Zagreb: capital of Croatia

The countryside from Split to the capital city Zagreb was a complete change of scenery. We left the beaches and rocky terrain and entered a lush landscape of ferns and forests. I caught glimpses of a timber industry as the train moved through the region. Logs stacked a couple of stories high and mills were a common sight along the tracks. The train ride was longer than expected and we nodded off here and there along the way. There is something about the rhythmic rock of the train on its tracks that acts as a natural sedative.

            We met a man named Pero Dzelalija who works as a sound engineer for the national television station based in Zagreb. He seemed eager to practice his English and we were eager to understand all about Croatia – it was a perfect match. The last twenty five minutes of the ride we talked with Pero about Zagreb, his family and the culture in Croatia. When I told him he was a photographer he said that he liked photographers because they “have a picture in their head.” I thought this was an interesting and accurate observation that many people don’t understand. Instead of having a vision in your head of how you want the shot to be, many rely on a combination of camera + computer to tell them what the picture should be. He also told me that I don’t look like the typical American. I didn’t know quite how to respond to that until he told me that I seem more German.

            Pero had decided that he would be our guide and show us around Zagreb. He looked at the address we had for our hostel and told us he knew where it was located. With Pero in the lead, we boarded the number 6 tram and headed toward the center of town. Students sat in the many parks and people were bustling about their day as we arrived at the center of town. A small market was active and vendors were selling homemade crafts and trinkets in conjunction with traditional Croatian dancers that were preparing to perform in the center square. We found Fulir Backpacker’s Hostel and walked up the stairs and through the door.

The chef pulls the meat out of the oil and puts it between two pieces of bread that resemble inch-thick Pita.

The meat and bread is then passed to another guy who puts all the fresh toppings on: corn, jalapenos, lettuce, tomato, mayo, spicy mustard, ketchup, pepperoncini, pickles and onions.

            A fluffy-headed Croatian guy greeted us and asked us for our names. He stared at his computer screen and typed on his keyboard. Then he asked us for our reservation number. Carolyn pulled out here phone and showed him the number. He stared at his screen again and looked perplexed. Pero was waiting at the entrance to the hostel smoking. The Croatian receptionist let out a big sigh of relief. He explained that he thought there had been some mistake and that they hadn’t received the reservation email but he found it – the only problem was that the reservation was for the 20^th and 21^st of October and not July.

            Carolyn looked at me and I was dumbfounded. I wasn’t sure how in the hell I booked and confirmed a hostel for October. Something must have happened on the booking screen that changed the month. Carolyn looked annoyed. We had traveled more than six hours on a train and were excited to unload our packs and head out with Pero to get something to eat. The receptionist gave us directions to another hostel closer to the station and cancelled our reservations for October. We lost the $14 deposit on the cancelled room. We had the receptionist put us down tentatively for the next night in a six-person dorm.

Vendors in the open market in Croatia allow bees to feast on a piece of their fruit to show the buyers how sweet the fruit is.

These ads are hilarious. And I think they'd be more funny if I could understand the words and not just the image.

            We walked back down the stairs and returned to Pero with another map. We told him that if he wanted we would find our way and he could go about his day. He insisted on coming with us and grabbed Carolyn’s bag. We marched back down to the center with Carolyn mentioning more than a couple of times that she would be the one to book our lodging from then on. After taking the number 6 tram back the way we came we got off and looked for our new hostel. We found it not far from the station and walked up another flight of stairs to the reception area. Pero waited downstairs again and started another cigarette.

            Mirna, the young girl at the front desk, looked surprised to see us. The guy at the first hostel has supposedly called her and asked if there was room. She acted like she had been the one he had called and after showing her the map, she nodded her head at the circled area and said that was where we were. She led us to a room and picked out sheets for us, towels were not included and there was no wifi. We walked up to our room and it was silent. There wasn’t another person in the building except for Mirna. When the receptionist had called from the first hostel, he had said that there were a lot of people staying there and that there were five stories of rooms. We had booked the wrong place. We decided that it wasn’t worth changing places at this point and that we’d make it work.

Thistle-like flowers of all different colors were sold in the flower market in the central square of Zagreb.

            We descended the stairs and met the waiting Pero. He led us downtown to a place called Pinguin. It was a small booth on the side of the road and was filled with several young men, one of them was working a grill and the other was putting fresh ingredients between bread. I ordered a Zagrebacki sandwich and Carolyn ordered a vegetable burger. The food was delicious. My sandwich had a piece of meat at its center that resembled a combination of chicken-fried steak and a cordon blue. It was a steak, wrapped in ham with cheese in the center and then chicken fried. We wolfed down our food in record time and Pero then decided that we must have ice cream. We put up no resistance to the offer and followed him to an ice cream shop called Vincek. After finishing our ice creams we said goodbye to Pero and decided to head back to our hostel and make some plans for the evening. We had noticed earlier that there was a cinema by our hostel and that Harry Potter was playing. We entered the theater and looked at the times and chose one that wasn’t playing in 3d. The lady at the ticket counter was very helpful (as was another English-speaking girl in line) and we bought our tickets and actually got to choose our seats on a small screen on the counter. We found our way up to our theater and Carolyn got a large soda and large popcorn for $4 US dollars and the tickets were $10. It worked out to be cheaper to see the movie in Croatia than it would have been in the States. The crowd was much quieter and weren’t talking on cell phones or letting little children cry or run around the inside of the theater like my usual theater experience in America. The only disadvantage was that the theater didn’t have symbols on the bathrooms. You actually had to know the Croatian word for men and women. Not having a very good understanding of the Croatian language I waited and waited for someone to exit one of the bathrooms so I could determine which one I should use. Nobody exited. There was a guy waiting and I thought he might be waiting for someone to finish using the bathroom. When I motioned for him to go in front of me, I understood by his reaction that he was waiting for someone, probably a girlfriend. I chose the door opposite the one he was waiting by and breathed a sigh of relief when I saw urinals.

The left tower of the cathedral in downtown Zagreb. The right tower (not pictured) is under construction that should be completed in 40 years.

Downtown Zagreb.

            The next morning we showered, dried ourselves with our sheets and said goodbye to Mirna. We checked in at the Fluir Backpacker’s Hostel and found our room and made our beds up with clean sheets. Lunch consisted of the exact same routine as the day before -- sandwiches at Pinguin followed by ice cream at Vincek. In fact, a blonde girl at the ice cream shop recognized us. We sat in the park and watched people for a while and then went to the small market in the town center and looked around. Carolyn bought a 18^th century replica of traditional Croatian ring and we got pendants in the shape of a stylized acorn. The acorn for that period represented the family, because it grew into a large oak. It was an interesting analogy and I was reminded of how something so large and complex could begin with something so small and simple. After shopping we returned to the hostel and Carolyn took a nap while I updated my travel blog.

            The town of Zagreb has been my favorite so far. There was a perfect blend of old and new and the populace was young and active. The transportation in town was quick and efficient and not overly crowded. Many people there spoke English and seemed happy to have English speakers there. Zagreb was less touristy than Split and the temperate was more moderate. It rained twice for a couple of hours while we were there. The land surrounding the capital was lush and green and it reminded me of somewhere in Washington State. We went out with Pero one last time that evening and then came back to the hostel and made our plans for the next day. We booked a place in Bled, Slovenia which is known for a castle that overlooks a lake.

           

Split, Croatia

We never thought that our ferry ride from Bari, Italy to Dubrovnik, Croatia could have been worse than our first ferry ride. The seats in the reception we thought we would sleep on didn’t exist. In fact, there was no reception area at all. The Croatian ferry was more akin to a fishing boat minus the fish. Every soft seat on the entire ferry had a metal armrest separating it from the others. This made it impossible to stretch out and sleep on them. The crafty Croatians had ensured that anyone who didn’t book a cabin would not be getting a comfortable night’s sleep on the ride over.

Carolyn and I slept on the floor that was covered with a red carpet that felt like astroturf. Without pillows, blankets or any other amenity that would have softened the blow we drifted in and out of an exhausted stupor. I would love to write that we awoke the next morning but that would infer that we actually slept. Instead, we became more aware of our surroundings and our eyes focused better as the sun heralded the end of our seven-hour daze.

