The End of Tourism

My guest on this episode is Petra Reski, a German writer and journalist who has lived in Venice since 1991. As a result of her numerous publications on the Mafia, she was subjected to lawsuits and threats, which is why she received police protection for a while. She has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Ricarda Huch Prize in 2021, which is awarded every three years to personalities whose work is characterized by independent thinking and courageous action, and who are fully committed to the ideals of humanity and international understanding.

She has not only written novels, non-fiction books and numerous articles about her hometown of Venice, but also made a film already in 1998 with the prophetic title "The Last Venetians". Her most recent book is about the sell-out of Venice and has been published in Germany, Italy and France. She is a member of PEN and since 2018 has been driving a small fishing boat with which she can also park in reverse.

Show Notes

Everyday Life on an Overtouristed Island

The Last Venetians

The Fascist Political Rigging of Municipal Politics

Murano Glass and The Death of an Island

The Changes in Venice in the Last 30 Years

Taking Back Venice in the Pandemic

April 19, 2023 Collective Action & Referendum in Venice

The Loss of the Venetian Language

Once I Fell into the Grand Canal

Homework

Petra’s Website: www.petrareski.com

Books: https://www.petrareski.com/buecher/

Book in English: https://www.petrareski.com/buecher/mafia/the-honoured-society/

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Chris: Welcome to the end of tourism podcast, Petra. Could you tell us a little bit about where you're speaking from today and what the world looks like for you, where you are?

[00:00:08] Petra: Well, actually, I'm speaking from the center of Venice, just kind of not even 300 meters to the square, San Marco Square.

So in the middle of everything, what happens here because 90% of the tourists who come to Venice go to San Marco Square and to the Rialto Bridge, and that's all. So, I'm in the middle of what people consider, unfortunately, interesting for just a day trip, for example.

[00:00:43] Chris: "in the belly of the beast" we, we might say in English, yes. Yeah. I mean, not to denigrate, right? I'm sure that despite the, the hordes, the masses that there's, there's beauty to be found there still.

[00:01:01] Petra: Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is, of course. But let's say for us it's a little bit, how do you say it? Because what we just experienced yesterday was the 1st of May, so it's a holiday.

So we had long period of holidays. The 25th of April is a national holiday. So, we have been overcrowded by people. And the problem is even if you live upon tourism, like pizzeria, whatever, you can't even organize because you can't expect today it will be the mass and tomorrow there is nothing because it's changing.

Even depends on the weather. Sometimes it's raining. People don't come that much. Or in this case it was almost cloudy. Not really nice weather for a trip to Venice, but it was overcrowded for one day and the next day there's nothing. So, let's say you are organizing a pizzeria and you can't even buy things, so everything is just in the freezer.

It's nothing fresh. So, even for this simple motives, it's a problem here. You can't even calculate like you do it in a normal town where people come, you have kind of periods how to, organize your work. No.

[00:02:14] Chris: Yeah, certainly. I feel that in the sense of, you know, there's certain types times of year in Oaxaca as well where many of the locals here, they either stay in their homes or they leave the city for an extended time. And this is just part and parcel of what it's like to live in a tourist city and so in that regard, Petra, I wanted to ask you, you're an award-winning journalist, an author of many books, articles, and, and novels.

I'm curious what drew you to Venice in the first place?

[00:02:48] Petra: Well, actually, for me, for example, I didn't know anything about Venice. When I moved to Venice, I moved to Venice just for a romantic reason, because I knew a Venetian. So that's the only reason I moved to Venice. For me, it would've seemed like, I've lived in Berlin, I lived in Paris, and Venice was not the place I wanted to be actually. So, it was just a choice because I have been drove by this Venetian, who, he like all the Venetians, if he looks outside of the window and he can't see water, so he feels bad.

So that's the reason why. And he's very Venetian and he's very attached to a city and to the culture, so for him it would be impossible to live anywhere else. While for me it was easier. So many people, I know so many, who come to Venice and they buy a house or apartment or whatever because it's so romantic to live in Venice.

