René’s old blog
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Liberation Day in Venice
I’ve had the great honour of being invited to the official celebration of Liberation Day in Venice by ANPI, the national association of Italian resistance fighters, to photograph their participation in the event.
More on my photography web site: With ANPI on April 25th.
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Burano – a photographer’s paradise
Burano is a small island town some 10km north of Venice in the middle of the Venetian Lagoon. It is as ancient as Venice, and famous for lace production, great seafood and it’s coloured houses.
In fact, it must be one of the most colourful towns in the world. If you’re looking for a house that’s pink, orange, lime green, violet, turquoise, or just plain blue, Burano will have something for you.
All the bright colours opens op a plethora of possibilities: matching colours, complimentary colours, saturated colours vs pastel colours, and the classic Burano colour game: find people and houses in matching colours.
A common question we get is: who decides the colours of the houses? We have asked a few of the locals, and generally they just pick a colour they like. There is no regulation or planning of the colours of Burano. They just happen.
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Press release: Legal Recourse Accepted
The local administration in Venice introduced an almost complete ban on kayaking in Venice city last August, and Venice Kayak has taken the city to court over the ban. We have written about this several time previously.
The TAR Veneto (Tribunale Amministrative Regionale del Veneto) has finally pronounced its sentence, and they have decided in our favour.
In practice this means that Venice now returns to the rules as they were before August 1st, 2018, which allowed kayaking in Venice with some time restrictions.
Below Venice Kayak’s press release of March 20th, 2019, is reproduced.
Venezia, March 20th, 2019
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Carnival time in Venice – the Twelve Marys
It’s carnival time in Venice again, and one the main events is the procession of the “Twelve Marys”, which starts from San Pietro di Castello and ends at Piazza San Marco.
The Festa delle Marie is a re-enactment of a medieval annual celebration where some of the wealthy families of the city offered the dowry for twelve of the poorest girls of marrying age.
The celebration lasted for two weeks in early February, with processions on boats down the Canal Grande and numerous feasts and events.
In 973 a pirate attack on Venice (which wasn’t yet a powerful state) led to the abduction of the girls, but they were saved and brought back to Venice.
Later, as the rich families resented the expense of clothes and dowries for poor girls, the girls were replaced by statues, and after some time the entire event was discontinued.
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Kayak ban court hearing
The final hearing of the legal recourse of Venice Kayak against the kayaking ban in Venice, was held on february 6th, but the sentence will only be published later.
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Penny
Last Tuesday I placed the most difficult signature of my life on the most unwanted piece of paper ever.
I signed away the life of our Penny.
Penny came to us thirteen months ago. She was in a horrible condition.
Months of neglect has reduced her to shadow of herself.
Down to half her former weight and seriously dehydrated, her eyes sunken in to be almost invisible behind dark shades on her skin, some kind of infection around her eyes, mouth, nose and ears leaving a hard black crust. Even if she looked at us, it was like she wasn’t there.
A walking ghost in search of somebody who wasn’t there any more.
We took her in so she could die in a warm home, on a soft pillow, and not in a cage in the cold amongst strangers.
The vet gave her a month, maybe two.
Penny was stronger than that, though. She came back.
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WordPress Hamilton Theme add-on
I’ve got several site running on the brilliant minimalistic Hamilton theme for Wordpress. It is a free theme created by Anders Norén.
The only thing I found missing was to be able to display posts and pages easily in the same way they appear on the blog posts page.
After bit of experimenting, I came up with code for a Wordpress shortcode that’ll do the trick. There’s a download link below.
With this shortcode you can do things like:
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A Pathetic Human Being
Fascism is by definition authoritarian.
Fascism is by definition violent.
Fascism by definition oppresses dissent.Roberto Siebessi is a self-declared fascist. He doesn’t hide his beliefs.
He is also a gondolier in Venice, who thought it is a good idea to decorate his gondola in this way.
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Venice Kayak
Venice Kayak is a small company offering kayaking tours in Venice, Italy.
We do tours in sea kayak around Venice city and in the lagoon, offering a unique point of view on the city.
The idea started in 2006 just as I had started kayaking. I was looking for interesting places to go paddling in Italy, where all my holidays would go for family reasons.
Looking at a map, I followed the coast line around the peninsula, and took notes: Cinque Terre, Isola d’Elba, Costa Amalfitana, Sardegna, Sicily, … When my finger reached Venice, it immediately struck that that had to be a different experience.
I spend a lot of time researching on the internet, with little success, but I found the Italian sea kayaking association Sottocosta, and they appeared to have half a dozen members in the area. I wrote to all of them, but the only one who answered was Marco.
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Brexit from a distance
I find it hard not to follow the Brexit news from the UK, even if I’m not directly involved.
Much of the Brexit debate has been about freedom of movement.
When I can live in Venice now, being a Danish citizen, it is because of the EU rules on freedom of movement.
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Kayaking ban status
The city administration of Venice has issued an almost total ban on kayaking for entirely fictitious reason of safety of navigation. We have written about it previously on August 1st , August 6th, September 9th, and September 23rd.
The TAR Veneto (Tribunale amministrativo regionale del Veneto) has held a preliminary hearing on October 3rd, to express judgment on the suspension of the kayaking ban awaiting the final hearing which will lead to the final judgment in the case.
The outcome was neither victory nor defeat.
The judges decided to non suspend to city’s ban on kayaking, but to hold the final hearing in the case, leading up to the final judgment, on February 6th, 2019, at 9am.
The final judgment will be issued sometimes afterwards, in principle the day after, but more likely one to two months later. We might only know the outcome around Easter 2019, even though we hope it will be earlier.
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Kayking banned in Venice for fictitious reasons
The city administration of Venice has issued an almost total ban on kayaking for entirely fictitious reason of safety of navigation. We have written about it here (Aug 1st) and here (Aug 6th) and here (Sep 9th).
This post explains in more details where you can go kayaking and when in Venice with the August 1st 2018 ban in force.