Once we arrived at Dubrovnik we were the first ones off the ferry. We walked out of the port area and we were met by dozens of Croatians trying to sell us stays at their hotels. We hadn’t had wifi since Greece and because we were afraid that we wouldn’t be able to get ferry tickets, we hadn’t booked any place to stay. We found an internet café nearby and sat down to use the internet and Carolyn bought a tea. Everything in Dubrovnik was triple the price of normal lodging. We made a quick decision to instead take the bus (that we were told was three hours) to Split. We found cheaper hostels there and thought we could manage a three-hour bus ride. After we changed our euro for kuna, we walked to the station and purchased our tickets. Apparently, the bus stopped in many stops along the coast and the ride would take five hours. Having already bought the tickets, and having nowhere to stay anyway, we boarded the bus where a scowling Croatian was smoking and hovering near his bus.

Our tickets had our seat numbers printed on them but when we went to our seats there were people already in them. They were English-speaking travelers and they told us that there was no assigned seating. Too tired to argue, Carolyn and I walked back to the front of the bus and took seats apart from each other. Just before the bus was ready to leave, a slim woman with short dark hair and piercing blue eyes boarded the bus and stood looking at her ticket and at the number above the seats. A petite blonde Australian girl sat in the seat she was eyeing. When the lady asked for her seat, the Aussie tried to explain that someone was in her seat as well. The woman got off the bus and found the smoking, scowling bus driver. He scratched his balding pate and shrugged his shoulders over and over in an exaggerated motion. The woman continued speaking until the driver boarded the bus and stomped over to the Aussie. He barked something in Croatian and the Aussie plead her case in English. The driver didn’t understand a word of English and the Aussie not a word of Croatian. Tired with the disparity in understanding the driver grabbed the Aussie by the arm and yanked her out of her seat. The woman nodded her head in approbation and sat down where the Aussie had been. The Aussie kept trying to explain that now she didn’t have a seat. Carolyn and I asked the driver if he was going to make everyone change. I showed him my ticket and pointed to the 25 printed there and the 7 above my seat and then I shrugged in an exaggerated manner like I observed him do earlier. The driver seemed to understand the problem he had on his hands. The entire bus was not sitting in the assigned seats and one woman wanted to sit in her assigned seat. In order to remedy this, everyone would have to change seats with their luggage inside the tiny bus. He motioned for the Aussie to sit down in an empty seat by a window and she did so without speaking.

The driver seemed content with the solution and stomped back up to his seat grumbling. We began the long drive to Split. The scenery as beautiful and the water was clear and inviting. Bathers were taking advantage of the water to find relief from the hot temperatures. From inside the muggy bus, the refreshing water might as well have been on another planet. After about two hours of riding, the driver began to smoke. Just above his head was a no smoking sign. I grabbed my shirt and put it over my mouth and nose to show him I was affected by the smoke. He looked me dead in the eye and blew smoke up into the air.

Unlike Italy, where a ticket checker would come by once during the trip, a ticket checker checked our tickets three times. Nobody had gotten off or on during this period so all of us English-speaking travelers were curious as to the reason. We never actually discovered why after about 20 minutes of checking our tickets, they came by again to check them. Maybe there were incidents in the past where people had driven alongside the bus in cars and climbed aboard as we were speeding along the coastal highway. During the trip we had to enter Bosnia and our passports were checked as well. The woman who checked ours didn’t even really look at them once she saw we were U.S.  I was under the impression that she was looking for passports of certain countries in particular. We had another passport check when we left Bosnia and reentered Croatia. All in all we had a total of five checks of passports and tickets from the city of Drubrovnik to Split.

We arrived at the coastal town of Split and it was teaming with people. Many backpackers walked around holding maps and families with small children walked along a white-stoned path that wound around the waterline. Walking on the white stones made the temperature even more uncomfortable and once again we were pouring sweat. It had been two days of balmy travel since either of us had showered and for the first time I was aware of my own body odor. My own stink had been masked by the constant body odor of other travelers and the occasional smell of urine on the sidewalk. The directions to the hostel in Split were written in very broken English – the meaning of which left Carolyn and I both wandering down the hot seaside walkway in the opposite direction of our hostel. After asking some Croatians where certain streets were by pointing to the names in the directions on our email, we managed to find our hostel. We hiked our bags up the wooden stairs and rung the bell. We were soaking wet and smelled awful.

We decided that in order to save some money we would do four-person dorms instead of private rooms. The savings would net about seven euro each per day or the equivalent of about ten US dollars. When on a budget of 50 dollars a day, the savings would be significant over the long run. After meeting our roommates, Michelle from Melbourne, Australia and Hannah from Korea, we showered. A shower had never felt so good in my entire life. I did burn the top of my left foot though because when I turned the water on it had apparently been left on the magma setting. Because really cold and really hot seem awfully close to your nerves, it took me a second to realize that it was that hot.

After our showers we explored Split and set out to do our laundry as well. We found one of the only laundromats in Croatia and met a Croatian girl named Adreanna who worked there. During our conversation about things to see in split she offered us some cookies her mother had made. We chatted as we waited for our clothes to wash and dry. A blonde girl named Julia overheard some of what we said and she joined in the conversation as well. She was traveling with her boyfriend, Nico and they were both from Germany. After the tips from Adreanna and our laundry was finished, Julia and Nico invited us out to dinner with them at a place that Adreanna had recommended.  The restaurant was called Fife and we ate grilled sea bass, black ink squid risotto, grilled vegetables and salad. We discussed politics and world events with the couple for a couple of hours as we ate our dinner. Much of the conversation was about how the economy was going and the effect that the housing/banking scandal/meltdown has had on other countries in the world. On the way home Carolyn and I stopped into a tea shop and got some fresh tea and baggies because she hadn’t found any breakfast tea in the neighboring stores.

The following day we went out to Bene beach. This was a beach that Julia and Nico had suggested because it was secluded and was flanked by pine forests. Carolyn and I took the 21 bus to the 12 bus and then rode it until the end of the line. We walked down the hill through pine forests filled with noisy secadas. They were so noisy that we could hardly hear each other speak. Once on the rocky beach we jumped in the water and floated in the Adriatic Sea. It was such a contrast to the muggy heat we’d been accustomed to while traveling. The water was clear, full of life and salty enough that you could float without any effort at all. We relaxed on the rocks for about an hour and then headed back to the hostel. I could already feel a burn coming on. I only had a farmer’s tan and I could feel the heat on my back and stomach.

Once we arrived at the hostel, I set about making lunch. We had purchased some groceries from a nearby store for about 10 euro and figured we could easily get three meals from the food we bought. For lunch I made tortellini with white cream sauce and wiped our plates clean with fresh bread. After lunch we meandered around the old town part of Split and took some pictures of the buildings and architecture. After we walked all over the city, we returned at dusk and hung out in the kitchen area. Travelers from all over the world had been coming and going and in was interesting to chat with them about their travels and especially to get tips on where they’d come from and where we should go. One of these travelers was Jason Paperman from Montreal. He was traveling and then returning to school to begin his studies in law. The university he will be attending is ranked 13 in the world and is the number one university in Canada. His tuition for the year is around three thousand dollars. The tuition in California for state universities just went up again for the second time in a year to a total of $3,440. We talked about travel and the similarities and differences between Canada and the US until about 2 a.m. We had to call it a night because Carolyn and I had to catch a train to Zagreb the capital that promised a lengthy 6-hour ride.

SuperFast not SuperNice

           The morning that we were to return to Italy began with the free continental breakfast at the hostel Aphrodite. Toast, jam, tea with condensed milk and orange juice was the standard breakfast at the hostel although you could pay several euros for upgrades to eggs and bacon or other breakfast items. After showering and getting our gear together, we said our goodbyes to Dee and Dave and walked out the door into the already hot Athens morning.

            We boarded the metro at the Larissa station and got off at the Omonia station. From there we walked down a couple of blocks from the metro and found the bus number 051 which took us to the main bus station. At the main station we purchased our tickets to take the 3-hour trip to the port city of Patras. During the drive we met three guys from England traveling around Europe. Nick, Max and Felix had all grown up together and were taking a trip before they had to return to England and begin school. Carolyn mentioned that Nick reminded her of Frodo, which Nick did not consider a compliment. But he had a good sense of humor and he and his friends both laughed.

