Notes from Abroad

Tuesday: I’d originally planned to do a day trip from Rome to Naples, Capri and Pompeii. After hearing from one of the BusAbout guides that a day like that would be pretty much impossible, we decided to just go for Pompeii. Capri would have been cool, and I still would like to go there at some point, but I really didn’t want to leave Italy without seeing Pompeii.

So Tuesday morning we got up at the crack of dawn once again. Showered, dressed, and out the door before 7:30. We knew we had to get to Termini station in order to get a train to Naples and then we’d have to take a local train to get to Pompeii (the Circumvesuviana). We were hoping to get there by around noon, 1PM at the latest.

We did well. Bought our tickets – yay for Eurail passes, once again – and made our train with no major problems. Sweet. So far so good. After getting a bit lost (and grossed out) by the Napoli Centrale (the Naples train station) we made it to the Circumvesuviana and off to Pompeii.

Pompeii’s heat beat everything else we’d experienced so far and considering I’ve had things like band-aids melt and can easily drink over 2 liters of water in a few hours and not need a bathroom, that’s saying a lot (and probably more than you needed to know). I was expecting it to be hot – we were, after all, going to be walking around on nearly black dirt at the hottest point of the day, through ruins that were generally quite short and therefore didn’t provide much shade. We’d might as well been standing in the middle of the the tarmac at the airport with some solar reflectors pointed at our faces.

Pompeii is also HUGE. Much bigger than I was expecting, and much more spread out as well. There are little blips of activity all over the area and the most interesting parts are pretty much as far away from each other as you could get. Once again, though, going back to Arkeo this past semester, I had a whole new appreciation for the amount of work it must have taken to get even a fraction of this stuff uncovered, let alone entire arenas and ornate bathhouses. I think they said excavation started around 1700 and we definitely saw some archaeologists here and there still digging. That’s a LOT of digging.

But I digress. So we rented these audioguide things. After looking at the map for a while we realized that it would be pretty tough to tell what’s what without some sort of guide there. It turns out that the audio guide was mostly an annoying voice in the too-hot heat. A 5 euro loss, but better safe than sorry I suppose.

We walked around for hours. I think 4 in total. We didn’t cover everything, but we saw enough. I don’t think it’s possible to cover it all in one day. It seems more like Disney to me. You know, the kind of place where you stay nearby, do a little bit one day, a little bit the next. Otherwise it gets too overwhelming and even a bit repetitive. Toward the end one little house started to look like the next and before we knew it we were mostly staring at the ground trying not to trip and just walking by the structures giving each a quick glance, if that.

Some of the structures were just awe-striking, especially this one bath house that they only recently opened after renovations. It was so ornate and luxurious looking. If only it had running water and were open for a swim. I think that would have been perfect.

I kind of wish I’d read up a bit more on Pompeii before I went, but I was shocked at how much I was able to apply stuff I didn’t realize I learned in a class that I didn’t particularly enjoy but only took to fulfill some graduation requirements. That’s the last time I’ll complain about Cornell’s distribution requirements. It turns out that they can actually be a bit useful. Who’da thought?

After finishing up the parts that we definitely wanted to see, we stopped at this little food stand because Laura was starving and I was in desperate need of something sugary. I ended up paying 3 euro for what was basically a small cup of lemon juice (sugarless lemonade) and Laura paid 7 euro for a sandwich. But, they’re the only game in town. Gotta love economics.

At this point we were planning out the rest of our evening. After a successful day of going off on our own – figuring out the buses and trains and surviving the heat, all we wanted was a good dinner and a strawberry daiquiri. We thought we deserved it. We hopped on the Circumvesuviana back to Napoli Centrale and bought our tickets home.

That’s when we realized. The departures board was over an hour behind. It appeared that nothing had left the station since around 17:15 and it was currently just about to hit 18:00. Our train was scheduled to leave at 18:16, but it wasn’t on the board. After looking around for a bit and realizing that there was something amiss we went off to in search of someone who spoke English to see what was up. We managed to find a guy who worked for the trains. He spoke “a little” English. We asked him what was going on. He said “There is a…how do you say it??” turns to the other train man next to him and says in Italian “how do you say…”. He turns back to us and says, as-a-matter-of-factly and ever so calmly, “There is a strike.”

