Su e Zo per i Ponti | Venice: I am not making this up

Enjoy this moment from a few days ago, because you may never see it again. A lone person rowing his sandolo (the type normally used by professional sandolistas) toward the open lagoon, or possibly to the boatyard. He may be thinking he’d better be ready — who knows when a customer might suddenly appear?

During the past week or so life has finally “re-opened” after lockdown, and the process has felt strangely like the way you felt the first time you tried to skate.

Put another way, everything is still a little awkward.

I’m not saying this is ideal. Just saying it had become normal.

So we’ve been upgraded now to Normalcy 2.0: Shorter lines at the supermarkets, at least occasionally, and sometimes no lines at all (I do not understand this — under quarantine the lines stretched for miles. Have people stopped needing to eat?), but you still must wear a mask and gloves when you enter. Masks are required only in enclosed spaces where maintaining social distance is difficult, though many people, including me, are still wearing masks out on the street. More people are outdoors, of course — the end of lockdown and beautiful weather guarantee it. Cups of espresso are available everywhere. I must be dreaming.

Our favorite little restaurant finally re-opened, so we celebrated the other evening by stopping for dinner; we were the only — perhaps even the first — customers, happily munching undercooked pizza because we were so glad to get back in the groove, and also helping the owner do the same. She’d been closed since December, thanks to the apocalyptic acqua alta of last November 12 (anybody remember that?)

This sign didn’t stay up long, but was worth noticing: “Turn off the virus! Turn on your business!” This company uses ozone as disinfectant. The process evidently offers several advantages over other methods, especially in restaurants and salons where the odor of bleach or other chemicals is unpleasant.

On the subject of signs, you recall that all the death notices during quarantine stated that funerals were very restricted (only closest relatives, no Mass, etc.). This is the first indication of some remediation: “On April 1 she was lost to the love of her dear ones” (standard), but it then continues: “Not having been able to celebrate the religious function on the occasion of the funeral, the Holy Mass of intercession will be celebrated at the Basilica of San Pietro di Castello Saturday June 13 at 11:00 AM.” It’s interesting that this was put up more than a week in advance.

A few tourists have begun to appear, which ought to be the best indication that the worst is over. And yet, although I know that the city needs a certain quantity of them in order to survive, seeing them inspires the same dread as seeing the water in the glass on the dashboard in “Jurassic Park,” quivering from the heavy tread of whatever dinosaur was approaching. Yes, I have just compared tourists to saurian predators. Funny how you think you want something and then it turns out you really didn’t.

And so one of the prime features of Normalcy 1.0 is still active: The slob tourists. Some people were hoping that now, seeing that the decks had been cleared, the city could attract the elite tourist (how many times have I heard this dream? About as often as I hear how we’d spend the millions we’d win in the weekly lottery, and with the same probability). Of course we want tourists like Grace Kelly and Cary Grant, but instead we get two German men who went swimming in the Grand Canal a few days ago.

Odd, in that this stunt is usually the specialty of drunk American boys in the hottest depths of summer. But who can search the intricate pathways of the touristic brain? And this pair was not the first to succumb to the lure of the canals. On May 26, back in the early days of Phase 2 when travel was just beginning to be permitted within the Veneto, two young women from near Vicenza were seen lounging in their swimsuits on a fondamenta in Cannaregio, enjoying the sun and evidently anticipating a little dip in the rio degli Ormesini. Offended locals alerted the police, who came to explain the situation to them and impose fines (250 euros / $282) on each of them.

As for the German men, their being 40-something adults complicates the equation, as well as their not being intoxicated, as does their sang froid in answering a bystander’s question as to what the heck they were doing with another question: “What the hell does it matter to you?” (freely translated). Yes, they managed to have their little swim, and I hope it was everything they’d dreamed of because they were nabbed, each fined (450 euros / $508) and marked as forbidden to return to Venice.

So refreshing, so expensive, so … illegal. (galileusweb.com)

It’s something to ponder: Back in the olden days of last year, the loutish tourist (turista cafone) seemed to appear as the occasional freak in the midst of the masses. You think, well, when there are 50,000 visitors a day, it’s probably inevitable that a few boors will slip through. But evidently the boors are free spirits who have no need of concealing themselves. I’ve begun to wonder if there could be a factory somewhere that manufactures these people and sends them at random around the world. Do they have homes and jobs and normal lives? I just cannot picture them in some regular place, like regular people.