Like the small fish that swarm around the sharks, feeding off extra bits of food and fighting for the remains, the gypsies swarmed the tourists when we got off the bus. After swimming out of the school of gypsies, we walked several blocks to a small market and grabbed 10 euros worth of groceries for the ferry trip. This equated to two full meals for us and some drinks. On the ferry this would have cost at least 80 euros. The grocery bag was about as heavy as my backpack and carrying that in addition to my two other bags was quite the workout. As usual, the sun beat down on us and as we walked the final blocks to catch our last bus the sweat had already soaked through our shirts and shorts.

The bus station where we had been dropped off a couple of days before was deserted. Small signs were on the windows in Greek writing but there was nobody inside. Carolyn and I looked at each other and a small amount of panic began to set in. After we asked a cab driver about how far the port was from where we were he told us about 4 kilometers. It was about 4 o’clock and we were supposed to arrive a couple of hours early so that the ferry could depart on schedule. We walked up the unfamiliar street looking in windows of travel agencies trying to determine if anyone was working and if we thought they looked like they would be willing to tell us where the elusive bus might be.

After several blocks, Carolyn went into an office with the name of our ferry on the front door. The employees at the SuperFast outlet told Carolyn that we needed to take the bus number five and that it passed in front of the station. To add to our stress, we met a nice French girl named Maud who looked at our reservation paper and informed us that we needed an agent to issue an actual ticket. Not sure if there would actually be an agent at the port itself, Carolyn returned up the same street to see if she could get a ticket and for all her efforts received the exact same information that we needed to get bus number five and go to the port.

She walked back down to the bus stop where two Iranians had joined our wait. Maud continued to insist that we didn’t actually have a ticket and that we needed to get something like she had. The repercussions of us missing the boat were not terrible at this point: we would lose 54 euros (non refundable ferry) and have to stay the night in Patras to try and take the ferry the next day. We really wanted to be done with Greece at this point though and were really looking forward to relaxing in Croatia.

Bus number five arrived after another 20 minutes and we all hustled on after Maud showed her ticket to the driver and he nodded and said something in Greek. After about five minutes the driver stopped abruptly in front of a small store and opened the door and motioned for me and an Iranian to get out. I wasn’t sure what he was meaning until he made the motion of putting a ticket in the validation machine onboard the bus. The ride he wanted us to pay for should have been complimentary from SuperFast. It turned out that it was a municipal bus and not one from the ferry. The Iranian and I purchased our tickets, validated them and the Greek shut the doors and continued the ride.

After another 10 minutes, and nowhere near the port, the Greek opened the door and told us that this was the stop by motioning with his hand. We all got out and looked around. All that lie in front of us was a long sidewalk with an asphalt road. Apparently, this was the road we were meant to take. We all started walking down the road, the two Iranians in front, followed by Maud and me, and Carolyn brought up the rear. The Iranians didn’t seem nearly as bothered by the heat as the French girl and the Americans. Our path could be traced by other lost travelers if they followed our dried drops of salt. All along the walk I constantly thought of how hard it would be for the elderly to make this trip from the street to the port or how unaccommodating it was for people in wheelchairs.

Our multicultural group arrived at a small building at the port and walked into the air-conditioned foyer. We walked up to the scowling Greek receptionist and got our tickets for the ferry. I actually mentioned to her that she should try smiling. While the Greeks are great at gyros and Greek salads they aren’t so good at preserving their national wonders (i.e. the Parthenon) nor are they too skilled at customer service. In stark contrast to the Italian side of the trip, the Greeks were constantly scowling, not helpful with directions, had few amenities, were guilty of bait and switch tactics and were generally not very pleasant. The two diamonds in a rough experience were Nicolas and Semina. They made our trip to Greece unforgettable and were the reason that we’ll have fond memories of our trip there.

We boarded the ferry and saw the English guys we had met on the bus. After putting our luggage away and getting our seats we went back to the reception area and sat with Maud and ate our evening meal of sandwiches, peanuts, and a Greek orange soda. After our meal we sat down to play Rummy and Jungle Speed with the English guys and Maud. We chatted about French snobbery and English football. Ashley, a guy from Denmark, joined the game as well and we played for a couple of hours. After we were all exhausted, Carolyn and I returned to the room reserved for the first class “airline-like” seats that came with our Eurorail pass. We both decided to claim a couple of rows so that we could stretch out and sleep more easily. I used my earplugs and my eye patch and we both fell asleep quickly. I awoke to the loudest snoring I had ever heard. It easily reached my eardrums despite the gummy plugs I had jammed into my ears. I pulled my patch off my eyes and sat up. The light from the room hurt my eyes and I wondered (like I did on the way over) why they didn’t dim the lights so people could sleep more easily. Not a single person in the room was stirring. It was 3 a.m. and the source of the snoring was a large African man. His stomach heaved up and down and his mouth was partly open. His snores had awakened sleepers within a four row radius around him on each side. I knocked on the wall by his head to see if I could wake him but he was out cold. After about 15 minutes and another couple of futile knocks I knew he wouldn’t be stopping anytime soon. It was probably better that I find another spot to sleep anyway, the air conditioning was so cold that my feet were freezing and I had to get a long sleeve shirt out of my bag to wrap around my feet. I went out to the reception area and slept under a table for about an hour before my pockets of my cargo shorts began to dig into my leg. I awoke and wandered back into the room where Carolyn slept. A large man of unknown origin stole my row of chairs and was fast asleep. I walked to the back of the room, eyes burning and lay down next to a girl in the corner. After about five minutes she started snoring. I figured I could bear it because nothing could compare to the African’s snore and I was resigned to stay there – until the sound of a soccer game started playing loudly through the wall behind me. I gave up and headed up to the deck and propped myself against a chair and fell asleep to the sound of the waves and the orange glow of the upcoming sun.

Carolyn woke me up and I went down to the reception area to shower and prepare for our return to Bari. The shower felt amazing and I dried myself with a clean shirt because I didn’t have a towel. Carolyn and I left the ferry and the scowling Greeks and walked down into the port of Bari. We helped the English guys and Maud with their bus directions, said goodbye and looked for our place to store our luggage and buy our new ferry tickets to Croatia. It wasn’t twenty minutes of carrying our backpacks and hauling our bags that we were once again dripping wet. There was no place to put our luggage and after asking several people that worked at the port, the ticket office didn’t open until six p.m. with the ferry departing at 10 p.m. It was 11 a.m. Looking out away from the port we tried to decide how to best spend our time. We noticed a sign that said Lavanderia (laundromat) but it, like most things in Bari in July and on Sunday, was closed. We’d hoped to do our laundry while we waited. Instead we’d have to wait until we arrived in Croatia where we weren’t even sure if laundromats existed.

We opted instead to take a trip into citta’ vechhia (old city) or old Bari, in hopes that it was similar to the old part of Genova. After boarding the 20 barred bus we asked the driver where citta’ vecchia was and he told us where to get off. We walked several blocks after getting off the bus and found ourselves in the citta’ vecchia of Bari. Nothing was open. Not a bar, a store, or even a pizzeria showed any signs of life. Carolyn and I hadn’t really eaten and it was nearing 1 p.m. We had walked all over the port and downtown citta’ vecchia and there wasn’t a market or store in sight. We sat down in the shade to rest for a couple minutes and I noticed a small photography studio. I had Carolyn watch our bags while I went over to it and spoke to the owner and his son. He was a really nice man and decent photographer. I told him of our food situation and he told me he had just the place if I’d just follow him. We walked down several small streets and finally arrived at a hole in the wall where a man stood with flour on his shirt and dough in his hands. Behind him a pair of men worked on pizzas and foccaccia. He noted my interest and let me come in and photograph his oven that was made in 1940. More than just an over, this was a vast stone “lazy susan” that was inside a furnace. From a small opening in the outside, the cook could insert as many items as he/she wanted into the oven by simply turning it with a small wheel on the ground. It used to be a wood oven but he had had it converted to gas so that it would be more controlled. It was one of the only turning ovens in the country. After the small tour of his kitchen, the man sold me two large focaccia rolls and four small pizzas. He ended up giving me two more free of charge.

