A few days ago this simple notice was stuck on the glass of the front door of the Trattoria alla Rampa del Piave. That’s the exactly joint three steps from the fruit and vegetable boat and, more to the point, is by the balustrade where Sandro Nardo would sell his fish.
“Sandro has been gone for a year,” it says; “Today he’s standing drinks to all his friends.” (Giorgio Nardo is his brother, Cristina is Giorgio’s wife.) I asked Fabio at the bar of the trattoria how many friends had showed up to drink to Sandro’s memory: “One hundred? Two hundred?” An amiable shrug meant “At the very least.” A free drink? He was my best friend! I apologize for the reflections on the image, but this is the best I could do.
He was no amateur just out making a little extra money — I don’t know that he had any other source of income. In any case, he was always out, night and/or day, depending on whatever conditions were most favorable for a reasonable haul.
And then he’d weigh and bag whatever he’d caught, and in the late morning he would come and pile the bags on the balustrade. He wasn’t there every day; it seemed kind of random. Monday was often a good day to find him, as the fish shop is closed on Mondays. And the balustrade was a prime spot, being at a sort of crossroads as well as a point where the street narrows dramatically. It slows people down enough to give them time to glance, at least, at what he had caught.
We didn’t often buy from him — his prices were no bargain — but we rarely resisted when he had seppie because it’s not easy to find them fresh.
The very useful balustrade at the bottom of via Garibaldi makes a fine temporary sales counter. The plaque is attached to the iron fence where it meets the marble.This extraordinary memorial appeared a few months after his demise, and is attached to the metal fence by the canal. “Here Nardo fisherman sold his fish and his history. Here we LAST Castellani will remember him with unaltered affection down to the very last one of us.” This likeness isn’t excessively accurate, but it does at least give him a lifelike aspect. My own few recollections of him at work focused on the toil involved in unsnagging the fish from the net. I speak from modest experience that a fish’s fins seem to have been created to get tangled up in filaments of nylon. As to “selling his history,” I have no idea what is meant by that, but considering how taciturn he was, anything verbal must have been really expensive.
We went to his funeral at the church of San Pietro di Castello. It’s a big place, but it was crammed; I’m sure the entire neighborhood must have been there. This was impressive, though not entirely surprising.
What truly surprised me was Nicola (probably not his real name, but the one he goes by). He’s a wiry, gristly bantamweight Romanian man who showed up in the neighborhood some years ago. At first he seemed to be just an anonymous mendicant who had installed himself between the fish shop and the vegetable boat. Tourists passing — there used to be lots, all aiming for the Biennale — would make their contributions.
Then gradually he wove himself into the neighborhood net, doing odd jobs, mopping boats, helping with the loading and unloading of the fruit/vegetable boat, and so on. By now everyone calls him by name, and he reciprocates.
But now we’re all at the funeral. The service is over, and the casket is being wheeled out to the canal where the hearse is waiting, rolling along a paved walkway lined with everybody from within the radius of a mile. Nicola is standing near us, all by himself, clutching his baseball cap, and he looks stricken. I have no idea what his interactions with Sandro ever were, but they must have been important because he is weeping. A lot of people are sad, but he seems to be the only person in tears.
Having nothing else, he wipes his eyes with his baseball cap.
You couldn’t make a memorial plaque big enough to match that.
As you know, just going outside and walking around here — as everywhere, probably — provides all sorts of opportunities to observe the strangeness of people and life.
Let’s take tourists. Yes, they’re back — not millions of them, but a choice assortment. The number is increasing as we approach the launch of the Venice Film Festival next Wednesday, September 2, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the glimpses I’ve had. This is not a screed about tourists, they’re just one part of the summer scenery.
It was nearing midnight when we boarded this vaporetto bound for home, and who should board but Hermann of the Teutoburg Forest, with his substantial wife and daughter (not visible here, but I can tell you she was feeling the heat and the trip, bless her heart).I turned the corner coming back from the supermarket and discovered visitors. The door facing them leads to an apartment rented to tourists, and we’ve just begun getting used to seeing them come and go again. But this was the first time I’d ever seen anyone imagine that they’d also rented the street, and its walls. (The green shutters to the left belong to our kitchen window.) There’s so much to wonder about here. Do they sprawl on the street back in their own city? I know that many men feel that the T-shirt is the emblem of freedom from the daily necktie. Street-sprawling is freedom from … chairs? I was wondering how to politely ask them to move, then realized that the sun would soon be taking care of that — it moves from right to left here, so before very long that refreshing shadow will have disappeared and the street will be broiling. When I glanced outside again, they had gone somewhere else.
