Boatworld, Venetian Events, Venetian History, Venetian-ness

Papal visit leads to gondolier smackdown

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Perhaps your local gazette hasn’t mentioned it yet, but Pope Benedict XVI is planning a big trip soon. He’ll be touring Northeast Italy, and will be in or around Venice on May 7 and 8.

"King Henri III of France visiting Venice in 1574, escorted by Doge Alvise Mocenigo and met by the Patriarch Giovanni Trevisan," by Andrea Micheli "Vicentino." This is the kind of welcome everyone had come to expect.

Venice has a long and prodigious history of state visits — King Henry III of France and Poland, in 1574, was one of the more famous guests, just one of a seemingly infinite procession of princes, ambassadors, potentates, emperors and, of course, popes coming to see the sights, visit the doge, and usually ask for some favor, like money or soldiers. Reading the list of deluxe visitors over the centuries gives the impression that the main business of Venice was hosting foreign notables, while other activities such as running an empire filled the random empty moments, kind of like a hobby.

Yet His Imminence has aroused not only joy and excitement among the faithful, but tension and recrimination and a series of increasingly regrettable remarks among the city’s gondoliers concerning who is going to get to row him the approximately five minutes it takes to row from San Marco to the church of the Salute, and in what boat. By a mystic coincidence, gondoliers are also known as pope (POH-peh), because they row on the stern (poppa) of the gondola. I have no idea what this might portend.

"The reception of Cardinal Cesar d'Estrees 1726," by Luca Carlevaris. Just all part of a normal day.

Don’t suppose that the battle to transport the pontiff is any particular evidence that gondoliers are so pious. A pious gondolier would be a distant cousin to a pious illegal-clam fisherman, or a pious doctor of a cycling champion.  I’m not saying it’s impossible, just kind of unusual. But they do like to be the center of attention and, in fact, they’re used to being regarded as some sort of star.  At least to the damsels they may be so fortunate as to row around the canals.

Popes aren’t supposed to cause dissension, they’re supposed to resolve it. But Benedict has unwittingly set off a sort of collective seizure.

Pope John Paul II being rowed in the city's balotina by four "re del remo" in 1985; high astern is the legendary Gigio "Strigheta."

First: Luciano Pelliccioli, vice-president of the gondola station heads (and a gondolier) offered to join Aldo Reato, president of the gondola station heads (and a gondolier) to row His Sanctity in Luciano’s extremely elaborate and glamorous gondola.

No!! The cry went up.  Why should those two men profit by their position and crowd out equally (I mean, more) deserving gondoliers?  Why, indeed?

Furthermore!! Champion racer Roberto Busetto, never at a loss for an opinion (he isn’t a gondolier, but that’s a detail), objected on the grounds that if Luciano should ever think of selling his gondola, he could easily make a huge profit by marketing it as the gondola that had carried the pope.  Busetto gets five bonus points for crassness, though that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.

Anyway, Luciano withdrew his offer of his gondola and himself.  Reato also withdrew, but the incessant calls have continued. There are 425 gondoliers and by now probably each of the remaining 423 has called him at least once.  Some of them have fantastic reasons to be chosen: “Padre Pio came to me in a dream and said you should pick me,” said one.  Another person suggested Giorgia Boscolo, the first woman gondolier.  That idea burnt up on reentry into reality.

Then somebody suggested the “Strigheta” brothers, Franco and Bruno, sons and heirs (and gondoliers) of one of the greatest racers/gondoliers of all time, Albino “Gigio” Dei Rossi, known as “Strigheta.” (He rowed not only one, but four popes in his day.) They’re loaded with credentials and nobody hates them, which helps.

Then somebody suggested a four-rower gondola, rowed by the current racing champions, the Vignottini and D’Este and Tezzat. I think the idea was that rowing the pope could somehow magically bring peace to these two savagely feuding pairs, though somebody else opined that it wasn’t appropriate to expect the Holy Father to resolve every little neighborhood squabble. In any case, the four men have declared their willingness to row the Pontifex Maximus together, which is already a big step forward.