I thanked the photographer for showing me this gem of a place and let him know that without his hospitality we would have been stuck at the port all day with nothing to eat except expensive tourist food. The photographer returned to work and Carolyn and I ate our pizzas and foccaccia. Apparently we had attracted some attention while talking with the baker because just as we finished eating a couple of guys came up to us and asked us who we were and what we were doing there. One of the guys, Nicola, worked at a butcher shop and invited us down to his shop a couple of streets over. We followed Nicola through the twisted maze of citta vecchia and arrived at his shop. His dad and some friends were inside talking when we arrived. Nicola had his dad cut up raw horse meat and Nicola sprinkled it with salt, pepper and some parmesan and held it out for us to eat. I saw the look on Carolyn’s face and told Nicola that she was vegetarian. I grabbed the meat, shoved it in my mouth and chewed it up. It actually tasted really good. The men in the shop were happy with my approval and Nicola’s dad cut some more for me. I ate that as well. Before he could offer me another bite though, I grabbed my camera out of my bag and asked to take their picture. They loved this idea and got all together behind the counter and grinned.

We walked back to the bus stop and caught the bus back to the port. Once there we settled in for the long wait before Jadralinja ferry offices opened. After a couple of hours the office opened and we purchased a deck seat. A deck seat means you have to try to find space on the deck somewhere to sleep. This is the lowest accommodation choice. Just above it is the airline-type seat and then an actual cabin. We figured that it would be similar to our last ferry ride and we’d be able to sleep on the couches in the reception area. We let out a sigh of relief. We hadn’t even been sure that the office for the ferry was the correct one because of a sign they had posted on the window that said they’d moved.

It was six p.m. and we hadn’t eaten yet. I decided that I would try to find an open supermarket in Bari on a Sunday in July. We might as well have been looking for ice cubes in the desert. I spoke to a lady who worked at the port and she told me that a store called Penny Market was open on Sundays. She gave me directions and I ran to catch the 20 barred bus and rode it to the station. At the station, I caught the 53 bus and asked the driver to tell me where the Penny Market was. After about 30 minutes of travel, I arrived at the closed gates of the Penny Market. There was an enormous chain around the gate obviously to ensure that no starving American pulled it apart out of frustration. Time was running out. We were to board the ferry at eight and it was already seven. I walked around looking for a bus stop where the 53 passed and couldn’t find one. I walked up the street for about 30 minutes until I came across a bus stop where the 53 passed and right behind it was a pizzeria. I dashed inside and ordered two margheritas and some Fanta. The owner of the restaurant also happened to be a bus driver and he drove the 53 route. He informed me that bus 19 and 53 both went to the station. When the pizzas were ready and I’d thanked my guide, I walked outside and waited for the bus to arrive. After the change at the station I arrived at the port to a starving Carolyn. It was eight o’clock on the dot and it was eight o five by the time we finished our pizzas. We had arrived in Bari from Greece at nine a.m. and we were boarding our ferry at eight p.m.

Athens, Greece

           The ferry was enormous and our EuroRail pass gave us preferred seating on what are similar to airline seats except they have way more leg room. If you didn’t have an airline seat it either meant that you had a private cabin (expensive) or you slept on the deck (cheap). Many backpackers were strewn all over the deck sleeping in cramped positions that resembled the cadavers in Pompei that were caught by an unexpected Vesuvius eruption. Some of them had blankets and pillows, others, less prepared, had just their backpack and a thin sweatshirt. With the warm night air their only source of discomfort probably came from the hard deck.

            Inside the ferry, things were nicer. The seats were nicer than those on an airline and reclined for sleeping. Unlike the airline seats that recline an inch, these seats actually reclined similar to a normal recliner. There were open spaces all throughout the seated section so I slept on a row of four vacant chairs. This was preferable to sleeping on the deck, but the ferry leaves the light on with no dimmer, making it hard to sleep. It is best to keep a little packet they give you on most night trains through Europe that contains earplugs and a handy night mask. Food on the ferry was really expensive so we opted for a Greek salad and a plate of rice and pork. We didn’t get any drinks because they cost several euro. For example, one small 8 ounce orange juice was almost four euro ($5.60 US). They even charged .40 cents for a small butter tab for your morning toast. We will be hitting a grocery store before we ever board a ferry again.

            Just before getting off the ferry I met a nice couple from Argentina who were coming to see family in Athens they hadn’t seen for seven years. Because the ferry had a private line that charged 20 euro for their bus fare into the city, I asked her to ask her family if they knew of a cheaper way. They pointed us to a free bus that took us downtown. Once away from the port we exited the bus with several other backpackers in tow and wound our way down the streets looking for the bus station. After about 20 minutes of walking in the extreme summer heat of Greece we found the station called “Katol.” Dee and Dave were with us as well as two other travelers from England named George and Ella. We worked out our bus tickets to get into the heart of Athens and to our hostel. Gypsy children walked along our line with their hand out begging for money. I offered an adult some food I had in my bag and she only scowled at me and jerked her hand away.

            The bus ride into the heart of Athens took three hours. I used this time to familiarize myself with some phrases from a book I borrowed from Dee. Because I was unable to read the alphabet or pronounce any of the sounds adequately, I spoke to a couple sitting across the aisle on the bus to ask them for some help with my pronunciation. Nicolas and Semina were their names and they both spoke English very well although Semina was a little more shy than her boyfriend. Nicolas was from Cypruss and Semina from Patras. They helped me with pronunciation for the length of the trip. By the time we arrived in Athens I could say, hello “yassas”, goodbye “andio”, thank you “efcharisto’” and you’re welcome “parakalo’”. Greek is extremely hard, and it’s even harder when you’re trying to understand the construction of the language from phrases found in a travel book. There is no grammar like the gender of articles and how verbs are conjugated. In terms of grammar, the only trick I learned was that I could put “poli” on the end of some phrases to mean “very.” For example, “efcharisto’ poli” meant thank you very much. The language barrier here is very frustrating. I’ve found that I’ve resorted to gestures for much of my communication. These gestures have been quite primitive. In fact I feel as though I’ve been caught in a never-ending game of charades and pictionary. I’ve resorted to drawing on pieces of paper (like playing pictionary) or holding a postcard and then mimicking licking a stamp and placing it on the postcard (much like charades).

            Thanks to Nicolas and Semina we were able to negotiate the metro and exit at the Victoria station. Once we climbed the stairs and exited the station we entered a park. There was not a single Greek-looking person around. The park was filled to capacity with middle eastern men and some women wearing berkas. Middle eastern music was playing and some small children were watching a puppet show. As we walked through the square and down the main street we realized that this was not a very Greek section of Athens (we learned later that this section was called “little Afghanistan). Asking directions from several people (who happened to give very opposite directions) caused us to walk back and forth in front of the same groups of dark individuals. We finally arrived at the hostel and checked ourselves in. Our rooms were on the third floor but there was an elevator, which we used to haul all our bags up to our room.

            We had made tentative plans to meet Nicolas and Semina in a busy square at the center of Athens but had a hard time using the hostel’s internet and their wifi was down. After some messages back and forth using FaceBook we managed to meet up at a very busy square called Monastiraki. The square was alive with young Greeks and there were many restaurants and bars. Nicolas chose a restaurant and negotiated pricing with the waiter. At first the host didn’t seem entirely pleased to have six tourists at his table with a savvy local from Cyprus but when he returned with the food and we feasted.  The plates consisted of two kabobs each on a pita with potatoes and stewed tomatoes on top. A large Greek salad, a large bowl of saziki and bread sat in the center for all to share. The meal was delicious and we ate until we were full. For the six of us the tab was only 40 euro and would have been much more had it not been for Nicolas. Above us the Acropolis was illuminated and made for an amazing atmosphere. It’s no wonder the restaurants in that area are busy.

            After dinner we walked up to the square just below the Parliament building. There were many protestors and activists in the square but they were all peaceful and were singing some song with English lyrics that I didn’t recognize. There were two guards outside the parliament building who were going through a military ritual when we arrived. They wore, what appeared to be, traditional military garb, including high hats, tights and shoes with large leather adornments on them. They were high stepping and all their movements were in unison, in slow motion and very exaggerated. The “dance” took about 20 minutes and when they were finished a soldier dressed in a contemporary uniform announced in English that pictures could be taken in front of the soldiers.

            Because the metros had all closed, we had to take a taxi back to the hostel. The driver told us that a Greek man had been heading to take his wife to the hospital and a Palestinian had knifed him and killed him for his camera. This happened about five blocks from our hostel. That evening, using maps, we decided that a safer route home would be from the Larissa metro station instead of the Victoria one.