Fun fact (that caption was already too long): I could only say “sprawl,” but there’s a great word in Venetian for what’s he’s doing: stravacar (strah-vah-KAR). It’s based on “vacca,” the Italian word for cow. Hence, lolling about like a cow in the field.
This bridge, which I cross many times a day because it’s the one nearest our house, exerts an occult force upon people, compelling them to stop at the bottom right corner. It’s usually three or four women, or a few men, with or without children, dogs, or shopping carts; they tend to cluster there for leisurely confabulations. Evidently this is a sort of intersection, but the fact remains that it’s pretty inconvenient for anyone trying to pass in either direction. Sure, I can make a wide turn, that’s not a problem. None of this is a problem (except for the really old people who need to hold onto the railing). But why a tourist would want to stop at that specific spot is a mystery. Photos — I understand that bridges are the perfect setting for photos of your girlfriend in Venice. But at the bottom of the bridge? Seated? In the shadow? And — may I repeat — at the corner where inevitably someone will be wanting to pass, or dogs to piss (not made up)? And if it has to be a corner, why not the other corner?
I know nothing about this situation; the clip was forwarded to me by a friend via WhatsApp. My friend says it’s not a joke, and frankly, it’s hard to tell anymore when people are serious and when they’re just fooling around (though the fact that her entire outfit is some shade of pink also deserves notice). It looks like the marinaio who is supervising the boarding is taking her seriously. Using both of his hands to indicate “The boat’s already full” means it’s seriously already full. Too bad we couldn’t have put her on the vaporetto with Hermann and his backpack. I could have taken bets, like at a cockfight.
This extraordinary boat was tied up here for a few days. I’ve seen boats in all the stages of life, but never one so gloriously unkempt and so proudly loved: “The most beautiful boat in Venice,” it says in Venetian. Its mother must have stuck that label on it one day as it was going to school.There’s something enchanting about this thing — it’s like it took a wrong turn on Reelfoot Lake and ended up here. The curious wooden seats fold outward in a cunning way to form a table, and the mini-motor is the perfect touch; normally, 40 horses are the fewest you’ll almost ever see on boats around here.Massimo and Luca have taken two weeks off, and they left their fruit and vegetable boat in a state of unprecedented order and cleanliness. The planter they keep on the bow contains some useful herbs, but this sturdy little sentinel rosebud seems to have been left on watch till they return. Perhaps on the night before they come back, all the petals will fall off, in a sort of “Mission accomplished” kind of way.This woman knows her cat. I would never have thought that you could just open a carrier in a public (i.e., not safe and familiar) place and know that the feline would do nothing more than glare at you all the way home. The creature might have been on some tranquilizing medication, but if that were the case it doesn’t explain the glare. Supposing that this is her pet’s natural expression makes me feel uneasy, but not as uneasy as noticing that they’re traveling in what appears to be the my-mask-refuses-to-cover-my-nose section of the vaporetto.Let me set the scene: This is a four-oar sandolo, which for reasons of safety Lino always positions on its little cart with the bow downward.This is the same boat before it was repaired, in the same position in its shed. The bow is down, protruding just far enough outside the roof that it caught the rain from a recent storm. Rain has visibly accumulated, but rain isn’t supposed to accumulate on your boat, especially if it’s made of wood. In fact, a simple solution was discovered centuries ago: A little hole called an ombrinale. As long as gravity is still working, the water will drain out all by itself.But as you see, the water is just sitting there, because as you can also see, in this case the ombrinale was drilled on the OPPOSITE side of the little piece of barrier wood — a piece of wood that was placed there specifically to compel the water to flow out through the ombrinale.I am obsessed with this; It’s a perfect example of “You had ONE JOB.” These boats aren’t mass-produced, they’re made by hand, one at a time. I have tried to find, or even invent, an explanation, but I guess it will just have to continue to speak for itself.But let’s forget about boats and go ashore. Here is a fondamenta near our house. You can see, reasonably far ahead, something in the center of the walkway. Old Venice hands recognize it as sawdust, and the same hands know it’s there for one specific purpose: To cover an unusual quantity of dog poop, thus preventing an unwary person from stepping in it. So far, so good.It’s pretty big, hard to miss. And there’s clearly plenty of room to walk around it.But maybe not. I understand the bicycle treadmarks, at least they’re around the edges and besides, only kids are riding them. It’s the grown-up footprint smack in the center that makes me reflect on the person who did not see it coming. No sarcasm here — if you don’t see this from half a street away, something way more important is going on in your life, and I can only be thankful that the sawdust-distributor got there first.Meanwhile, there’s always this…And this…And, of course, this.