That wasn't the case for me. My romantic reasons were different, like the man I met here a long time ago. So, well I lived here in Venice and I tried to do a kind of normal life, like because I'm a journalist, so I'm not writing always about Venice. I'm, I'm traveling around in Italy and my special subject, for example, is mafia.

So I'm not connected to this to tourism. I don't live upon tourism, but I just feel the consequences of tourism and as a journalist, for me it was like the experience to see, because I arrived here actually in 89, and even at the time, one of the first journalistic things I did was, for example, for the radio transmission about the so-called last Venetians, and we are talking about 30,000 Venetians more than today.

We were more than 80,000 at the time. 85,000. Wow. If I remember. So, because we lose every year, thousands habitants. And that was for me, quite curious. I wanted to understand the reasons why it is like this. Mm-hmm. And for Venice, what is not almost not known at all outside of Venice, I'm not talking even about in Europe or somewhere else, but even outside a few kilometers outside of Venice, they don't know that Venice is, by a political choice at the time of fascism, there was a group of industrialists who had this good idea to say, well, Venice, it's nice.

And we keep it like a museum. And we put all industry, everything, which is not really nice, attractive, we put it on the mainland. Mm-hmm. So, the petrol chemical industry, for example, the oil at the time, but it started really only in the fifties and sixties. So, they settled the whole industry on the mainland and.

At one certain point it was very important for the development of Venice was in 66 when there was the first really disaster of high water in Venice. And what they did, they created at the time of fascism.

The whole administration, Venice is called now Venice, which is Venice, and they call it Venice, which is not Venice because Venice, as everybody knows, is inside the water, it's island. Mm. But they consider for administration, mainland as Venice. This is very interesting because we are suffering from this monoculture of tourism.

And this monoculture of tourism has been started already, kind of 30 years ago. Really, it was really the aim, the drive at a monoculture of tourism, not to do anything else, no industry, not even small industry in Venice, not more classical things like construction of boats or anything else.

Just only monoculture of tourism and the reason why, because for example, if you consider the island of Murano, the Murano glass factories, as there was a, a certain moment, the Murano glass factories actually, they have a kind of problem because they live on Murano. So everything that has to be brought to the island is much more expensive than if you produce on the mainland, of course. Mm-hmm. So the European community supports regions who are for geographical reasons disadvantaged, like Murrano obviously. So they had kind of suspension and they felt fine with this, but at a certain time, of course the European community said, well actually you are not an island.

You are mainland. Mm. And in this case, the mayor should have said, well, actually, it's a problem because we are both. And so if you are both, you can't have this suspensions. You can't have this money from the European country. And this was the reason why today, for example, Murano is dead.

The Moran glass industry is completely dead. Yeah, they don't have any more. They even had to pay back the European community or the money they had . And so it has been a political decision just to isolate Venice and to maintain Venice just only as a kind of monoculture as a museum without.

And the last obstacles in a way are the last remaining Venetians. Mm-hmm. And they have to be pulled out. And I think at the speed in which the Venetians are pushed out of the city because they don't find departments because everything is Airbnb.

They don't find any job, which is not in the tourism. So it's will be completely dead in a few years, not even.

[00:09:00] Chris: Wow. Those are strong words. I'd like to, return to this notion of the quote last Venetians shortly. But I'd like to ask you just to give a little bit of context as you were for our listeners.

How have you seen Venice, your home, change over the last, I guess, 30, 35 years?

[00:09:23] Petra: So when I arrived here, it was for me quite funny to study the Venetians in the way, because you can see Venetians, how they move differently, for example, if they move around in Venice.

And at the time it was like this in the whole crowd of Venetians, you saw tourists completely disorientated, going around, didn't find the right way to go. While today it's just the opposite. It's a huge crowd. And you'll see, I see, I know who is Venetian, even if I don't know him, I can recognize the Venetian, how they move inside the crowd. They try to get around.

So even, really just have a look on the crowds. You can see what changed. And well actually where I live, just close to the Fenice Theater, the Opera House and behind this there's a street "Calle de la Mandola," and in this small street, it was like Venice. Everywhere there was fruit and vegetables and cheese and meat and whatever you can buy you, for your everyday life. You could go to these small little shops, and at the time everybody said, oh no, supermarkets are not good in Venice because the people, they don't buy in supermarkets. And so the supermarkets were only on the mainland and no supermarkets in Venice.

