I had initially only intended to stay in Naples long enough
to sprint the length of the city and get on a ferry to Sicily. Several reliable
sources had warned me that Naples was an unequivocal shithole and my feelings
were that in the previous six months, I had categorically filled my shithole
quota. But then in the days before I hit town, a few people enthusiastically
ensured me that Naples had a bad rap. I even ran into a native Neapolitan
who was nearly brought to tears while singing the praises of his home town.
So at the last minute, I dipped into Lonely Planet to sort out accommodations.
Things looked up immediately. Lonely Planet raved more ardently about Six
Small Rooms, a hostel in the heart of Naples, than any other accommodations
options that I had read about previously.
Although Six Small Rooms was within reasonable walking distance
of the train station, I knew that the immediate vicinity around the Naples
train station, Piazza Garibaldi in particular, was a free-for-all of thievery,
hustlers, junkies and a few enterprising guys employing a scary combination
of the three. Those who weren’t in the aforementioned demographics were
selling stuff that was so hot and illegal that if one were caught with the
same in the States, I think they can actually take your ass straight to the
Chair.
I wanted nothing to do with this action while I was carrying/dragging
all of my very expensive earthly possessions. Although it probably meant more
physical exertion than just biting the bullet and walking, my plan was to
descend into the metro without ever leaving the train station and bypassing
all of that ugliness 30 feet underground, jockeying through two metro stops
on two different lines and resurfacing four blocks from the hostel in a less
seedy part of town. Unfortunately, Naples decided to have a transportation
strike two hours before I arrived. I was left to either try my luck with the
aggressive, unlicensed taxi drivers or walk the gauntlet through the worst
neighborhood in Naples. I chose the latter.
I got into character for the trek by messing up my hair to Unpredictable,
Armed Drifter standards, changing into my dirtiest shirt, which I donned inside-out
and backwards, putting on my trashed sunglasses and screwing on my best “Fuck-off
Face” before bursting out of the train station and hurrying across the
piazza at a remarkably fast pace considering the weight of my luggage. All
around me I could hear hustlers accosting other train station departees with
a hilarious, all-purpose opening line; “Hash/coca/cellphone?”
I was moving too fast, with teeth clenched in an ear-to-ear grimace and looking
too all-around dangerous and crazy to personally attract this kind of attention.
Instead, I ran into an unexpected, vexing snag when I made the sad discovery
that Via San Biagio del Librai, the most direct street to the hostel, turned
out to be one of the worst cobblestoned streets I had seen in all of Europe.
The effort I was putting into dragging the Barge slightly uphill, over loosely
packed, irregular cobblestones put me in into such a horribly pained, fatigued,
sweaty state that my feigned “Fuck-off Face” was dropped in favor
of the very genuine “I Am So Close To A Gruesome Death That I Won’t
Think Twice About Taking You With Me You Rat Bastard.” The streets were
a shoulder-to-shoulder swarm of action and almost every time I looked up I
caught guys taking long, interested looks at my baggage before I looked at
them and then they didn’t look at my bags anymore.
As if the walk to the hostel weren’t hideous enough, the
pinnacle of misery was waiting for me at the end. Six Small Rooms was at the
top of a four story apartment building. It took 10 minutes and two rest stops
on the steep, narrow staircase to get to the top, where Patrick the Irish
clerk waited good-naturedly as I slumped over the desk and wheezed out my
information between gasps for air. He smiled sympathetically and informed
me that my physical condition was common among recent arrivals. I later discovered
that even just carrying yourself up those stairs with nothing but a gelato
to weigh you down was enough to wind a guy with the air quality being what
it is in Naples.
Six Small Rooms had the most intimate, family-like atmosphere
I had seen in all of Europe. This close ambience was due to the hostel being
run out of a roomy apartment. There were four dorm bedrooms, a living room
and a kitchen. Six Small Rooms. The clerks and the residents alike fell into
an amiable kindred groove, cooking meals, playing cards and watching movies
together every night. The place was only about 1/2 full while I was there,
making the personal space ratio just right, though during high season I imagined
that it would be a little cramped, not to mention steaming with the unrelenting,
soaring heat that southern Italy endures June through September.
