Transport, Uncategorized, Venetian Problems

The last rant of 2012, I promise

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A touch of Christmas spirit, hung out to dry.  Festive photographs are added to this post to mitigate the rantage.

I can’t resist — well, I don’t know if I can’t, because I haven’t tried — recounting the latest arabesques from the ACTV.  And lest you think I am obsessed with the public transport system here, let me defend my little manias by saying that it’s not so much the ACTV that I’m obsessed with so much as I am with absurdities and preposterosities.  They have a fatal fascination for me.  My father was the same way.  And the ACTV is the Venetian equivalent of Old Faithful, gushing an unfailing flood of reckless absurdity over the the lives of innocent, unoffending travelers who have paid their money to go somewhere and have found themselves instead on the road to the looney bin.

Christmas Day.  I thought everybody knew that the entire world has important plans which involve some sort of travel.  But if you were to have been so ill-starred as to need to go between the Lido and Tronchetto (d/b/a/ the mainland) on the morning of our Saviour’s birth, you’d have spent all morning praying in your car.  A car almost certainly loaded with children, gifts for relatives, and perhaps foodstuffs not packed for long-term transport.

Poinsettias (known here as “stella di Natale,” or “Christmas star”) are always a good theme for a tablecloth. They’re so pretty.  And they don’t have to be watered.

According to the report in the Gazzettino, the reserved spaces for cars on the ferryboats for Christmas Day had been sold out almost a week earlier.  Which meant that — not to put too fine a point on it — the ACTV had time to prepare reinforcements, because it is obvious to anyone who has ever been alive on Christmas Day that masses of people who needed to travel but hadn’t managed to book a space would just show up.  And so it was: On the morning of one of the busiest travel days in the year, hundreds of cars were lined up, at the Lido and also at Tronchetto, just waiting.

This was Olympics-level waiting, waiting on the grand scale.  Because the ACTV had put only two (2) ferryboats into service that morning.  One (1) going each way.

The two “flagships” (“Lido di Venezia” and “San Nicolo'”) were out of service for scheduled maintenance work.  Not emergency maintenance, which would be moderately excusable, but work that had been scheduled by some large intellect for the holiday period.  Not only does this border on madness from the public-service point of view, it’s also insane because who would be working over Christmas?  Except, I mean, in an emergency capacity.

The enraged would-be passengers began a surge of protest on Facebook and (I suppose) Twitter.  The ACTV, roused by this from its torpor, launched extra boats — the two smallest ferries, “Marco Polo” at 12:05 and “Ammiana” (no heating, but who cares at this point) at 12:20.  For someone who might have had a two-hour trip ahead of them, this wouldn’t translate as “Way to go, ACTV, you’ve saved the day,” but “Thanks, ACTV, you’ve dismembered my Christmas.”

Note: Due to the “excellent work” of Mauro Minio, may his tribe increase and all go to work for the ACTV, the “Lido di Venezia” was sufficiently repaired in order to begin service that afternoon at 4:00 PM.

All this needs no comment from me, but why should that stop me?  The ACTV isn’t expected to stop the war in Syria.  It isn’t expected to eradicate malaria.  It isn’t expected to adopt Ukrainian orphans.  It isn’t expected to anything but provide the means, for payment, by which the public may go from here to there. But that seems to be too much to expect. Pay, yes.  Transport you to where you’re going? In the immortal words of Jack Benny, they’re thinking about it, they’re thinking about it.

Must keep foremost in mind the reason for all this wild activity. My vote goes to this scene; I’ve never seen a fuzzy pipe-cleaner palm tree before, but next year I want an entire oasis made of them.

Breaking news: The ACTV has announced a severe crackdown on scofflaws who ride for free.  Naturally there are people who skip the ticket-buying process. The company makes cheating irresistible, what with gouging the passengers with the price of tickets and then not bothering to maintain any system of checking them (I cannot remember, even if you promised me a house in Aspen, the last time a ticket-checker appeared).