They are just all these small little shops. But when more and more Airbnb came up and the people in the Airbnb, they are used to use supermarkets. They don't want to pick up the meat here and the fruit there. And so they were supermarkets everywhere. So all the little shops closed.

And transformed into tourist stuff like gondolas or something. Just tourist stuff. Completely useless things sold. And because at the time we had already kind of Murano glass shops at the time for tourists, of course, because Venice has always been a tourist city.

But now it's just very, very low level tourist stuff, which is sold and it is sold by, today, by Chinese and by Bangladesh, and that's all. So there's a little street and one of these so manys here in Venice is completely dead, dead in the sense it's just tourist stuff and even very cheap tourist stuff.

[00:11:57] Chris: Wow. And I'm curious. You know, you spend, I guess 30 years and you see this over tourism as it's called rise and just get stronger and more caustic or problematic in the place you live, in the place you call home. And then suddenly, in probably a few weeks, I imagine in March of 2020, it's all gone.

Or at least the tourists. Right. And so I'd like to ask you a little bit about the pandemic and what the feeling was like for locals in Venice during that time. You wrote in that time that Venice's quote, rape was temporarily suspended.

Yeah. And so what, what was it like to go from one of the most over touristed cities in the world to having what I imagine was no tourists and no tourism, whatsoever?

[00:12:54] Petra: Yeah, for us, it was unbelievable. And I will never forget this, because it was the most beautiful time in Venice I ever experienced, because there was nobody. Actually, everybody, all the Venetians went around with a phone and took pictures and videos. And I sent even videos to my friends in Germany and they said it was astonishing for me, as surprised me, that they said, "oh no, it's terrible. There's nobody there."

And I said, yeah, it's true. There's nobody, it was like a ghost town if you want. But, after a few weeks, when we got used to this, there was one moment completely crazy for me because we live on a canal where gondola serenades pass by from nine in the morning until 11 night.

So even with rain, singing "Ciao Venetia, Ciao Venetia." So, no gondolas serenades around. That's the reason why we keep always the windows closed because otherwise there's too much noise. Mm-hmm. So, at the time we had the windows open. In this 30 years, the first time I took place on this small balcony and I sat there in the sun and I had a glass of wine. The first time in 30 years.

And at a certain point, I heard on the other part of the canal and window opened and there was a guy crying, "oh, Johnny, what do you do here to the other side of the canal?"

And the other said, "Well, I live here." And the other said, "since when?" "Since 20 years." because everybody has always closed these windows.

We can't open this. So, for me, the experience was to hear in this apartment, when I went around in Venice, in this moment when I heard people in the apartment talking and I was kind of, "oh, these are real Venetians living here." And it was for us, we tried to get back in a way our city, you know. So, when we went around, for example, with the boat, and we entered in small canals where we never go, because you can't even try to get in them. And so we tried to get in possession once again of our own city and obviously we had like, I think so many people in the whole world. We had the hope that there would be a change on even a rethinking. But already after some time we, we had to, to admit that there won't be a change, actually.

Today, it's like "revenge travel" no? Everybody wants to travel and they always wanted just to go back to the life they had before. So didn't change anything unfortunately.

[00:15:43] Chris: Well, I mean, at least it entered into the minds of the people, the locals anyways, that things could be different. This notion of revenge traveler, revenge tourism, which you don't hear so much about anymore after, I guess a year or two of global tourism having returned.

And well, revenge. Revenge against what, right?

And people say like, "oh, well, the pandemic." And I'm like, "you can't really take revenge against a virus?"

And okay, "well then the lockdown." Well, "you can't really, I mean, if you're leaving a place, you're not really taking revenge against your own government."

So who is the revenge against? And then When you think about the consequences, you realize that the revenge is against the places that they want to go. Yeah. Right. The damage that they're causing through their vengeance is against the the places they want to go to, right.

And so we see this this return and revenge of travel and tourism and certainly, you know, Venice, like many of the other most over touristed places and cities in the world bear the brunt of this feel this. And so I was in contact with some of your friends and colleagues at Groupo 25, apri. Because there was some protests a couple weeks ago in Venice. Yes. And I'm curious if you could tell us a little bit about those actions, how the turnout was, the overall reaction and the next steps?

