vedi napoli e poi muori

recap of last week, part one: naplesssssss

last sunday afternoon i left for naples, to spend about two and a half days there before i had to be in rome for the ETA orientation. two and a half days, three Neapolitan pizzas. not a bad deal.

in retrospect, it may not have been a fabulous idea to combine a naples visit with my orientation, as by the time i got to rome i was already exhausted and then the intensity of orientation left me feeling pretty overwhelmed. i'd bought the plane tickets shortly after arriving in palermo, though, and at the time the strangeness and newness of it all made me long for somewhere familiar, somewhere where i already know people. and since naples is only an hour by train away from rome, i decided to stop off on the way.

actually, it did end up feeling fantastic to be in naples again. it surprised me how fantastic it felt. i really do love the city... its bustling atmosphere, its hugeness, its gritty beauty, its incredibly warm and friendly inhabitants.

i took a few pictures, since i never managed to take very many when i was there last summer. i mostly hung around piazza del plebiscito, which i've decided is my favorite place in naples and my favorite piazza in italy. it's hard to capture it in pictures, and i don't think i was very successful, but i hope you can get at least some sense of the atmosphere from these.

its most striking feature is its sheer enormity, which is hard to really absorb without being there. it's simply an enormous space, in the middle of a very big, dense, and crowded city. what's more, the density of the buildings surrounding it and the narrowness of the streets makes it so that you can't see the piazza until you stumble into it... like coming through a thick forest into a giant, sunny, unexpected clearing.

when they hold concerts in naples, they hold them here... and it holds several thousands of people. on one side is a church, san francesco di paola, or in english, i suppose, st. francis de paul. on two sides are massive government buildings, and i admit i'm not sure exactly what buildings they are, though i'll look it up. through the gaps there's a view of mount vesuvius and the city beneath it on one side, and on the other side the silver dome of the galleria umberto.

for me, it's impossible to be there without thinking about the time when it was first built, several centuries ago, and trying to imagine how people back then could even conceive of building a place of such enormity. how long it must have taken. what vision it would have required. if you look at paintings of naples from say, the 1700s, you always see the enormous piazza del plebiscito, seemingly taking up half of the city at its then-size. i could easily look up the details about when it was built and how long it took and all that, but honestly, for me, too many details ruin the thing. i like to be able to go and sit and absorb places like that on a gut level. anyway, here i am going on and on and you haven't even see the thing. without further ado, the photos:


view from the steps of the church:
and again, with a couple of newlyweds walking across the piazza from the right:

the dome is the galleria umberto:

the galleria with the bride and groom at the lower left:
the church, san francesco di paola:

vesuvius visible from the church steps:

close-up of the bride and groom. by the way, this is the second wedding ive seen take place here.
getting photographed (by their wedding photographer and me):
someone else getting photographed on the church steps:



old friends who spot each other across the piazza:


and then they hug, and then they chat. wow, i feel like a creepy paparazzo.







i also took some photos of the consulate, like a sketchball, so that more than a year later you all can see where i worked for a summer. they monitor people who take photos of the consulate, for security reasons, so i probably seemed like a terrorist, taking like a dozen photos of it from different angles so that i could get a decent-looking one. by the way, you probably can't tell but it's rather an imposing building, a massive white box, standing apart from all the other buildings, mostly restaurants and hotels, forming one continuous line along the waterfront. and with the carabinieri, the military police, surrounding it 24/7, it's pretty clear it's a special place.
then the view along the lungomare with castel dell'ovo at the end


Someone sunbathing on the rocks of the lungomare. We always used to laugh about the fact that neapolitans are desperate enough to come hang out on these rocks alongside a busy major street as if it were a beach. it looks kinda pretty in a photo, but believe me, it's pretty schifoso. disgusting, that is. you don't really want to be hanging out in a bathing suit down there. except that neapolitans do it. and then you laugh at them.


la pizza napoletana at da michele, regarded as possibly the best in naples:

i went by on tuesday afternoon and managed to say hi to a lot of the people i worked with during my internship, which was nice. honestly, i wasn't sure whether people would really remember me, but they all did, even the guards.

unfortunately, though, the one person i wanted to make sure to see while i was in naples was occupied all of monday and tuesday, the days i was planning on being in town. i wanted to leave first thing wednesday for rome, but i ended up taking a later train so i could go back wednesday morning and see manuele. so i arrived at the ministry of education in rome on wednesday 15 minutes late for orientation, sweaty and out of breath, and having been ripped off by a sketchy very non-legit taxi driver but having been too tired to put up a fight. still, it was worth getting to see the ever-adorable manuele for an hour.

even though he works in political and i interned in public affairs, he ended up becoming my best buddy at the consulate while i was there. on slow afternoons when i didn't have much to do i'd go and hang out in his office, and he'd chat with me, pausing to answer phone calls and reply to emails. he could go on forever and ever about italian politics and history and life in general. i'd ask him to walk me through the news stories of the day, and it was really helpful to have someone provide some background context for current events.