Why am I going on about this? Because it seemed like we wanted tourists to come back. Now I, secretly, am beginning to rethink that. Of course businesses want them, I understand and respect that. More about that in a later post. But on a personal level, I’m going to confess that despite the many uncomfortable and inconvenient aspects of lockdown (starting with the fear of falling ill, or maybe dying, and ending with the total lack of cafe’s), I’ve already begun to feel a guilty little tremor of nostalgia for the peace and the quiet.

Yes, I realize I could find all I want in the Gobi Desert. But I like the canals as much as everybody from Germany and America and Italy and Belgium…..

In fairness, these visitors are from the Veneto, by which I mean there is some typical tourist behavior that is not unique to foreigners. I know this because the city was full of families and groups that sunny Sunday afternoon (May 31), as the restrictions on travel within the Region had just been lifted.

Along the Riva dei Sette Martiri, there were couples and family groups just walking along, enjoying the sunshine.

The vibe was somehow like a really relaxed “Su e Zo per i Ponti” (scheduled for April 19 this year, but obviously canceled). It’s an event that is a great excuse for groups, families, clubs, etc. to get out for the day, explore Venice, benefit a charity, totally clog up many narrow streets, etc. It always seems like a party, which is very nice. I’ve never participated because I go up and down the bridges all year long.

The vaporettos have reached their standard configuration now, with red labels indicating the places you are not permitted to sit. So this person is standing. It’s wonderful.

And on the other side of the same boat, I watched this lady just plunk herself down on top of the miraculously invisible red label, and make herself comfortable. She was not a tourist; I’ve always said that plenty of Venetians can be just as uncivilized as foreigners.

As it happens, I saw the same thing happen on the big #1 coming down the Grand Canal yesterday, but I intervened.

The interior of the cabin is organized with three seats facing three seats, etc. and in that case I had the free seat in the center of one row, but the seat facing me was red-labeled. The window seat was occupied, and the aisle seat was free. A woman enters with her young son, who might have been eight or nine years old. She parks her shopping trolley in the aisle, parks her son in the seat next to it, and parks herself in the forbidden seat in front of me. (Beat. Beat. Beat.)

“Why are you looking at me?” she asks. “Because you’re sitting in a seat with a red label.” She then rebuts, not unpleasantly but with complete conviction, that she has to sit there, she has no choice, because something something son something aisle. I say “The seat has a red label, you’re not allowed to sit there.” More reply. “So,” I say, “if everybody just does whatever they feel like, there’s no point in having the labels, is that right?” And I get up and walk over to Lino across the aisle, and just stand until another seat opens up.

Later, when I explained why I had been standing there, he said “Wrong! You should have told me!” (Unchain the Lino!) Or I could have gone to tell the marinaio, who ties up the boat at each stop, and he would have come and enforced the rule. They actually count how many people disembark at each stop, and count the same number of people boarding, after which they close the barrier.

I’ll keep these options in mind for my next experiment in the new order of things. Glad to know I’ll have backup. The new normal is looking kind of interesting.

Walking home, I see this. But what is it? A man with a … lamp? If life were normal, I’d immediately have understood it to be some piece of modern performance art as part of the Biennale. I say “performance art,” because the art wouldn’t have been the lamp. It would have been the man in a boat, floating around with a lamp. Nowadays, though, invoking the Biennale is obviously impossible.

Mystery solved: It’s moving day, and he got stuck with the torchere, or a cult object from some indigenous Amazonian tribe. Something too valuable to have been loaded onto the other boat with everything else. The fact that whoever it is has finally been able to move in is a great sign of the return to normal life.

This is our normal: Rowing out in our boat to the Great Hunting Grounds where Lino seeks clams. It’s like meditation or something for him, he totally loses track of everything. You must imagine the thought balloon over his head: “Just one more…..”.

Events, Tourism

Running around Venice

November 15, 2010 1 Comment

And they're off: another handful of orienteers has just grabbed their maps and the clock is running.

I started scribbling this yesterday to the sound just outside the window of a lot of people going by in a hurry. Sometimes a large hurry. I could hear the thudding of feet, the puffing of lungs, and incoherent voices of various ages and genders that sounded either baffled or urgent, or both.