“A strike?!”
“Yes.” And he moves on to someone else.

Holy hell. NOW what are we supposed to do!? I’d heard about these crazy strikes they like to go on in Europe (Palermo had recently had a garbage strike) and I knew they could last anywhere from a few hours to a few days. I was hoping for the former, but planning for the latter. We went over to the tourist info booth to see what we were supposed to do. Do these things resolve themselves quickly? Should we start looking for a place to sleep tonight? Can someone please speak English?

Of course, the tourist info booth was closed for the day. As was customer care. We were basically left to fend for ourselves. In Naples.

I suppose now would be a good time to try to describe Naples to you. Because let me tell you, it’s probably one of the last places I would want to be stuck for an extended period of time. Ysa had warned me that Naples was a bit like Newark or Camden, NJ. I figured, hey, couldn’t be that bad. I won’t actually stay there overnight, but passing through won’t be a big deal. As our train from Rome got closer and closer to Napoli Centrale, I knew exactly what she meant. I wish I had taken a few photos to try to illustrate (bad photographer, Jenn, bad!) but I was so in shock at just how…I don’t want to say slummy, but it was slummy. If you could imagine the stories of the tenaments in NYC from back in the days of the Irish immigration – essentially an entire city comprised of buildings that we would call the projects. Not just big brown brick buildings (because these were quite colorful), but big brick buildings, built with only a few feet between each. Each window with its own balcony from which clothes of all shapes and sizes were hanging to dry. Throw in some graffiti, dirt, and some of the highest pickpocketing rates in all of Italy and you have a rough approximation of Naples. It was a different kind of bad from Palermo.

So now with that image in your head, enter the train station. Don’t let the “Centrale” part of Napoli Centrale fool you. This place is no Grand Central. It’s basically a large, unappointed space with train tracks coming out of one end. There is no seating whatsoever. The only food around is a McDonald’s attached to a pizzeria, and there are stray dogs lying everywhere (Cute dogs too. So sad. They were all over Pompeii as well. The smart ones went into the bath houses and shaded areas). It’s the type of place where you wear your backpack on your front with your arms clasped over it and start jabbing your elbows if someone gets even a little bit too close.

There we are, in this train station, tickets in hand, but no place to go. In any other city (well almost any other city) this would be the time you say “no big deal, we’ll just go out and explore,” but we were in Naples. We weren’t going any further than within reading distance of the departures board. It was around this time we became very thankful that we had sweat out all of the water we’d consumed over the course of the day. We stared at the departures board for a good, long while, just trying to figure out what to do. There were announcements coming over the PA, in Italian of course. Not much help to us. We just kept looking around for clues of what we should be doing. The fact that not many people had left despite the strike led us to believe that it might not be a very long strike. Fingers crossed.

I hadn’t really eaten all day. I had a yogurt in the morning, a lot of water, and a cup of lemon juice, but that was about it. I needed food before I passed out. Unfortunately I had to break my “X years without McDonald’s” streak and give in to hunger. I bought a thing of curly fries (curly fries, in McDonald’s?! Sweet!) and a McFlurry. Laura opted for the McFlurry. If you could see the rate at which I was eating these fries, you would think I’d never eaten before. It certainly felt like it. The McFlurry was a different story. I just needed to eat that one before it melted.

McFlurries in Europe are about 1/3 of the size of our McFlurries at home. They’re about the size of a 4″ tall Dixie cup. Laura’s was only 1/2 full. We have a running joke about what I get because apparently I can pass for Italian vs. what she gets because she’s blonde. She generally gets men proposing to her (more on that later) and less food served by grumpy people and I generally get the proper, if not larger portions and service with a smile. Laura decided that if we were still in the train station at 8PM, she would get some fries, but I would go order them so she would get the right amount.

While I’m on that topic, I have to point out some funny things about being of non-descript heritage. When I’m at home, most people guess that I’m Italian. I’m not, obviously. When they hear my last name, some can manage to guess that I am at least part hispanic. Most of the time, though, people can’t really figure it out.

