Wednesday, August 7, 2002
Naples, Italy: Mother Nature Always Wins
In my marketing class, I teach that one way of analyzing different cultures is to look at how they treat outsiders. Do they welcome them warmly, as the Irish do? Or treat them as tolerated, but useful strangers, as the Russians do? Or do they keep them outside their circle, as the Neapolitans do?
Our Interport lecturer, Francesco from Rome, has explained how the Southern Italians are focused on family ties and have created a culture that mistrusts anyone outside their group. We see evidence of this the first time we buy sodas in the café-snack shop near where the boat is docked. The place is populated with guys who look like rejects from a Martin Scorsese casting call. Before you get your drinks from the man behind the counter, you pay the person at the cash register—usually a woman—who gives you a ticket. They will only trust one employee, a female family member, with the cash.
Because they don’t trust us outsiders, they also try to kill us on their streets. We Miamians have railed against South Florida drivers who, as columnist Dave Barry says, drive under the rules of the country they were born in. In Naples, it’s different. There are no rules. They drive down the wrong side of the road—the main road—and we were advised to get across the street by walking downstream of a local who has figured out the game of Frogger you play with the speeding cars and mopeds. As another Floridian on the trip commented, this is like walking along I-95.
So let’s just say, out of respect for my Italian-American friends and my Italian born stepmother, Naples isn’t a walking city.
It isn’t a breathing city either. The cloud of smog and dirt that we find in the air the first hot, humid day is as bad as it was in St. Petersburg, but the smells are worse.
I’m a big city girl. I love the hustle and energy of cities from Miami to New York to Dublin. And, as Woody Allen says, I am “at-two” with nature. But after one morning of trying to walk around Naples—where are the little European outdoor cafes? The lovely parks? The charming streets without discarded syringes littering them?—we are ready to hightail it out to the countryside.
The field trip the first day includes walking up Mt. Vesuvius, which hovers over the city like a sword of Damocles, ready to punish the inhabitants for what they have done to the air and water. The tour bus (which isn’t allowed to chance the city streets but drives through the docks area to get out on the highway) takes us up hairpin turns, honking along the way to alert those coming down.
The guide points out the swath of dried lava left by the most recent eruption, in 1944, which cuts into the side of the mountain. Not many were killed then because the occupying Allied forces of World War II evacuated the hillside towns. Apparently most of them survived to open pizzerias because there are lovely trattorias specializing in the local dish all the way up the 3500 feet the bus is allowed to go.
The base camp at that level is the first of a series of souvenir stands selling lava jewelry, holy statues, and thank God, bottles of water. I admire the Neapolitans’ entrepreneurial spirit, and make a note to use the guy renting out walking sticks as an example in my next marketing lecture. The trek up the almost 90 degree slope on the gravel path makes us realize what poor shape shipboard life has left us in. It’s great to breathe clean air, smell the yellow wild flowers blooming, and feel muscles in the backs of our legs that we never knew we had. Glancing down over the slight wood railing, the twisting mountain road we just drove up appears even more astounding.
Once we reach the crater, where the path sometimes has no railing, I have visions of tourists bouncing down the side of the mountain like the pebbles that precede an avalanche. Maybe the locals figure that, if they haven’t killed you on the streets, they’ll lose you up here.
The layers on the rim mark the eruption in AD 79 which buried Pompeii and, two or three feet higher, you can make out the lava that was added in the most recent eruption. At the end of the path, in the shimmering Italian summer sun, is the last souvenir stand. I take a picture to show it nestled high up in the mountains; it’s a good example of location, location, location.
After our descent, which is even harder on the leg muscles, and the obligatory stop at the local cameo store, we are back in port, wondering what else we can do to get out of town. One of the senior passengers recommends the local water taxi that runs to the little villages down the Amalfi coast. It’s cheap, it involves being outdoors, and you don’t have to cross the street to get there. Let’s go!
The small boat, that smells like petroleum, chugs along the mountainous coastline, past beautiful houses hanging on for dear life with no visible means of support. It deposits us in the heart of Positano, an entire village clinging to the side of the cliff. With a beautiful church and lovely narrow streets snaking their way up, we get another walking workout, past hundreds of elegant tourist shops.
