Venetian Events

The Vogalonga cometh

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That sound you may have thought was silence from out here was actually the sound of me putting my shoulder to the titanic wheel, so to speak, of the registration work for the annual event known as the Vogalonga, or “long row.”

This year it will be held on this coming Sunday, June 12. It has never been held this late in the year (May has been its preferred month), and I’ll explain the reason for this in a moment.

Just like people, each of these oar-driven marathons for the past 36 years is different, yet each one is the same.  Thousands of rowers in all sorts of boats proceeding around a 30-km (18-mile) course betwixt the islands of the northern lagoon.

Every year there are more of them rowing in single kayaks, and far too many of them get in the way and do things that do not demonstrate a profound experience either of boats and a tidal lagoon, by which I mean they don’t seem to realize there is a tide working harder than even they are — against them, with them, or a blend of both.  Their not taking the tide into account conduces to many little surprises for them.  Any nearby Venetians, knowing this, have already come up with Plan B to avoid getting involved in their assorted miscalculations.

The start is always impressive, though this image doesn't give anything near the sense of mass migration you feel at the waterline.

Back to the registration work: It goes on for two weeks, and today and tomorrow, being the last days (and being the weekend) will be spectacularly chaotic at the office, as thousands of just-arrived, already-happy-and-excited rowers appear to claim their pectoral with the registration number, and the T-shirts allotted to them.  There is often much debate among them about what size Ingrid or Francois is going to need, while masses of waiting rowers pile up behind them.

In the early days — last week — I’d take a Medium (or whatever) out of its plastic bag to demonstrate what it looked like (leading to more debate…..). But those days are gone.  If somebody asks me now for two Large, I just give them to him/her.  If they want to exchange them they have to go to the back of the line and wait their turn.  It’s either me doing that, or fifty impatient rowers deciding to take matters into their own hands.

Briefly, the reason why we will be rowing for hours in mid-June (which translates as “probably scorchingly hot”) is because this year it’s Venice’s turn to host an annual event which rotates among the four participating cities of Venice, Pisa, Florence, and Genoa.

It’s called the Palio of the Four Ancient Maritime Republics, and it’s rowed on eight-oar boats, something like life-saving boats, called “galleons.”  In case you’re wondering what Pisa is doing in the lineup, Pisa was an important port city before the harbor silted up and they built that tower and batches of city on top of it. They’ve been digging up sunken Roman ships in town for years now.

Fine, I hear you say, but how does this concern the Vogalonga?  Because the organizing committee of the Palio thought it would be cool to hold their race on the afternoon of the Vogalonga, seeing as there would already be so many  boats in the water (us).  The rowers could just stay in the water and watch the race and provide a lot of nautical garnish to the spectacle.

I will have to let you know how that fantasy works out, because from my own experience, I can say that the last thing anybody feels like doing at the end of possibly five hours in a boat is to stay in the boat, even to watch the World Cup.  Your primary thoughts at the end are for food, shade, a shower, and a chaise longue, if not a bed in a room with the blinds pulled down.

You have no secondary thoughts.  If you did, I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t be to stay in or near the water and watch a race that starts at 6:00 PM.

But what, as I often ask myself, do I know? I’ll let you know how it all turns out.

Back to the registration work.  There are two questions many people can’t resist asking when they sign up.  One is “How many boats are there?”  I don’t know and I don’t really try to know.  I’m just slinging T-shirts.  And besides, does it matter?  Have they organized an office pool on who bets closest to the correct number?  They’re here, so whether there are 2,893 or 5,001 boats can’t make any real difference.  Perhaps I’m wrong.

Second baffling question: “What’s the weather going to be?”  If any forecast, even for six hours from now, turned out to be correct, it would be amazing. Instead of replying, “You believe forecasts?” I have always tended to say, “All I can tell you is that whatever the weather is for you, it’s going to be the same for everybody else.”

