Napoli e Pompei

Owing the euros in my wallet to the U.S. Navy, I mean no disrespect when I say that military administration is nothing if not inefficient.  As proof, consider the three days I recently spent in Naples, Italy - was ordered to spend in Naples, Italy - to accomplish one hour of administrative check-in for my current assignment in...wait for it...France.  The back story in a nutshell: In 1966, Charles de Gaulle, long unhappy with the perceived special relationship between the United States and Britain and other alleged inequities within NATO, expelled American forces from France.  100,000 U.S. personnel, and all their stuff, got the boot.  Fast forward 45 years, and you see the bureaucrat’s dilemma: Who fills out the paperwork for the handful of U.S. military folks working in France if there’s no base there, no There there?  Time to find another There, and the There they found is EURCENT, in Naples.  This doesn’t explain why I was afforded three days to accomplish an hour’s work, but the inefficient don’t appreciate second guessing.  Rather, There I went, and did the paper work, and 2.8 days remained until my flight to Paris.  Plenty of time to do a bit of sightseeing. 

I saw the city once before, during a port call in 2004, when I bobbed across the choppy waters of the Bay of Naples from the USS Enterprise to the fleet landing pier, for a few days of strolling about and eating pizza.  On the advice of an old friend, I rode the funicular up to the top of Vomero Hill, then walked to the fortress of Sant’Elmo, a majestic complex dating from the 13th century, with sweeping views of the bay, port, and city below, and Mount Vesuvius beyond.  The aircraft carrier, funicular, and visit to the fortress are several years ago now, and on my return to Naples what I'm most impressed by are the trash and traffic.  The place is a godawful mess.  Which is not to say that Naples is without it’s fine points, but the madness of the traffic and ubiquity of the refuse are easier to find.  I found both in spades on my way to Pompeii.

On Tuesday morning I got up early and made the three-minute walk to the top of the Navy base’s five-story parking garage to snap a few pics of the sun rising over Mount Vesuvius.  That done, I walked the half mile to the bus stop outside the airport to catch a ride downtown.  Driving in Naples seemed like a bad idea, not that I had the option, and the bus ride was pleasant.  My destination was the Piazza Garibaldi, which I remembered from my previous visit as the bustling, vibrant center of downtown Naples.

Either times had changed, or my memory had been generous.  On debarking the bus, I looked down to find the tops of my Skechers barely visible through loosely packed garbage.  Shuffling forward and turning 180 degrees in the trash, I saw that the entire Piazza - perhaps the size of 6 city blocks - was a construction site.  Plywood fences, enormous cranes, and stockpiles of building materials were everywhere. I was underwhelmed by the power of urban renewal at work and wondered if the construction workers, trash haulers, or both, might be on strike.  At various intervals it looked as if the construction crews had taken delivery of loads of household garbage and were waiting for word from the foreman as to what should be done with it.  

Having gotten off the bus at the opposite end of the piazza from the train station, I hoofed it around the perimeter, taking in the sights and smells.  It was a welcome relief when the odor of cooking oil from the McDonald’s next to the station overpowered the stench of hot trash, an incongruous stench considering the wintry morning's chill.  Upon entering the station, I stood in a couple of wrong lines before finding the place to buy a ticket to Pompeii.  Ten minutes later I was rolling south, listening to a busker's accordion, Piazza Garibaldi happily forgotten. 

Without fail, there are five things you see out the window of the train between Naples and Pompeii: orange trees, prickly pear cacti, graffiti, laundry drying on the line, and Mount Vesuvius.  The infamous volcano dominates the skyline in these parts, situated as it is only slightly closer to Pompeii than to modern day Naples.  Graffiti is everywhere along the tracks, one recurring design bringing to mind Cool Disco Dan, the District of Columbia’s legendary tag artist.  

Exploring the ruins of Pompeii is worth every penny of the 11€ ticket price.  At over 150 acres the town is huge, and there is a lot to see.  I snagged a free tourist guide from the the kiosk by the front gate and set off to get lost in the cobbled Roman streets.   As the guidebook explains, most of the original art and statuary has been moved to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples, a diminishment for which I was grateful, given how much there was to see. A recurring architectural feature I found especially pleasing were the large, raised stones in the middle of the streets.  Back in the day, the streets were flooded each morning for cleaning, and the precisely-spaced stepping stones allowed morning commuters to cross without getting their sandals wet.  The spacing coincided exactly with the length of chariot axles, so that they too could pass.  I wondered if the concept of street cleaning in Italy had been lost forever when Vesuvius blew its stack in 79AD.

I am not yet a world traveler with friends dotting the earth like push pins on a wall map, but I do have a friend in Naples, and what a friend he is.  Domenic, a Navy doctor, is Italian, and his insider tour of Naples was educational.  On my last night in town he picked me up for dinner at the Navy base near the airport in Capodichino.  As the crow flies, the distance from Capodichino to the Trattoria da Cicciotto in Mareghiaro is just shy of eight miles.  In Dom’s BMW, during rush hour on the night of a local soccer match, this drive took years off my life, threatening on multiple occasions to take the whole thing, all in 30 minutes.  As Dom explained to me, there are too many cars in Naples, causing people to drive like maniacs.  Dom being local, I was reticent to question his logic, though I silently held the opinion that the problem wasn’t too many cars, but too many drivers, a frightening number of whom slalom through traffic on scooters like a swarm of hungover Alberto Tombas careening down the slopes of Lillehammer.   Lane markings on the roads mean nothing, and traffic signs might as well be in a foreign language, which for me they were, because absolutely no one pays the least attention to them.  Most of the time, everyone except the kamikaze scooter drivers is in gridlock, with adjacent cars no more than six inches from one another on all sides.  It seems an impossibly tight mass of cars for the scooters to negotiate, but somehow they do, often at high speed.  The drive to dinner was tense, but we made it to the restaurant, with Dom pointing out sights along the way, and without being implicated in a vehicular homicide.  

We sat down for dinner at 8:30pm, obscenely early by Italian standards, our waiter clipping on his bow tie as he showed us to a table in the winterized outdoor seating area.  For forty minutes we were the only people in the restaurant, and we had the undivided attention of the cheerful, chatty staff.  The village of Mareghiaro is situated to the southwest of Naples proper, smack on the Mediterranean coast, at the bottom of a maze of small and tangled streets.  It is locally known as the place where the 18th century poet Salvatore Di Giacomo penned a famous Neapolitan love song, staring out a particular window at the sea.  The historical record does not identify Di Giacomo’s muse, but she may well have been a poached octopus.  Dom ordered our dinner in Italian, without consulting either me or a menu, and it was delicious: lightly fried julienned vegetables, poached octopus salad, lobster, mussels, heaps of pasta, bread, and a pitcher of fresh white wine pulled from a tap.  Our main courses were served on rectangular plates the size of tea trays.  After dinner we walked down a flight of steps for the obligatory look at Di Giacomo’s window, and then drove to a downtown cafe through eerily deserted streets.  Dom explained that all Neapolitans watch the local soccer matches, emptying the streets to observe the ritual.