By now the hard candies made of glass have surpassed cliche’. But now a whimsical glassmaker has begun to produce chocolates. I want them all…
First, apologies to those who subscribe; the link to a YouTube clip did not come through in the e-mail version. (I keep forgetting about that, because it makes no sense….).
Here it is. Background music for the New Year: http://youtu.be/EOt4VDDjuYQ
News from the Western Front, where all was not quiet on the night of Saint Sylvester (Dec. 31). The Gazzettino this morning gave some details.
At 10:30 PM the Liberty Bridge to the mainland was closed because there was no more room to park (38 buses and 1,500 cars were stashed at Tronchetto, 750 in the Comunale garage and 450 in the San Marco garage, both at Piazzale Roma).
Police estimated there were 80,000 people partying in and around the Piazza San Marco. Despite regulations requiring plastic bottles for your chosen beverage, there was plenty of broken glass around, which wounded 39 people. One person fell in the water, but not from the Piazza San Marco.
Astonishing, but the vaporettos and buses were sufficient and efficient. (As my old choir leader used to say when we did what he wanted, “Now you’re in trouble — now I know you can do it.”)
So much for the turn of the year. I’m facing forward now.
The essential components of New Year’s Eve: A bottle of spumante, some expendable element of a firecracker, and tourists. On New Year’s Morning the bottle is empty, the firecracker spent, and the tourists are heading for the exits. I was surprised to see how many tourists were already homeward bound at 9:00 AM. I realize they have trains and planes to catch, and a strong desire not to pay for another night in a hotel, and that they probably also have to get back to work the next day. But after all the excitement of the night before, these little clusters of departing people dragging their luggage seemed so unfriendly, like leaving a party without even telling the hostess what a nice time they had.
Oh look — there’s a big box containing a whole new year sitting out there on our doorstep. Batteries not included — we have to provide our own. Some assembly required — all the tools are around here somewhere. User’s manual — the same as every year. The instructions are few but really easy to understand: Don’t do bad things. Think about somebody else at least once a day, not just about your own blessed self all the blessed time. Work more. Work less. Smile. Be thankful.
And in whatever time is left over, get the attic/garage/basement under control. And of course, start the famous diet. If I never see another panettone in my life, it will be too soon.
I happen to hate New Year’s Eve, and always have. It fills me with foreboding. Celebrating the old year doesn’t usually strike me as appropriate, and celebrating a year about which we know nothing seems like just asking for trouble. But as soon as midnight strikes, all the shiny possibilities of the new year, latest model, dazzle me, and I feel good.
The diet will be easy to start (all diets are), because at this point the holiday glut has transformed me, my brain, my world, into a shapeless mass of inert material. So at least the next few weeks will be devoted to erting up as much of the material as I can.
But let’s go back to New Year’s Eve for a moment. The day before it, we celebrated our third or fourth New Year’s Plumbing Crisis. The water system in our little hovel seems to want to be part of the festivities, like lentils and cotechino. We had been battling a blockage in the kitchen sink drain, using progressively heavier chemical artillery, till said artillery conquered the pipe leading into the wall, allowing the accumulated substances, including sulfuric acid, to spill onto the floor. We’re fine, the floor is sort of fine, but the blockage was found to be further inside the wall and was removed by Lino somehow and a new pipe installed. Fun.
Most people who come to Venice for New Year’s Eve (about 70,000, if the reports are to be believed), have a simpler idea of entertainment than that: They think that celebrating it here is the most fun thing imaginable. Piazza San Marco. Fireworks. Bottles of spumante.
We don’t go to the Piazza, as you might imagine, though we do open a bottle of prosecco at home when the clock strikes twelve. And we do usually walk down do the edge of the Bacino of San Marco to watch the fireworks. While it’s true that any firework is better than none, especially over a reflecting expanse of water where it can illuminate the facades of the most beautiful city in the world, etc., this year’s display was unusually dull. I had the impression that the city had looked over the fireworks offered and picked what amounted to the classic tourist menu. It was the visual equivalent of spaghetti with tomato sauce, breaded veal cutlet, French fries, and a half-liter bottle of water. The pleasure you derive from it isn’t in the eating, but in the having eaten. Main value: It didn’t cost us much. Not very festive.