We’ve been living through the completely reliable and predictable days of scorching heat — this being the end of summer — and we’ve been dealing with it in the simplest and most effective way known to man: Immersion in water. But no beaches for us. The beaches have lost whatever appeal they once had, due mainly to the vaporettos loaded with families with hot, tired children struggling home at the end of the day.
Instead, we go out early into the lagoon to a little spot that I have dubbed “the old swimming hole.” It’s not literally a hole, and usually it’s not deep enough for real swimming, but lowering ourselves up to our necks in the cool water flowing in from the Adriatic is all we need to do to feel happy, harmonious, chakra-balanced, equipoised, and otherwise at peace with ourselves, if not with the world. This little idyll ends at 9:10 AM, when the man with the motorboat arrives, along with assorted family members and a dog. No idea how he discovered this place, but their idea of relaxation is very much not ours.
So we climb in our boat and row home, which we’d probably have been doing in any case, because by 10:00 the sun has switched to “char.” Those two hours, though, are the best part of the entire day.
Ideal departure time is no later than 7:00 AM, so we’re up at 6:00. It takes about the same amount of time to prepare the boat as to prepare ourselves.The water is wonderfully calm before the barges and taxis and other motorboats begin to rumble around.Low tide is my favorite moment, though it means we have to take the perimeter route around the mudbanks. Usually the tide is about to turn when we go out, so when we come back there will be enough water for us to cross directly over it.Not every morning is this calm, but every morning has its own beauty. The lone grey heron who lives nearby never lets us get any closer than this, but it’s always wonderful to see him or her — here he’s standing just to the left of the two poles.We made absolutely no noise as we approached, but he was taking no chances.I have made a vow that we’re going to mount an expedition to discover where this lone tree is located. It’s a very strange thing to see out here, all by itself.I don’t know how long this “capitello,” or little shrine, has been here — we were both surprised to discover it the other morning. The lagoon is full of these memorials, in all sorts of designs and types, commemorating the spot where someone (usually speeding at night with no lights) has met his end. Or, as Lino puts it, “painted himself onto a piling.” There have been more of these events than usual this summer. Post-quarantine madness?The Regata Storica is coming up soon (September 6), and some racers make the most of the early calm to go out to train. Here is Rudi Vignotto astern, rowing with his son, Mattia. Of course Lino’s right when he says that they ought to be out in the bacino of San Marco instead, where the waves make rowing much more difficult. But we’ll say that after 28 Regata Storicas, Vignotto probably has a pretty good idea of what he’s doing.One of the few remaining milestones that were placed by the Venetian Republic around the lagoon. The date is now indecipherable.Further on, two more have fallen side by side — it’s puzzling that they would be together. Some interested soul has braced them with sticks to prevent their sinking into the water and mud forever. So here they lie.
When the tide is really out, this part of the lagoon looks like this. On the way home in an hour and a half, the water will have returned.The tide has turned, so we begin to see more water, less land.More water filling up the lagoon.Not much later, it’s like this. The little ripples in the lower right corner show the water coming in.And not even an hour later, we’re back to water everywhere. Wandering around Venice, you may not be inclined to notice what’s happening with the water in the canals, but obviously the same thing is going on there as it is out here. Or up, or down, I mean.The lagoon is full of egrets. There is almost always at least one in this part of the neighborhood, though I’d have no way of knowing if it was the same one.Returning to our outward-bound trip, this is the last stretch before we swim — it’s one of my favorite parts of the lagoon. It has a sort of Amazonian vibe.When the tide’s out you can really see the erosion of the wetlands caused by motondoso, or the waves created by motorboats. At this particular moment the marsh is covered with blossoming common sea lavender (Limonium vulgare). It only lasts about a week.
