pandemic | Venice: I am not making this up

I’ve been trying for a month to find some way to write a deep and detailed update on life here these days, but I give up. What follows is the best I can do.

After a year of the virus, and its varying grip on Italy’s 20 regions and 80-some provinces, all I can say is that we are not yet out of the proverbial woods, even though vaccinations have begun. There is an “English variant” now on the scene that has upset everybody’s predictions on progress. Even without this interloper, the danger of assembramenti (gatherings of people) remains paramount, though large numbers of people I see walking around seem not to be concerned. Exhibit A: Mask worn beneath the nose. Exhibit B: Mask around neck. Any time that the restrictions on gatherings are moderately lifted, the campos and fondamente clog up again with bright sparks, glasses in hand, masks lowered or even removed. And so the restrictions clamp down again. It’s like Groundhog Day.

On Saturday, Feb. 13, the Veneto returned to the “Yellow” status and Sunday’s headlines were absolutely no surprise: “Carneval movida, maxi-risk of contagion.” (“Movida” is the term for mass group socializing, usually on Saturday night.) “Saturday Yellow, immediately the movida, tens of calls to the vigili,” or local policemen. Whoever answered the phone repeatededly replied that “We don’t have enough officers on duty to send to make everybody wear their masks and stand one meter apart, even with the threat of a fine.” One wonders why there weren’t enough on duty for the easiest situation to predict since Christmas Morning, but one wonders in vain.

On Feb. 11, this was the utterly predictable report: “Arrival of the Veneti in Venice: Mass gatherings and masks lowered.” (Note: “Arrival” isn’t the right word but I can’t find a better one. To give some idea of the impact implied, calata is the word used for dropping anchor.) Therefore, the rule is that from 15:00 (3:00 PM), you are forbidden to drink standing around. If you’re going to drink, you have to be sitting at a table. That’s until 18:00 (6:00 PM), that is, because that’s when the bars close. Too many people milling around with glasses in their hands and masks completely pulled down. Not sure if table rule will be only on weekends, or every day.

The year has been entirely color-coded, as Italy has struggled to maintain control of the contagion (and its social, economic, and medical consequences) by applying restrictions according to their level of contagion: Yellow is the least dangerous, Orange is the middle ground, Red is obviously the most dangerous (and at least one doomed region was labeled Dark Red for a while — I think that may have meant something like bomb-shelter-type quarantine).

Handy reference for what we can do, and how, and where.

But the restrictions kept changing, reacting to the bettering or worsening of the epidemic’s numbers. We have spun through variations of life involving the hours that shops/bars/restaurants could be open (restaurants closing at 6:00 PM was obviously problematic, though takeout was the stopgap solution), to the number of persons permitted to enter a shop (from one to as many as six), to whether you would even be allowed to enter at all. Oh — and sitting at tables inside was obviously risky, and sitting at tables outside not much less risky, so as recently as last week you bought your coffee at the cafe’ doorway and stood there drinking it al fresco. Except you weren’t supposed to be standing — assembramenti! — so you had to keep moving to avoid the potentially contagious assembramenti (gatherings of people), so you wandered away with your little paper cup, sipping the rapidly cooling teaspoons of espresso, looking for a trash bin. I gave up coffee abroad because the always-dependable cafe bathrooms were no longer available.

Permission to travel between towns, provinces, and Regions continued to mutate. Schools open, schools closed. Public transport restricts the number of passengers permitted during “rush” hour (“Six people can board,” I heard the marinaio call out as we left the vaporetto), but at other times there have been vaporettos that were completely empty. Except for us, I mean. Not made up.

Sunday, late morning, between the Giardini and Sant’ Elena. Feast your eyes, but just keep in mind (if you want to) that all these seats represent minus-signs on the ACTV budget. Just another link in the losing-money chain.

Some museums are beginning to reopen, though obviously with fewer visitors because cross-border travel is still generally forbidden. Venetians (or Italians) who’d like to see some of their artistic patrimony without scrimmaging through masses of tourists, this is your big chance. Most of the museums are open only Monday through Friday; the Guggenheim and Palazzo Grassi only on Thursday and Friday.

Today is Mardi Gras, but this year’s Carnival has been almost entirely online — that is, whatever remnants of the Old Celebrations they managed to retain. We did see some tourists (mainly from the Veneto) over the past few days, on and off, some of them in costume. But I can confirm that seeing a few random dressed-up people does not a Carnival make, especially when they are walking along streets in the late afternoon, where the few businesses that were open are beginning to close. Curfew for bars and restaurants is 1800 (6:00 PM) and slightly later for other enterprises. Supermarkets are open till as late as 8:30 PM.

The last weekend of Carnival did have its brighter moments, especially Sunday when the sun and the tourists combined to bring a whiff of normalcy to the city.

Sunday morning we rowed to the Rialto, an idea that clearly had occurred to many others, including a heartening number of gondoliers. It’s been months since a gondola with passengers has been seen. There was also a wonderful assortment of regular Venetians, either in their rowing-club boats or out rowing their own, like us. And it’s always a treat to see a kid with an oar, as in the boat furthest to the right.

And this one, too, with two people — presumably father and son — out in their little *s’ciopon*. Gosh: There were two kids rowing around? Where will it end?

Friends from Arzana’, the association dedicated to the recovery of old Venetian boats, rowing a *batela buranela*. We caught up with them down by San Marco. I apologize for the quality of these images — cell phone cameras and sunshine don’t work together very well.

I don’t know them, but they are clearly on a private boat. If there is one positive side to all these troubles, it’s that the pandemic has created space where people can come out and row around in the Grand Canal again. No longer is it surging and roiling with taxis, which over the years increased to a number that effectively took over the entire canal (I’m referring to weekend activity; obviously there continue to be barges during the week). Everyone who was gradually elbowed out by all the waterborne tourist traffic has been able to return home, in a way. It makes you feel like you belong here again.

We went out for a late-afternoon walk today; there was very modest activity in via Garibaldi. Carnival barely touched the city as it drifted past, unable to land. As always, it was the children who made it happy.

How we are (part 2)