After getting appropriately settled, I set out to find the gems
of Naples. The problem was, there really weren’t any and if there were,
the supreme effort that was required to get your ass anywhere in Naples completely
traumatized you and over-shadowed whatever it was you wanted to see. I had
gotten a very keen taste for the streets of Naples during the harrowing walk
to the hostel and quick pizza run soon after my arrival. Lonely Planet reported
that Naples was one of the most densely populated, high paced, chaotic cities
in all of Europe - further research revealed that Naples actually ranks quite
high in worldwide population density levels - and it would either embrace
you or ruthlessly destroy you. I feel ass-backwards onto the destroyed side
of the fence.
Despite being the third largest city in Italy, the state of
the frantic Naples street scene made even the unhinged streets of Rome seem
like Quaalude, Montana. Take Rome’s hysterical ambiance, double it,
add two parts dog shit, halve the number of mufflers, triple the number of
people who wouldn’t think twice about running you over to gain two seconds
on their drive and that’s Naples. Oh yeah, cut the amount of usable
oxygen in half. That about sums it up. The 1884 edition of “Cook’s
Tourist Handbook” offered the following; “Naples is an ill-built,
ill-paved, ill-lighted, ill-drained, ill-watched, ill-governed and ill-ventilated
city.” It was like Cook ill-wrote it yesterday. Nothing had changed.
Perhaps I should clarify my perspective by illustrating the
delicate state of my mental and physical health at that stage in my voyage:
I was six months into a balls-out, high speed tour of western Europe, trying
to keep pace with a supremely ambitious, short-sighted and admittedly obtuse
self-induced schedule that left me with precious few, genuine rest breaks.
Anyone who has backpacked and lived out of hostels for a couple months knows
how draining it can be. Take the general exhaustion involved with budget backpacking
and imagine doing it for six, virtually uninterrupted, months. Then pile on
several hours of writing duties and digital picture processing each night.
Now pretend that you’re a 33 year old, out of shape American hauling
almost his body weight in luggage. Why yes, I am an idiot! Tell me
something that I don’t know, Gomer. I had long since smashed into the
wall of mental fatigue, exploded pathetically, but determinedly out the other
side and was now still hobbling forward, with slow, dumb progress toward the
goal line, that being home for a three week break at Christmas and possible
institutionalization.
Even in top form, the perpetual sensory-overload that is Naples
is maddening and irritating, but in my frail condition it was truly frightening
and incapacitating. On the street cars, motorcycles, scooters, people and
stray animals were coming at me so fast that my head couldn’t keep up
with the action that my eyes were sending to it. This condition was aggravated
by the jittery knowledge that one is never, ever completely safe from injury
when you venture out of the house in Naples. You are in just as much danger
of being killed walking down the sidewalk as you are lying in the middle of
the street. Humans and animals aside, the sidewalks are fair game for anything
on two wheels and sometimes cars if they feel that they have waited in traffic
long enough. Traffic lights, when they work, are heeded by so few people that
drivers actually slow down a little when approaching a green light because
there’s an even chance that the people approaching the red from the
opposite direction are not going to stop. When Italy passed a mandatory seatbelt
law, it was the Neapolitans that fabricated t-shirts with shoulder belts stenciled
on them. These are seriously unbalance drivers and you need to be in razor-sharp
form just to zip out for a gelato. I found religion in Naples, as Lonely Planet
accurately foretells, you need the power of prayer to cross the street.
As if the danger-level and constant bumping of shoulders and
elbows weren’t exasperating enough, Naples is also a city of unusual
weirdness. Crazy, uncanny things happen in the streets of Naples that would
confound people from anywhere else, but would likely draw an indifferent shrug
and a dismissive solicitation of a cigarette from a local. I had been a resident
of Six Small Rooms for less than 20 minutes, still seeing spots from the stair
climb in fact, when a fellow hostel resident walked in and reported that he
had just nearly been killed by a bag of chocolate chip cookies that fell out
of the sky and missed caving in his skull by three inches.
