Napoli

Ciao Tutti,

I arrived in Napoli at 10:30 AM and headed to my hostel immediately.  The directions on the hostel’s website said that I should take the tram #1 towards the “Stazione Meridionale”.  Unfortunately, the trams going both ways said “Stazione Meridionale”.  After about 10 minutes of indecisiveness with a few other Italians heading in the same direction,  we finally found someone that knew where we wanted to go – simply by the water.  I honestly have no idea why it was that hard to find someone that could help us.  I suppose there are too many tourists in Napoli by the train station.

I had quite an experience on the tram to my hostel from the train station.  The police came on board to check if everyone had a ticket.  I did, but other people did not.  There was one old lady screaming at the man as if he had just murdered her son. She was relentless.  The whole tram heard her.  Then, the guy a few seats behind me verbally assaulted the police officer.  He asked him what kind of a job is this and asked him if he is happy with what he does. The man went on to ask if the ticket taker enjoyed hurting people.  It was quite the scene.  All in all, they caught about seven or eight people.  It is a good thing I paid the €1.20 for my ticket.

After I got off the tram, I walked less than 5 minutes to my hostel.  Hostel of the Sun is right off the road that runs parallel to the water on the seventh floor of an apartment building.  Yes, there is an elevator.  The security was very good – you need to ring a bell to get into the building as well as to get into the actual hostel.  After dropping my stuff off, I headed straight for the port for a boat to Capri.

I am currently on the boat and it is very fast.  They call the boat a hydrofoil.  Let me just say that it is a good thing that I do not get seasick.  The boat is bouncing up and down every few seconds. For me, it’s relaxing. For the people next to me, not so much!

While I have time to write, I figured that I would comment about the things I’ve noticed in terms of the Neapolitan clothing and hair. The people remind me a bit of Berliners – they don’t care about what other people think.  A few of the men I’ve seen had very short shorts and very strange hair – kind of like a Mohawk, but it extends over their face.  Some of the women were wearing shirts that said “Follow me back to my house”, “No boyfriend, no problem”, and “You’re hot, why not?”. The alternative culture so far is much different than anything I’ve seen in the rest of Italy.

Note: This post was originally published on June 2, 2012 in a blog entitled “Romeing Around Europe…Again” which chronicled my post-graduation trip across Europe.