Dolo [16 miles from Venice], one good cough, and out came the tooth which had caused so much pain for so long.”

What makes me wonder about this woman isn’t that she inhaled her tooth — I suppose it could happen to anyone. What I can’t grasp is that she lived 24 years without investigating further. Did she think everybody has a pain in their lung? Did she never wonder about it at all? Or does it take that long to get an appointment at the radiologist? And if one of her children had a pain in his/her lung, would she have just said “Suck it up” (sorry) and leave it at that? I couldn’t put up with 24 years of anything, if I didn’t know what it was. Evidently curiosity went to Dolo to die.

“130 CITATIONS FOR TWO BARRELS”

There is a very cool restaurant in the Campiello del Remer, not far from the Rialto Bridge. It’s called Taverna Campiello del Remer and I can remember when this campo was pretty desolate. So I was glad to see that improvements began to be made a few years ago by unseen hands. The main accomplishment was the fixing-up of a brick vaulted former warehouse (it would appear to have been) to become this congenial little eatery. But there is no joy in the Campiello del Remer, because the police won’t stop giving the restaurant owner summonses.

This is the entrance to the restaurant. The two barrels are usually within the arch somewhere. This little patch of space doesn't appear to be public, but what do I know. — This is the entrance to the restaurant. The two barrels are usually within the arch somewhere. This little patch of pavement doesn't appear to be public, but what do I know.

The nub of the problem is that commercial enterprises which occupy public space (think cafe tables on the sidewalk), have to pay a special tax. The space they are allowed to occupy is measured out and a record of these dimensions is kept in one of the city offices.

Emilio Farinon and Angela Cook, owners of the joint, put two big old wooden barrels (closed at both ends) outside the entrance. These barrels were intended to be useful as little tables where people could put their drinks and their ashtrays, much better than putting this stuff all over the ancient marble wellhead in the courtyard.

But somebody in the Campiello del Remer objects to the casks and has decided they must be removed because they are occupying public space illegally. (It’s really heartwarming to find that there is someone who takes the letter of the law so seriously around here. I wonder what they do for fun?). And so this person has taken to calling the police to come write out summonses for the alleged violation. This has happened 130 times in one year.

But not so fast, says Giorgio Suppiej, the owners’ lawyer. This is persecution, and a baseless one, because the square inches of soil upon which the hogsheads are sitting isn’t public, but private. So the summonses have no validity.

To demonstrate this fact, Suppiej has shown the Comune as well as the Court the Napoleonic Cadastre, the first ever to document the property limits of every building in the city. Suppiej then compared it to the subsequent version, and finally the one that is current today. “In all of the maps,” he says, “the space, which is under a staircase, is shown as private.

“Furthermore, the Comune can’t say the space is public; we previously asked the Comune to grant the plateatico [authorization to use public space], a request which was rejected because the space is under a staircase, a rejection which was suspect because other spaces beneath a sottoportico [passageway under a house] have been granted the plateatico, and anyway, this isn’t a sottoportico, but a sottoscala [under a staircase].”

Speaking of occupying public space, I still haven't figured out who this little clan might have been, or why they felt the need to set up a makeshift playroom outside the Accademia gallery. It seemed to be on its way to becoming a small habitation, like something out of the Dust Bowl days. If they got a citation, I wasn't around to see it.

A city councilor, Renato Boraso, has added his booming notes to the chorus, and asked the mayor to justify what Boraso regards as the “excessive zeal” of the municipal police. [Didn’t know they were prone to attacks of zeal, much less excessive ones. This is heartening indeed.]

“One hundred thirty citations isn’t something to underestimate,” he says. “…It’s time to put an end to this persecution — we’ve reached administrative insanity and I’m going to ask for all the documentation and then send it to the Accounting office. The city is going to have to justify all the hours which the police have spent on pursuing the complaint of a private citizen who evidently knows somebody at City Hall, distracting them from their public duties.

“Furthermore, it appears to me that the night that those vandals tried to set fire to Marino, the old derelict, the police were in the office writing out their usual photocopied report on this.” I like this, not only because it shows the vivid contrast in importance between an attempt on someone’s life and a bureaucratic technicality, but because it implies that there were only two police on duty that night in the entire city. But I mustn’t get distracted.

Ernesto Pancin, head of the merchants’ association, also sees some anomalies in this conflict. “I believe that businessmen ought to be rewarded, not punished, for their tenacity. In the case of the Campiello del Remer, before a business was established there, there were only drug addicts. I can guarantee that there are other cases which are flagrantly illegal but which inexplicably go unpunished.”