            The next full day was spent walking around Athens with Dee, Dave and a new friend named “Poncho.” Poncho is from Mazatlan and is backpacking through Europe as well. We all climbed to the top of the Acropolis. The weather has been so hot here that even the Greeks are complaining. I’ve decided that while I’m in Greece I’m just going to have to settle on being wet constantly. From the second we step out of the hostel to the moment we come back to our air-conditioned room we are soaked. The keys we were given upon check in at the hostel have a little plastic card attached to them. Upon entering the room there is a card slot what enables you to turn the air conditioning on. This is designed so that when you leave the hostel you don’t leave your air conditioning on all day while you’re gone. The front desk controls this by having you leave your key while you go out for the day. I took a business card I’d been given on the street and put it into the slot and the air conditioner still worked. I passed this information on to Poncho and Dee and Dave as well. During our stay, whenever we’d go out, we’d always come back to cool rooms instead of having to wait about an hour for the air to cool the room.

            On our last full day in Greece, Carolyn and I went to the post office to get stamps and mail postcards home. We were invited to eat with Dee, Dave and Poncho but we had to buy our tickets and prepare our bags for tomorrow so we ended up going to the market near the Larissa station. We bought pita bread, kalamata olives, cucumber, tomato, feta, tsaziki (sp), waters and a fanta all for under 5 euro. We sat in a small park near the station and (with a knife/spoon/fork kit we bought at the store) prepared our meal. We ended up making 5 pitas filled with the fresh local ingredients. We have found that in the delis the ingredients are much more fresh, one just has to be brave enough to try to communicate with the people who work in the deli. Using my clenched fist, I managed to convey the quantity of all of our orders. I just pointed, then showed them my hand and they understood that the quantity I desired was about the size of my fist.           

           

Portici to Bari Italy

           The hostel Fabric was so nice we almost decided to stay another day. But Carolyn and I were both itching to see Greece so we decided to say goodbye to Naples and head toward the opposite coast of Bari to catch a ferry to Patras the Grecian port. The only glitch in our schedule was the train arrived about an hour before the ferry was scheduled to leave. Prices in Bari were really expensive when we looked for them online and it would be hard to check availability once we arrived due to the lack of wifi spots in Italy. Unfortunately, Italy hasn’t quite caught up to their Spanish neighbors.

            After arriving on the train we headed to the bus station just across the piazza and bought a ticket to take the #20 barred train to the port where we were hoping to catch a ferry to Patras, Greece. We noticed some other backpackers board the bus as well that seemed to heading in the same direction. After a brief trip we arrived at the port and went into a large building to see about where we could buy tickets. We talked to several people on the bus and many of them were going to Patras as well. We made friends with a young married couple from Australia, both pierced and tattooed. Their names were David and Deanne. David was an Australian BMX rider and Deanne (called “D”) was raised in France and Los Angeles so she had dual citizenship. We decided to travel with them for a while and we all bought our tickets to Patras. Deanne had already booked a hostel in the center of Athens that had great reviews, so we just booked a stay along with them.

            We thought the ferry was leaving at 3:30 p.m. (like we read on the site) but instead it was leaving at 8 p.m. It was a great moment to finally be early for something because we didn’t want to stay in Bari for the night. We sat around and visited and waited for a couple of hours until the ferry docked and we could board. The ferry line, called SuperFast, was an enormous ferry that looked more like a giant cruise ship than anything else. We were greeted by polite Greek stewards as we boarded the bus and went inside, put our luggage on racks and climbed to the top of the deck so we could watch Italy disappear on the horizon. 

Pompei and Pizza and Napoli

We awoke at 5 a.m. and were ferried down the hill from Crevari to Voltri so that we could catch the train that would take us to Genova Principe. Knowing that we needed to catch our train, Luciano sped down the hill avoiding parked cars on either side. It was a path he had probably done thousands of times. At 82 years of age, he had lived in Crevari since birth. He knew every edible plant and animal on the mountain and every place in the tiny road that widened just enough for two cars to pass each other (even if this meant that both drivers had to pull their mirrors in).

I  held onto the edge of the seat. Anyone who has ever ridden with me knows that I am not the calmest driver. Some would even call me “not safe.” But for someone who is used to going fast in traffice, I was a novice when it came to the 82-year-old Luciano. It was if he had a seventh sense that was geared toward driving a small car through smaller spaces while simultaneously detecting oncoming traffic and places in the road he could use to avoid it.

We arrived at the tiny station of Voltri and said our goodbyes. After grabbing a train at Principe we sat down to enjoy the ride to Napoli. This was the first time I had ever been this far south and I was nervous as to how the people were and how prevalent crime was. Since there weren’t any numbers on a couple of the train cabins, we counted the number and then shuffled ourselves and our bulky bags down the narrow aisles until we got to our assigned seats.

We put our bags up above our seats and the fit was so tight  that the straps from our bags dangled down. After about an hour we had dozed off. We were awakened by loud talking in a language I didn’t understand. A lady who looked she was Chinese boarded the train staring at a piece of paper and barking orders. A gaggled of other Chinese trailed in behind but not before taking pictures of themselves in front of the train. Once aboard they began to walk right toward our seats constantly gazing at the numbers above the seats until their leader stopped in front of our seats.

“Sixty five and sixty six,” the lady said to me in English and then pointed at her ticket. Sure enough, it looked like she had booked our seats as well. I showed her my ticket and pointed to the seats marked “sixty five” and “sixty six.” Her eyes got wide and she mumbled “double booking.” It was obvious that everyone in her group understand that term. The phrase passed from the guy standing next to the leader all the way down a girl at the end like some weird game of telephone. “Double booking, double booking, double booking,” they said as each person took a turn repeating the condemning phrase.

I told her that I spoke Italian and that I’d ask the train director why we both had the same seat. When he arrived he looked at me like I was stupid. And I was stupid. But it wasn’t entirely my fault. If the cabins had been marked I would have easily found our seats. Apparently we were in cabin one and our ticket was for cabin two. We gave the “double booking” chanters their seats and moved down a little ways so that we didn’t have to take all our luggage down. We arrived at the station in Naples without further incident.

We had about an hour or so before our train left for Salerno. I found a small supermarket inside the station and after paying a euro ($1.40) to use the bathroom, I grabbed a couple of salads and some other snacks so we could eat lunch before continuing our trip further south. As we walked over to the platform where our train was due, a woman ran into my side and appeared to hurt herself on my bag. She turned around after she passed and yelled at me. What she yelled was in such poor Italian that I couldn’t really understand her except that apparently I had “hurt her.” I was about to apologize when a train director pulled me aside and told me that she was a gypsy and used that tactic frequently to rob people at the station. The gypsies run into you and steal your stuff from your pockets upon contact. You are generally too distracted and alarmed that you ran into someone to check your pockets and valuables. By the time you realize your pockets have been empty they are long gone and you never connect the encounter with the theft.

We boarded the regional train for Salerno and sat down across from two men. One was tall and dark and seemed to be something other than Italian. The other was a little shorter and was constantly typing on a Galaxy pad tablet or his cell phone. It turned out the guy on his tablet was a priest who had just finished his training in Rome and was on his way home to start his priesthood. His name was Alfonso and he was heading to Salerno as well. Once the guy sitting next to him hear us speaking he joined in the conversation as well. We chatted about the States and Italy and why Naples has a problem with the city’s garbage. The told me of all the place surrounding Naples that we should visit. I asked Alfonso about a train we had to connect with at Salerno to get to Pompei and he pulled up the schedules on his tablet. The train we were on had wifi and he was able to log on because he was a subscriber. He found that we had about 10 minutes to find the platform and board our train before it left for Pompei. As a priest, Alfonso receives about 800 euro every month, which equates to about $1200 US dollars. Because he feared we might miss the train Alfonso told us to head to the 2^nd platform and he’d go buy our tickets for us so that we wouldn’t miss it.

We exited the train and hurried to our platform. After about five minutes, Alfonso arrived with a sweaty face and handed us each our ticket. We shook hands and thanked him for his kindness and boarded our train just in time to enter a packed commuter train. There was no room for us to sit so we stood in the breezeway.

Within minutes of the train leaving we began to see little dark-skinned adolescents walk back and forth between the cabins. They did this every 10 minutes or so with increasing frequency. I put our bags behind me so that I could watch them and any hands that might try to open them. Just before the next stop, two train directors corralled a band of gypsies and walked them through the breezeway. The adolescents that had been running back and forth were in the group accompanied by several other women. They were yelling at the train directors in broken Italian and were shoving and pushing inside the crowded breezeway. From what the directors had said, they gypsies had been riding the train without a ticket. Because of this, they were being forced off at the next stop. The gypsies continued do push and wail as we got closer to the station. When we stopped we all exited the train. They gypsies stood at the side of the train and made rude gestures at the people seated inside laughing and whistling.