Furthermore, ever since the new, computerized system of electronic tickets replaced the old paper version, you’re required to “beep” your ticket on a little machine before climbing aboard.  Even if you have a month’s pass, you’re required to “beep.”  Anyone caught with an un-beeped ticket is counted as someone who didn’t pay.

No one has ever understood why a person with a once-beeped monthly pass has to keep beeping it or be punished. The ACTV says it’s to get accurate statistics on ridership.

For a while, the ACTV put posters up in the vaporettos and buses complimenting themselves that the percentage of freeloaders had dropped from 8.20 percent to 1.16 percent under their intense vigilance.  But the numbers conceal an unpleasant fact, which is that the directors’ bonuses are directly linked to the percentage of deadbeats they catch. In the real world, that would make sense.  Prizes are supposed to be given for performance. But wait.

Davide Scalzotto wrote about this in the Gazzettino a month ago, headined (I translate): “The mystery of onboard evasion, and the mystery of the company’s bonuses.”  It was inspired by the press conference held to announce the new program to install turnstiles on the docks (there already are some in operation) and buses, turnstiles which are going to stop freeloaders forever.  But the company didn’t give specific numbers to delineate the dimensions of the problem, making it impossible to know how efficient they actually have been and, more to the point, how necessary these expensive turnstiles really are.

The only reason to go anywhere by any means of transport is to eat and drink. And wash up.

As Scalzotto points out, the ACTV is stuck.  If they admit that evasion is high, they don’t have any basis for awarding bonuses.  But on the other hand, if they say evasion is low (“We did it!”), they don’t have any basis for justifying the new turnstiles.

The data provided by the ACTV shows that in 2009 (one year after the electronic, or IMOB, system was instituted), the rate of evasion on the vaporettos was 0.49 percent, and on the buses was 1.72 percent.  In 2011 the rate was 0.64 percent on water and 2.12 on land.

The limit below which bonuses are automatically awarded is fixed at 0.70 and 2.0 percent. This is extraordinary: The numbers given for diminished evasion are just a squeak under the limit which permits the bonuses. I’m not sure how they got around the 2.0 ceiling, but bonuses to the ACTV are like rain in Cherrapunjee, India: Inevitable.

Now a city councilor, Sebastiano Costalonga, has opened an inquiry which will seek to obtain the certifiable passenger/evasion numbers from 2010 to today, and discover the parameters which are used to determine the bonuses.

But keep this in mind.  The ACTV has declared that they’re 8 million euros in the red.  The turnstiles will cost around 5 million euros.  Apart from the fact that these turnstiles will create a sack of problems, as we say here, for the passengers, how can the ACTV keep raising ticket prices because they’re broke, if at the same time they’re so ready to spend money they don’t have?

For something which — if their own numbers are to be believed — isn’t necessary in the first place.  Because if they really have driven down the percentage of cheapskates with hardly any turnstiles, what’s the point of adding more turnstiles?

I promise to change the subject in 2013.  Not for the entire year, but at least for a little while.

Happy New Year.

Wishing everyone a year full to the brim with everything wonderful.
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Venetian-ness

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Buon Natale, too

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This year the students at the Francesco Morosini Naval School, aided and abetted by the chaplain, Don Gianni, put together a lagoon Nativity scene. It’s very cool that the Three Kings are arriving aboard a classic boat, a “sampierota.” They wisely left their camels behind, perhaps to leave space to bring everybody back to the mainland from this little sandbank after Epiphany.

Christmas this year (so far) has been the most subdued I’ve ever seen.  It’s not the spirit that is lacking, but the fundage.  I don’t need to remind you that yes, we have no money.

Christmas lights no longer festoon via Garibaldi, though a few indomitable individuals have put up some illumination.  I salute them. They obviously have nothing to fear from the energy companies.

