MonaCOVID

From Enter the ESC

Revision as of 10:13, 22 March 2020 by Se (Talk | contribs)

One of the many advice on coping with the current Corona virus crisis while staying confined at home is to keep a diary. This is what I decided to do, the more so as I am confined in a very interesting place: the one where I was born, almost seventy years ago.

You will have guessed (no prize! ;-) which place that is. For now I will try to update this daily every day, or at least every other day. On the other hand I don’t know how long I will stay here, since the longing for my housie in the beloved Tuscan village is also strong – and I miss my garden!

Time will tell. For now I will start the story not from to-day, March 18, but from the past week-end, ‘the last one before the unknown’, as French daily Liberation called it.

Also take note that these pieces are written quite quickly, and if xs4all's Cube Webmail provides for a spell checker, it says nothing about grammar - so please bear with me as I try to limit the sloth!


Practical info

Having been reluctant to go for a blog from day one, I have chosen the flexible format of a Bcc list (mail to ‘undisclosed recipients’). So if you receive this, you are on it. But if you do not wish so, a simple mail to me will ensure your prompt removal. You are of course free, nay welcome, to comment on my musings. If you wish to share it with all other recipients, just tell me, and I will put, ‘anonymously’ or not – you say – in a next installment.

Let’s remain calm and happy in these trying time. Respect the current measures taken by your local authorities, and foremost:

STAY SAFE STAY HOME!

And here two excellent (immo) health advisories:

https://covid-at-home.info/

is very extensive, on the verge of the ueber-technical, while:

https://ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2020/03/zukunftsblog-viola-vogel-reducing-the-risk-of-infection.html

focuses on the crucial need to keep your throat winning the battle against infection.

Wishing you all the best! Take Care! Patrizio & the travel-Diiiinooos! (stuck now)

Contents

Part I

This diary starts the week-end that Liberation had termed ‘the last one before the unknown’ - while the front page read ‘the Day Before’ , probably referring to a suddenly vanished paradise, or at least a vanished past.

That surely holds true for the Principality of Monaco, the glam & glitter haven of the ueber-rich. But also home to fairly ordinary and not spectacularly wealthy people, both ‘nationals’ and ‘expats’ (ca 8500 and 29000 respectively) (*).

For both categories life was looking fairly normal till this past week-end. That is what goes for normal over here: a remarkable number of (very) expensive cars on the road – I saw a Maybach for the first time – and a nasty number of, (again, very) hi-end shops, catering for the tastes of the ‘seriously rich’ and the ‘merely wealthy’ - to use the Wall Street Journal’s apt socio-econmic sorting.

In more regular outlets, such as supermarkets, the first signs of the storm to come were already apparent however: the shelves meant for bottled water and toilet paper started to take a definitely ‘GDR’ look, a sure sign of the - totally ridiculous – panic buying to come.

Meanwhile I was also feeling the clouds gathering – after all my country of usual residence, Italy, had been in lockdown for more than a week (**) - and decided to go on long walks as long as that remained permitted – and that was to show foresight, even if of a minimal sort.

The first took me along the quays of the harbour. The latter was in my youth a wide open square water plane , but it has now been reduced to a checkered space so as to accommodate a large number of long jetties, crowded with sailboats and motor cruisers, while a long dock has been built outside the harbour proper for cruise ships (unwelcome for some time already, after the ‘Princesses’ scare).

Along the quays, lined with crafts big, medium, and small – I saw even a fisher(wo)man’s little boat – a spectacle reminiscent of Oslo harbour in Summer: one glitzy water hole after the other, with crowds of guileless HNWIs and VHNWIs lizzard-lounging, sipping Sauvignon at Oslo+ prices.

In the evening, higher up the rocks, in the distinctly more proletarian adjacent French commune of Beausoleil where I do my shopping, people were dancing in the covered market at the rhythms of a Martinique band. (or was it Guadeloupe, or …?) There too one could not suppress a feel of impeding closure.

The walk had also brought me along the sea to Roquebrune beach and railway station, where a bearded homeless man had apparently taken up residence in the waiting shelter. These people also inhabit the Cote d’Azur, and I wonder what will become of them. Meanwhile para-gliders were slowly drifting down from the mountain promontory 600 meters up, landing on the beach. For them too it must have been the last flight into known territory, geographic or otherwise. Same for a few early season swimmers ...

(to be continued)




Notes (I’m a former academic, so I love ‘m ;-)

(*) Numbers vary according to sources. Monaco’s civil register count 9300 citizens, which surprised me, but then quite a few reside outside the principality. Anyway both the numbers of autochthonous and allochthonous inhabitants has grown a lot since I was (officially) living there in my young years …

(**) Things are happening so fast that you please excuse me if I have lost the chronology of the Covid crisis. As one historian described the two weeks before WWI broke out ‘every morning saw a situation that had looked unimaginable the evening before’.

Part II

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas nisi turpis, rhoncus sit amet dignissim volutpat, vehicula vitae augue. Integer consequat aliquet nisl, ut iaculis ligula lacinia id. Maecenas iaculis faucibus felis vitae interdum. Morbi ac tincidunt sem, ut vulputate quam. Fusce varius metus sed neque volutpat malesuada. Ut ut eros ante. Donec id commodo tortor. Proin in nunc eu eros dictum faucibus non eu dolor. Curabitur accumsan dolor nibh, vel cursus ex auctor a. Maecenas ipsum lectus, tempus vitae pulvinar nec, mattis sed diam. Nulla nunc ex, pellentesque ut sollicitudin lobortis, tempus ut elit.

Part III

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas nisi turpis, rhoncus sit amet dignissim volutpat, vehicula vitae augue. Integer consequat aliquet nisl, ut iaculis ligula lacinia id. Maecenas iaculis faucibus felis vitae interdum. Morbi ac tincidunt sem, ut vulputate quam. Fusce varius metus sed neque volutpat malesuada. Ut ut eros ante. Donec id commodo tortor. Proin in nunc eu eros dictum faucibus non eu dolor. Curabitur accumsan dolor nibh, vel cursus ex auctor a. Maecenas ipsum lectus, tempus vitae pulvinar nec, mattis sed diam. Nulla nunc ex, pellentesque ut sollicitudin lobortis, tempus ut elit.

Part IV

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas nisi turpis, rhoncus sit amet dignissim volutpat, vehicula vitae augue. Integer consequat aliquet nisl, ut iaculis ligula lacinia id. Maecenas iaculis faucibus felis vitae interdum. Morbi ac tincidunt sem, ut vulputate quam. Fusce varius metus sed neque volutpat malesuada. Ut ut eros ante. Donec id commodo tortor. Proin in nunc eu eros dictum faucibus non eu dolor. Curabitur accumsan dolor nibh, vel cursus ex auctor a. Maecenas ipsum lectus, tempus vitae pulvinar nec, mattis sed diam. Nulla nunc ex, pellentesque ut sollicitudin lobortis, tempus ut elit.

Personal tools
Navigation

ESC-2024
dal 17 settembre
al 22 settembre
San Dona' di Piave
e ONLINE! :D

˪ CAMPEGGIO

˪ PROGRAMMA

˪ SEMINARI

˪ LABORATORI

˪ SPECIALE

˪ DOMANDE

˪ RISORSE

˪ CONTATTI

˪ PARTECIPA!

green-arrow-right.gif