Napoli 4/5/08

I slept In that morning till the wonderful hour of 10:30am. When I got up, I met Mark and Deb upstairs for breakfast. Mark made me scrambled eggs in cheese and a buttered bagel, and we talked about what to do today. He and Deb had to go down to the train station at some time that day and get their tickets to Florence for Sunday, so they offered to take me down with them into the city where I could wander around the city and eventually make my way over to the Central Station and catch a train to Pompeii for the day.

So after breakfast, they drove me down to the local train station and we rode the local train to the main city of Napoli. On the way they pointed out Mount Vesuvius to me. It was hard to miss though, its gigantic! They showed me where to get off, and I spend part of the day walking through the streets and fish markets down to the docks of Napoli. I made a point to make use of my one semester of Italian, and asked directions to the Station Central (Central Station) in textbook 1A Italian. I was told anyway by several people before I left on this trip that it's always a good idea to speak in as much of the national language as you can, even if you mess it up completely. That's definitely something that's been excellent advice in my travels so far. People always appreciate your effort to speak to them in their native language, and it's often the difference between being shrugged off like a tourist, and making a new friend. In this country I've been fortunate enough to have known a little Italian before arriving, so I can actually somewhat speak to the locals in their own tongue, which has been amazingly helpful. So wherever I can, I speak Italian here. The tourists think I'm a local. The locals can tell I'm not but they're more receptive to me.

I found the Central Station and caught the little local train to Pompeii. I bought the little self guided audio tour thing, because I figured this'd be another one of those places where I might like to know a little something about what I'm looking at. I walked around the city for pretty-much the rest of the day, and was amazed to see how much of the city is still standing perfectly how it was. I expected it to be little more than a couple pillars and caved in houses, but the streets looked almost like they'd been abandoned yesterday. On some of the homes, the only things missing were the roofs. Of course, I also made sure I saw one of the preserved bodies of the Pompeii citizens. The dust and ash of the eruption covered the town so quickly and so thick that it preserved the bodies of the people in a hard cast of ash so perfectly that you can see the folds of their clothes. The body I saw was laying on the ground, apparently knocked over by the blast, and he was still screaming. It was one of the creepiest things I've ever seen. His mouth was open wide, with a look of horror plastered on his face. In his eyes you could see the last desperate thoughts before being completely covered by dust, ash and debris.

Later in the day it began to rain, and the streets of Pompeii were once again desolate. I walked along in the rain listening to the thunder sound near the famous mount that laid waste to this area almost 2000 years ago. The thunder was different the thunder I'd heard before. It wasn't rumbling and growling like back home, nor was it blasting and echoing like in Greece, but instead it was like the report of a rifle, or the sudden beating of a drum. It continued sporadically for hours, while I walked along the ancient amphitheater listening to excerpts of works by Plateaus that were once performed there, on my audio tour listening device.

When it began to get dark, I took the train back. I met 2 girls from China on the train. One of them, Vivian, will be in Paris and Spain next month maybe around the same time I will be. She gave me her number and email address so that we could meet up there if it works out that way, and they both invited me to stay with them in Shanghai if I'm ever in China, which one day, I might take them up on.

When I got back to the train station, Mark and Deb, and their daughter Marky took me out to real Neapolitan pizza, and some Italian wine. We sat and laughed and told stories until late in the night, and then I retired downstairs to go to bed.
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