[00:17:15] Petra: So Venice is, let's say, the "golden goose" for the mainland because, do you remember, the mainland lives mainly upon Venice. And so, and even for political reasons like we are here in Venice now, less than 50,000 inhabitants, while on the mainland it's 180,000 inhabitants. So, the election of the mayor means that he is elected by the mainland, not by the Venetians, against our own interests, you know? Wow. And this is for us, the biggest problem of all.

So once, one of the activities even of a Gruppo 25 Aprile and even other associations of Venetians was in 19. We had the fifth referendum, two to be autonomous, separation from the mainland, because just we want to decide, we want to elect our mayor who defends our interests and not the interests of people who are not living here, but living on Venice.

And actually, it was a huge success, but it hasn't been recognized. It has been declared invalid. Okay,

[00:18:42] Chris: So, the referendum passed then?

[00:18:44] Petra: Yes. Okay. And had a lot of big success, even on the mainland. But the fact is, it was as if the independence of Scotland, England has to vote too.

That's the reason why. So it's completely absurd, no? But we had this. So even the inhabitants of the mainland voted for a separation from Venice. But anyway, so this was one of these things we did. But the last manifestation, the reason why there was this demonstration on the Campo San Angelo was because it's 50 years now that Venice is should be financed by a special law because at the time, in 66 was this completely destruction of the high water in Venice. So then after, the politics in Italy, they decided we have to do something to maintain Venice. And so they decided a special law (legge speciale) to maintain Venice.

We are, in a way, we are kidnapped by the mainland. So what do they do with the money? The money they should use, they use it for the mainland. And in this case, for example, money that is thought for Venice, they wanted to put it to construct a sports stadium on the mainland. So this is for voters obviously.

So, this was the reason why we were manifesting that you can't go on with this to spend the money which is thought for Venice for other things like even the flood.

The money that comes to maintain Venice goes directly to maintain this huge thing against the high water, and this is too long to discuss, but are not really only positive for Venice actually, because we need the flood and so on.

But it's very, very delicate and so the money doesn't finish here in Venice and it's invested everywhere else in this huge modern project and on the mainland. That's our problem here.

[00:20:57] Chris: Sounds, as you said, extremely complex and convoluted, at least as far as the money is concerned.

I'm curious, in those days of organizing and action, I imagine these were public events, and given that I've never been to Venice, I have this image in my mind of, on any given day kind of 80% tourists, 20% locals. I'm curious if there was any noticeable response or acknowledgement at the very least, by tourists in regards to these actions.

[00:21:37] Petra: Yeah, let's say a little bit, but only a little bit because they don't speak Italian. They don't understand the problems. I wrote recently a book about Venice, about all the problems. And it was interesting for me because it was published in Germany.

So, they might assume the people who read my book, obviously people are interested in Venice, so they said, "oh, it was strange for us. We never knew about this. We never knew."

And actually they don't know about it. No. Because even on discussions on Facebook, as somebody, even Italians say, "oh wow, yeah, they are always complaining about the tourism, but they are living upon this tourism."

I said, no, they don't live on the tourism. That's the biggest problem because they don't know that, what I explained now, the thing was the mainland, that we are really kidnapped by the mainland. Mm-hmm. And it's a political problem and they don't know anything about it.

So that's the biggest problem for us because I think, I wouldn't criticize tourists actually. They come and they don't know anything. You might inform the people of what is happening here and for example, the day trippers. One could organize it easily to diminish this huge masses who come here.

So it's not if you want, but they don't want. It's a disadvantage for the tourists who come here, who love Venice, who go to the museums, who stay here for a long, long time. That's long time, today. It's like three or four days, no? "Long time." But if they come and if they don't see anything Venetian anymore and they can't, for example, the food in the restaurant, it's if a restaurant is run by Chinese or Bangladeshi, it's not Venetian food.

You come here and you don't have the food, you don't hear Venetian, anymore. Mm-hmm. You don't have Venetian craft work anymore, here. So it's like you go to Pompeii.. No.