On a blind turn high above the town we reach the internet place—€8 an hour, the highest yet—and know the only thing we’ll find farther up is crazy people. We decide to chance the bus ride along the coast, south to Amalfi, 18 frightening kilometers away. I’ve heard stories about this trip, and so, with fears of all of us tumbling into the beautiful Atlantic, shakily find a seat on the east side of the wide bus—and promptly fall asleep. Tony, standing in the back, is treated to the full roller coaster ride, looking down the side of the cliff to the rocks and ocean below and forward to the cars, mopeds and other buses we meet head on.
Once in Amalfi, just as beautiful as its sister city but with a little more elbow room, Italy has redeemed itself. Shops are selling lemons the size of grapefruits, and four young guys are playing a game of kayak basketball in the harbor.
Heading back up the coast in the water taxi that evening, we wonder again at how man has managed to carve roads and dwellings out of this hillside. The houses are 50, 75 190 years old—what are we building at sea level in Miami that will last that long? Their windows and doors make them look surprised that they are still here in this precarious position, or just astonished at such a beautiful view.
We have signed up for the tour of Pompeii, the town that Vesuvius buried almost 2000 years ago. The 25,000 inhabitants who lived there that day have left behind clues to help the archaeologists decode their lives. Ruts from chariots gouge the well planned streets, and brightly painted frescoes tell us which house was owned by a hunter, which was a bakery, which was a brothel.
Pompeii had been a commercial center for almost 600 years while its citizens went about their business—first as Greek traders, then as Roman allies and finally as colonists. Vesuvius was always in the background, guarding them, until it spewed forth a three-day shower of gas and ash that literally stopped 8,000 of them dead in their tracks. The plaster casts made of their bodies, looks of horror frozen forever on their faces, are displayed respectfully along with their furniture, statues and urns.
A reminder to all of us that in the end, Mother Nature always wins.
Back on the ship, we are told that some people who wanted to go to Capri or our beautiful towns along the coast that day couldn't because the seas were too rough. The ocean decides when the water taxi will let you get out of the city.
With five days in Naples instead of the usual four, we allow ourselves one day on deck to sit in the sun and read magazines. What a luxury. Most of the other 500 students and staff have found their own way out of the city, either north two hours to Rome or on side trips like we have already taken.
In the once beautiful Bay of Naples, through the man-made smog and haze, the island of Capri is to the right, inviting. Mount Vesuvius is to the left.
Waiting.
For the WLRN Radio Reading Service, this is Kathleen Dixon Donnelly—at Sea.
In my marketing class, I teach that one way of analyzing different cultures is to look at how they treat outsiders. Do they welcome them warmly, as the Irish do? Or treat them as tolerated, but useful strangers, as the Russians do? Or do they keep them outside their circle, as the Neapolitans do?
Our Interport lecturer, Francesco from Rome, has explained how the Southern Italians are focused on family ties and have created a culture that mistrusts anyone outside their group. We see evidence of this the first time we buy sodas in the café-snack shop near where the boat is docked. The place is populated with guys who look like rejects from a Martin Scorsese casting call. Before you get your drinks from the man behind the counter, you pay the person at the cash register—usually a woman—who gives you a ticket. They will only trust one employee, a female family member, with the cash.
Because they don’t trust us outsiders, they also try to kill us on their streets. We Miamians have railed against South Florida drivers who, as columnist Dave Barry says, drive under the rules of the country they were born in. In Naples, it’s different. There are no rules. They drive down the wrong side of the road—the main road—and we were advised to get across the street by walking downstream of a local who has figured out the game of Frogger you play with the speeding cars and mopeds. As another Floridian on the trip commented, this is like walking along I-95.
So let’s just say, out of respect for my Italian-American friends and my Italian born stepmother, Naples isn’t a walking city.
It isn’t a breathing city either. The cloud of smog and dirt that we find in the air the first hot, humid day is as bad as it was in St. Petersburg, but the smells are worse.
I’m a big city girl. I love the hustle and energy of cities from Miami to New York to Dublin. And, as Woody Allen says, I am “at-two” with nature. But after one morning of trying to walk around Naples—where are the little European outdoor cafes? The lovely parks? The charming streets without discarded syringes littering them?—we are ready to hightail it out to the countryside.
The field trip the first day includes walking up Mt. Vesuvius, which hovers over the city like a sword of Damocles, ready to punish the inhabitants for what they have done to the air and water. The tour bus (which isn’t allowed to chance the city streets but drives through the docks area to get out on the highway) takes us up hairpin turns, honking along the way to alert those coming down.
