Near Death in Venice

In the early days of the home PC, when the BBC Micro was king and 32k was all the memory you could ever need, someone invented a game called Frogger. You had to hop a frog across multiple lanes of a motorway and not get squashed. Janet remembered it when we sailed into the Canale della Giudecca which is Venice's main waterway.



Different types of craft plough backwards and forwards along multiple lanes. There are the enormous cruise liners which lok like floating blocks of flats, which of course is what they are. They try not to hit anything because of the paperwork involved but they have the manoueverability of well, a block of flats. Then there are the car ferries. By tradition, at the entrance to the Canale, the captains of these ferries lash their wheels, lock their engines on full and then go below for a fag. Then there are the powerful motorboats, who do follow rules of the road. The main one seems to be that they have to keep to the right, unless they don't want to. They are all driven by young people, maybe they don't get to be old.



Venetian Frogger is played in water taxis. If you imagine a single decker bus without wheels, welded to a large baking tray, you will get a good idea of the appearance and sea-worthiness of these craft. The water taxis tack between alternate stops on each side of the Canale.



Advanced Venetian Frogger is played at night. We took the number 2, the long way, both ways, to St Mark's Square. The taxis have room for 80 seated and 100 standing, which gives them a night-time capacity of 350. We talked nervously to ease the tension, but conversations tended to towards "That bell tower looks beautiful in the moon... Christ that was close!" as another unlit, jet black car ferry full of jet black cars missed us by inches and left us bobbing in its wake. (Funny word Wake). All the taxi drivers, also remarkably young, ever did was to shove the throttle forward and look for someone else to miss.

At the end of the game we emerged shaken but still with one life left. Lager in pavement cafe near St Mark's Square £10 a pint; surviving to blog about it, priceless.

Dave C