René’s old blog
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Venice about to ban kayaks in the city
Ever since the fatal accident in August 2013 there has been a lot of debates about what to do to make boat traffic safer in Venice. There has been little change in the year and a half since the accident. All changes have been blocked or sabotaged by the various vested interests in the city: […]
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Copenhagen paddle
These photos are from a short paddle in early January in Copenhagen, with our friends Per and Lise. Many thanks to Kajakhotellet for lending us the boats.
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A Roman boy in 1912
I’m currently listening to a podcast on the Byzantine Empire, which is very interesting.
An episode discussing the identity of the people of the Byzantine Empire mentioned a story of a little boy on an island that had been part of the Ottoman empire but was passing to Greece. A Greek soldier met a small boy who asked him: “What are you?”. “I’m Greek like you” the soldier answered. The boy replied “No, I’m Roman.”
A self-image of being “Roman” almost 500 years after the fall of the Byzantine Empire.
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New Year at Tivoli
We spend New Year’s evening in Tivoli in Copenhagen, with a handful of Italian friends.
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High tide in Venice
We’ve had several days with high water lately here in Venice. Not extreme high water, but enough to be a burden for the locals and an amusement for the tourists.
The city canals are very quiet when the tide goes above a certain level, as most boats can no longer pass under the bridges, and we had planned to go paddling to enjoy having the city’s waterways mostly to ourselves.
First thing to notice is that at high tide there is quite a bit of rubbish and other stuff floating around, like this part of a bridge or dock.
Give the lack of traffic we quickly gravitated towards San Marco, here from the front.
Here’s a gondola stuck under a bridge by the rising water, just behind Piazza San Marco.
This is the view from the canal behind the square onto the Piazza San Marco. This is the lowest point level entry to the square, but there is far to little water to do any kind of stupidity.
I got out of the kayak and walked in though the water and found this view.
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Reflections in Venice
Throughout October we’ve had some fantastic reflections in the water. Less traffic and a different light are probably the main reasons.
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Photography classes II
I did a basic level photography course back in the spring, and in September and October I did the next level course.
The teacher was Marc De Tollenaere.
This course covered several themes which all build on the basics from the first course, requiring manual adjustments to ISO, aperture and shutter speed to get the required result.
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Photography classes
This year I have taken a couple of photography classes, for the first time ever, and I have learned a lot. Like so many others I have just relied on the automatic settings and shot without thinking too much. While it mostly works, it also only mostly works. Both classes were taught by Marc De […]
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Guaranteed for Life
I’ve been using a Tilley hat ever since I started paddling and I’ve been very happy with it. However, after some 8 years of heavy use, and at least a thousand days kayaking in all sorts of weather, my hat was severely worn. This summer it has literally been coming apart. Since Tilly Endurables promises […]
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Contorted Venice
In the 1960s a deep canal was dug across the Venetian lagoon to give access to bigger ships to the commercial harbour at Marghera, and since then Venice has been flooded by ever more frequent and ever higher tides.
To counter this threat to Venice’s existence a system of mobile flood gates was devised at the three openings between the lagoon and the sea. They’re still being built. The costs are now over 6bn Euros, nobody knows if they will ever work, and the whole affair has become a cesspool of corruption and mismanagement of public funds.
Now, to make sure the next generation of still larger cruise ships will be able to enter the lagoon, a new branch of the canal from the 1960s will be made to take the 70m wide and 360m long future ships into Venice. The project is being sold as a necessity to avoid having the ships pass in front of St.Mark’s, without promising that they won’t, and as an environmental project to repair the massive damage caused by the first canal.
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Killing Venice Slowly
The Italian government has decided to dig a new deep canal through the Venetian lagoon to give the next generation of cruise ships, even bigger then the current ones, a passage to Venice. Please consider signing the online petition against this next assault on Venice. This decision was taken in Rome without any kind of […]