The flowers are interspersed with clumps of Salicornia europaea, variously known as sea asparagus or marsh samphire (crunchy and salty). It’s also called glasswort, as it was burned to make soda ash (sodium carbonate) for glassmaking.Just a reminder that Venice was built on wetlands like these. That fact alone continues to amaze me, perhaps even more than how impressive the buildings are.Of course I knew that the tide was low, I’d been watching the water since we left home, but this was ridiculous. Where’d our swimming go? Have we been relegated to the wading pool?You could see all the shells in the water, left here over months or years by birds, crabs, sea snails and other denizens who’d feasted on clams. Sometimes clams just die, too, Lino tells me. Anyway, it’s Clam Graveyard. I don’t mind walking on them, but when you can see them this easily I’m guessing that swimming is out, along with the tide.Interesting, to be sure, but not a scene that brings swimming to mind.Yet as you see, all we needed to do was back up a few yards (meters), and we find a spot where the channel deepens enough for dunking. I am still asking myself why I was surprised — I’d just rowed over the dang thing.Apart from the little issue of swimming, I have to say I love it when the tide is low. World turned inside out.The egrets appear to prefer water that’s knee-high, so they’re back with the incoming tide.Feeling good….partly because the tide is really coming in now, which you can detect by the water flowing around Lino. Yes, the Adriatic inlet at San Nicolo is actually to the right of this frame, but the water doesn’t flow only from right to left. Here it’s gone up a channel, curved around, and is coming in by a sort of back door.It’s too bad that we’re leaving just when there’s finally plenty of water around, but that motorboat is probably only minutes away.Having covered that muddy field, the lagoon has returned to postcard perfection. We’re looking straight out to sea, with the Lido on the right and the inlet at San Nicolo in the center of the horizon.Homeward bound, wending through Amazonia toward Venice.And back to the big city. Let’s do it all again tomorrow.
I have seen a tourist. I have heard a foreign language. I have seen a taxi and a gondola. I have heard the muffled roar of an airplane taking off. I have seen a barge carrying bags of hotel laundry. And I’ve heard the deep crackling sound of a rolling suitcase. I noticed each one of these, over the past month or so, as a faint, flickering sign of a pulse that could mean that Venice is returning to life.
For anyone whose livelihood depends on tourists — that is, just about everybody — the sight of one must be like the sight of a dripping faucet to a person suffering the last stages of severe dehydration. And someone reading a guidebook instead of squinting at a phone seems like a vision from the era of the Grand Tour.Pioneers! (This was early July.)
Not to belabor the metaphor, but it’s one thing to survive a near-death experience, and another to get well. Things are still bad; tourism is making only a tentative, baby-steps recovery. It’s all very little, and for this year, too late for anyone to begin to feel good. But as I say, there are signs.
It was natural for non-Venetians to imagine that life here under quarantine must have been beautiful without tourists. Au very much contraire — it’s been a mar de lagrime (sea of tears), as they say here, because everything in Venice lies at some point on six degrees of separation from tourism.
Having said that — just as an aside — don’t think that the economy of the nation is built only on gelato and selfies at the Leaning Tower. Here’s a fun fact: Italy is the second-ranked industrial country in Europe; in 2019, over 75% of the EU’s value of sold industrial production was generated by six Member States: Germany (28% of the EU total), Italy (16 %), France (12 %)… Of course, tourism is called an industry, too, but I don’t think you can say a country produces it in the same way it produces eyeglasses, machinery, pharmaceuticals, clothing, cars and — wait for it — robots.
But let’s get back to tourists. (Yes, it’s unfortunate that you can’t have tourism without them.) Italy is the fifth country in the world, and third in Europe, in terms of international tourist arrivals. In 2018, tourists from abroad made up 86.6 percent of all visitors to Venice. (Domestic tourist arrivals in 2019 were a small, but perfectly formed, 747,000.) Arrivals from anywhere in the world since March, 2020: …. Five? One official estimate suggests that Italy won’t be back to pre-pandemic levels of tourism before 2023.
The lure of sitting on the fondamenta’s edge has endured, but, at least at the beginning of the reopening, there seems to have been an improvement in the visitors who succumb. (For the record, two German ladies.)The earliest days of the reopening saw many more families coming to explore, though they still arrived mainly on the weekend, and often stayed only for the day. And a higher number than usual were (and still are) Italian.And a few daily tourist boats have begun to return, bringing a few more hardy souls. As the numbers increase, ever so slowly, the percentage of barbarians seems to have remained the same. I read that in Campo Santa Margherita some people are back to using the streets as a latrine; in the sestiere of Santa Croce, tourists have been seen washing themselves and their laundry at one of the fountains.