Then somebody asked: Why should it be a gondola?  Excellent question, considering that the city of Venice owns a more capacious gondola-type boat called a balotina, on which Pope John Paul II was borne along the Grand Canal in 1985.

Then some daring person suggested using the “disdotona,” or 18-oar gondola, which belongs to the Querini rowing club, and which in my opinion is not only the most spectacular boat in the city, by far, but would provide 18 men the chance to Row for Holiness.

Naturally, this idea got nowhere, because nobody thought one club should be given preference over another.  We’ve all got great boats, the thinking goes — why them and not us?

Even when it's not doing anything, the "disdotona" is impressive. I think the pope would look splendid seated in the bow, what with the velvet drapery trailing in the water and all.

I’m surprised nobody has yet suggested using the “Serenissima,” the huge decorated bissona with a raised stern, making the pope easy to see plus providing space for his entourage and some trumpeters, if that seemed appropriate.  But so far no mention of this little coracle.

Which brought up the next question: Why should the rowers be gondoliers? Another useful point.  In the olden days, a visiting potentate — such as John Paul II — would be rowed by the necessary number of “re del remo,” men who had won the Regata Storica five years in succession.  There aren’t many of them, because it’s fiendishly hard to do.  That would instantly reduce the number of candidates to something manageable.

And by now there has been at least one practical joke.  Someone purporting to be Aldo Reato (president of the gondola station heads) called the Gazzettino and said the matter had been settled: Luciano’s fancy gondola was going to be used after all, rowed by Franco Girardello, a retired gondolier who goes by the nickname “Magna e dormi” (eat and sleep). This fantasy was quickly dispelled by all concerned except the anonymous prankster.

The "Serenissima" was born for this kind of event. Odd that so far nobody has suggested it.

The most recent bulletin is that the matter will be put to a secret vote among the gondoliers.  The mind rather reels.  Busetto thinks the papal gondola is going to cost the moon at resale?  How much is a gondolier’s vote going to be worth, at this point?  No checks, no credit cards.

Comments from bemused readers of the Gazzettino run from “The pope doesn’t care who rows him” to “What a farce” to”Actually, Padre Pio came to ME in a dream and said I should do it.”

A certain Riccardo made the following suggestion:

“Requirements for candidacy:

Never to have blasphemed; Never to have used foul language; Never to have spoken in a coarse tone of voice.  In the case of more than one valid candidate (doubtful), preference will be given to the one who has a good knowledge of the principles of Catholicism, and/or who has read at least one of the 16 chapters of the Gospel of St. Mark, patron saint of our city.”

This pastoral visit has been in the planning stages for at least three months — probably more — and yet here we are, at the last minute, dealing with the frenzied bleating of the flock.

Meaning no disrespect, I think it would have been better for everybody if they had given a crash course in rowing to a Rastafarian and a dervish. I can’t think of a gondolier who could possibly be cooler than that.

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Boatworld, Nature, Problems, Water

Fogging up

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We’ve been having fog of various densities and persistence over the past – I’d have to check, it seems like a month or so.  Or year.  A long time, anyway.  And the predictions are for more.

“How romantic,” I hear you thinking.  And I agree.  Fog can be hauntingly lovely here, all drifting shapes and softening colors and the complete evaporation of the horizon.

What you can't make out in this picture, along with many other things, are two special fog components: A persistent southwest wind to sharpen the fog's edge on your skin, and the many different sizes of drops which run into your face as you walk.
What you can't make out in this picture, along with most of via Garibaldi, are two special fog components: A tenacious southwest wind to sharpen the vapor's edge on your skin, and the many different sizes of drops which fall against your face as you walk.

But if you need to move beyond the visual and into the practical, fog can be a pain in the gizzard. Acqua alta may get all the emotional publicity, but I can tell you that acqua from above, in the form of atmospheric condensation, can be just as inconvenient. I suppose nobody makes the same sort of fuss about it because fog doesn’t come into your house.  Or shop.

The vaporetto stop. Not a very promising panorama.
The vaporetto stop. Not a very promising panorama.

Example: Yesterday morning I was forced to abandon my plan to go to Torcello to meet somebody for an interview (assuming I do, or do not, succeed in re-scheduling said meeting, I will explain who, what and why in another post).