This year I’m trying something different.  When they ask me, I just say “Beautiful. It’s going to be beautiful.” I’ll either be right or wrong, just like any other forecaster.

I experienced an amusing variation this year: I brought the Vogalonga cell phone home last night and left it on while I recharged it.  Two calls came in at 11:40 PM. I was sound asleep.

I didn’t even answer them, I just turned the phone off and tried to get back to reclaim that dream they so rudely interrupted.

Checking the numbers this morning, I see that one call was from an area near Rome, the other from Munich.  When I got up at 5:00, I was extremely tempted to call them back.  But the satisfaction would only have been momentary, so I let it go.

I may not be helpfully demonstrating T-shirt sizes anymore, but at least I haven’t descended to the level of vendetta.

The start may have been impressive, but it's the return that really gets you. Too many boats in the Cannaregio Canal, most of whom want to get ahead of you in very little space. There is usually a certain amount of shouting at this point.

 

 

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Venetian Problems

An afternoon stroll, plus swim

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The following event was so peculiar that naturally I have to tell you about it.

Protagonists: One (1) mother, one (1) 3-year old son (hers), one grandmother, one ambulance, and a couple of bystanders.  Jesus said that “Ye have the poor always with you,”  but I think he could have just as well said “bystanders,” at least in Venice.

As reported by the Gazzettino, Lucia, the mother, is a 39-year-old Moldovan who works as a waitress in a restaurant at the node where via Garibaldi reaches the lagoon.

The scene of the drama. The restaurant where Lucia works is immediately to the left of the bridge. The point where the plunge occurred is on the other side of the ramp. Which only raises another awkward question, which is how Lucia managed to see, "out of the corner of her eye," that a woman and stroller had fallen in. There are just too many things about this that I can't make fit together. However, you can see that there is more than enough room on the fondamenta to accommodate a brigade of perambulating grandmothers.

Last Friday, the afternoon was sunny and beautiful, so naturally anybody who had the chance was wandering along the Riva dei Sette Martiri to enjoy the rays, the breeze, the lagoon view, etc.

Among these wanderers was the grandmother, pushing her little grandson in his stroller, sharing some quality time till mom got off work at 3:00. Alessandro had been to the pediatrician that morning for a check-up after a week with bronchitis — an interesting detail considering what happened next.

Everything was proceeding in the most predictable way, with the grandmother ambling along the fondamenta, when suddenly she tripped on one of the myriad uneven, busted-up paving stones.  I note that these stones did not start to shift and break up overnight; it’s been a long and continuing process and unfortunately anyone could see it if they were looking.

She tripped and lost her balance, and she must have been strolling on the very edge of the pavement because she fell overboard, pulling the stroller and grandson with her, down into the lagoon.  By a strange stroke of good luck, she had not strapped Alessandro into the stroller, otherwise he would have gone straight to the bottom with his fatal vehicle. His grandmother managed to grab him.

All this happened in nanoseconds, but at that VERY INSTANT, Lucia came out of the restaurant and saw, a  mere few steps away, that a woman and a stroller had just fallen into the water.

Without an instant’s hesitation (though she later confessed to having a desperate fear of the water), she raced to the brink and dove in, grabbing the little boy.  At which point she discovered to her shock that the child she was saving from imminent drowning was, in fact, her own.

She started screaming, “It’s my son!  It’s my son!”, and managed to get to one of the nearby wooden pilings, to which she clung for dear life.

Cue the bystanders.  A few of them managed to pull Alessandro up onto dry land, while someone else called the ambulance, one of which miraculously happened to be nearby.  It zoomed up, the rescuers proceeded to rescue the two women and the boy, and whisked them to the Emergency Room.  Lucia and Alessandro were dismissed (evidently the bronchitis conceded the right of way in the face of a larger threat), but the grandmother was checked in for an injury to her leg.  All told, though, you could say that everybody was going to live happily ever after.

