About two weeks ago my friends Bianca and Caroline and I went to Naples for the weekend. The night after my last exam we took a 1AM train down the peninsula to arrive in the beachside town of Salerno where our hostel was. Salerno is a very pleasant town with a quaint old quarter, and we stayed in a former monastery. I was in the massive boy's dormitory all by myself for one night, and only had to share the space with one other the next two nights.
That first day we went to Naples. Now, I've grown accustomed to Bolognese traffic patterns. What I once viewed as reckless and dangerous I now view as efficient. If there's space to drive your car, drive your car there. You want to walk in the road? Walk in the road. Get from point A to point B by whatever means necessary, perhaps stopping for gelato along the way. I haven't seen anyone hurt yet.
Naples was a different story. The traffic was insane, an absolute mob. Buses were squeezing into scooter-sized openings, horns were blaring everywhere, and you had to look four different ways and then behind you before crossing a street. The city was much more hectic and somewhat more downtrodden than anywhere else I've been and has a reputation for that. More on that later.
We wandered a bit, looking for a particular museum we never found, and sojourned through an old, crowded part of the city. We eventually reached the archeological museum, more or less the only thing we truly visited in Naples, which had a great collection of cool old things, which are more or less my favorite type of thing.
When I am fabulously wealthy, this is what the entrance hall to my home will look like, but with more pants.
We returned to Salerno that night. As we walked around, we came across a fashion/talent show in the town's main square we dwelled at for a while.
The next day we took the train to Pompeii. Anyone who's been paying attention to this blog will know already that I had a great time there. It's simply amazing. The entire site truly is the size of a small city, and an enormous portion of the area, I'd estimate nearly a half, have not even been excavated yet and are browned out on the map. Visitors wander all they want through the excavated area and are free to enter a number of houses and gardens.
A few of the fossilized remains of the inhabitants are on display in various areas of the site.
Friendly dogs wander the entire site and like to latch on to groups and follow them around for a while. I have a horrible sense of humor, so I named this one Dusty.
We left around midday and ate dinner in the town of Pompei, where our waiter was very pleased to discover that we spoke Italian. We returned to Salerno and were relaxing in the hostel when suddenly we heard fireworks nearby. We peeked out a window...
A PROCESSION. I started having traumatic flashbacks of Seville. Our hostel was right next to a church, and a parade of marchers in Renaissance garb marched by, stopped before its doors, performed a ceremony, and marched on. Apparently we were there for some sort of regional feast day. Luckily I was safe in the hostel and they didn't spot me, and we didn't run into them again when we went out that night. Italian processions are less persistent than Spanish ones.
As long as we're talking about Salerno (I am, are you?) I should mention the bizarre prevalence of purple clothes in this town. For whatever reason, lots of people in Salerno were wearing purple to the point that we would giggle every time someone violet passed. We tried asking what the deal was but couldn't get an answer. I wasn't going to take pictures of random strangers, but look at this storefront:
Bianca left early the next day. Caroline and I sat on the waterfront that morning counting the purple Italians before training back to Naples to meet one of my father's second cousins, Antonio. We met him and his nephew (my third cousin) at the station, and before taking us to their home they gave us a
proper tour of Naples. It seems that the first day, we really hadn't properly explored the city and had in fact walked through some of its less attractive neighborhoods. In a half hour of hectic driving, they pointed out some wonderful architecture and fantastic views on the opposite side of the city we hadn't explored. We really, really screwed up that first day.
They then brought us to their house in Pomigliano D'Arco, a town on the edge of Naples where my father's father's family is from. A giant meal ensued, the magnitude of which was only matched by my mother's relatives in Milan. We fished our memories for common names we both knew (their strong contacts stateside are my father's aunt Archie, who I see often enough, and a relative named Mike who my father found Antonio through), and they seemed very interested in stateside life. Caroline had to leave then, and after the meal Antonio gave me a tour of Pomigliano and took me to the nearby town of Camposano, where my last name might come from (Antonio's mother was a Campasano so it's not his last name, but he says that in the cemetery the Campasano plot has a few names spelt "Camposano").
I met a few more relatives including his sisters and a cousin of his. Here's a photo of Antonio, his daughters, his wife, his sister (who married nobility, and has a wonderful art collection and a massive coat of arms in her home), and myself on their roof terrace.
Also of interest is this shot, which Antonio said is of the factory where my great-grandfather worked (the grey building behind the scaffolding):
Antonio and his family also have a strong case of Italians-are-the-nicest-people-in-the-world syndrome, so after spending this whole day trucking me around, he took me up Vesuvius to see the view at night, you know, just because we could.
The niceness continued, and he and his wife drove me back to Salerno before saying farewell.
I came back to Bologna the next morning, where BCSP had its end-of-semester talent show. I read a piece I wrote for the
Lunatic (Cornell's humor magazine) freshman year which was well-received, then went home to take a break from all this traveling.
Or maybe not. I left again the next day for a week in London and Paris. Until next time!
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