During the past two weeks there has been fog: Some days on, then sunshine, then back the fog rolls again. It’s very poetic and romantic, looked at one way. But it’s highly inconvenient if you need to take the vaporetto to do something unpoetic, because some lines are suspended, and the rest are all sent up and down the Grand Canal. This means that you may well be walking farther to your destination than you had budgeted time and energy for. Maybe you yourself can manage that, but if you’re a very sick and frail old lady — looking at you, Maria from upstairs — who has to get to the hospital for her chemotherapy, the fact that your vaporetto doesn’t exist today means you’re forced to take a taxi to the hospital. That’ll be 50 euros please. Going, and then coming home. Not at all poetic if you’re living on 750 euros a month.
But let’s say you’re on one of the vaporettos, living a routine day. Don’t relax completely. Because even though the battelli (the big fat waterbuses) have radar, and so does the ferryboat trundling up and down the Giudecca Canal between Tronchetto and the Lido, that doesn’t guarantee that the drivers are looking at it, or if they are, are understanding what they are seeing. Radar, much like bras or penicillin, is intended to help you, but only if you actually use it.
I mention this because yesterday the fog was pretty thick. And around 1:00 PM, the #2 that crosses the Giudecca Canal between the Zattere and the Giudecca itself collided with the ferry. At that point the two routes are operating at right angles to each other. Everybody knows this. I mean, one shouldn’t be even minimally surprised to find these two boats out there.
But find each other they did. In the collision nobody was hurt, but one passenger temporarily lost his mind and punched the marinaio, the person who ties up the boat at each stop, in the face. Why the marinaio? Because he was there, I suppose. He certainly wasn’t navigating. Nor was the captain, evidently.
To translate the phrase in the brief article in La Nuova Venezia, “Probably the incident was caused by the thick fog.” I don’t mean to be pedantic, but “The fog made me do it” doesn’t sound quite right. The fog had been out for hours; it hardly sneaked up on the boats from behind. The pedant further wonders why the fog gets all the blame. It didn’t grab the two boats and push them together, like two hapless hamsters. One might more reasonably say that the incident was caused by two individuals, one per boat, who were not paying attention either to the water ahead or to their radar. Footnote: These vehicles operate on schedules. I’m going to risk saying that one could easily predict when they would be, as they put it here, “in proximity to each other.” If one wanted to.
But let’s return to the poetry.
Rio de la Ca’ di Dio. The forecast is for more fog tomorrow. If I put on my gray coat, I’ll disappear.
This day is commonly observed here by means of sprays of mimosa. I’ve written about this before.
Today, in addition to the mimosa, we had a 24-hour transit strike (busses, trams, trains, and of course vaporettos). This is some sort of inexplicable sub-tradition, because Women’s Day has been disfigured by a transit strike more than once. Some vaporettos will run, but it will be a task to reorganize your day to accommodate the ACTV, the public transport company. If this strike were to accomplish something, I’d be so glad. But it seems a feeble reed to wield in the struggles that women live through every day, up to and including their struggles with the ACTV.
The ACTV has a hundred reasons for calling strikes; we have one every few months. They are mostly politically motivated and are usually directed at lapses in administration. Work problems, not human problems. This year they’ve decided to take every social problem yet identified and load them onto a highly worthy cause and, you know, let the women carry it.
So the ACTV demonstrates its sensitivity to the problems of women in Venice, the nation, the world, by creating problems for women. Transport strikes absolutely mangle your day in a city with basically two alternatives — feet and taxis. Let’s say you have to accompany your sick neighbor to the hospital for her radiation therapy today. During a strike last year we walked to the only functioning vaporetto stop, much farther than the usual stop, and took the sole working vaporetto two stops to San Zaccaria, where they put everybody ashore. Then we had to walk inland, streets, bridges, streets, bridges, to get to the hospital under our own fading steam. She was so frail by then, but such a trouper.
When the next strike rolled around she could hardly walk to the corner anymore, so we had to take a taxi — that will be 50 euros (rate from her house to the hospital). And 50 euros back, naturally. Her pension was 750 a month. But sure, the ACTV’s union disagreements come first.
So just work your way around the strike however you can, or can’t. Kids going to school? Get them up at 4:00. (Made up, but not by much.) Going to your job, or your second job, today? Call to say you can’t make it and lose the day’s pay. Or walk. Be sure to consult the labyrinthine schedule of the times and routes of the limited service, or just decide to stay home.
So thank you, ACTV, for acknowledging all the problems that ought not to exist in a woman’s world. I don’t see you on the list, though.
Monday morning, things were different. Yes, we (still) have no tourists, nor will we, probably, for an unknown stretch of time. But it seemed like there were more locals around, somehow. Life has begun to find its old grooves, though not always in a good way; “old grooves” means “do whatever I want.” I was afraid of this. More on this below.