Not wanting to draw any more attention to ourselves that we already had, Carolyn and I snuck down the stairs and walked to the front of the station to ask for directions. There wasn’t anyone from Pompei there so I went into the bar and asked where Via Carlo Alberto was. The directions from the barista were pretty straightforward: go up the street and turn right at the piazza. We followed the street up to a magnificent church several stories tall and walked past a fountain without water to our hotel.

The hotel Apollo was on the second floor and run by an Italian family. A mother was at the front desk and an elderly woman sat on a couch in the foyer ironing towels. A large man sat in a recliner in a wife beater watching television in the room behind the front desk. We checked in and the lady led us down a short hallway to our room. Once there, we opened up our shades and the window. It was smoldering outside and we noticed that there was no air conditioning.  We were so hot and tired from the train ride and all we wanted to do was get something to eat and drink. After spending 45 minutes walking down streets with closed businesses we realized that nothing was open on Sunday in Pompei. We finally settled on a couple bottles of water at a bar and a pizza from across the street from our hotel. We ordered a margherita (sauce and mozzarella) and one with mozzarella di bufala. This is a very delicious type of mozzarella that is from Naples. We returned to our room and sat on the balcony and ate our dinner. We were so tired from the travel and walking all day that after our showers we fell fast asleep. Until I was awaked about an hour later in pool of sweat. My hair was soaked. And my body had a thin layer of water all over it.

I got to my feet and went over to the window and looked out it. Crowds of people began appearing on the streets, well-dressed and speaking in loud tones. From my groggy state it seemed as if everyone on the entire street was yelling at each other. Despite all this noise, I could easily hear the entire phone conversation of the girl parked right below our window. I closed some shutters and the sound diminished substantially. Whatever breeze existed was now shut off in favor of quiet. I went to the shower and grabbed a towel to lay on and climbed back into bed. With my earplugs snugly in my ears I lay flat on my back so that my arms and legs wouldn’t come into contact with my body lest they stick there. Less than 30 minutes later I got up to open the window. It was too hot to sleep. The noise on the street had gotten progressively louder until it finally died at about two in the morning. Not to be outdone by the noisy people, a noisy garbage truck drove along the street collecting glass and smashed the brittle material in his truck for 30 minutes. During this battle with my surroundings I keep feeling something jump on and off my body. Before we’d hit the lights, I’d seen a couple of smashed mosquitoes on the wall near the headboard so I figured that they must be landing on my occasionally. The strange thing was they never bit.

I cant’ write that we awoke the next morning because I don’t think we ever really slept. Carolyn had mysterious red bites on her body to garnish her already swollen mosquito bites she received in Genova. We had decided to spend a couple of hours at the ruins of Pompei and then head to a small village on the outskirts of Naples to sleep that night. The decision was an easy one: we couldn’t spend another night at the hotel Apollo.

It was only a couple of minutes to the entrance to the ruins from our hotel and we were excited to see the site especially since there were remains of people and dogs among the things that were uncovered. Lining the entrance to Pompei were street vendors whose sales approach was similar to that of carnies at the circus. Once I responded in Italian they left us alone. In fact, I told one woman I was Italian when she gave me her pitch in English and her response was “meno male,” or thank goodness. I got the sneaking suspicion that these carnies didn’t prey on fellow Italians – just foreigners. Speaking in Italian worked well to keep them at bay.

We approached the ticket office and had read online that tickets for people ages 19-25 were eight euro. Being on a tight budget, every savings, even small ones, were welcome. As we began to pay for the tickets the guide told us that the eight euro price only applied to the European community and not for anyone else. I was really annoyed by this and told the guy when he came to American I hoped that there was a separate price for us Americans and something more expensive for him since he was Italian. Not only did we not get the discount like the rest of the Europeans there, that were all out of booklets in English that described the sites of Pompei that was supposed to accompany our tickets.

Pompei was interesting for the interested. I enjoyed all the ruins and the craftsmanship of the streets but after a couple of hours all the houses started to blend together. In fact, it was difficult to orient ourselves because the small map they had given us had writing so small that it would have taken a microscope to see it. We walked down many dead end streets trying to find our way out of the ancient maze only to come to a dead end sign that would have been more appropriately placed at the entrance to the street instead of the end. When you are at the end of a dead end street a sign only adds insult to injury. Dripping with sweat from walking around an ancient, shadeless city for two hours in the blistering heat we decided we’d head back to our hotel and pack our things for the 11 a.m. checkout.

We said goodbye to the family that operated the hotel and promised we’d be back (a polite gesture only) and headed down the street to the station to catch our train to the stop where our hostel was on the outskirts of Naples. The train was so packed that we stood in the breezeway again and waited the 25 minutes for our stop. We got off the train at Portici Erculano, a small town on the edge of the Mediterranean. With the sea at our backs, we crossed the tracks and followed the directions to the hostel. Navigating Italy is difficult even for someone who speaks the language and has lived there. Not every street has a sign in the same place, numbers are mixed, streets stop and start at different places in the city and when someone tells you make a left at a roundabout you have to choose between three streets that go left. We chose the one in the middle and walked uphill for about 25 minutes. If the sidewalks had been smooth like in the States it wouldn’t have been nearly a challenge. Unfortunately, they were typical for smaller Italian cities and were made of irregular cobblestone that made pulling our luggage difficult. I wondered how many high heels had been broken off walking on these disjointed rocks.

Exhausted again from train rides and walking we arrived at the hostel in a slightly shady area of Portici. The hostel, called Fabric, was in a poorer residential area and actually shared a courtyard with neighbors. But what the hostel lacked in curb appeal it made up for in service and comfort. Our room, although on the third floor, did have air conditioning. We turned it on as soon as we entered the room and set the lowest setting possible. We flung our bags on the ground and I hung my shirt up to dry on two cabinets.

The hostel had a recreation room, a music room that had a full bar and a piano, wifi and clean showers. The rooms were small but comfortable and after my shirt dried we walked back downstairs and left to explore the city a little before dinner. Besides a small market we’d found and a delicious bread shop, there wasn’t a whole lot to the small city. We came back and drank from bottles of aranciata as we checked our email and used skype to contact family to let them know of our whereabouts. A small group of Australians was noisily laughing and telling stories and after a guy named Michael came over and introduced himself. There were four of them from Sydney all traveling together through Europe. Shy, Patrick and Jeff rounded out the foursome. As they recounted some of their experiences from their journeys we realized they were quite fearless. We met a couple of Americans as well, Matt and Susan, both nurses. We all watched clips on YouTube. I shared some of Australian spiders that they had never seen and they shared some of what they call “stacking.” The word means anything from stubbing your toe to eating it on a snowboard. If you go to YouTube and type in “big stacks” you won’t get big stacks of anything but will get nutty Aussie’s posting video clips of themselves that would make JackAss producers proud.

The group decided that we’d go eat at a restaurant that Michael had heard of. We walked down toward the station and my skills as a translator seemed to impress. I could see all the Italian locals eyeing us as we all clambered for our chairs. When the waitress came up to us I discovered that you couldn’t get anything to eat there, that it was only a bar. She left briefly and came back with a suggestion of a place to eat that had good food near the center of town where we’d come from. We got up and were off walking to the Reginella. The eight of us walked at least a mile along the road while locals zipped by in their vehicles narrowly missing us as they sped along the narrow streets.

I’ve had to reeducate myself on how Italians judge distance. Every time I’ve asked for directions the response has been “just right up the street.” An American would have said something along the lines of, “it’s pretty far, I’m not sure I would walk if I were you.” I’ve come to understand that, because they walk everywhere all day long, it IS “just up the street” to them. To an American however, that is NOT used to walking 10 miles a day, it is a long ass walk. Some cultures would define a walk of this magnitude as exercise and dress themselves accordingly with running shoes, headphones and running shorts. For Italians, it was just part of their normal daily routine.

