Venice: I am not making this up

MOSE makes history

October 3, 2020 26 Comments

I’m not going to lie: I never thought I’d see this day. Either it would never come, or by the time it did, I’d have long since turned into tera de bocal (clay for making chamberpots, as they put it here). But here we are, or more specifically, there it was this morning — the Adriatic to the right, the lagoon 70 cm lower to the left, and the vaunted MOSE floodgates ensuring for the first time that the twain shall never meet.

Years, decades, lifetimes have been devoted to constructing (and paying for) this thing, and I had little (in ErlaSpeak that means “no”) expectation that the gates would ever function. But they did. Allow me to doff my chapeau and say I’m not only astounded, but slightly weirded out. Because hearing three signals on the warning siren at 8:00 AM put all my nerves on high alert, even though we’re not in danger till four signals warn us of the possibility of the tide’s exceeding our personal domestic ground-level safe limit of 150 cm. Instead: Nothing.

I think everybody’s nerves have been a little tense, after two days of forecasts predicting an acqua alta to peak today at 135 cm above mean sea level at 12:05 PM. But at 9:00 AM (and at a mere 70 cm of rising tide) it was instead the long-discussed, -doubted, -reviled floodgates that rose, and stopped the sea at whatever the watery analogy of “in its tracks” may be. At the measuring station at the Diga Sud of the Lido the tide was at 119 cm, but the water at the Punta della Salute — bacino of San Marco, basically — was at 69 cm. When the tide turned, just after noon, it had reached 129 cm, but in the city was only a paltry 73.

This graph clearly shows the track of the tide, from its lowest point at 6:00 AM to the moment when the gates began to rise. Game, as they say, over.

We went outside to look at our canal. The water wasn’t moving. A lost pear, fallen from the fruit/vegetable boat upstream, was bobbing tranquilly in one place when it ought long since to have been carried off by the rising (or, by then, falling) tide.

Even on a normal day, the water in the canal is almost always moving at some speed, in some direction; only briefly, twice a month, does the tide pause in what is called the morte de aqua (“death of the water”). But here it was, stock still. It might as well have been in the bathtub. And so it remained until some time after the Adriatic began to withdraw; I suppose that didn’t need to be said, but perhaps someone other than myself might have forgotten that you wouldn’t lower the barrier until the sea was at least even with the level of water in the lagoon.

I didn’t used to think of 135 cm as anything more than “God, this is annoying.” But I think it’s fair to say that the doomsday inundation of November 11-12, 2019 is still too screamingly fresh in everybody’s mind to allow the casual return of “Sure, this is Venice, what do you expect?” Any tide above normal now appears potentially apocalyptic. And if our nerves were slightly on edge, so were those of the hopeful travelers who had booked hotel rooms and then, having heard early mentions of the dreaded words “acqua alta,” quickly canceled the reservations.

That’s too bad, because they missed a verifiably historic moment. And I’m glad I was here to see that pear not going anywhere in our canal.

The breakwater at San Nicolo’ on the Lido was an excellent spot for watching this epic event. This clip gives a sense of the force of the wind, always a crucial player on Team Flood Venice. This morning it was up to 41 kph (25 mph).

In case the still photograph above doesn’t convey the dynamic of what’s happening, this video from Corriere della Sera (particularly at the beginning and end of the clip) gives a glimpse of the force of the tide, as seen against the barriers as they rise, one by one. Fun fact: It took one hour and 17 minutes to raise all 78 of the gates, so the process obviously needs to start in a timely manner and not wait till the last OMG minute.

But this is astonishingly beautiful: Noon today in the Piazza San Marco, the moment of the peak tide which ought to have covered the pavement with some 45 cm/17 inches of lagoon. The only water that dampened the stones here came from the clouds.

Note: Two videos, and all of the images with the exception of the water in the Piazza San Marco, were forwarded to me by friends via WhatsApp, so I am unable to give appropriate credit to their sources.

Venetian-ness

Sandro: Here’s looking at you

September 27, 2020 9 Comments

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.

Venetian-ness

Life goes on

August 30, 2020 9 Comments

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.

Water

The old swimming hole

August 27, 2020 21 Comments

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.

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.

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