The Battle of the Barrels may, with all this publicity, have reached a turning point. Perhaps the anonymous protester will turn to pursuits of more evident public value, though I doubt it because this vendetta doesn’t have any significance to anyone but him or her. But if they’re still in the mood for persecution, I have a little list of offenses here that he or she could start on tomorrow. I could help.

There are specific ordinances prohibiting the degradation of the city's aesthetic aspect. But they don't appear to apply to certified works of art, which is what this decrepit boat from the Comoro Islands with its container most certainly is. I know this because it was moored outside the Biennale for months on end, till the boat began to fall apart. Evidently objects fraught with symbolism do not qualify as eyesores under the municipal edicts. — There are specific ordinances prohibiting the degradation of the city's aesthetic aspect. But they don't appear to apply to certified works of art, which is what this decrepit boat from the Comoro Islands with its container most certainly is. I know this because it was moored outside the Biennale for months on end, till the boat began to fall apart. Evidently objects fraught with symbolism do not qualify as eyesores under the municipal edicts, while two barrels are intolerable. And isn't the water public space? Did they pay the tax?

Tourism, Tourism in Venice

Cruising: where the music ends

July 21, 2010 10 Comments

The departure board at Venice's Marco Polo Airport. The first flight left at TKTK — The departure board at Venice's Marco Polo Airport. The first flight left at 6:35. followed by 20 others before this list came up at 10:07.

I went to the airport one morning two weeks ago, and there I discovered that there is a dark side to cruising. The only thing surprising about that is that I was surprised.

Going home from vacation is never very much fun, but it would seem that Marco Polo airport was designed to get you accustomed really fast to the fact that the fun is seriously over.

As I have often mentioned — sorry if I’m becoming repetitive, maybe I should set some of this material to music and we could all join in on the chorus — Venice has become a mega-major passenger port.

The wall on the right is where the line of check-in counters is placed. The left edge of this photograph is where the check-in line at each counter ends. — The wall on the right is where the line of check-in counters is placed. The left edge of this photograph is where the line at each counter ends.

Cruise traffic in the last ten years has quadrupled. Expressed in bodies, that comes to 1,420,980 in 2009, which represented a 16.9 per cent increase over the previous year. Venice is now the fourth busiest port in Europe, and the first in the Mediterranean.

The first ship on the dance card this year was the Costa “Deliziosa,” which arrived on January 30 (I don’t know from where — maybe there’s a cruise-ship launching platform somewhere around Queen Maud Land). The last one scheduled this year is the MSC “Magnifica,” which will depart on December 27. The word “season” has taken on new meaning: It’s every month of the year except January.

But until last Sunday, I hadn’t really given any thought to what these numbers might portend, not so much to the ships as to the airport.

The space from the man in the yellow shirt on the right and the red suitcase on the left is the space allotted to walking to your check-in counter, or wandering aimlessly.

After all, passengers mostly arrive by air. I’ve often seen the young women who serve as cruise-passenger wranglers waiting in the Arrivals area at Marco Polo airport, holding up their signs for Princess or Costa or whatever the cruise line might be, to help them gather their arriving clients, each of whom appears to bring about ten metric tons of luggage. The common idea about cruises is that people go on them in order to eat constantly, like blue whales (daily requirement: about 1.5 million calories). But when I look at their bags, I think their main plan must be to pass the time changing clothes.

Anyway, it’s obvious that extraordinary machinery has been developed to keep these ships and their passengers and their supplies coming in and going out, doing a turnaround in the space of a day, for 11 months a year.

It doesn’t appear, however, that the same efficiency has been devoted to the airport phase of the experience. Because when six or seven cruise ships come into Venice on a Sunday morning to finish their dreamy voyages, most of those people head for the airport. Where the party is definitively over.

Venice airport is the third busiest in Italy, preceded only by Rome and Milan. This makes the airport people very proud, as well it should. But while their annual numbers might be impressive on the page, they’re not nearly as impressive as the struggle all those thousands of people have to make in order to leave Venice in something like a four-hour window of time. Certainly there are early flights where the density of humans is less — the first departs at 6:35 AM. But no cruise company in the world would put its passengers on the airport bus at 4:30 AM, unless it were docking in Murmansk.

Another glimpse of the space for walking around, or staring at the Departures board, or trying to figure out what to do next. This width is theoretically compensated for by the fact that it extends for 60 check-in counters. Doesn't look like quite enough, though. — Another glimpse of the space for walking around, or staring at the Departures board, or trying to figure out what to do next. The width of the area is theoretically compensated for by the fact that it extends for 60 check-in counters. Doesn't feel like quite enough, though.