Like many plans — Napoleon’s invasion of Russia, say, or New Coke — it looked perfect on paper. Take the #52 vaporetto at 8:10 to the Fondamente Nove, change to the LN line at 8:40, change to the Torcello line at 9:35, and faster than you can recite the Gettysburg Address, I’d be there. Actually, you’d have to recite it 36 times; door to door requires an hour and a half, but I don’t mind.  It’s a beautiful trip, assuming you can see where you’re going.

There's a church over there with a big bell tower. Trust me.
There's a church over there with a big bell tower. Trust me.

But once again, I discovered — standing there without a Plan B — that the real problem isn’t the fog itself, but the way the ACTV, the transport company, deals with it.  The ACTV seems to have wandered beyond a reasonable concern for public safety and into the realm of phobia: “An irrational, intense, and persistent fear of certain situations, activities, things, animals, or people.”  I don’t think the ACTV has a fear of animals. Otherwise, fog fits the phobic bill. The solution? According to the dictionary, “The main symptom of this disorder is the excessive and unreasonable desire to avoid the feared stimulus.”  In this case, fog.

But the ACTV exists to be outdoors. Much as it might wish the case to be otherwise, it can’t function anywhere else.  And more to the point, by now almost all the boats have radar.  Yet it seems that the the more radar the company installs, the less willing the company is to trust it.

May I note that there were a good number of people out rowing in the fog yesterday morning, on their way to a boating event at Rialto.   I myself have been out rowing in the lagoon with a compass, as has Lino, as have plenty of people.  Lino rowed home one time in a fog so thick he couldn’t see the bow of his boat.  Just to give you some idea of what is, in fact, feasible.

The board continued to show the vaporettos and their expected arrival times. I stood there and watched the times change as no vehicles passed. Somebody was either doing it on purpose, or didn't care, neither of which was too helpful. When Venice finally sinks beneath the waves, all that will be visible above the surface will be the angel atop the belltower of San Marco, and a board on which the departure times will continue to advance.
The board continued to display the vaporetto numbers and their expected arrival times. I stood there and watched the times change as no vehicles passed. When Venice finally sinks beneath the waves, all that will be visible above the surface will be the angel atop the belltower of San Marco, and a board on which the vaporetto departure times will continue to advance.

In yesterday’s case, all the vaporettos were, as usual, re-routed up and down the Grand Canal, even those — like the one I wanted — which normally circumnavigate the city’s perimeter.  If I’d known in time that the fog was that thick out in the lagoon (as it wasn’t, outside our hovel), I wouldn’t have walked all the way over to the vaporetto stop at San Pietro di Castello.  Because once I realized that the boat wasn’t coming, it was too late to activate the most reasonable solution: Walking to the Fondamente Nove to get the boat to Burano.  Although there again, even if service were maintained to the outer reaches of the lagoon, it would almost certainly have been on a limited schedule. Like, say, once an hour.

Pause for the sound of the perfect plan drifting out to sea, and the first stifled shriek of the day.

Fog does show the spiderwebs to their best advantage. There is that.
Fog does show the spiderwebs to their best advantage. There is that.

I can’t understand several things. If the boats have radar, why does it not inspire confidence in its operators? And more to the point, if the vaporetto captains can manage to navigate along the shoreline and up the Grand Canal, with or without radar, why could they not, by the same token, circumnavigate the city?  The route outside takes them just as close to the shoreline as it does inside — in other words, whichever route they take, they’re not exactly out on the high seas, but within eyeshot of any palaces or pilings or any other landmark that they need to keep track of.

Once again, my sense of logic has run aground in a falling tide on the mudbanks of municipal management.

But one last question: If the city (and by extension, its transport company) is so willing to confront a temporary meteorological situation (fog) with the attitude, “Suck it up, people,” why has it not been willing to confront another temporary meteorological situation (acqua alta) with the same panache?

Answers do suggest themselves, but they are cynical answers, composed of bitter little thoughts about human nature.  Best to leave them unexpressed.