However, two essential elements of New Year’s Eve in Venice, and I daresay in Italy, don’t show up anywhere on the tourist’s program of the evening’s entertainment.
The first is mass at 6:30 PM in many parish churches, the end-of-year acknowledgement to the Almighty. The liturgy is basically the same as every other day, but at the conclusion the “Te Deum” is recited, chanted, or sung. We don’t go to the basilica of San Marco anymore because the notion of going to that part of the city on New Year’s Eve, even at dusk, is unthinkable. They sing the Te Deum in Latin, which makes it even more solemn, but whatever the language, pausing to basically say “I’m still here, and You’re still God, so thank You” is one of the best things you can do.
The second is the President’s Address to the country at 8:30 PM, byTV, radio, or computer. In England this takes the form of the Queen’s Christmas Message, and in the US we have the State of the Union address (on a wandering date unattached to any events significant to the world at large). As you can imagine, ever since the world economy vaporized in 2008, this speech has not been especially cheerful, and has tended to be rivetted together with words such as “hope,” “trust,” “courage,” and “sacrifice.”
On New Year’s Day itself there is the annual concert from La Fenice, broadcast live on TV at 11:00 AM or so; it’s now also viewable via streaming on the RAI, the national TV company, website. You can also watch its big brother, the New Year’s concert from Vienna, in the afternoon. Those should be sufficiently soothing, and give you the impression that you’re doing something when you’re actually not. Unless you’re already out there, dragging your suitcase, heading home.
Wherever you are, I hope 2014 is your very best year ever. I mean, why not?
It was a glorious, gleaming morning, but as you see, all it took was one boat passing somewhere nearby to disturb the water’s celestial calm. But while perfectly still water causes perfect reflections, I actually prefer the squiggly shapes, at least until they’re so squiggly you can’t tell what they are. It’s kind of a metaphor.
Sunset falls on the Piazza San Marco, the end of another glorious day of feeding pigeons and plucking tourists, not to mention Venetians.
I like to call them “Venetian moments” — those instants of recognition, typically when you run into somebody you only met yesterday, in some unexpected place.
Today we experienced a tiny but less blithesome Venetian moment. Its Venetianness was based on money.
Experience, and occasional articles in the newspaper, have shown that there are sometimes two price scales here: one for tourists (high) and one for Venetians (low. Or less high, anyway).
We haven’t had much experience with this, except for one strange moment on the Lido some years back. I wasn’t there, but I can picture it. Lino was with someone he has now forgotten, and they stopped in a slightly fancy bar/cafe on the main street to have a spritz. After they’d drained their glasses, Lino, on a sprightly impulse, said to the barista in English, “How much?”
The little cash-register receipt was produced and Lino glanced at the total. “What’s all this?” he asked the barista. “You charged me double the price for a spritz? I’m Venetian!”
To which the hapless young man responded, “Well, you could have told me you were Venetian.”
But an even stranger moment occurred today.
We were walking toward the Piazza San Marco around 9:30 this morning. Lino was thirsty, so we stopped in a bar/cafe on a corner. For the record, it’s called Snack Bar da Piero. (Sounds like a TripAdvisor warning.)
There was no one in the bar except for the dark-haired young woman behind the counter. Lino said, “May I have a glass of water with bubbles?” Sounds better in Italian: frizzante.
She pulled out one of those little half-liter bottles of water, opened it, and poured half of it into a glass. “That’ll be one euro,” she said.
Lino and I stared at each other, and at her.
“One euro, for that glass of water?” Lino asked? (Note: I would have expected 50 euro-cents.)
“Yes.”
“What? We’re not Americans!” Translation: Do you think we’re rich and dumb?
“No,” she replied. “I give the Americans the whole bottle.”
Lino said, “Excuse me? You charge the Americans one euro for the whole bottle, but you’re charging me one euro for half a bottle?”