After asking a couple more people where the Reginella restaurant was we finally arrived. The metal gate was closed over the restaurant windows and there was no sign of life inside. The group, although happy, was also hungry and was not happy that the recommendation hadn’t panned out. I asked a man that was talking to his friend in a Chrysler if he knew why the restaurant was closed. He informed me that it was always closed on Monday. I asked them for another recommendation for a place to eat and made sure to point out that we didn’t want to eat where tourists eat but somewhere the locals hung out. They began to give me directions that started with the usual kiss-of-death phrase “just go right up the street.” I then heard the guy on the street say to the guy in the car, “you think they’ll fit?” I looked at the guy in the car and said, “Ci stiamo,” or “We’ll fit.” He motioned us to all quickly get into his car. Carolyn and I got in the front with her on my lap and the six others got in the back with two lying horizontal across the laps of the others. Matt and Susan looked a little skeptical of the whole situation while the quartet of Aussies welcomed the adventure with a cheer.

Arturo drove down the road and we made small talk. He works as a mechanic and lives in Portici. We drove about 10 minutes or the Italian equivalent of “just right up the street” and arrived at a pizzeria. Arturo entered before us and spoke to the owner. The owner made a signal to a waiter who then disappeared through the back of the restaurant. Arturo explained that his cousin worked here and that they had great food. The waiter had gone to prepare a large table for us in the back of the pizzeria. We all ordered a different pizza and Alfonso (the owner) cut each pizza into eight slices. While we waited, Alfonso brought out some fried appetizers that appeared to be nothing more than salted, fried dough. It was a great snack to tide us over before dinner. Once the pizzas arrived we all ate a piece, waited for everyone to finish then passed the pizzas clockwise so that everyone got to taste one slice of eight different pizzas. We were so synchronized that the whole operation seemed like a giant machine. We spent the night stuffing our faces until we were so full that we couldn’t eat another bite.

Genova: Gente di Mare

           Stazione Principe was just as I had remembered. It hadn’t undergone the major facelift like the one in Milan and it still retained much of its charm. We got off the train and exited the station. We were looking for wifi. I hadn’t reconnected with Enrico for a couple of days and I’m sure he thought we were still in Morocco. After asking several people I quickly determined that Italy wasn’t up to Spanish standards yet when it came to wifi in the larger cities. We walked down a busy street toward piazza Ferrari with Carolyn holding out her phone trying different connections as we walked. We stopped in front of a gelateria that had wifi and this gave us a great excuse to buy some ice cream. Italian gelato is one of a kind, and although many countries claim to sell it, it doesn’t compare to eating it in Italy.

            

           Using Skype (the ONLY way one should use a cell phone while in Europe) we contacted Enrico and let him know we were there. He was shocked and thought for sure we have been in Morocco. We told him how our plans had changed and he agreed to come down the hill to meet us at the end of  bus line one. We hiked back up the hill to the station and bought two tickets for 100 minutes each. It would take about 45 to arrive at the end of the line changing from the bus 20 which we now found ourselves on to the bus one.

            

           The weather was uncommonly humid. We were already drenched and the hairs on my arms were curly. The bus ride was the usual jostling jolting experience that is synonymous with bus travel in Italy. There were an inordinate amount of foreigners on the bus heading to Voltri. In fact, I had never seen this many on buses in Genova. A very large woman with two children sat in seats a small ways down from where we stood. She seemed to speak some sort of Spanish to her children both of whom sucked on cherry popsicles that had already drizzled down the hands and onto their seats. At the next stop a ticket reader got one. These are people who work for the transportation system and enforce bus and train jumping. He walked by and asked people for their tickets. We showed him ours. He stared at the stamp carefully and was satisfied that we hadn’t exceeded our time allowance. Every time you board a bus in Italy, you need to validate your ticket by inserting it into a small orange machine on the bus. This machine stamps the date and time so that the ticket expires eventually. Some people try to keep their ticket in their pocket and not stamp it so that they can ride for free. Others have been known to board and hope that the ticket enforcer wouldn’t happen to select their bus to audit.

            

           The auditor stopped at the foreign mother and her two children. She hadn’t purchased a ticket and he shook his head and began to write her a ticket. An elderly Italian lady chimed in and said that she wouldn’t pay it anyway because foreigners never paid their tickets and that there was no way of enforcing it. While she was right, and the lady probably would never pay, this opinion didn’t sit well with the couple from Ecuador that sat behind her. They began to yell at the old Italian woman speaking only with infinitives (unconjugated verbs, i.e. “You to be quiet, we to pay, you to want) but their message was clear. They said that she lived off of her retirement which was deducted from all the working people’s checks. They said she was a fool and some other worse profanities and they sat there fuming and gesturing after their verbal onslaught. The auditor tried to calm them down and eventually they all exited the bus.

            

           As we stood waiting for our stop I made eye contact with an Italian woman waiting to get off. In Italy, this is usually all you need to do to guarantee some type of conversation. She began to explain that the non-Italians (extracommunitari: people who aren’t from the European community) were moving in and taking over the city. The tension was apparent that the Italians tolerated the foreigners but didn’t exactly welcome them.

            

           We exited the bus without further incidents and met Entrico at the end of the bus line in the tiny faction of Voltri. Genova is divided into many sections, each with its own name and identity. From Centro (at the center of Genova) they are Cornigliano, Sampierdarena, Sestri, Pegli, Pra and finally Voltri. Enrico and his family lived about the town of Voltri in a tiny community called Crevari. He greeted us with the typical hug and kiss on each cheek and helped us put our bags into his Fiat Panda. We traveled up the hill that in the States would have been a one way street as it was just barely wide enough for a car to drive with ample room on each side. Cars came at us and squeezed by at an alarming speed with little space between us and the side of the mountain. I chatted with Enrico a little more about how he and his family had been until we got to Luisa and Luciano’s house. Carolyn sat and listened and tried to understand what was going on. I stepped out of my Italian every now and then to give her the gist of what was being said.

            

           After greeting Luisa and Luciano they showed us to our guest room and then to the most important room in any Italian house – the kitchen. Luisa had already prepared pesto with fresh pasta and mozzarella “di burro” and we sat down and filled ourselves to our necks. This “mangia fest” forced us to our rooms where we quickly went to sleep.           

            

           We awoke refreshed. And sticky. The weather, according to the Canepas, was uncharacteristically humid and they complained about it two to three times a day (the television said it reached 93%). Because the house has no air conditioning, we walked around sticky and warm. We ate a breakfast of homemade apricot jam, steamed milk and Carolyn had a caffe macchiato. We left with Luciano to do errands. We dropped the car off at a mechanic near the store where Luciano needed to shop because his horn was broken. While we walked down the small street to the store an approaching car sped by and its mirror hit Carolyn in the hand. She still walks a little too close to oncoming traffic and probably isn’t used to the tight spaces in which Italians are used to operating.

          Walking around the small town of Voltri with Luciano was a test of patience. Luciano is 82 years old and because he’s grown up in the same town and has never moved away, he knows every third person on the street. He stopped often to introduce us as his “friends from California” to everyone he knew. Carolyn was getting  a lesson in Italian greetings and was learning to say “piacere” (it’s a pleasure) and salve (hello, formal) and she was getting her lessons in the best way possible – through constant repetition.

            

           Luciano goes down to the market and store every single day. Along with introductions, he stops every 10 meters or so to tell a tale about something. Instead of walking while telling the tale, he comes to a complete stop. “There was a flower that grew here that had special properties. It got its name from an early Roman emperor who used the seeds from this flower to cure an illness that was widespread across the land. On one of his early travels he…” and so the tale would go. This story would continue for five to ten minutes and would occur every time we passed something he found interesting. In the last case it was a flower. It took us an hour and a half to walk three blocks to shop for five things and go to the bank.

             After the shopping we stopped into a bread shop (foccaceria) and bought some foccacia. We ate several large pieces and a slice of foccacia pizza. The salty, oily bread is best served warm in the morning and best eaten in Genova. The town is where pesto and foccacia are the local specialty. Because we left the car at the mechanic we bought a bus pass at the newsstand to go back up the hill. Luciano told the guy that worked there one of his favorite phrases in Latin and introduced us. We boarded our small bus and headed up to the top of the hill above the sea. When we arrived, the smell of food filled the house. Luisa had prepared a sauce of mushrooms that Luciano had cultivated on the hill above their house the day before. Normally, polenta isn’t made during the summer months but Luisa had prepared it because we wouldn’t be here for the winter and she wanted to give us a variety. Carolyn stared at her plate with wide eyes as Luisa spooned a healthy helping of polenta into it. We had Luisa reduce her portion by about half because Carolyn had eaten so much foccacia earlier. We both struggled to finish our plates. The polenta hit hard and fast and I was probably full before my sixth spoonful.