If you've ever wondered what "It is what it is" might look like, this is an excellent illustration. All those women have long since accepted the fact that their laundry is going to be wetter by noon than it was when they hung it out.
If you've ever wondered what "It is what it is" might look like, this is an excellent illustration. All those women have long since accepted the fact that their laundry is going to be wetter by noon than it was when they hung it out.

Note to people flying, not floating, yesterday. I’m sorry if your flight was delayed.  I realize that flying in fog is stupid and dangerous. But slowly driving a boat in fog, hugging the shoreline, isn’t.

But as I say, if you don't have to drive or fly in it, the fog does have a certain fascination.
But as I say, if you don't have to drive or fly in it, the fog does have a certain fascination.
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Boatworld, Events, Venetian-ness

The “First Row of the Year”

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So we have all somehow managed to hack our way out of the calorie-entangled canebrake of the holidays, and you might suppose that now we would all return to our lairs for three months of hibernation before thinking about going out and rowing around.

Maybe some people hibernate, but for the past 33 years, the rowing club “Voga Veneta Mestre” has rousted everyone who is roustable to come out on the earliest possible Sunday in January to form a boat procession, or corteo, in the Grand Canal.  This undertaking is known by the homespun title of the Prima Vogada dell’Anno, or  the first row of the year.

A snippet of rainbow from the hanging around, waiting to get going: Blue and white of the Settemari, blue and gold of the Voga Veneta Lido, red and white of the Club Ponte dei Sartori.
A snippet of rainbow as we all wait to get going: Blue and white of the Settemari club, blue and gold of the Voga Veneta Lido, red and white of the Club Ponte dei Sartori.

Of course people already have been rowing this year, your correspondent included. But the motivation for this event isn’t merely rowing, but rowing with the purpose of Doing a Good Deed. The corteo ends at the nursing home at San Lorenzo, behind the church of San Giorgio dei Greci, where the Mestre club prepares a festive sort of party/lunch/scrum, cooking a vat of pasta e fagioli, bringing useful gifts, and providing plenty of loud and cheerful talking and singing to entertain the inmates — sorry, I meant residents.

Quadruple parking as the early-arrivers wait for everybody else: purple and white of the club San Polo dei Nomboli, blue and orange of Voga Veneta Mestre, and a random blue-garbed man from the Querini.
Quadruple parking as the early-arrivers wait for everybody else: purple and white of the club San Polo dei Nomboli, blue and orange of Voga Veneta Mestre, and a random blue-garbed man from the Querini.

I have only gone once to this climactic phase of the morning.  We usually just keep rowing in order to make it home at a decent hour, so I can’t tell you much about the denouement.

But I can tell you that I think the Prima Vogada dell’Anno is one of the best little boating exploits in the whole year because it has absolutely no public relations value whatever, no touristic or fancy-poster or let’s-find-a-sponsor or we-have-no-money or who-shot-John or any other of the aspects that often begrime waterborne events here. There are just too dang many situations in which floating Venetians  are used as decoration to provide some kind of folkloristic color to somebody else’s hoedown. And God forbid that the event should be televised — then they tell you where you have to go and how long to stay there, even if you had come with the quaint notion of being a participant and not merely some kind of anonymous oar-carrier.

So the great thing here is that it’s Just Us Folks, and if the weather is raw and foggy, which it was on Sunday and still is today (the foghorns are blowing as I write), all the better.  There are fewer people out to snap pictures, and the fog makes all the colors of the boats and their rowers’ track suits really come alive.

A simple sandolo from San Polo dei Nomboli standing by, hanging onto us. As you see, the Christmas Forcola has finally gotten out of the house and back to work.
A simple sandolo from San Polo dei Nomboli standing by, hanging onto us. As you see, the Christmas Forcola has finally gotten out of the house and back to work.

So the boats gather, in the usual disorderly way, between the train station and Piazzale Roma. Rowers wave to each other, call out mildly rude comments, check their cell phones for messages, and so on till the caravan moves out at 10:00.

There is relatively little traffic at that time on a fuzzy winter Sunday morning, so we have the Grand Canal pretty much  to ourselves.


Wherever we are at the beginning is not usually where we are at the end.  Lino likes to be near the front of any corteo, and rarely resists the temptation to perform all kinds of tiny, deft and seemingly impossible maneuvers to sneak past the other boats one by one and get ahead.

