Mozzarella Madness

            I am currently curled up in my bed in a t-shirt and shorts, my heavy duvet cover fallen on the floor beside me. Spring has finally come to Bologna and I am so happy. However, the days are slipping by much too fast and I’ve realized that while I have been catching up with writing posts about daily Bolognese life, I haven’t written anything on my travels. April has gotten away from me, but before May starts to slip away as well, I’m taking you all south to a sprawling, dirty, colorful metropolis known as Napoli.

            There is a saying in the Neapolitan dialect that essentially states that once you’ve seen Naples, you can die, because you have now seen all the riches the world has to offer. But there is also a saying that goes something along the lines of, si è nato a Napule, ce vò' murí. It comes from an old Neapolitan song called Santa Lucia Luntana and it means that if you were born in Naples, you will come back here to die. It’s the idea that the place really settles into your bones—a feeling that can’t be replaced by other cities or climates, but one that consumes you entirely with nostalgia.

            Oh hey guess what guys? I was born in Napoli.

            Okay, technically, I was born in Pozzuoli, which is essentially Naples. Of course, I don’t think Naples has found its way into the recesses of my soul. I was born there, but I didn’t grow up there. No, that spot of honor is reserved for Gaeta, the quiet little beach-town just about an hour north of Naples, where I spent three formidable years in Italian school.

            But the air was the same when I stepped off the train that had brought me all the way down from cloudy, rainy Bologna. It’s such a distinct smell that I’m surprised I forgot it—the salt of the sea air, the wafts of fried food, the trash that litters the streets…and sunshine. Oh, the sunshine. If sunshine had a smell, southern Italy has it in bounds. All of it smelled like home.

            I had such a stupid grin on my face, walking through the doors of the train station and out onto the bustling street of what was once one of the Roman Empire’s proudest cities. It was loud and out of control. Taxi drivers were yelling at each other, cars honked furiously on the streets, there was music playing somewhere, immigrants eagerly moved towards us with their flashing gadgets, trying to convince us to spend three euro on a toilet bowl cigarette lighter, and everywhere you turned, there was the smoke of cigarettes clogging the air.

            It was great.

            We got on our bus, which took us to our hotel, which was big and nice and facing the Bay of Naples just next to the ports. We had a few minutes to put our stuff into our rooms (I was rooming with Lily) and then comeback downstairs to go to lunch and then our next destination.

            The restaurant we went to was just around the corner from the hotel, so it too had wonderful views of the water, with wide windows that opened up to the sea and the fresh air. ECCO’S staff (the wonderful Giuliana, the formidable Mariantonnieta and the spectacular Ivan Tassi) all informed us that we would be eating a very quick lunch, so be sure not to dilly-dally…and by quick lunch, they actually meant a three course meal, plus coffee. Thinking that we needed to eat as quickly as possible, we ended up devouring the three plates of appetizer-type food that the waiters first brought out to us. This was the food I remembered from Italy: fried zucchini, bread made with salt (why why why is northern Italian bread made out of flavorless sawdust?), tomatoes filled with rice and meat, peppers and eggplant and all of these are vegetables—do you see a pattern? We were very far from Bologna’s world of heavy meat sauces and hunks of lard (lard is a specialty in Bologna and I don’t know why—who thought that was ever a good idea?). And then…mozzarella di buffula. I’m surprised that everyone in the program didn’t kill me over the amount of times I freaked out about real mozzarella…I had only been talking about it non-stop for the two weeks leading up to the trip. There is a distinctly different taste between mozzarella made with cow’s milk and real mozzarella, made with water buffalo’s milk. Even certain northern Italians are not used to the strong taste of southern mozzarella, as it almost has a sour tang to it (I gave some to Viola once and she spat it out—she had never had it before). It’s hard to describe, but I love it.

            So after eating two mozzarella’s (seeing my enthusiasm over the cheese, the young Italian girl who is an intern for ECCO gave me hers, claiming to dislike it—blasphemy), we all leaned back and smiled contentedly, thinking that was our quick lunch and now we would be on our way.