A bag of chocolate chip cookies.
Fell from the sky.
Almost crushed his head like an egg.
Apparently he had just been innocently walking down the street,
avoiding dog shit and side swipes by sidewalk-bound scooters and with absolutely
no warning this bag of cookies rocketed out of the clear blue sky - well this
is Naples we’re talking about, it was more of a soupy, polluted, asthma-inducing
sky - just in front of his nose and landed directly where his next footfall
was intended. I was aghast and speechless by this fantastic incident. Patrick
however, sniffed and with as straight a face as there has ever been, simply
asked if he could have one. I understood at this moment that Naples had an
entirely different scale of what was common and what was out-of-the-madcap-ordinary
and it succeeded in petrifying me even further.
Wishing I had had the foresight to bring a re-breather, I embarked
on my first exploration of the city, heading toward the disappointing harbor,
only almost dying 17 times on the way, and then cutting into the market area.
Calling this place a “market” is about as absurd a misnomer as
“Coffee Shop” is for an Amsterdam hash bar. The conspicuous sale
of stolen and contraband goods is alarming. Guys would have a five megapixel
digital camera just laying out on a table. No box, no manuals, no cables.
Just the camera. At least in that case you would something. If you
decide to go slightly more legit and give your business to a guy selling a
camera that’s still in the box, it would behoove you the check the contents
before completing the transaction or you might end up walking away with a
100 euro, neatly packaged rock.
Heading back to the hostel, I stopped to snap the only pictures
that I would take in Naples that didn’t involve some kind of disturbing
street scene, peculiarity or near disaster. I have to admit that the 13th-century
Castel Nuovo is fantastically impressive. Despite being surround by screaming
traffic, unsightly parking lots and ferry loading docks, it manages to command
complete attention from all sides and is so colossal and formidable that one
will likely fall into an involuntary reverie while admiring it and wonder
how the hell they built something so extraordinary 800 years ago. Then, of
course you’ll be unpleasantly ripped back to reality by a motorcycle
jumping the curb and screaming by two inches from your toes.
I returned to Six Small Rooms in time for a debriefing on how
the men in southern Italy were even more aggressive in their desire to bed
as many women as possible than the guys in the north, something that everyone
had previously thought was impossible. A young Canadian woman led the discussion
by describing her walk home from the museum. A man latched onto her two steps
out of the exit and followed her all the way to the hostel, a distance of
about 10 blocks, offering relentless propositions to bring her home for what
he assured her would be supremely satisfying sex. As is common with Italian
men, simply giving a firm “no” is completely useless, so she proceeded
to attempt everything short of calling the police to shake the guy. Ducking
into stores, faking a dangerously contagious sickness, telling him that she
was on her way to meet up with her husband, brother and father. The
man never batted an eye and was even kind enough to patiently explain that
illicit sexual romps were the norm and indeed the height of etiquette in Italy.
She didn’t even go out for ice cream without an escort after that.
The next day I asked around for advice on where I might find
something pleasing without having to worry about asphyxiation or looking both
ways before rounding every corner. I was directed up the hill to the spiffier,
quieter Vomero neighborhood where I did indeed find calmer streets and fractionally
fresher air. I had intended to stop in for a visit at Saint Elmo Castle which
is gnarly looking and clearly visible from almost any spot on the hillside,
but I somehow got myself into an inescapable series of dead ends, where the
only road that didn’t end in a 10 foot wall or a cliff headed back down
into the city center. It was going on 4:00PM and the sun would shortly dip
out of sight. The last thing I wanted was to be lost in Naples in the dark,
so I headed back downhill, through a maze of ancient, randomly planned streets
and neighborhoods before being amazingly deposited back into the city at almost
the exact point that I first started climbing the hill.
After devoting three days to finding something, anything
to like about Naples, I felt that I had done my duty. The hostel was friendly,
fun and good company, but otherwise the city was an overwhelming, filthy shithole,
just like I had been prudently warned.
Don’t Go to Naples