Let me set the scene: Below is a glimpse of a typical high-season day in the Venice of yore. Till last year, high season had spread across most of the calendar.
Just a brief refresher on what “normal” used to look like on any summer morning.A late-summer afternoon in 2016. When I made this photograph I was concentrating on the gondolino — I was so accustomed to the traffic that only later did I notice how much there was. Does it seem like there are more taxis every year? That’s because until 2020, there were more every year. An undated overview of unscheduled water transport (i.e., not vaporettos) listed 271 taxis and 158 tourist launches.I’m not sure why Tony Catanzaro decided to give this student a rowing lesson in the maelstrom of the bacino of San Marco, and I’ll never know if she ever came back for another one. But if you’re going to row around here, you have to find a way to deal with all this. It’s like those jungle survival courses.Enormous tracts of Venetian water are essentially off limits to anyone rowing, unless they know how to handle the waves. It may be counterintuitive, but summer is the worst season of all for going out in a boat with oars. One can certainly renounce rowing. But when one suddenly finds the city floating in what amounts to a millpond, the way it has been for a year or so, it’s like a paper-thin silver lining to the rest of life.
Let me state that there is nothing good about the pandemic, so don’t think what I’m about to say is to be taken as positive. Except that in its tiny little way, it is.
Over the past months, the daily armies of motorized boats of all shapes and purposes and horsepowerage roaring around everywhere — particularly in the Grand Canal — have made a forced retreat. This is bad (see above), but the side effect has been a Grand Canal liberated from the appalling turmoil that had long since become normal.
Note: Barges and their cousins are still at work, but what are missing are the approximately 39,210,443 taxis and tourist launches that had claimed the waterways as their own.
Result: Space, tranquility, and calm water for Venetian boats to return to their native habitat, which they have been doing on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Perhaps also at other times, but I’m not there to see them.
So for anyone who might want to breathe the atmosphere of a watercourse that has been unintentionally restored to many Venetians who had been effectively banished for years, here are some views of our Sunday morning row in our own little boat a week ago. There were even more on Saturday, because boaty people like to go to the Rialto market, but Sundays had long since been taken over by herds of taxis thundering along one of the world’s most beautiful streets like the migration of the wildebeest in the Serengeti.
Here are some glimpses of what the Grand Canal looks like when there are more Venetians than anybody else. Enjoy it, because yesterday the Great Reopening began here, and we may have seen the last of this.
Hark! Is that a boat I see on the horizon?Yes indeed it is, a sandolo rowed by three friends from the DLF Sport Mare rowing club. Odd numbers of rowers are not ideal in Venetian rowing, but maybe somebody couldn’t make it. Or wasn’t invited. Or maybe they just like it this way, because we saw them two days ago as well.Approaching on the left is a pupparino from the Remiera Canottieri Cannaregio rowing club, while lurking along the right side of the canal is a sandolo from the Associazione Canottieri Giudecca. Surprising how many clubs have chosen red and white as their colors, though the reds vary. Even from this distance you’d never confuse the bordeaux tint here with the fire-engine red (not shown here) of the Unione Sportiva Remiera Francescana (full disclosure: we’re members).Slipping up behind us is a mascareta from the Reale Societa Canottieri Francesco Querini.I don’t exactly know the man in the bow, but I have had a little run-in with him and it appears that almost every boating person in Venice has encountered him at some point. Let’s just say he can be difficult. (Also, he likes to video his excursions; note the video cameras set up on the bow and stern of the boat.) Still, he was in a great mood and not only said hello as they went past, but called his partner to execute an alzaremi for us. Too bad their oars weren’t synchronized, and neither was I in time with my camera. But the intention was very nice.
Hark! We meet again. It’s the three from the DLF Sport Mare, heading upstream on their way back to their boathouse.DLF Sport Mare was previously known simply as the “DLF,” Dopo Lavoro Ferroviario, the Railway Workers After-Work club. Their boathouse is up behind the railway station, of course.A private s’ciopon being rowed “a la valesana,” with two oars per rower. The man astern is the former president of the Reale Societa’ Canottieri Bucintoro rowing club.Coming up fast on the inside rail, so to speak, is a gondolino, also from the Bucintoro.This is a hard boat to row in the throes of the usual Cape Horn waves around Venice, but with water like this it’s really fun.
Catching up with the four-oar guys.Another mascareta, this time from the Remiera Ponte dei Sartori, has slid down the Cannaregio Canal and has turned left into the Grand Canal. Seems like everybody had the same idea this morning and I felt somehow that everyone belonged, because of course they do.Followed by two of their compatriots.Feeling good. You just know it.The compatriots again. Usually people row to the end of the Grand Canal and back up it again, or go home another way. It just depends on many factors ranging from the weather, the tide, how much time you’ve got for this, maybe what’s for lunch (rush home, or take the long way back….).Querini club again. Great to see so many people out today.Two mascaretas from the Gruppo Sportivo Voga Veneta Mestre club, on the edge of the lagoon at the end of the bridge to the mainland. They are indefatigable, especially on Saturday when batches of them row to the Rialto to check out the fish.
We went home by the back roads, so to speak, and found that some gondoliers were making the most of the lack of traffic to help their aspiring students practice rowing. On the gondola hiding just behind the corner was another gondolier with beginner aboard.The lion is definitely feeling it.
So we have swung between two extremes — the old days entailed lots of work and craziness and also hugely damaging motondoso, then the pandemic period was marked by no work, no craziness, lots of people with no money. But I will whisper this: I never would have thought I’d have the chance to feel that the city returned somehow to its origins, and it has been beyond wonderful. Whether some middle ground between the two extremes can be found will be clear only when the pandemic is well and truly over.