            Until the waiters came around the corner with dishes filled to the brim with gnocchi alla Sorrentina: little gnocchi (southern Italian gnocchi tend to be smaller and lighter than their northern counterparts) with delicious tomato sauce, melted mozzarella, and basil. The smell coming from those little pots of gnocchi was delicious, so we forced ourselves to eat almost all of it before the waiters then brought us out a lemon rum cream cake, which I of course had to eat, before sliding down in my chair and slipping into a food coma.

            ECCO’s staff forced our over-stuffed selves out of the restaurant and back onto the bus. We drove through Naples (there were piles of trash everywhere along the roads) and headed in the direction of Mt. Vesuvius: we were going to Pompeii.

            I have been to Pompeii multiple times, so originally I was grumbling about having to go back again. But I quickly realized that my first few times in Pompeii, I was under the age of twelve and most of my knowledge of the place came from that famous Magic Tree House book in which those kids go back in time and almost get charred to a crisp from the exploding volcano. My most recent visit to Pompeii was on my trip with Mrs. Wilgus and my high school classmates, but I remember the weather being so ridiculously hot that I was pretty much incapable of paying attention. This trip to Pompeii was great because I was old enough to truly appreciate the history and was also able to focus, as I was not baking under the summer sun. This time, the nice, crisp breeze blew through the crumbling streets of Pompeii, almost chilling us, if not for the sun—so much bigger in the sky down in the south—which was slowly setting throughout our time in the ruins.

THESE LEMONS.

            Our tour guide, Alessandro, was really good. He did a great combination of history and humor and I really felt like I learned a lot. After the tour, while waiting for our bus to pick us up, we went to one of the stands just outside the walls of Pompeii, and got freshly-squeezed orange and lemon juice. It was delicious and it was a lot of fun, sitting out on the curb as the sun lit everything with a golden glow, talking and marveling at the fact that we were wearing short-sleeves.

            We got back to Naples and were free for the rest of the night, which meant that we were on our own for dinner. With wifi in the hotel, I did some online research with my iPod and attempted to find a good restaurant in the immediate area. This was a challenge, as we were a little bit of a walk from the real center of the city. However, I found a place that sounded promising (a small trattoria in a piazza surrounded by old palaces and ‘fashionable boutiques’, according to TripAdvisor). Krystal got walking directions from GoogleMaps on her phone and so along with Lily and Megan, the four of us made our way out of the hotel, on the hunt for this cute little trattoria.

            Our first few directions took us just a few streets up from our hotel, where there was a well-lit main street filled with small grocery stores, touristy restaurants, and families. We took a left onto an alleyway that led us up the hill…and walked into a completely different world.

            The alleyway was at a sharp incline on the hill and there was very little light leading the way up the uneven cobblestones. We walked by a group of about ten children from the ages of about four to thirteen, playing soccer, barefoot and unsupervised, at nine o’clock at night. We walked by women whose hair was unkempt and cigarettes hung from limp fingers as they watched us suspiciously as we walked by, blowing smoke into our faces. The doors to the houses along the alleyway were all open to the street and everyone was eating dinner. I saw one little boy run up to the open door of a house and make faces at another little boy sitting at the table before the mother inside the house yelled, “Get out, go on! He’ll be done eating soon and then you two can play, but let us eat!” And the little boy making faces ran off, peeking his head into other doors along the street. A man wrung out his laundry in a bucket filled with suds out on the street, singing loudly in that thick, confusing Neapolitan accent as his radio chimed in as well. The walls of the buildings were covered with lines of laundry and the occasional shrine to the Mother Mary, which was framed by rotting flowers and candles that were melted down to the wick.