There are still regulations, but they have evolved. The Gazzettino published two pages of lists, according to category, of what we’re allowed to do during this phase. (Phase 3 will begin June 3).
Masks are still required outdoors wherever it’s impossible to maintain social distancing, but gloves are no longer required inside a shop unless you intend to be touching the merchandise. (Shops will have bottles of hand-sanitizer and sometimes gloves available.) Clearly you can resist touching certain things, but only up to a point — I doubt that the employees will always be available to do your fetching and carrying. And of course, if you’re buying clothing you’ll have to touch the merchandise. Obvious. Just plan on gloves.
Gloves are no longer required on the vaporetto. Even more interesting is that the seating has been reassigned to accommodate more passengers.
Did I say “more passengers”? Transport is a mess now. The number of boats hasn’t increased, and the 4.1 and 4.2 lines have yet to reappear. A friend of mine waited 50 minutes at Piazzale Roma to be able to board a vaporetto bound for the Lido. I think what’s so annoying about that is that the ACTV seems to have been hoping people just wouldn’t notice that they had cut service by 50 per cent. When nobody could travel, the service could have been cut even more than that, but now people actually want to get somewhere. Amazing, I know. Who would have thought.
The main problem this week — and it’s a big one — is the increasing number of people not wearing masks, or with their masks pulled down below their chin. I saw a man this morning talking with a friend, and the man had pulled his mask down to make talking easier. I’m sure he put it back when it wasn’t needed anymore. And social distancing? Suddenly people here are having more difficulty than I am in estimating what “one meter” means (and they’ve grown up with the metric system)…
NOTICE: Do not overstep (this barrier), the zone is secure for persons at the tables. To reach the restrooms, use the side door in the calle and respect the wait times. The bar is disinfected (“hygienized”) at mid-day and at evening by means of a bleach-based solution as advised by the minister of health. Entrance is forbidden during the disinfection!
For your further care: Every table is supplied with spray and/or disinfectant wipes. Clients are free to disinfect tables and seats. Attention: The products are based on bleach solution (1 per cent). At night an anti-bacteria lamp with ozone will be used, to guarantee as germ-free a local as possible.
Please be aware of these and respect the rules, the customers, the owners, and the collective health.
NOTICE: At the table please keep your gloves on till you are sure to be in a disinfected area. You are requested to register (everybody) on our Facebook page to keep track of your presence to be notified in case of contagion.
You are requested to have your self-certification in case of any controls by the competent officers. Specific disinfecting products will be available to you. Remove your mask only to drink or eat. Put on gloves and mask before asking for the bill. Wait to be sure you have useful interpersonal space before moving around.
Avoid touching surfaces that you don’t need to use.
Please be aware of these and respect the rules, the customers, the owners, and the collective health.
Lest you think they have an extreme concern for their customers, which of course I hope they do, bear in mind that they also have an extreme concern for themselves. Literally overnight, like some diabolical algae bloom, masses of people gathering to party in public places has become a major problem. It’s happening all over Italy. Fines for these happy-hour shenanigans range from 300 to 4,000 euros, and if that’s no deterrent to the blithe spirits, the bar and restaurant owners are enjoined to break up any groups forming in front of their establishment, otherwise they (the owners) risk suspension of their licenses and will be closed.
All this revelry is the big story these days, because groups MUST NOT BE PERMITTED TO FORM. Front-page headline in the Gazzettino two days ago: “Spritz and folly: ‘I’ll close everything again'” (Luca Zaia, governor of the Veneto). “The Halt! of the governor: Exaggerated nightlife and too many without masks: They should remember the deaths.” “In Padova tens of young people drunk, carabinieri attacked” (wait, what?). “The prefect: Stupidity everywhere, I’m astonished by such childishness.”
The Gazzettino’s headlines yesterday: “Wild nights: Maxi-fines and closures. Bars packed and spritz without masks. (Prime Minister) Conte: This isn’t the time to be partying. Steep sanctions for whoever slips up and stopping the bars.” Sorry for the translation — like so many things, it sounds better in Italian.
“Look,” Zaia states on the front page — “I’ll close everything. We’ll go back to sealing ourselves in our houses with silicone. The use of the mask can’t be seen as a whim, it’s a lifesaver.”
So these modest little photos of via Garibaldi are nothing compared to the locust-swarms of adolescents of every age that overnight have turned the streets and piazzas of Italian towns into pullulating masses of merriment. What strikes me as modestly amusing is that in Venice a lot of this behavior used to be perpetrated by the much-maligned tourists. I’m not saying that whenever the tourists return, and presumably resume their rampant rude revolting craziness, that I’m going to be glad. I’ll be glad to see people enjoying the city, as I always have been when people come to Venice who do not act either like a herd of overstimulated wild boars or moribund water buffalo collapsing before they reach the river.
