More advice on protecting yourself from pickpockets (other than staying at home, under the bed).
Where else is your wallet at risk? At the automated vaporetto-ticket machines. By the time you’ve finished deciphering and following the instructions, your worldly goods may well have moved on. If not yet, the pickpockets have seen where you put your wallet. Getting through the turnstiles is sufficiently distracting that you won’t notice that they are right behind you as you pass through.
“In very crowded areas,” my friend explained, “they get so close to you, you don’t even know they’ve opened your bag.”
Another thing: “Crossing crowded bridges is another way to get your bag opened up,” etc. etc. etc.
I have no doubt that all this information and advice is valid also in Florence, Rome, Milan, and any other city that attracts lots of people. They don’t have to all be tourists, there just have to be lots of them and the thieves have their cover.
Tour guides have been stolen from — one German guide was pickpocketed inside the basilica of San Marco. The spouses of tour guides have been ditto ditto. On especially busy days (for example, from now till October) there are hundreds of these incidents a day.
Don’t bother pining for the good old days under the doge and the Council of Ten. As Lino occasionally remarks, “They used to cut the thief’s hand off. He kept stealing anyway.”
When last we spoke, Venice was on the verge of its annual celebration of the feast of the Redentore (held last Sunday). By now the festa has come and gone, but this year the difference between the two was minimal. “Reduced form” is the boilerplate description, but if you reduce something past a certain point it just isn’t it anymore.
We did not have fireworks, as all the world knows. Without fireworks, I discovered, the festa can’t achieve liftoff. Yes, people did come to Venice — according to La Nuova Venezia, 108 tables had been reserved for the usual dinners outside (68 of them along the fondamenta of the Giudecca), and a total of some 15,000 people came to join the Venetians making some sort of merry. Fifteen thousand may sound good compared to nothing (let us cast our minds back to the desolation of the total lockdown), but it represented less than a fifth of the number that crammed the city last year. I used to hate the cramming, but without it the evening felt strangely deflated. No, actually, it felt partially deflated, which is not much better.
Seeing that we did not go roaming the city in search of entertainment, I only know what I saw in our little lobe of land, or what the newspaper reports. It says that there were people eating outside around the city, along fondamente big or small, or in their boats tied up in the Grand Canal or some other major waterways. That sounds nice.
To warm the general atmosphere to an even happier level, four large boats bearing a total of some 30 Venetian musicians moved around the Grand Canal, the Giudecca Canal and the Bacino of San Marco. Floating music has a long tradition in this festival, although in recent years it has been co-opted by the big party boats blaring music at levels that would pulverize a small planet. It must have been wonderful to have a bouncier, smaller sort of soundtrack as the evening drew on (for the record, the participants were Batisto Coco, Josmil Neris and Laguna Swing, Pitura Stail and Ska-j). All these groups are on YouTube, and here is a small clip that shows how little it took — at least, compared to the labor and cost of a 30-minute fireworks display — to get the party going.
It looks really sweet and I send huge compliments to the organizers, etc. Unhappily for us, none of these boats made it down as far as via Garibaldi — or at least not during the brief period I was roaming the waterfront. So if this sort of thing is ever organized again (and I hope it will be, though probably everyone will want fireworks again), the landlubbers need to lub somewhere further afield.
So I can only report on Redentore as observed south of the Arsenal and north of Sant’ Elena. But I will throw in some of the races held on Sunday afternoon, and a glimpse of the Patriarch going to mass, if that will help liven things up. We’ll hope for better and happier things next year.
This just in: The bridge is already under construction, and I’m sure the fireworks are already on the way, but like a launch at Cape Canaveral, mayor Luigi Brugnaro has scrubbed the mission.
This year, there will be no fireworks for the Redentore (July 19). No fireworks, no party boats, no “notte famosissima.” It’s a blow, but there were already signs that caution was going to rule, beginning with the new regulation that spaces along the fondamente were going to be assigned only by booking. But in the end, it was obvious that safe social distancing was going to be impossible to plan, much less maintain, on water or on land.
Here is the mayor’s announcement (translated by me):
“I do not have good news. I have been awake all night, but unfortunately I’m forced to tell you that we are annulling the fireworks for the Redentore. I can’t bring myself to make it work, I have tried everything. In conscience I just don’t feel like it, for me it’s the most beautiful festa of the year. We set up an incredible system for booking for the boats, we even invented a series of plans for limiting the flow. It’s my decision, I take responsibility for it, but I cannot bring the city to risk it. This is a safe city.”
No news at this moment as to whether the races will be held on Sunday afternoon, or the mass.
In my last post I mentioned the various physical effects of the Redentore festivizing, but I forgot to mention the nautical manifestations of Redentore Syndrome. A new one turned up on the Morning After (Sunday).
You should know that by now a large percentage — I’d guess around 97 per cent — of the boats which come to watch the fireworks are not carrying Venetians. By this I don’t mean to say that Venetians don’t come (though an informal survey reveals that they are fewer each year), nor do I mean that Venetians only come in boats with oars, because, there too, the number is dwindling. Certainly some Venetians come in their motor- or sailboats. But, at least in our neighborhood, people either watch from the fondamenta, as we do, or don’t go at all. (Giorgio was asleep upstairs by 9:30.) A wander around the zone revealed that the majority of the partyers are from elsewhere — foreigners on vacation, or people from the hinterland in every direction, from Chioggia to Treviso to Padova to points beyond. Many of them do not have a deep experience of boats, as I can confirm from seeing them around the lagoon.
In any case, here is the latest exhibit in that category. What I will never know is whether it was the boat’s owner, or some kindly soul full of good intentions where experience ought to be, who tied it up in this eccentric manner. It’s kind of adorable.