Except that I wonder about that. The fact that it was Lucia’s mother-in-law would almost inevitably have a certain bearing on life chez Alessandro till both women pass away, and possibly after. Because I would bet money that the family’s future is going to be composed of daily doubts, half-uttered recriminations, dark silences, and about a million spiky little questions before anybody goes out the door anymore.

And Alessandro, who may or may not remember much of this, and who certainly qualifies as a bystander as much as any geezer down the way fishing for seppie, is doomed to live the rest of his life trapped in this family drama like a trilobite in slowly hardening mud.

In case you were to be tempted to think this event too improbable to be true, a reality check is provided by the immediate finger-pointing and blame-assigning which followed.

Let me ask who you think is to blame for this near tragedy?

If you said “The city of Venice, because they let the pavement deteriorate to such a state that a grandmother with a stroller is virtually destined to trip and fall, risking her life, the unthinking cads,” you’d be in line with Lucia, who stated that it is shameful that people can’t walk along the riva without risking their life, though she didn’t specify at which point on the riva a rational person (the very edge?) might be likely to meander.

The Gazzettino has interpreted this event in the same way, concluding its report by observing that this kind of disaster was practically inevitable, given the constant degradation of the pavement which the city continues to ignore, except for occasionally slapping some cement on the worst problem spots.

On the other hand, if you said, “The grandmother,” you’d be in line with me.

I realize that in most situations, one’s first impulse is not to blurt, “Crikey, I totally screwed up, what was I thinking?”  But while I am usually several steps behind the last person to defend the city from its innumerable instances of neglect and indifference, I think it’s a bit of a reach to criticize the paving stones for where you put your feet.   Or, for that matter, your entire body (plus stroller and grandchild).

The Riva dei Sette Martiri is about 70 feet (22 meters) wide.  I don’t believe that walking along its center would put your life at risk. Why would anybody (who wasn’t fishing for seppie) feel the urge to walk along its very edge?  It’s like somebody walking along the shoulder of a six-lane interstate highway stumbling on some gravel and then blaming the city because a truck nearly ran them over.

They’re all alive, though, so I guess the city doesn’t have to scramble the fighter repair crew.  Until something really, really serious happens, the administration tends to take the “It seemed so real, but thank God it was just a bad dream” approach to the city’s problems.

But let me respectfully point out to any future grandmothers that whether the stones are smooth or jagged, there will always be water in the lagoon.

Or maybe the city’s to blame for that too.

 

 

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Fish, Venetian Food, Venetian History

Another day, another mollusk

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We went out rowing the other afternoon, which is always a good thing but not exactly news. Other people might have been unenthusiastic — and in fact, we didn’t see anybody else out — but we don’t wait for the weather to sing its little Lorelei song. That’s a waste of valuable time especially in March, what with Lorelei being so skittish.  We just go.

A nondescript March afternoon, soon to become much more descript with the gathering of the oysters.

For a while, the most notable thing about the excursion was the faintly hazy, vague color scheme of the part of the lagoon where we like to go. Then the breeze began to get to me. It wasn’t so strong, but it was raw and insistent, which began to be annoying, like a crying baby in the apartment at the end of the hall.  Part of the effect of the crying baby, as with the wind, is that there’s pretty much nothing you can do about it. Things I can’t do anything about really, really annoy me.  Just so you know.

But the situation became much more interesting when we ran the boat onto the exposed mudbank — the tide was out — so Lino could go exploring. I would have gone too, but wasn’t wearing shoes that would have made even the slightest effort to resist the squishy, waterlogged terrain.

And what he found were oysters.  I knew they were out there because he’s brought them home before.  Lagoon oysters on the half-shell were our antipasto for Christmas Eve dinner a few years ago, and they are delectable, not too large, not too small, and faintly sweet.  One source states that this breed is known for its “unique tannic seawater flavor…and [is] considered excellent for eating raw on the half shell.”  As I said.