            

           Having gorged until the point of gluttony, we decided that a walk was in order. Actually, I was ready for nap. It was Carolyn who decided we should probably take a walk to help things settle. We walked up the tiny cobblestone roads up to the top of the hill. Along the way we met and stopped and talked to several of Luciano’s neighbors; a guy with a couple of cool Vespas, a man with a lab that had had seven pups and two men working on a project for the city that would connect an autostrada from Centro to Crevari. We might as well have thrown breadcrumbs on the ground. After we reached the top of the hill and took in the view of the entire coastline of Genova we saw a familiar figure walking up toward us. It was Luciano. He said he found us because he stopped and talked to the guy with the Vespas, the guy with the dog and the two workers and they had all told him where to find us. Needless to say, the walk back was punctuated with stops by many trees, bushes, plants and insects as he taught us their names, if they were edible and if they were indigenous to Italy or not. I learned that all the chestnuts in Italy are ruined this year because of a worm that arrived and has bored into all of the nuts. I also learned that the tiger mosquito arrived in the water left in rubber tires from China and wasn’t indigenous to Italy either.  Carolyn and I hit the beds once we got home and laid on our backs covered by a small layer of sweat.

We awoke just in time for dinner. Enrico had made plans to take us to his favorite pizzeria for dinner where we were going to meet up with his girlfriend Christina. We zipped down the hill in the Fiat Idea and picked up Christina on the road near the pizzeria. We said our hellos and introductions were made and we all got out to get some dinner. We walked into the narrow take out restaurant called Pizzeria d’Asporto and up to the counter. A short middle-aged woman was calling out instructions to two young muscular guys in their 20’s that were making pizzas and sliding them into a wood burning oven with long poles. A young guy on a Vespa pulled up with a small box on the back and came in to load it with pizzas and drinks. We ordered our pizzas and chatted with the guys behind the counter. The woman was on the phone calling other pizzerias to purchase dough, she had just run out and ours were the last pizzas to be made. A guy behind us poked his head in and asked if he could order 17. The woman looked at him and laughed and made a typical Italian gesture for “no” while she clicked her tongue twice. Enrico had told me this place was popular and with margheritas priced at 3.80 euro you could see why.

The next day our pattern was pretty much the same. We awoke to Luisa bustling around in the kitchen. She was preparing a sauce that wasn’t very common. It was a sauce made of walnuts, garlic, oil, parmeggiano reggiano and pine nuts. After we pulled the skins of the walnuts, she put it all into a small food processor and blended it until it was a paste. She then salted it to taste. Carolyn watched intently and took notes as Luisa explained how the walnuts might not taste precisely right because they weren’t in season. She also explained how the walnuts in California were a little more clear and had a slightly sweeter taste. Luisa combined this sauce with homemade lasagna she had laid out and some pesto and we ate until we were ill. After eating, Carolyn and I went down to sleep yet again.

We awoke about the time that Enrico came back with his six-year-old son Danielle. The two wrestled around a little bit before settling down and eating some of the pasta Luisa had made. After the two had eaten Enrico two us down to exchange money at his bank. He came out extremely annoyed that his bank didn’t understand what he wanted to do, couldn’t calculate the exchange rate correctly, and then ran out of cash in euro to give him. He walked across the street to another bank and tried there. While he was inside Carolyn and I were approached by a dozen street vendors from Senegal at least one every couple of minutes.

            

          Later on that day back up on the hill in Crevari Carolyn began to feel sick with all the food she was eating. According to Luisa, it was lack of proper digestion. While Carolyn lay in bed feeling like she was going to throw up, I feasted on tortellni filled with mortadella and parmeggiano and topped with a cream sauce. I checked on Carolyn every 15 minutes or so and she lay in the same fetal position, sweating and feeing nauseous. Luisa decided to prepare a tea made of Camomille flowers that she had picked in Menorca. She told me the best way to dry them was to wait for a sunny day and dry them in the shade, never in direct sunlight. She placed 12 of the tiny dried flowers into a cup of hot water, added some lemon juice from their tree and then a small spoonful of sugar. I brought this to Carolyn who had to be persuaded to drink it down. She eventually finished it and was asleep 30 minutes later. I played down in the garden with Danielle. He had brought a soccer ball with him and we kicked the ball back and forth until we were sweaty and tired.

            

          The next day Carolyn woke me at about 5:30 a.m. refreshed and bored. She bugged me until I got up around 7 or so. We decided that we’d take a day trip to Florence. After some online planning using Enrico’s internet connection we were driven down to the train station in Voltri where we caught the train for one of the main stations in Genova, Stazione Principe. By the time we had arrived, a long line had already formed to buy tickets and we only had a 15 minute window before our train left. We used the automatic vending machines to schedule our train ticket and punched in the code on our Eurorail pass. Success! We looked for the place to put our money in and didn’t see a slot. I asked a guy in line if we could use cash in this machine and he shook his head and pointed to another machine down the hall with a small design of a bill and coins above it. We cancelled our ticket and ran down to wait in line for that machine. We had eight minutes left. We reached the front of the line, selected the trains, punched in our code and saw that many of the trains were full. According to Enrico, 4 million Italians were heading to vacation this weekend. Carolyn thought that we should probably buy our return tickets as well seeing as how seats were filling up fast. We started over and instead of a single trip, chose round trip. We had about four minutes before our train was supposed to leave for Florence. We put the six euro in the machine, it printed our tickets and we were off running down flights of stone stairs to find which platform was ours. We ran up and onto the platform for our train just to see it begin to move and leave the station. Our tickets were non-refundable and we were pissed. I blamed it on Carolyn’s decision to start over and purchase round trip but it wasn’t her fault. I was just so frustrated that we missed the train and lost the euro.

            

           Because we missed the train we decided to stay around central Genova and then return to Voltri earlier than expected so that we could adequately prepare for our long journey south to Pompei then following day. We didn’t want to be rushed and wanted to get adequate rest because we’d be spending eight and a half hours on trains and travel was grueling if you were running with heavy luggage up and down stairs. Still fuming from our change of plans, we bought some foccacia and sat down by the station to eat. Pigeons surrounded us and we fed them and stuffed our faced with the fluffy, salty bread. After eating we were in better spirits and we spend the next several hours wandering the vicoli (tiny streets) of Centro Storico (historic Genova) where tiny shops lined the walls and people crowded the cobblestones so close the brushing shoulders was common. We saw piazza de Ferrari and the house the Colombus lived in before grabbing a train and heading back down to Voltri.

            

            Carolyn found a wifi connection that didn’t have a password and we used it to call Enrico so that he could take us up the hill to Crevari. He told us he and Danielle were preparing to go to the beach and that we were invited. We joined them in the car as they picked up Danielle’s cousin Stefano and we headed to the beach.

            

           The beaches on the coat of Liguria have small rocks that are the size of golf balls and to walk on them makes your feet ache. The sea was a great reprieve to the muggy warm air we’d be continually exposed to and we both jumped in. The only problem I have with the sea near Genova is the salt content. Several times a random wave would wash over my head and the water would splash in my eyes and nose. The water may as well have been gasoline for the stinging it caused. An old paper mill used to dump its waste into the sea near Voltri and for decades the sea had been to dirty to swim in. The last 10 years saw a change in the attitudes of the Italians and they decided to change the waste system for the mill and for the inhabitants of that area. Nowadays, all the waste from the area is pumped to a sewage treatment plant inland and the water is clean and beautiful. Because of this, scores of Italians were on the beach to take advantage of the cool water. Vendors from Senegal wandered amongst the sunbathers easily visible like flies on a white wall. One came wandering by with coconut, selling pieces for a euro. Carolyn didn’t have any money on her and when she went to get some, they vendor had left the beach. Of all the vendors that came by several times each, he was the only one that never returned. We ended up stopping at a Pam (small chain supermarket) for some coconut and other food for our trip the next day.

            

           Our last night at the Canepas we ate tortellini with sugo (red sauce) and prosciutto, spicy provolone, swiss cheese and bread. We stood on the balcony and watched the city lights of Genova that competed with the tiny lights of fireflies that flashed directly below. Enrico held out his lighter and watched the flame flicker. There was no wind. He was hoping that the north wind would pick up because that meant that the humidity would cease and the weather would cool back down. We said our goodbyes and went down to bed because we had to wake up early the next morning to head to Pompei.