She just looked at him.
“You can keep the water,” he said, and turned to leave.
“Suit yourself,” was her answer, or some equivalent thereof.
So we walked out, leaving her with an open bottle and full glass which — one can hope — she won’t be able to sell to anyone else.
Lino was a mixture of stunned, offended, and just plain mad. I could hear another nail being driven into the proverbial Venetian coffin, the coffin which contains the few precious fragments of genuine Venetian-ness blown there by the winds of avarice across the vast Kalahari desert which is touristic Venice.
We walked over the next bridge into the Piazza San Marco. At the corner was a small gelateria, and an older gentleman — clearly the owner — was standing just outside it. Lino said to him, “Could I have a glass of tap water? I need to take a pill.”
The man said, “Sure thing.”
I asked Lino, “Was he Venetian?”
“Yes.”
“And the girl?”
“No.”
I can’t explain it, I can only describe it. But by the way, a euro for a half-liter bottle is still too much, no matter who’s paying. I can get six of them in the supermarket for 1.20.
I must go down to the blog again, to the lonely blog and the sky…..
More time has passed than I intended between my last post and this, though as usual many of the reasons had to do with putting down slave revolts in the technological departments of my life. (Apologies to anyone offended by the word “slave.”) My computer seized up. The espresso machine has had a nervous breakdown. Transferring my cell phone number from one company to another was an adventure within an adventure. My cloud backup service has gone into a semi-permanent stall. My photos stopped uploading to Flickr. We’re still waiting for the boiler-repair company to come repair the repair of April 16. The kitchen clock died.
But all this is no more preposterous or tiresome than what’s been going on all around the most-beautiful-booby-hatch in the world. The past two weeks have seen the return of many well-worn themes. If they were music, they would be familiar tunes — perhaps transposed into another key, or performed by different instruments, or converted from pieces usually played on a lone kazoo into swelling symphonic creations. But the same tunes, nevertheless. They practically qualify as folk songs.
The ACTV is always prime territory for the absurd.
An annoying number of the turnstiles keep breaking at the docks on the Lido, causing commuters to miss their boats to work. Sebastiano Costalonga, a city councilor who has made squaring away the ACTV part of his mission on earth, has pointed out that there are seven turnstiles at a typical London Underground stop, through which millions of people pass each day, while on the Lido there are 48 turnstiles, through which, on a really big day, perhaps 20,000 people will pass.
The ferryboats connecting the Lido to the rest of the world continue to fall apart and be taken out of service for repairs (one boat has been in the shop for nearly a year. Are they plating it with rhodium?).
The personnel of the ticket booths went on strike for two days, April 30 and May 1, when storm surges of tourists were naturally expected to overwhelm the city, which meant that tickets were sold only by the individual on each vaporetto who ties up the boat at each stop. You can imagine how many he/she managed to sell. Or even tried to sell.
The company is 17 million euros in the red, but the ACTV drivers are the highest-paid in the entire Veneto region. The ACTV is like the Energizer Bunny — it just keeps going.
On April 25, National Liberation Day, the city places laurel wreaths at important civic monuments. Here the wreath got as far as the plaque recalling the “Seven Martyrs,” but whoever was wrangling the wreath didn’t realize it was supposed to be right-side up.
Then there are the Illegal Vendors: Whatever they’re selling, they’re everywhere, and there are more of them every day.
First (and still) were the West Africans, who sell counterfeit designer handbags from bedsheets spread on the pavement. While this squad continues to proliferate, it has been joined by Bangladeshi and Sri Lankan vendors of gimcracks such as fluorescent darts which gleam when flung skyward and balls of gelatinous rubber which flatten when hurled to the ground, then re-form themselves before your eyes.