[00:23:37] Chris: The ruins. The ruins of pompeii.

[00:23:38] Petra: Yeah. Yeah. You see nice palazzi, but there's no life in it because the people come to see the life. Because why do you do tourism? Because want to see how people live here and in Venice, the importance is, even a few kilometers from here to the mainland, it's a completely, it's a different culture. It's a different culture.

We are here, we're living upon water, which is completely different, completely different concept of living. We don't have the car in front of the house.

[00:24:10] Chris: Right, right, right. Yeah. I mean you know, in some of the the articles that I read regarding your work, you had, you had written that "living in Venice consists in watching the city die."

[00:24:23] Petra: Yes.

[00:24:23] Chris: And that's an incredibly heartbreaking statement. And you mentioned a little bit about this notion of the, the language. I imagine that many foreigners, especially Anglophones don't know that Venetian is a separate language from Italian and that the culture is very, very distinct and unique, of course, geographically and otherwise.

And so you mentioned the restaurants and the food. What have you seen happen to Venetian culture and language? Has it just gone to the mainland or are there still pockets of it there on the island?

[00:24:58] Petra: There. Well, there's a few places, but you have to know it because everybody asked me even when I arrived here and now, until today, they "No. Where do Venetians go?" There, you won't find any Venetian. You don't even find somebody speaking Italian in restaurants here? No. Wow. Wow. So when I'm in a restaurant, I don't hear Italian. I hear just here English, German, whatever, French. This is Venice. This is daily life in Venice. No, you can find some. It's not because it's not because you can't transfer Venetian life on the mainland. The mainland is different form of life. It's completely different. In Venice, life is like, the food is different.

If you are eating fish, for example. All this fish things that were very specially Venetian. You can find it only in Venice. You don't find it on the mainland. So, this is all almost lost now because all the venetians still know where there's still a good restaurant that prepares kind of Venetian food.

But you have to know this, and if you come here, you don't know it. You won't find it. No. Mm-hmm.

[00:26:15] Chris: I imagine, that perhaps there are still some native Venetian grandparents and great-grandparents on the island still living there and I'm curious, if that's the case, what they might think of the issue.

[00:26:29] Petra: Yeah, they see this and for them, it's heartbreaking because they see that their city kidnapped by the mainland is sold out and sold out, and their culture is destroyed. There's nothing left, nothing. So, and we are kind of minority. 50,000 and not even there.

Let's say we are really living here, it's about 30 thousand. While on the mainland, 180,000. We do what we can. But the mayor, for example, he thinks in voters, what does it mean? Doesn't mean anything for him. He doesn't care at all. He doesn't care at all. They just want to have the office in Canal Grande.

And for example, the Mayor of Venice, he doesn't live in Venice. He never lived in Venice. He doesn't even live on the mainland of Venice. He lives outside, in Treviso. So he has nothing to do with, with Venice. He has never lived here. He doesn't know what it mean. At the time, when we suffered from the flood in 19, it was a complete disaster.

I've never seen this cause I experienced even high waters here, but this was, you can't even imagine, was really like, a horror show. Yeah. And if you know what this means for Venetians that they had to pick up when the siren was yelling and you have such a long time. You have to go to run to your shops or whatever you have to protect it against the water because the water it was like until here. No,

[00:28:08] Chris: up to the chest. Wow.

[00:28:10] Petra: The chest. It was completely crazy. And if you have experienced this, because we had even high waters before and even terrible high waters, but not like this.

But you have lived with this for years. It makes something with you, obviously, you know, but if you have always lived in Treviso, or Mogliano or whatever, what do you think? You don't care. You don't care at all. Hmm.

I would've, I would like to tell you something more positive.

I mean, you know, it's important, it's key that we have the capacity to hear these stories, right? That I think so often go unheard. I just had this image pop into my mind of living in a place where, constantly with this threat of floods and the floods are both natural or I guess in the sense of water and then perhaps unnatural in the sense of tourists.