plus he's fun to listen to. and great for language practice. he never tries to talk to me in english, and he's given me my only prolonged exposure to a roman accent. he speaks italian super-quickly and smushes words together and skips over consonants, so it's challenging just to listen to him, and he does this hilarious thing where he'll say something quick and jumbled, take a long pause, and then go, "o no?" ("or not?"), and keep saying it even when you enthusiastically affirm what he said.

like, he'll go, "letsgodownstairsandgetsomecoffee,"
and i'll go, "si', ok, va bene,"
".... o no?"
"si, no, si si si si, coffee sounds good."
"alwaysgoodtohavecoffeeafterlunch, no?"
"si si si si si si si."
"... O NO?"
"si si si si."
"... O NO?"

and so on. it always makes me laugh. which means i'm basically always laughing because that's basically the way he talks continuously.

it's kinda hard to explain to someone not familiar with italian. or people who don't understand the sheer pleasure I get out of watching the different ways people use italian, and the ways people manipulate language in general.

also manuele, like many men of a certain age, loves to dispense his sage wisdom about life to younger people. okay, maybe young women especially tend to experience this. i love it though. i'm not sure why, but i absorb older people's life advice like a sponge, even when i don't completely buy what they're saying. like, manuele was horrified by the idea that i might want to work for the foreign service. this was no job, in his opinion, for a nice girl like me. i might not have to know yet what i wanted to do, but i had to start thinking about my priorities, didn't i? sure, i guess so, sure. ".... o no?!" sure, of course. "o no." yes, yes, definitely. i wanted to get married and have children, didn't i? yeah, sure. i didn't want to have a marry a foreigner, did i, like all these foreign service officers do? i wanted to marry a nice american boy, didn't i? i didn't want to have to move my children around all the time, did i? i wanted to be close to my family and among my compatriots, didn't i?

uh, well actually, i wouldn't mind marrying a foreigner, i told him. he looked a little perplexed by that but sighed and shook his head like, those americans, i don't get them sometimes. i appreciated the genuine concern. manuele's full of wisdom like that. no, actually, most of it is quite legit. he's a very sweet guy and child-like in a lot of ways, very ADD and always teasing and all over the place, bouncing off the walls, jumping around from subject to subject, from very serious and solemn one second to lighthearted and teasing the next. i wish you could meet him. i wish you could meet all these people all i come across, cause it's so hard to do them justice in just a paragraph or two!

also great: the taxi driver who took me to the airport from the consulate on wednesday. he was a perfect example of why i love neapolitans. first of all, he asked me how to teach him to say "devo fare il giro," in english, which would be something like "i have to circle around," as in around the block and around the roundabout. you know, to avoid traffic, or if the street is one-way in the wrong direction. but it was confusing, because in english we don't really have an equivalent catch-all phrase, and he wanted to translate it word for word, which obviously doesn't work. i tried to explain, but i'm afraid it was too confusing for him to remember. anyway. then he asked me if i was a native italian speaker or a native english speaker, and then of course i liked him immediately. maybe he was just trying to flatter me.

like all neapolitans, he was thrilled to find out that i had lived in naples, and what's more, that i'd liked it. he said he'd been stationed in palermo and didn't like it, not that that's surprising. but then he was explaining why, and he said, "we merdionali (southerners) are un po' chiusi ( a little close-minded, in this case). neapolitans," he says, "are like this --" he cups his hands to the side of his eyes to block out his peripheral vision. "but palermitani," he says, "are like this --" he covers his eyes with his hands completely. (by the way, i should mention he's not driving during this explanation... we're stuck in traffic. haha.) i assume he meant that palermitans are piu' arretrati: a bit more backwards, close-minded, traditional.

it's funny, because palermitani would say the exact same thing about napoletani. in fact, maria grazia was just telling me so the other day, talking about how primitive and old-fashioned neapolitans are, how the girls get married so young and have babies and stay at home, and the parents are so strict with their children, and so on. and, she even said, "the strange thing is, they think of us that way."

i wanted to tell both of them: you know, you guys should stop hating on each other. the only sure thing, in my mind, is that southerners seem to be determined to be as biased against each other as northerners are against them. they should really unite. have some southern pride. that's their big problem.

the taxi driver did admit, though: both groups of people, underneath it all, have a good heart. and from what i've seen so far, i agree. although i have to say that in my experience napoletani are more open, friendlier, less guarded. totally unguarded, actually. palermitani, though very cordial and very nice, aren't so eager to be friends.

example of how crazy nice neapolitans are: i asked this taxi driver (the same one) a couple of times if he was sure we'd make on time to the train station. the first time he seemed too blase' to be very convincing. the second time i asked, he was like, "i gave you my word, didn't i? i told you i'd get you there on time, so now i have to. i'll carry you there on my shoulders if i need to" -- traffic --- "but no matter what, i won't let you miss that train." and then, as proof that he really meant it, he said: "you know how neapolitans are."

i had to smile. and i thought, yes, signor tassista, i do know how neapolitans are. they're pretty freaking delightful.

anyway, more to come soon... i still have to talk all about rome and then it's my first day of school tomorrow! wish me luck.