A sub-division of these ethnic entities has taken over the wandering sale of long-stemmed red roses, which used to be offered mainly from table to table in restaurants, but which are now available all day long in the Piazza San Marco, and environs. Illegal corn for the pigeons: After years of struggle, the city finally convinced the vendors with their little trolleys in the Piazza to switch from grain to gewgaws — this being the only effective way to limit, or even reduce, the plague of feathered rats which had passed the 100,000 mark and was still growing. So now corn is being sold surreptitiously by the handful from the pockets of the red-rose vendors. Still, on April 25, a blitz by the police in the Piazza San Marco netted plenty of swag abandoned by the fleeing vendors, leading off with 1,408 roses. The day before that, the police got hold of 22 kilos (48 pounds) of illegal corn.
But these are temporary events. Stashes of illegal pigeon-corn have been found hidden in the garbage around San Marco. Intermittent reports of these discoveries and confiscations, whether of goods or of people, imply progress, but they would be the intermittent reports of emptying the ocean with a teaspoon. Uncollected fines have reached some three million euros; one illegal rose seller was reported to have laughed and shown some employees of a shop near Rialto his collection of tickets — five so far, one of them for 5,000 euros. “Stupid police,” he said, “I don’t have anything and I’m not paying anything.”
The complaints of exasperated merchants and citizens have finally caused the city to increase surveillance by putting officers on patrol, from police in plainclothes to carabinieri in full battle gear. But only on the weekend! Still, there was plenty to do: Twenty-eight illegal vendors spread across the Bridge of the Scalzi were nabbed with their bags and sunglasses and camera mini-tripods! (I know from personal examination that the bridge is 40 steps on each side, so that comes to one vendor every 3 steps. But somehow it must be hard to see, because citizen outcry was needed in order to focus the city fathers’ eyes on it.)
Sometimes there are violent altercations between vendors, based on subtleties of territory and rights thereto — though the concept of someone claiming the right to something illegal is kind of special. Many are often without papers, so they’re already in tricky territory where the concept of rights is concerned. One recent nabbee, from Senegal, was discovered to already have been sentenced to five months in prison, by the court of Florence.
The city council dusted off a year-old proposal to issue residence permits (permesso di soggiorno) with points, like a driver’s license. It didn’t pass, for various reasons, some of which verged on silly: “What are supposed to do,” asked one councilor — “expel the women caretakers because they get a fine for illegal parking?” But another summed up what everybody has long since recognized: “Even the police can’t manage to do much if there isn’t collaboration from the local politicians. The message which has been sent out is that here there isn’t the kind of determination there might be in other cities because of a misunderstood sense of solidarity.” (Translation: We feel sorry for the poor foreigners.)
Speaking of illegal vendors, the mendicants from Rome who dress up as Roman centurions and pose for pictures near the Colosseum attempted to set themselves up here. Some of you might wonder at the congruence of fake Roman soldiers with fake swords and breastplates in Venice, but the tourist-guide association didn’t need to wonder. It managed to drive them decisively out of the city in a matter of a few days. Instead of police and carabinieri, why don’t we just pay the tourist-guide association something extra to clear out the illegal vendors of everything? Or better yet, send them roses?
As Roberto Gervaso noted in his satirical column in the Gazzettino not long ago, “Our generals manage to lose even the wars they’re not fighting.”
The only antidote I know to all this is to go places and do things which only give pleasure. And there are plenty of them, in spite of all the weirdity. All you have to do is pull the plug on that part of your brain that concerns other human beings. Here are some views of what we’ve done or seen that have made the past few days more than usually pleasant.
Lino isn’t looking for clams, he’s looking for scallops (canestrelli, or Chlamys opercularis), and it was a great morning to do it.And he did surprisingly well. These little critters reached their apotheosis that evening, fried.My activity of choice is often to sit in the boat and look over the side. It’s pretty busy down there, what with crabs and snails and so on. These two were moving right along.
This is the first time I’ve ever seen this creature in the fish market. The label here calls it “pesce sciabola,” or saberfish, but I see that it is known in English as scabbardfish (Lepidopus caudatus). It was brilliantly silver and shiny, just the kind of saber I’d rather not confront.
And despite all the rain in March, the wisteria has come out right on time. Along with the laundry, and the trash.Lilac is here so briefly that I took a mass of pictures. Bonus: Lilac-shadow.