Right. And just reminded me, you have this new book that I had a chance to read a little bit from called "Once I Fell Into The Grand Canal." I don't think it's been published in English yet,

No, absolutely not. It's been published in Italian, German, and French. If there's in an editor, I would be happy to publish it in English because Yeah. For me, it's all about my personal experience in this three decades that I live in Venice and how I watched it developed and I participated with my Venetian husband. Yeah, because for him, it's even worse than for me. Yeah. He's very attached to Venetian craft work and everything. So it is very sad for them because yeah, they know that their whole life is almost gone.

[00:30:01] Chris: Wow. Wow. And what's been some of the response to the book or the feedback that's come out of places that, you know, as you said, this is where some of the tourists come from.

[00:30:11] Petra: No, I was really, really surprised. Positively surprised cause I had so much feedback, so, so much. And every, everybody was like, oh, what can I do for Venice? I would like to do something. I would like to help you and to sustain you. And well, the groups, all this association, because it's not only a Gruppo 25 Aprile. Well, there are several of them, but even Gruppo 25 Aprile is very, very active.

And so the Venetians do some things. I don't know, another town, with people so active, coming to this manifestations or even to come to know about what the problem of the high water is really for geographical reasons.

I don't know ever if somebody in Munich or somewhere maybe. It's only concerns you immediately, but I don't know, if in other cities the people would have been so engaged in a way. So, the readers were really, really interested and gave me a lot of response and a lot of them even said, I feel guilty if I come.

I feel guilty. Mm-hmm. And I said, well, you don't have to feel guilty unless you don't take an Airbnb first thing. Second thing is don't do cruise to Venice for the rest. If you stay here and you go around and you go to the museums and you have, look on Venice, it's okay, but you don't have to feel guilty.

Guilty. Guilty are these who come just for day trippers. Day trippers is completely useless. Yeah. It's useless. Mm-hmm.

[00:31:51] Chris: I hear this word a lot in the work that I, that I do with the podcast around guilt and shame even. Right. You know, there's, there's certainly people in tourist cities who want to shame tourists, so they feel bad or guilty or whatever.

But the other side of that, the constructive side perhaps is, in lieu or instead of feeling guilty, we could feel responsible for our movements, for our travels. And I guess one of the questions that I would have for you in that regard, because, just for our listeners, one of the statistics that I pulled up. There's an unbelievable amount of statistics around Venice, in this regard. But this one is pretty intense. That as Petra said, there's about 50,000 residents, Venetians, that live in Venice on the island, and that Venice receives about 110,000 tourists per day on average.

And so, The question is around, responsibility and is that the advice you would have for people who wanted to come and visit Venice? Don't choose an Airbnb? Yeah. Don't go on a cruise ship?

[00:33:04] Petra: Yes, this is the most important thing and don't do a day trip to Venice. Don't just buy a little small book about Venice.

It must much better than for several reasons, for you and for the environment because whatever you cause with your car or \ your plane or whatever for one day to come to Venice, it's completely useless because Venice is so special because, it's not the city like Rome or Florence because it's different.

It's a different world, and you can experience this different world only if you stay here, if you walk around, if you walk around in the evening because the noise is, for example, is different in the evening. And even to hear you walking, to hear your feet on the ground. This, you can't hear it.

But when I go to outside of Venice, I'm always astonished that you hear the cars and the whole time there's a kind of ground noise that nobody hears anymore. And you don't have this in Venice. Mm. So, there are so many experience of kind of sense for sensitivity, and you can experience this only if you stay here more than one day.

Of course. So it's even this experience and the water and yeah. This is, it is very important to spend some time in Venice.

[00:34:28] Chris: Hmm. Yeah. I mean, how much could you possibly learn in a single day? Right? And. Maybe that's part of the problem, is not only is that we don't even use or consider the term " learn."

It's just how much can you see, right? It's always about seeing, and even if we did take up this, exchange of words, and we use the term learn instead of see how much could you possibly learn in one day. We're always quantifying it right? We're always putting it into a number, instead of the quality of our learning.

And I guess, that last question brings me to this next one. We can offer advice and suggestions to tourists. Of course it's very, very important and very much needed. But part of the goal of this podcast is to create solidarity across disparate movements, across disparate places, across disparate cultures.