Many hotels are now open, but with reduced staff and reduced numbers of guests, too. The shops are offering dramatic sales, from 50-70 percent off. Gondoliers are working at ten percent of their usual summer load; instead of working three days and staying home two, their normal scheme, they’re working two and staying home three to allow everyone to make at least some money. A friend who has a small jewelry store near San Marco has been opening only two days a week. Many museums are not fully reopened. Baby steps.
True, towns and businesses all over Italy (and world) are undergoing the same crisis; it’s not just Venice, obviously. But I noticed it more vividly via the gondoliers. Not that I had any special concern for or about them, but I had never reflected — nor had they, I suppose — on how dependent on tourism that they had become. I suppose a taxi-driver can adjust his fares, because taxis are always useful. But nobody has to take a gondola.
So: First there was the collapse of tourism following the acqua granda of November 12, 2019. That cataclysm terrified tourists, who cancelled bookings for fear of finding themselves floating out to sea if they came here. Then the quarantine. The faucet (to return to my symbolism) that had seemed to the gondoliers to be perpetually open suddenly shut completely. And therefore the same crisis has struck the three gondola-builders. After the damage inflicted by the high water/hurricane, their business has also stopped. One builder told me that he has had five cancellations of orders for new boats, which amounts to the income of an entire year.
So we’re not what I’d call happy without tourists, no.
No mask is going to stop her wearing her mask.On the bright side, some of the tourists I’ve noticed have been uncharacteristically charming. Instead of the usual heat-stunned shoals of debilitated desert explorers fitted out by sports companies, there have been gems like this couple. What always bemuses me is that no matter how much effort the female component has put into her look, the male component is almost always dressed pretty much like this. But this young lady is visiting Venice in a way that I frankly admire. High heels and a tiny purse! What world is she living in?Not glamorous, but so remarkably in tune with each other that it’s a pleasure to see them. It’s in the shoes that we see them marching to their separate but equal drummers.
Two months have passed since the end of the lockdown and businesses are struggling. Judging by how many restaurants there are here, I’d have thought people come to Venice just to eat, but “The restaurant situation is extremely serious,” says Ernesto Pancin, secretary of Aepe (Associazione Esercenti Pubblici Esercizi, Association, or Association of Public Businesses),with some 800 restaurant/bar members in the historic center.
“Today between 60-70 percent of the restaurants have reopened,” he said, “but they have only 30-40 percent of the work and income they had last summer. They can’t manage to cover expenses — especially the rent — and the personnel is reduced. The absence of customers is really felt during the week, while the weekend flow is hanging on. But the weekend earnings aren’t enough to make ends meet.” People who have been working from home don’t go out to lunch; people on unemployment don’t have the money to eat out, and people in general are less inclined to go out, period. In some restaurants, the owner is waiting tables.
“We’re living day by day,” said Bonifacio Brass, owner of the Locanda Cipriani at Torcello, told a reporter for La Nuova Venezia. “We’ve had Italian customers, above all… Naturally we’re working mostly on the weekend. Lots of Venetians are coming in their boats, but meanwhile there has been a cutback in the vaporettos.”
Before we leave this chapter in the saga of these days in Venice (Part 2 will follow as soon as I can), all the problems aren’t necessarily tied to tourism.
For those of us trying to live a normal life, there’s the looming problem of the 570 family doctors in the 44-commune “province” of Venice. The national health system requires you to be linked to some basic doctor — your choice — who is your first stop in the world of medical assistance. Any visit to a specialist requires what I call a “work order” from your doctor. Now we find out that within five years, half of them will retire.
Unless replacements are found in a timely manner, the remaining doctors could have as many as 1,600 patients on their rosters.
And speaking of retirement, here’s another economic thunderclap from an approaching storm: For the first time, Italy now has more retired people than actively employed people.
Meanwhile, daily life continues here on its mundane little path to parts unknown. The more banal or even boring an activity or object may be, the more I have come to treasure it.
Crises and catastrophes may abound, but the need for domestic appliances will never fail.