And speaking of indomitable, I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the neighborhood pastry-wizard has outdone himself in widening the space between size and price in his festive offerings.  An ingenious little creation (note the use of the word “little”) of chocolate shavings and lumps of torrone, representing an Alpine village — the sort of thing which usually adorns a liquor-and-mascarpone-sodden cake — is now being offered without the cake.  For the same inflated price.  If I were to want to spend 30 euros ($40) for a plate of chocolate fragments, I would…. No, I wouldn’t, actually. If I had 30 euros to spend on a present, I’d give somebody a batch of bees via the Heifer Project.  At least that way the gift would propagate.  No propagation powers yet discovered in the world of ostentatious confections. End of sermon.

An example of the minimalist approach to the Christmas cake. He has made a version which costs “only” 30 euros, but you see the style. It’s on a cardboard base about the size of a luncheon plate, if anybody uses those anymore. Not small, but not big, either. Not 30-euros big, in any case.
This is what a normal, standard-issue Christmas cake looks like. True, you can’t eat much of it, and what you do eat sort of haunts you for hours. But at least you’re getting something in return for your cash.

Day before yesterday, feeling the onset of the big day, we had a party at our rowing club.  It was great.  Because the tornado last June destroyed our clubhouse, we now cling to the edge of the lagoon with our boats parked under two big tents, with a container serving as locker room, kitchen, and bathroom. The kind of container they give to earthquake survivors.  It works, but it’s not a long-term plan.

A table, panettone and wine, and people: It’s a party! The fog invited itself.

Just to give an idea of the atmosphere. We’ve had more fog than high water so far this year by a factor of at least ten, and fog is arguably more dangerous than acqua alta to most activities (I’m thinking of fatal collisions, and also getting lost). But fog just doesn’t seem to excite reporters in the same way.

It was a modest, Bob-Cratchity sort of celebration but the most important elements were there:  Fizzy wine (not the usual prosecco, but somebody’s home-bottled lambrusco), panettone and pandoro (my favorite, as is anything involving extra sugar), and smiling people. The frigid foggy wind was thrown in at no extra cost.

Another bonus was having time to hang around with some of the old guys and hear them geeze about the old days.  I pick up unexpected bits of lore this way.  This time I learned why gondoliers hate the nickname “pasta e oca” (pasta and goose).

Lino (whose grandfather was a gondolier, as is his son) says that they ate pasta and goose because they’ve always been “grandoni” — that is, tending toward the grandiose.  Someone added, however, that in his opinion they hated being called this nickname because the dish (which I’ve never tried) is a sort of viscid, mucilaginous preparation which is so revolting it makes you want to barf.  As it was told to me.

In any case, the preferred rejoinder to “Hey, pasta e oca!'” is “And yo’ mama gets the neck!”

Christmas spirit comes in all shapes and sizes, and I liked our standing-around-outside-in-the-freezing-soggy-air version.  There weren’t very many of us, but it didn’t matter.  This would be the only point on which I might agree with the pastry-shark.  When it comes to a festa, it’s not about quantity.

So auguri (ow-GOOR-ee), as we say here.  Technically, “good auguries.”  We no longer practice divination by studying the liver of sacrificial animals, or the flight of birds, so I’ll translate this as “Good wishes!”

Our irrepressible neighbors along the canal have thrown caution somewhere — to the wind, or into the water– and favored us with all these sparkles.  In these purlieus, the Christmas star leads , not to the Baby Jesus, but to the laundry on the line.
Heading out to do some errands this morning, I came across a festive garbage collector. He turned the corner about ten seconds ahead of me, and when I turned it he was nowhere to be seen. Nowhere. I’m thinking Santa has turned his sleigh in and is working with the ecological operator’s wagon.
Near San Giovanni Crisostomo, I came across a kiosk selling a vast assortment of figurines for your own Nativity set at home. In addition to the Holy Family, shepherds, angel, ox, ass, and Three Kings, you could have a woodcutter, with wood.
Here is a couple eating pizza, something I’ve always felt that Nativity scenes lacked. And a butcher with large sections of just-cut-up animals.
The sign says this woman is a “battipanni,” or rug-beater, though technically the battipanni referred to the woven wood paddle she’d use to pound the dust out of the carpets. Just so you know. Still, an excellent person to have in your Christmas creche, what with all the swaddling cloths and probably saddle cloths too, for the donkey.
A tailor would be an excellent person to have on the team; here she’s busy making shirts.
Someone to re-upholster your sofa or ottoman. You could get everything in your house fixed up by Epiphany, at this rate.