This went on Saturday and Sunday. “This” was the 31st edition of the Venice Orienteering Meeting. Each year, on the second Sunday of November, our neighborhood is besieged by people who’ve come from all over Europe (though I’m sure you’d be welcome no matter where you live. Pitcairn Island? Cool!). They are competing in a timed race armed only with a map and a compass, and a list of checkpoints to cover in the correct order in the shortest time possible. That’s my homespun definition of orienteering, an undertaking which has now reached the level of a sport. It even has a federation.

When an activity passes from being a game to a sport, things get serious. (A shout-out to Ernest Hemingway, who said “There are only three sports, bullfighting, motor racing and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.”) Frankly, some of the orientators didn’t look so serious to me.

The famous division of labor: The men do the hunting, the women talk about clothes and makeup. — The famous division of labor: The men do the hunting, the women do the talking about clothes and makeup.

In a way, much more than boating or swimming, orienteering is the city’s natural sport. In fact, I’d say it was Venice’s destiny to present itself, not merely as the repository of historical and artistic magnificence, but as a serious challenge to the brains and legs of people who are looking at it as terrain.

However willing your team may be, doing anything as a group always takes large amounts of time, as anyone who has traveled with a couple of friends or relatives can attest. These girls are about two minutes from the starting line and already there is discussion and doubt.

What, after all, are mere forests and torrents and ravines compared to the seductive complexity of dark, narrow streets, canals, dead ends, and bridges to everywhere? Any newbie who has ever set out for a specific destination armed only with the primitive map the hotel gave out can tell you that there may be moments here when negotiating forests and ravines would be simpler.

Two things about the course: First, it was designed by a German man. I don’t comment, I merely note it. Make of it what you will.

However, being on your own doesn't appear to make it any easier.

Second, there were many different courses, divided according to the gender and skill of the orientizers. These courses varied in length and in “dislivello,” a complicated topographic term which I can only manage to remember as being the distance in the difference of the heights of any two points. (Perhaps a humorous idea in Venice, but deeply meaningful in the mountains. If you’re running in the mountains, it probably interests you much more to know how far up and down you’re going to have to go than the kilometers to cover. If you live in the Lincolnshire fens or downtown Houston, it is a totally foreign concept.)

The longest course was, logically, for the serious athletes in the Elite Category. For the men, it covered 10,500 meters and 80 meters of dislivello (six and a half miles and 262 feet). Winner: Alessio Tenani of Italy, who finished in 1 hour 9 minutes and 51 seconds. The last in this category came in at twice the time: 2:20:23.

For the women, the Elite course covered 8,700 meters and 73 meters of dislivello (five and a half miles and 239 feet). Winner: Sarka Svobodna of the Czech Republic, who made it in 1:08:27. Last to come in here clocked 2:00:41.

Behind all these paladins were large squadrons of students of assorted ages, and a richly variegated quantity of people — couples with small children, some of whom could race like the wind, or quartets of young adults, or pairs of roundish older people taking the whole thing at a pace that could have been calculated in phases of the moon.

Three cadets from the Francesco Morosini naval college forge ahead. John Paul Jones would have been proud.

But while we’re talking about walking, you should know that there is another annual event that might be more appealing, or at least less competitive. It’s called “Su e Zo per i Ponti“ (Up and Down the Bridges), and groups turn out in hordes. Here too there is a laid-out course to follow, but no need at all to use your brain. I’ve seen pods of people as they go by and most of them seem more interested in laughing and talking than in getting home before dark.

Next year’s “Su e Zo” will be on April 10 (2011) and if you’re going to be here it could be a very diverting and different thing to do. After all, if you’re going to be tramping around from hither to yon anyway, why not join the masses of people who are so cheerfully blocking the streets? You’re going to have to mingle with a lot of them anyway, and if you register you get refreshments and a medal, which you can’t say every day in Venice.

If there are tickets left you can register the morning of the event, at the departure point in the Piazza San Marco. It costs six euros, less than a vaporetto ticket. I think you should do it.

A runner punches his ticket at whichever checkpoint this is and is off again.

I myself have never thought of participating, mainly because walking around Venice takes up so much of my daily existence that it would seem bizarre to do what I do every day with a batch of people who regard it as entertainment. I’m not saying I don’t love walking around Venice, it’s just that I usually do it in second or third gear. I need to get places.

If I had any free time on a Sunday, I’d be taking a nap.

No rules against participants carrying their beloved stuffed creature.

A checkpoint symbol that missed the pickup at the end. I wonder how long it will stay here before somebody does something.