Speaking of tourists, this just in: The Biennale has been canceled for this year. It had been scheduled as per normal from late May to late November; comes the pandemic and it was halved to run from late August to late November. Now it will run from late never to late never. Whatever disappointment you may feel about losing the chance to see the exhibitions is nothing compared to what the myriad tourist-tenders are feeling. The 2019 edition logged almost 600,000 visitors, who not only paid the entrance fee but ate, slept, and did other money-intensive things here to the tune of 48,000,000 euros. Whatever percentage of that amount the city treasury realized, it will be sorely missed this year. Tourism to Venice isn’t just shirtless day-trippers laying siege to the Piazza San Marco.
Another sign of the new times is price hikes. Some hairdressers and bar owners are trying to make up lost ground by increasing their prices. There have been reports of an espresso costing as much as 1.70 euros (as opposed to the normal 1 or 1.10). Some salons have added 2 euros, marked “COVID” on the bill, to cover the cost of the single-use supplies they have had to lay in, and some have acquired expensive disinfecting equipment that cleans the air by ozone. Some shops have a box for contributions to help defray the new costs.
There’s at least one normal thing I’d rather not see. It has nothing to do with coronavirus, but is a sort of mine-canary for what I consider the dark side of life-as-usual here: Horrific motorboat accidents. For nearly three months private motorboats were grounded, and at the moment motorboat traffic is still fairly modest (taxis are yet to be seen, for one thing), so accidents haven’t made news because there weren’t any. But on May 18 there was a headline about a collision with a piling, and it brought a dank whiff of “Oh, so we’re back to doing that again,” not unlike the random shootings in the US once lockdown was lifted.
I would bet you money that every single person who has come to Venice in the past 200 years has said: “It looks like a stage set.” I’ve heard lots of people say it, as if it were an astonishing discovery. I heard myself say it, on my first trip here. I thought I’d said something original.
But empty stages, I’m here to tell you, aren’t interesting at all.
Walking to the Rialto Market yesterday morning was not a very pleasant experience. There were some people outside, here and there, but a promenade that I once would have savored as a delicious interlude of stolen calm was a wander across a disconcerting dreamscape; despite the gleaming March sunshine, it felt like we were walking through one of those vaguely ominous black and white Eastern European films from the Sixties.
Suddenly we saw a young couple having breakfast in the screened-in porch of the Pensione Wildner on the Riva degli Schiavoni – Honey look! Tourists! They were the only ones in the entire room, and I can’t say how I resisted taking their picture. Maybe I was afraid of scaring them away, like a barely glimpsed Javan rhino in the wild. (But if they’re in Venice these days, it’s probably impossible to scare them.) We passed a friend, a professional photographer, who was going toward San Marco, and I almost yelled “Tourists! On the Riva Schiavoni! Two of them!” as if he’d want to snap their picture for the Gazzettino before they escaped. This is not good at all.
Fun facts from the Gazzettino:
A review of 21 communes in the Veneto at the highest risk of hardship from the disappearance of tourists puts Venice at #16 (NOT #1), right after Livinallongo del Col di Lana (mountains) and right before Eraclea (beaches). The top six are all around Lake Garda, which depends a great deal on German tourists.
Speaking of Germany, the epidemic started there, it’s just been stated, and not Italy (so we can throw away our leper bells?). Just telling you for the record.
Vaporetto ridership is down 40 per cent. Actually, this is delightful for those who are still riding, but don’t say that to the ACTV officials who are beginning to consider cutting back on service. Yesterday morning we were on the #1 coming back from the Rialto and there were 13 people aboard, including us. Two (not one, but two) ticket inspectors got on, and went down the aisle, as required, checking if everybody had a valid ticket. It seemed just a little extreme; I’d say we’re scraping the bottom of the barrel here, if the fine on one freeloader is going to keep the ACTV afloat.
In point of fact, a large part of the mountains of money from the vaporetto tickets are spent on the land buses; lack of tourists paying 7.50 euros per ride means that red ink will soon be leaking onto the accounting pages. The books are already a little bloodstained by the cost of the damage from the acqua granda of November 12: There are 9 vaporettos and 22 docks needing more or less major repair or reconstruction, (20,000,000 euros).
Also, every night 95 vaporettos, 300 buses and 15 trams are disinfected. That’s not free, of course — what is? Not that I have sympathy to spare for the ACTV, but I’ve only ever noticed the problem of too few vaporettos for too many passengers. It’s a surprise to find myself thinking, even briefly, about too many vehicles and not enough riders.
Stage-managing this city has always been a challenge. But now we not only have no audience, but hardly any actors, either. This is some spectacle.