So as I say, I went to the airport on a Sunday morning to meet some friends who had disembarked from their cruise and were flying out that night. When I slid off the escalator on the Departures level, what greeted me was an appalling combination of the last day at summer camp (when all the kids are milling around being picked up by parents) and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West featuring Annie Oakley.

That morning there were 20 flights scheduled between 9:50 AM and 12:15 PM; that’s one every six minutes. And three of those flights were to major US destinations, Atlanta, Philadelphia, and New York. I mention that only because I presume that one flight to Atlanta involves more passengers than three flights to Palermo.

When I think back on the previous facility 15 years ago (a nostalgic reminder of the Oneida County airport at Utica, New York in 1968), the shiny new version is something of an improvement. But one has to ask oneself (I’ll stand in for “one,” in this scene), what they were thinking when they designed an airport that has more space for the planes than for the people.

Take the check-in area on the Departures level. It is beautifully long, but ludicrously narrow. There are 60 check-in counters, and the designer(s) evidently assumed that each check-in counter would serve a line of no more than 25 calm, lucid, well-organized passengers with no luggage or children. Then they left just a smidge of space at the end of the line so that people could get through who needed to go somewhere else — another counter, or the newsstand or the bar.

But wait. It turns out there are more than 25 people who need to line up at each counter, so they begin to clump together. And hold on — we actually need lots and lots of space for the people who are walking from here to there because many of them got here the necessary two (or more) hours before departure but whose flight isn’t open for check-in yet. So they wander (mill around, actually) or they sit, if they can find a place among the very designy but not very numerous seats.

Let’s talk about other things people need besides enough space to stand in a check-in line, or to sit and check their tickets and yell at their kids and or maybe take a snooze.

People need to go the bathroom. There are two obvious bathrooms on the Departures level and one hidden away down a hallway. I don’t know about the men’s room (men don’t care, anyway), but each ladies’ room has two (2) toilets. That makes four stalls for women on a floor that is pullulating with hundreds and hundreds of people. There are two ladies’ rooms on the Arrivals floor, too, so make that another four stalls on the ground level. Eight stalls — I mean ten, if you count the hidden facility — for women in an airport that operates an average of 80 flights a day, or an average of one every 12 minutes. (There must be a handicapped-accessible bathroom somewhere, it just doesn’t come to mind.)

Lest you think I am unreasonably obsessed with physiological needs (like, say, space to move around in and yes, to relieve oneself), I have some data from Robert Davis, an architect friend of mine. He writes: “We have a rule of thumb for theaters which is ’30 seats per seat.’ … So a 600-seat facility should have 20 fixtures, evenly divided male/female.”

Assuming that airport design is not radically different from theater design (some people spend more time in airports than they do in theaters, after all), if you have 600 people in the airport you would need ten stalls for the women. So we see that the Venice airport is already in a bathroom deficit situation. Because let’s assume there are more than 600 people in the airport at a given time, a pretty safe assumption based on the evidence of the other morning. The people keep swarming in, but there are still only eight stalls. Just deal with it.

At the other end of the alimentary canal, there are two (2) bar/sandwich counters (one upstairs with no seating and one downstairs with some tables), and one multi-station buffet with very little space to move around in with your tray, and a batch of cramped tables and extremely little space for your luggage, assuming you’re snacking before checking in, or you feel like doing something other than wander and look for a place to sit. The line for this facility stretches out to collide with the lines of people checking in at counters 59 and 60.

Then there's the way people come up the one escalator and then just stop -- to think, to look around, to consider the Departures board which is facing them on the other wall. Perhaps an up escalator and a Departures board shouldn't be right together like that? — Then there's the way people come up the one escalator and then just stop -- to think, to look around, to consider the Departures board which is facing them on the other wall. Perhaps an up escalator and a Departures board shouldn't be in front of each other.

I have to say, pretty slim pickings for passengers at an airport which claims to be ready to handle 15 million passengers a year. Especially considering that it is currently handling only about 8 million.

I’m not saying Venice’s aerodrome has to be like Frankfurt or Amsterdam airports, though I wouldn’t mind. All I’m saying is that while everyone has been working night and day to increase cruise traffic, it doesn’t appear that anyone has been attending to how they will be accommodated (I mean wrangled) on the day they leave. So far, Skytrax has not awarded any stars at all to Venice airport. I wonder what that means.

So what advice could I give someone leaving their dream cruise and flying out of Venice airport in the summer? Bring a book. Your own food. A folding chair. A portable toilet. Think of it as camping, in the middle of Times Square. You’ll be fine.

The joy of cruising ends right about here. No looking back, no going forward, either.