 

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Venetian Food

Christmas addendum

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I left you with images of raw fish and a gnomic reference to the Christmas Forcola (not to be confused with the Great Pumpkin).  I think you deserve to see how they came out.

This is what the risotto made from the go' looks like. Perhaps you can intuit from the look of it that the last step is to add butter. How could it not be great? If this dish was to found on any Venetian table other than ours, I would be very happy to know it.
This is what risotto made from go' looks like. Perhaps you can intuit from the look of it that the last step is to add butter. How could it not be great? If this dish was to be found on any Venetian table other than ours, though, I would be very happy to know it.
And this is the grilled eel. True, it doesn't look dramatically different than when it was raw, but I think it tasted a whole lot better.
And this is the grilled eel. True, it doesn't look dramatically different than when it was raw, but I think it tasted a whole lot better.
The Christmas Forcola. For me, the only thing cooler than decorating it would be to row it in this state. But I know beyond any doubt that the mere suggestion would be thrown down the well of Discarded Americanate. In any case, I like to think that the forcola enjoys being used for something, anyway.
The Christmas Forcola. For me, the only thing cooler than decorating it would be to row it in this state. But I know beyond any doubt that the mere suggestion would be thrown down the well of Discarded Americanate. In any case, I like to think that the forcola enjoys being used for something.
One of the best Nativity scenes I've yet discovered, here in the church of San Biagio. It has many imaginative touches but two flaws which concern me.
One of the best Nativity scenes I've yet discovered, here in the church of San Biagio. It has many imaginative touches but two flaws which concern me.
We have all the fundamental components here except for one thing. Where's the manger? I tried to convince Lino that a hayrack could be serving the same purpose, but he wasn't buying it. He was also not so keen on the fact that Mary is holding the Baby Jesus when he's supposed to be lying in the manger. But if there isn't one......
First flaw: We have all the fundamental components here except for one thing. Where's the manger? I tried to convince Lino that a hayrack could perhaps serve the same purpose, but he wasn't buying it. He was also not so keen on the fact that Mary is holding the Baby Jesus when he's supposed to be lying in the manger. But if there isn't one......
For my part, much as I love this domestic scene (two bonus points for the laundry hanging out to dry), I can't get past the fact that there is a pig. I don't insist on the manger, but I can't see any justification on this earth for there being a pig. I must speak to the priest.
Second flaw: Much as I love this domestic scene (two bonus points for the laundry hanging out to dry), I can't get past the fact that there is a pig. I don't insist on the manger, but I can't see any justification on this earth for there being a pig. I must speak to the priest.
But while his/their imagination was running wild, it came up with a very nice addition to the traditional cast of characters: Fishermen, with net and fish. In the upper left corner is a small waterfall, which adds a nice sound to the atmosphere. I'm not convinced that fishermen are likely to be out at night in the way the shepherds were, but I'll still go with it. After all, they've put in a pig. A couple of fish can't matter, especially when you remember its symbolic value.
But while their imaginations were running wild, the designers came up with a very nice addition to the traditional cast of characters: Fishermen, with net and fish. In the upper left corner is a small waterfall, which adds a nice sound to the atmosphere. I'm not convinced that fishermen are likely to be out at night in the way the shepherds were, but I'll still go with it. After all, they've put in a pig. A couple of fish can't matter, especially when you remember their symbolic value.
Returning from the perplexing sacred to the reassuringly profane, a batch of Santas have asked to wish you all a good night. I let them stay up just this once.
Returning from the perplexing sacred to the reassuringly profane, a batch of Santas have asked to wish you all a good night. I let them stay up just this once.
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