To be precise, these unsung lagoon creatures are known elsewhere as the highly prized Belon oyster, the stuff of high-wattage chefs and cultivated feeders.  Here, nobody cares about them anymore. Even less than not caring, nobody seems to even know they exist. Here the restaurants are fixated on clams…clams…clams…clams, like a stuck culinary record.

These animals (Ostrea edulis) go by various names, from the clearly appropriate "mud oyster" to the much"European flat oyster" to the much more glamorous Belon oyster. Too bad about the lone canestrello, or "lid scallop," that was forced to come along. Lino would gladly have brought a batch of friends for him, if he'd found them.

Oysters were once as common in the market as clams.  A particularly Venetian habit, more firmly rooted than kudzu, is to exclaim “Ostrega!” (OSS-tre-gah) which means “oyster” in Venetian. (Italian: ostrica).  It’s an all-purpose term that would instantly reveal you to be Venetian anywhere  in Italy; in fact, it carries amusing overtones of charming quaintness to anyone not from here. It is one of those clever next-to words (like “hello” instead of “hell”) that people employ to avoid using a really serious and socially inadmissible word — in this case, “ostia,” which is the Communion wafer. Ostrega is close enough to get your meaning across without offense.

“Ostrega” is a flexible word which, depending on your tone of voice, can express a variously emphatic reaction from astonishment to agreement, disbelief, displeasure, wonder, delight, and so on.  “Ostregheta” (OSS-tre-GHE-ta, or “little oyster”) is a gentler variation. I have a Venetian friend who will sometimes say “OO-strega,” which I think is adorable.  I keep meaning to ask him if he invented this.

On the building at the corner of Campo San Pantalon is a small stone tablet where fish used to be sold. One of several that remain from the Venetian Republic, it shows a list of the fish for sale and the legal minimum size.

Back to the oysters themselves. One of the clauses in the numberless regulations governing fishermen (which began to be documented in 1270), as stipulated in 1765, stated that  “To only the fishermen who personally exercise the laborious toil of fishing, should remain the usual freedom to go to the neighborhoods selling fish at retail such as eels, flounder, mullet, sardines….cuttlefish, clams and oysters in the permitted times.”

Another plaque with fish and sizes is in Campo Santa Margherita, here pleasantly accompanied by three stands selling fish.

But now, as with so many things (such as papaline), they have fallen out of favor and I’m not sure anyone can say why.  There seem to be fashions in fish. It can’t be because oysters are difficult to collect, because they’re generally easier than clams. Clams lurk beneath the sediments, but oysters — like canestrelli — are often found lying there on the muddy/sandy bottom, right out in the open, not even trying to hide. You can just pick them up, like Lino does, though back when they had commercial value men would take them by means of a cassa da ostreghe, more simply known as an ostregher (oss-treh-GHEHR).

A bragozzo in the lagoon, with an ostregher attached to each mast. (Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venezia.)

An ostregher was a sort of baggy net weighted with a strip of iron which was tied to the stern of your boat, and which you would drag along the bottom as you rowed or sailed.   Something similar, called a “cassa da canestreli” or “scassa diavolo” was used to take canestrelli (Pecten opercularis), as Lino often did when he was a lad; he sometimes shows me where, along the edges of the Canale del Orfanello stretching from the Bacino of San Marco toward the island of  San Servolo. Or in the Canale del Orfano, from San Servolo to the island of La Grazia. Lots of people did this, just for themselves. Even now, a few people might still joke, when the vehicle you’re in (say, the vaporetto) is slowing down for no apparent reason: “Are they dragging a cassa da canestreli?” I imagine that most youngsters have no idea what they’re talking about.

All the fish go by their Venetian names here; the ostrega is second from the bottom, with minimum length of 5 cm (1.9 inches).

Then the city outlawed this technique as damaging to the lagoon.  You might say this was a good thing — it’s certainly fine as a concept, like peace on earth — except that it wasn’t damaging, and if it were, why was this method outlawed while illegal clamming continues, night and day, by people using a mechanized version of basically the same technique, leaving utterly barren, completely devastated tracts of lagoon behind?