Gianni Bullo in the bow of his caorlina before the start. Perhaps he's rethinking his repertoire. ("Should I start with 'Un Bel Di?' Nah, let's just see what happens.")
Gianni Bullo in the bow of his caorlina before the start. Perhaps he's rethinking his repertoire. ("Should I start with 'Un Bel Di?' Nah, let's just see what happens.")

I’ll never forget how vastly he entertained himself one night a few years ago in a corteo for Carnival. The boats were all kind of mashed together in the semi-dark and we found ourselves wedged in behind a gondola of the Francescana club, rowed by four men. Giorgio Fasan was standing on the stern; he, like Lino on our 8-oar gondola, was the captain and steersman of the boat. At that time he was already very old but he was still as irrepressible as, I gather, he had always been, and still just as capable.

And we're off. Generally speaking. No rush.
And we're off. Generally speaking. No rush.

Lino, as always, was so perfectly in control of our boat, and so alert to everything and everyone around him (it’s long since become instinctive), that he decided to break the monotony by annoying Giorgio.  So we inched up behind Giorgio’s gondola, and with an imperceptible push on his oar Lino gave his gondola a little nudge against the stern.

Normally everybody tries to avoid touching, knocking against, running into, or otherwise coming into contact with other boats. Which means Giorgio wasn’t expecting his boat to move for any reason other than whatever he or his crew were doing. Lino’s little push, however, made his gondola unexpectedly begin to veer off-course, to the right.

"Mestrina," the 14-oar gondola and flagship of the Voga Veneta Mestre fleet, moves to the head of the corteo, as is only right and proper.
"Mestrina," the 14-oar gondola and flagship of the Voga Veneta Mestre fleet, moves to the head of the corteo, as is only right and proper.

Therefore Giorgio’s natural reaction was to start yelling at the man rowing in the prow, who he assumed was to blame for this deviation by having given a stroke that was just a little too hard.

“Why are you rowing?” he shouted.  “Can’t you see we don’t want to go right?  Tira acqua!”  (A counter-stroke that would have corrected the situation.)

I bet Lino nudged that gondola at least five times, just to watch Giorgio get more flustered and more mad — and of course, to listen to the exchanges between Giorgio and his supposedly incompetent but completely innocent crew member, which became increasingly warm.

Lino thought it was hilarious and I did too, I have to admit.  Childish?  Sure.  But I also thought it was pretty cool that he was able to pull it off, and it was so much the sort of thing I could imagine them all doing when they were all canal-rats together that I knew it wasn’t malicious.  Giorgio never did figure out what had happened.  He’s been rowing angels around the heavenly canals for several years now, but I bet he’s still blaming that guy in the bow.

Nothing like that happened on Sunday, though.  People stuck to the business at hand, Lino included, though after we passed under the Rialto Bridge, Gianni Bullo, in the bow of a caorlina from the Canottieri Mestre, suffered some sort of attack of euphoria (“rapture of the Rialto”?), and began singing snatches of a song, or maybe several.  Maybe he thought other people would join in — it happens sometimes, which is really nice. He was happy, though, and that’s something that always sounds good, though in his case it sounded better from a distance.

Me, I was savoring the boat-music, the sound of us swooshing along, and the boats around us also swooshing, each producing its own special swoosh-notes according to the size and shape and weight of the boat, not to mention the size, shape and weight of its rowers.  For once the main sound in the Grand Canal was not the snarling of taxi and barge and vaporetto motors, but just the water and the oars and the air combining in their own rhythmic, convivial, completely unorchestrated a cappella chorus.

I don’t think these guys, including Gianni Bullo, could possibly sing any song at the nursing home that would be more wonderful than that.

Coming out of the Grand Canal into the Bacino of San Marco, the boats tend to wander away from each other, becoming less of a procession and more of a small herd.
Coming out of the Grand Canal into the Bacino of San Marco, the boats tend to wander away from each other, becoming less of a procession and more of a small herd.
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Nature, Water

Venetian Lagoon reverie

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Water is such an fundamental part of Venice’s fascination that it would be silly to imagine the city without it.

