Napoli

The transition days are the hardest. Switching from one city to the next gives me time to realize how alone I am in my travels, and allows me to become homesick. Add to that the fear of encountering a new city, where you don’t know the geography, the customs, or even the language, and it is easy to feel overwhelmed. But if there is one lesson I can take away from this Italian vacation, it is a profound appreciation of how many generous, helpful and very cool people there are in the world, and the realization that it is easier to make friends than I had thought.

I left Hannah’s apartment today around noon to travel to the train station, unknowingly leaving my water bottle in her kitchen (the saga continues). Once again, I am hugely grateful to her and her roommates for allowing me to stay there and for making my trip to Rome a very enjoyable one. They saved me, at the very least, one hundred and fifty dollars for a hostel, and their company was worth much more than that.

I slept on the train, arriving in Naples three hours after leaving Rome. (I took the slow train because it’s cheaper; the journey can be made in about an hour and a half.) Naples, I have found, can be a scary place. It is drenched in graffiti, and many of the streets I have seen are dirty and unkempt. I haven’t seen much yet, but so far my impression is not hugely positive. It took me about an hour to sort out where my hostel is, and I spent a euro on a frivolous train ticket during the process. This is what my USC economics professor would call an information cost; I spent money on something stupid because I didn’t know the right way to do things. Anyway, after talking to several patient and not-so-patient transportation employees, I found myself at the Portici – Via Liberta train stop. A short walk brought me to my hostel, built inside the remains of a textiles factory. It is a very nice place to stay, cheap and modern with free lockers in the room and wireless internet, though the latter is a bit weak.

I left the hostel at around five o’clock for something to eat. Many areas in Europe close between the lunch rush and the dinner rush, and I found myself inside this eerie service gap today, unable to find even a pizza for a good half hour before stumbling across a lonely open pizzeria, which sold me a quality, classic Neapolitan pizza for only three euro. I followed it up with some gelato (which I think I’ve consumed at least once every day since I’ve been in Italy, and several times more than once per day, the worst bordering on, say, eighteen or nineteen per day), and I was set, returning to the hostel, where I re-met a girl I met in my hostel in Venice! Crazy!

In my room, I met three new friends: John, Brianna and Stacy, who are probably trying to sleep right now, annoyed at me tapping on my keyboard. They, believe it or not, are from California, attending San Jose State, and they are studying abroad in a small town (I can’t remember the name right now, darn it) just outside of London! Crazy again! We exchanged pleasantries, shared some laughs, cried a little bit, had some emotional breakthroughs and cemented our friendship over some more gelato. Can’t go wrong with more gelato. In fact, I think I’ll get some right now. No, not really, because the shops aren’t open right now, but wouldn’t that be funny if I just left in the middle of a post and got gelato? Man, that would be something. Anyways, they are really cool. They are going to Pompeii tomorrow and invited me to go along with them, which I deem a pretty good idea. Tonight we watched Pulp Fiction together, which I had never seen.

And now I’m typing in pitch dark with a pillow resting on my hands and my keyboard to dull the sharp clicking of the keys. There is a Romanian man sleeping a few feet away.

Unfortunately I can’t upload pictures right now because the internet is weak. This might weed out some of my illiterate blog followers who only do it for the cool pics, but that’s a risk I’m just going to have to take. Hopefully tomorrow I’ll have figured out this internet business and I’ll upload some of my more fantastic photos from the past couple of days. Until then, good night, I miss all of you, even the random strangers who stumble onto my blog after searching for something weird on Google, like ‘tortuously detailed account of a mildly interesting vacation’ or ‘something to read instead of watching paint dry.’ You too hold a special place in my heart; a place with padded walls, reserved especially for ‘special’ people’ strangely interested in the banal details of a stranger’s vacation. But I digress. As usual. Nighty night.

Update: Today is tomorrow, and here's a picture.