The guide points out the swath of dried lava left by the most recent eruption, in 1944, which cuts into the side of the mountain. Not many were killed then because the occupying Allied forces of World War II evacuated the hillside towns. Apparently most of them survived to open pizzerias because there are lovely trattorias specializing in the local dish all the way up the 3500 feet the bus is allowed to go.
The base camp at that level is the first of a series of souvenir stands selling lava jewelry, holy statues, and thank God, bottles of water. I admire the Neapolitans’ entrepreneurial spirit, and make a note to use the guy renting out walking sticks as an example in my next marketing lecture. The trek up the almost 90 degree slope on the gravel path makes us realize what poor shape shipboard life has left us in. It’s great to breathe clean air, smell the yellow wild flowers blooming, and feel muscles in the backs of our legs that we never knew we had. Glancing down over the slight wood railing, the twisting mountain road we just drove up appears even more astounding.
Once we reach the crater, where the path sometimes has no railing, I have visions of tourists bouncing down the side of the mountain like the pebbles that precede an avalanche. Maybe the locals figure that, if they haven’t killed you on the streets, they’ll lose you up here.
The layers on the rim mark the eruption in AD 79 which buried Pompeii and, two or three feet higher, you can make out the lava that was added in the most recent eruption. At the end of the path, in the shimmering Italian summer sun, is the last souvenir stand. I take a picture to show it nestled high up in the mountains; it’s a good example of location, location, location.
After our descent, which is even harder on the leg muscles, and the obligatory stop at the local cameo store, we are back in port, wondering what else we can do to get out of town. One of the senior passengers recommends the local water taxi that runs to the little villages down the Amalfi coast. It’s cheap, it involves being outdoors, and you don’t have to cross the street to get there. Let’s go!
The small boat, that smells like petroleum, chugs along the mountainous coastline, past beautiful houses hanging on for dear life with no visible means of support. It deposits us in the heart of Positano, an entire village clinging to the side of the cliff. With a beautiful church and lovely narrow streets snaking their way up, we get another walking workout, past hundreds of elegant tourist shops.
On a blind turn high above the town we reach the internet place—€8 an hour, the highest yet—and know the only thing we’ll find farther up is crazy people. We decide to chance the bus ride along the coast, south to Amalfi, 18 frightening kilometers away. I’ve heard stories about this trip, and so, with fears of all of us tumbling into the beautiful Atlantic, shakily find a seat on the east side of the wide bus—and promptly fall asleep. Tony, standing in the back, is treated to the full roller coaster ride, looking down the side of the cliff to the rocks and ocean below and forward to the cars, mopeds and other buses we meet head on.
Once in Amalfi, just as beautiful as its sister city but with a little more elbow room, Italy has redeemed itself. Shops are selling lemons the size of grapefruits, and four young guys are playing a game of kayak basketball in the harbor.
Heading back up the coast in the water taxi that evening, we wonder again at how man has managed to carve roads and dwellings out of this hillside. The houses are 50, 75 190 years old—what are we building at sea level in Miami that will last that long? Their windows and doors make them look surprised that they are still here in this precarious position, or just astonished at such a beautiful view.
We have signed up for the tour of Pompeii, the town that Vesuvius buried almost 2000 years ago. The 25,000 inhabitants who lived there that day have left behind clues to help the archaeologists decode their lives. Ruts from chariots gouge the well planned streets, and brightly painted frescoes tell us which house was owned by a hunter, which was a bakery, which was a brothel.
Pompeii had been a commercial center for almost 600 years while its citizens went about their business—first as Greek traders, then as Roman allies and finally as colonists. Vesuvius was always in the background, guarding them, until it spewed forth a three-day shower of gas and ash that literally stopped 8,000 of them dead in their tracks. The plaster casts made of their bodies, looks of horror frozen forever on their faces, are displayed respectfully along with their furniture, statues and urns.
A reminder to all of us that in the end, Mother Nature always wins.
Back on the ship, we are told that some people who wanted to go to Capri or our beautiful towns along the coast that day couldn't because the seas were too rough. The ocean decides when the water taxi will let you get out of the city.
With five days in Naples instead of the usual four, we allow ourselves one day on deck to sit in the sun and read magazines. What a luxury. Most of the other 500 students and staff have found their own way out of the city, either north two hours to Rome or on side trips like we have already taken.
In the once beautiful Bay of Naples, through the man-made smog and haze, the island of Capri is to the right, inviting. Mount Vesuvius is to the left.
Waiting.
For the WLRN Radio Reading Service, this is Kathleen Dixon Donnelly—at Sea.
posted by Kathleen at 12:09 PM
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