Lino happily returned to the boat with a bag containing a batch of oysters and a lone canestrelo which he couldn’t resist.

All now frozen solid, awaiting their moment of glory in Lino’s next fish soup.

It turned out to have been, as the saying goes, an excellent day to die.  For the oysters, I mean.

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Fish, History

March 5 in Venetian history (ours)

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Since I’ve been here, all sorts of dates have become staples of my annual pilgrimage through the months — dates which never had any significance for me because they didn’t have anything to do with me.  Like most dates, today excepted.

Take May 5.  No, I don’t mean Cinco di Mayo. It’s not Florence Nightingale’s birthday.  Not the first publication of Don Quixote.  Not the invention of WD-40.  All events worth observing but they don’t have much to do with Venice.

Death mask of Napoleon (Library Company of Philadelphia).

May 5, just so you know, was the Death of Napoleon.  In case this still doesn’t matter to you, your city probably wasn’t starved, raped, mutilated, and then sold into slavery. Probably.  So anyway, May 5 is, in fact, a day worth remembering, however briefly.

But, I hear you cry, this is March, not May.  I realize that.  I just wanted to say that March 5, which comes to nobody’s mind except Lino’s (and now mine), claims just as important a place in my calendrical memory.  And I wasn’t even there.

March 5, as Lino tells me every year (“Who knows why this date has remained so fixed in my mind?” he asked this morning), was the Battle of the Great Frozen Eel.

On the night between March 4 and 5, he went out in the lagoon to fish.

“There was hoarfrost in the bottom of my boat,” he starts out, to set the scene, and to point out how cold it was. March is famous for pulling tricks like that —  it snowed here day before yesterday.

Neither sleet nor snow nor fog nor gloom of night stays the letter carriers, and should the gondoliers be less than they?

He fishes for a couple of hours out in the lagoon.  “I got all kinds of great stuff,” he says (I’m freely translating).  “Seppie.  Passarini [European flounder]. And an eel.”

The fact of there being an eel isn’t so remarkable — the lagoon version has a lovely pale-green belly — but considering that he fishes with a trident, they’re pretty tricky to spear.  So this was a sort of bonus.

All the fish are tossed into a big bin.  He continues fishing.  It continues to be really cold.

Finally he rows home, lugs the bin upstairs and dumps the contents into the kitchen sink.

A view of Anguilla anguilla not doing much of anything. In Venetian he's known as a bisato.The eel makes a clunk. It’s frozen solid in the curled-up shape it was forced to assume in the bin. “That didn’t happen to the passarini,” Lino adds,  “but the eel was hard as stone.  So I began to run tepid water on it to soften it up.”

“All of a sudden” — (I love this part, it’s like a fairy tale when the witch or prince or stolen baby appears) — “all of a sudden, I see its gills begin to move.”  He makes a slowly-moving-gills motion with his hand.

“My God!  It was still alive!”  Astonishing, if you believed, as I — and obviously Lino — would have, that freezing would kill a creature.  But the gills were definitely moving.  And shortly thereafter, the rest of the eel was also moving.  A lot.

“You should have seen what that eel was doing in the sink,” Lino goes on.  Naturally it’s slithering like crazy, trying to get out, but naturally it is failing.  And naturally Lino is trying to grab it, but it cleverly has a slippery skin to prevent that.

“Finally I took a dishtowel and grabbed it using that,” he says.  “It still wasn’t easy.  I managed to pin it down and made a couple of cuts” (in whatever part of the body was convenient).  Then, when it began to slow down, he continued with the usual procedure of dispatching and cleaning eel, which I will not describe to you.  Anybody who wants to know can write to me.

So remember March 5, sacred to the memory of the gallant eel who didn’t realize he was better off frozen hard as stone.

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