But if you want to discover something equally beautiful, you should look at the water without the city. Go out into the lagoon, preferably in a small boat with oars, and above all, do it in the winter.

Looking toward Sant' Erasmo.
Looking toward Sant' Erasmo.

Habit, if not logic, induces us to believe that a great day out on the water requires sunshine, heat, cold beer, and all the other appurtenances of a summer weekend. Or month.

But I have a Venetian friend — and I know he’s not alone — who, when the spring warmth begins to creep across his shoulders, shrugs and says resignedly, “Well, it’s the end of the beautiful season.”

The first time he said it, I thought he might be unbalanced.  Now I say it too.

IMG_3578
This is the only boat we saw, apart from a small sailboat. The good part was that they were gone really quickly.

Of course there are positive aspects to summer here.  But when summer brings sun to the lagoon it also brings the sun’s entourage, which is everybody in the entire universe in loud boats with loud families, rampaging around, creating waves, havoc, and confusion. The waves in themselves belong to a particular species of confusion — aggressive, chaotic, senseless. You know how, if you drop a potato chip on the ground, in two minutes ants are swarming all over it?  The lagoon in the summer is that potato chip to uncounted thousands of people, almost all of whom look alarmingly alike.

But as October blends into November, and into early December, as winter breathes itself into the year and we wake up to a world wrapped in filmy fog, the lagoon changes, or rather reverts, to its true self, an intricate, delicate, harmonious realm.

What we discovered amid the debris ashore was this treasure, a "cheba da go" [KEH-ba da GO] which had gone adrift. "Go" is the Venetian name of a type of lagoon fish technically named a goby, and this piece of equipment is still, well, ready to go. Finders keepers.These are what I think of as the mother-of-pearl days, when the sky and water share a nacreous, faintly gleaming quality and the air is almost still. Days like this are the Japanese tea ceremony, Bach’s unaccompanied cello suites, of weather. Normal people looking out the window feel an urge to make hot cocoa and lie on the sofa.  I can’t wait to get out.

When we go rowing in the fog, everything is beautiful — the sharp air, the little melody of the water passing under the boat (which thanks to the absence of motorboats one can actually hear), and the silence itself.  It’s a soft sort of silence, that floats on swathes of water that are perfectly flat yet crinkled with myriad tiny waves which the imperceptible breeze has created and is now trying to smooth out again.

Simpliciti itself: You put a small crab into the trap, then jam the bamboo pole into the lagoon bottom. You go do something else for a while, then you come back, collect your haul, and start over again. You notice that the lagoon water is extremely far from murky; this degree of clarity is normal in the winter.
Simplicity itself: You put a small crab into the trap, then jam the bamboo pole into the lagoon bottom. You go do something else for a while, then you come back, collect your haul, and start over again. Notice that the lagoon water is extremely far from murky; this degree of clarity is normal in the winter.

We took the boat a few days ago on one of those perfect days: chilly, nebulous, with almost nobody in sight.  We were aided in this solitude not only by the weather, but by the fact that it was a national holiday (the feast of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, for the record), which meant that people weren’t working, which cut down drastically on the traffic. Just to see so much empty space was like getting a present in the mail.

Before long, real winter will arrive, bringing frost, ice, snow, scimitar winds slashing down from Siberia (I did not make that up).  One year we went rowing on the day after Christmas (also a holiday); it was during one of those Arctic snaps and in a few small canals a film of ice had begun to form, which my oar broke with a neat slice.  Rowing back, the wind was so strong it blew the frigid spray over our mascareta, turning to ice on the bottom.  It was like rowing standing on a skating rink. With each oar stroke I thought, “If I slip, I’ll never get my footing again.” Which led me to wonder how exactly we’d ever get home. These thoughts distracted me from the inconceivable coldness of the wind and the fact that it made absolutely no sense to be out there.

On those days the world is dazzling, cut by diamonds. Beautiful, sure. Anybody can see that.

But fog is insidious, seductive, gossamer, enchanting.  Tranquil. Restorative.

I’m improvising here.  None of these words, and not even all of them, can do this brief little season justice, but they’re the best I can manage.

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