This all changed the moment I stepped foot in Madrid. All of a sudden EVERYONE knew I was spanish. Checking into my first hostel the guy goes “Vargas! Hablas Espanol?!”, in Copenhagen the woman checking me in said “I thought you were American, but your last name is Spanish isn’t it?” In the same hotel, this Polish guy asked where I was from, I said the US, and he said “but you have some Spanish in you, right? I can tell.” It’s so strange that people here can actually figure it out, so much so that in Madrid and Barcelona people automatically spoke Spanish to me while they automatically spoke English to Marquise. I’d never felt so spanish in my life!

Then I got to Italy. Same thing with the owner of my B&B in Palermo. He was speaking Italian to his friend while he was checking me in and then goes “you can understand some Italian, right? Because you speak Spanish?” I didn’t tell him I spoke Spanish. I didn’t even hint that I could, but he assumed from my last name.

It turns out that I can, in fact, understand a good amount of Italian. I’m not saying that you could stick me at a dinner table full of Italians and I’d be able to keep up, but the longer I spend in Italy (8 days so far but it feels like more!) the more I’ve been able to understand Italian. And, like in Spain, people here kind of assume that I’m Italian, because when I check out at a store or restaurant or something, they tell me my total in Italian whereas for Laura they either tell her in English or point to the screen to show her the number. I’m still learning my numbers, but I’m getting to the point where I don’t really have to glance at the screen before handing over my Euros.

Anyway, that was just a really long way of me providing some background for the rest of the evening…

So my ability to understand at least a little bit of Italian came in handy while we were waiting around at the train station. After about 2 hours of waiting around, it looked like the strike was over because they turned on the departures board again and were slowly starting to list platforms (binarios) next to the departing trains. There were two departures boards about 10′ apart. One seemed to display times and platforms before the other, so I stood at one and Laura stood at the other and we’d compare notes.

Because I’m not very good at standing still I decided to wander over to this other printed board that I’d seen a bunch of people looking at over the course of our wait. It was a hardcopy list of all of the departures from the station every day. I found our train on the list and next to it was listed Binario 17. I told Laura what I’d found and we decided it would be a good idea to go in the vicinity of Platform 17 just in case we needed to run. For the few minutes leading up to this discovery I’d been hearing some trains announced on the PA that weren’t on the board. At one point I thought I’d heard ours announced, but again, my Italian is pretty much non-existent. Luckily, they repeated the announcement every minute or so and after about 5 times I was able to put together the whole string: our train was delayed, but would be boarding soon, or something like that. FINALLY. We didn’t care if the train stayed in the station for another hour after we boarded. The fact that we were safe inside, had seats, air conditioning, and bathroom was about the best news ever.

Just as we reached platform 17 they announced that our train was boarding. On Platform 17. Go us! We figured it out! Though our seats were in car #10, we got on at car #2, just in case they decided to pull away quickly or something. Just get on the train and we’ll sort the rest out later.

It turns out we’d booked a high-speed train for our trip back. That would explain the price difference. Earlier we probably a bit bitter that we had to pay more for a high speed train, but with our train over two hours delayed we were sooo thankful that it would only take us about 1.5 hours to get back to Roma. Oh Roma. How we missed it.

We sat on the train for a while before it actually moved and hypothesized why they went on strike and why the strike only lasted for about 2 hours. We came to the conclusion that they were angry because they didn’t get a long enough lunch break and therefore didn’t get to finish their paninis. This, of course, was all in an Italian-speak-English accent. It’d been a long day.

Two hours doesn’t really sound like a big deal. Some trains are delayed for 2 hours even on a regular day without a strike, but the fact that all of this was going on in a really grimy place where we couldn’t understand if they were telling us to go home for the evening because no trains would be leaving or if they were telling us to sit tight and grab a coffee because it would all be over in a few minutes made it all the more painful. Not to mention we hadn’t really eaten and we’d been in the sun all day (and didn’t realize how burnt we were until we could see in the mirror of the train’s bathroom). All we wanted was a sandwich or a plate of fries and a strawberry daiquiri. Or maybe a Bacardi Breezer. Or maybe both. Also, the BusAbout was set to leave the next morning with some people we’d wanted to say goodbye to and had made plans to meet at the bar at 10PM. We were obviously going to be late.

Alrighty – so we’re finally on the train. At 8PM on the dot, our train started moving. I actually started to clap and cheer. It was that exciting. The ride was gorgeous. The Italian countryside really is quite beautiful and we got to see it at sunset. I tried to take a few photos, so we’ll see if they came out when I get home.