And so over the course of your 30 plus years in Venice, seeing these very different social movements all working towards the regeneration of the same place and culture, what advice would you have for other social movements in other parts of the world, maybe suddenly or maybe for a long time, having the storm of tourism or over tourism in their place. What advice would you have for people who want to try to make things better in, in their place?

[00:36:03] Petra: Well actually, we in Venice and I, somebody else, they try to connect with other movements over the time because to just create a net of, because we are suffering, for example, Dubrovnik.

Which is in Croatia has similar pro problems than Venice. And we try to learn, one tries to learn from the other. Like Barcelona for example, has the same problem of the cruise ships and so we try to learn from each other and mainly, we, we are connected. The different groups in Venice are connected with other groups like in, and even the ones No Grandi Navi were fighting to quit because we have still the cruise ships here in Venice because this was a kind of big fake news that went around the whole world that there won't be any cruise ships anymore.

We have still today, the same number of cruise ships in several points, but for the lagoon, it's the same. So mm-hmm. We had a lot of contact and No Grandi Navi they do it with all associations in the world. Like in America, it's like Key West.

It's some completely similar to Venice. Yeah.

[00:37:19] Chris: Hmm. Fascinating. We'll have to organize a conference in Mexico maybe, and Oh yeah. Invite you all over. Yes. Before we finish, Petra I just wanna thank you deeply for your time, for your willingness to speak with me today to speak for on on behalf of our listeners and on behalf of Venice.

And also to speak in a language that I imagine is not your mother tongue. It's very, very much appreciated and something that I think a lot of people forget a lot of the time. And so I'd like to again ask how might our listeners find out more about your work and the social movements you're involved in there in Venice?

[00:38:05] Petra: Thank you very much.

Yeah. I hope that this will, yeah, we have to bring it in the whole world. So just think about Venice and try to participate if you come to Venice, participate with Venetians. Thank you very much.

[00:38:20] Chris: Mm-hmm. And you have a website, is that correct?

[00:38:23] Petra: I have a website. It's www.petrareski.com. Petra Reski. If you just Google "German journalist in Venice," you'll find it immediately. And if you put a drawing with Mafia things, mafia, journalist, German, Venice, and you will immediately find my name.

[00:38:51] Chris: Beautiful. Well, thank you so much Petra and I have one small final question, if that's all right.

I wasn't gonna ask it, but you brought it up at the very end. And if you don't want to answer it, it's quite all right. But I'm curious, given that you've done all this work and, and research and a lot of your books have to do with the mafia or organized crime in that part of the world, I'm curious if you know whether or not Organized crime Venice, or at least in northern Italy, is involved in tourism.

[00:39:25] Petra: It is absolutely. It's one of the favorite investment just to to wash the money to. For the lavatriche. What is it still in English? Money laundering. For the money laundering. It's one of the favorite points. now, because it's, and even to invest the already laundered money in big hotels and restaurants, but even the restaurants. So, it's not by coincidence that the money is laundered in so many restaurants even. And we have to deal with Albanian Mafia. We have to deal with Italian Mafia. We have to deal with Chinese mafia.

And we have a local, we had even a local mafia, Venetian Mafia too. Mm-hmm. So we have all this so where money, where the money goes. Just follow the money, this is the main concept of mafia here in Venice.

[00:40:22] Chris: And so they, they, they own, I imagine they own businesses that are more or less fronts for money laundering.

And do they also tax local restaurants and bars ?

[00:40:31] Petra: No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's like, you know no, no, I know what you mean. No, no, because this, you do this only in Southern Italy with a small shop. No, no, no. They don't do it because they know the legal culture of Northern Italians.

It's completely different from Southern Italian. You can't threaten somebody with this here. They don't do this. No, no, no, no. It's just. It's like they move in the Venice, like they move like in Germany or in other parts of Europe, because they know very well how to move it.

[00:41:03] Chris: Okay. Interesting. Well, to our listeners, take notice, right? Once again, thank you very much Petra, and if you're ever in Oaxaca or if you're ever in southern Mexico, please let me know. It'd be great to meet you.

[00:41:18] Petra: I hope so.

I hope very much to join you once in Mexico. Thank you very much for your interest. Thank you very much and thank you to the listeners.

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