The conductor said we’d be home at 9:14PM. As I’d mentioned to Laura earlier, I’d never been on an Italian train that was on time. So true. We ended up getting in around 9:30 instead of 7:37 like we were supposed to.

From Termini we needed to take a metro and then a bus to get back to our campsite. The metro was no big deal, but we ended up waiting for the bus for a really long time.

And that’s where the third part of this story begins…

We get to our bus stop around 10:00. It’s obviously dark out at this point and we weren’t sure how frequently the buses ran at night. The good news is that we were on a busy street and there were a lot of people at the bus stop. For a while at least. As buses came and went the stop grew less and less crowded until it was just Laura and I and maybe 3-4 other people including this one guy who asked us (in Italian) if we were waiting for bus 246. We pretended not to speak Italian and just shook our heads like “huh?” Then he said it in English. Damn. He also mentioned that he was going to the same campsite we were (we didn’t tell him where we were going.) Double damn.

He took our acknowledgement of understanding as an invitation to start a conversation. Lovely. He wasn’t a creepy guy or anything, we just weren’t in the mood to talk to anyone and just wanted to get home and go to sleep. He asked if we spoke any Italian and I said I could understand a little expecting him to ask me if I knew when the buses ran or something. Not so much. He then launched into a conversation that covered everything from how much he liked Obama, something derogatory about a middle eastern man also waiting for the bus (and how Obama would do something about it…couldn’t quite figure that out), some other stuff about the soccer match between the US and Italy the night before, some more stuff about the 1994 World Cup (which I remembered was in the US and a few matches were played at Giants Stadium), some more stuff about Britney Spears, Jennifer Lopez, and Leonardo DiCaprio, some more stuff about who knows what else, and then launched into the point of all of this: he’s single and asked us if we were. I thought he was asking if we were married (obviously not to each other), so I said no. He then pointed out that he wasn’t either and that he needed to get married to a “bella donna, donna brava.”

I should mention that Laura doesn’t understand any Italian at all, so I had this dude talking to me in Italian, I would turn and tell Laura what he said in English (or occasionally smile and laugh like I was telling her something funny but really I was saying “I have no idea what this man is saying to me so let’s just smile and laugh and maybe he’ll go away”) and then I would go back to this dude as if she’d answered his question and try to explain it to him in whatever Italian I could muster. I don’t know why I was trying so hard to communicate with this guy – I suppose I really just wanted to kill time and it was actually pretty hysterical.

So then he launches into the “proposal” part of the evening. He notes that he has a cabin all to himself and that he would like to invite us to take a shower with him.

Ummm…how do you say “no effing way” in Italian?

I told Laura and we both laughed at him instead and I said no way. He went on to tell us about how Italians are friendly people and it would be fun, etc. etc. I told him we’d been to Pompeii and were going to home to sleep. No shower. Sleep. In our own cabins. And no, you’re not invited to join us.

I think he got the point and then started moving in closer to Laura. He again asked if she was single. I got the point this time and said no, she has a large boyfriend and started to use sign language saying he was really tall and really strong. Laura got the hint and shook her head in agreement. The guy (who I think introduced himself as Lulu or something like that) said “oh, so he would come here and kill me”. I said absolutely.

This went on for a while, despite my best efforts to get rid of him and FINALLY we were rescued by a bus. I told Laura go to in the front door because I saw him walk toward the back. We lost him. Finally. And we were on our way back to the campsite. Finally.

So now we’re inching toward 11PM. Everything at the campsite was closed, except for the “disco” which had a really long line, so we decided to forego all of the treats we’d had planned for the evening and went to see if we could find Peter and Emma to say goodbye. Luckily they were outside of their cabin with a group of BusAbouters. We told them all our story. They offered us some of their wine and beer, but at this point I only had the energy to consume things intravenously. Unfortunately they didn’t have french fries in an IV bag.

We went back to our cabin just after 11 and literally fell on our beds. What. A. Day.

We had plans to go to the Colloseum, Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish Steps the next day but wanted to sleep in. Alarms set for 9:30 didn’t help at all. I think we finally left for the bus around 12:30PM.

The story continues in Part III… read on…

Tags: Adventure, City, Italy, Journal, Naples, Pompeii