            And we became acutely aware of how American and, more specifically, how wealthy we looked. As romantic and typically Italian that scene above might sound, there was also the large amount of men leaning against the walls, their faces hidden by shadows, that watched us eagerly as we walked by. Out of instinct, we began speaking to each other in Italian, but even that was dangerous because our accents (and our clothes, obviously) immediately gave away the fact that we were not Italians. I tried to talk the loudest, doing my best to imitate the southern accent, but I had always had trouble really getting the wishy-washy Neapolitan sound down. The best I could do was sound nonchalant as men began to follow us down the street and we laughed at “what the boys would do” when we finally met up with, just down the road. It’s hard to describe exactly what it was…but there was just a very distinct feeling in the air that we shouldn’t be there. We stood out and not in a good way. Krystal kept her iPhone out and kept charging forward, apparently determined to reach this trattoria, but we finally managed to grab her and turn her around, going back the way we came. Eventually, the men lost interest in catcalling at us and following us, and we made it back onto the main street with no problems.

            It was quite the experience and although I would not highly recommend for anyone to go searching for the outskirts of Naples’ more dangerous areas when visiting (it is, after all, not the safest city), I don’t regret walking up that hill. I actually was really lamenting the fact that I couldn’t pull my camera out and take pictures while we were there; although that would have immediately alerted all possible pick-pockets in the area to come my way, it would have been so neat to capture the feel of that place. It was Naples to its core and I don’t think it’s very often that tourists wander into the midst of those streets.

            Still a little shaken from our experience, we met some of the other girls from the program at a restaurant that was very touristy and safely situated on the main street, in which the food was terrible and over-priced. We luckily made up for this one terrible meal with the wonderful ones that followed throughout the rest of the weekend.

            The next day we got up early to take a bus along the Amalfi Coast. Unfortunately, it was rainy and grey out, but there is very little that can dull the beauty of that coastline. Our bus was clinging to the road alongside the windy cliffs, zig-zagging back and forth with sometimes alarming speed, until reaching the city of Positano. It took us about 20 minutes to climb down the hill to the city, which was quite the trek. I’ve been to Positano with my parents quite a few times, as it’s one of our favorite places. A lot of the buildings are all whitewashed, with purple flowers and massive lemons hanging down from trellises. We walked around for a little bit, did some shopping (limoncello!), and made sure to walk alongside the water. Afterwards, a group of us decided to avoid the extremely over-priced and expensive tourist restaurants down by the water (again, English-speakers everywhere) and we climbed up the hill a little bit and found a restaurant that was priced normally. We sat outside despite the slight chill in the air and had a wonderful view of the steeped hill of Positano, studded with its tiled church and little villa’s. The food was delicious—I had my second gnocchi alla Sorrentina of the trip and did not regret it.

Springtime!

View of Positano from our restaurant

Gnocchi alla sorrentina!

            After Positano, we climbed up the hill again (so. many. stairs.) to get to our bus, which took us back along the coastline to the city of Amalfi, where we toured the Church there and ate more sfogliatelle pastries (typical of the south) and then explored for a bit before it began pouring rain. We hurried onto the bus and headed back to Naples. Our bus driver was nice enough to drop us off at Da Michele, which is the most famous pizzeria in Napoli. You may remember it from the scenes in which Julia Roberts devours pizza in the movie Eat, Pray, Love. It’s been around since 1870 and it only served two types of pizza: the classic margherita (tomatoes, mozzarella, basil) and marinara (tomatoes and oregano). Normally, when coming at dinner time around eight p.m. the wait to get into Da Michele can be as long as three hours. However, we fortunately arrived at around six p.m., so we only had to wait twenty minutes. The pizzaiuoli (the men who make the pizza) kept up a steady production of pizzas, never stopping to rest. I couldn’t see the face of the guy who was rolling out the dough, as his head was entirely obstructed by an enormous pile of basil. We all got margherita pizza, which was delicious, and the place was really loud and chaotic and fun.

Pizza boxes galore

Churning out the pizzas

            After our experience the night before, we thought it would be better to be back in the hotel a little earlier. We ended up getting gelato at a place right by our hotel and then crashed in our rooms to watch Harry Potter and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition in Italian.

            The next morning, we woke up extremely excited to go to the island of Capri…only to find out that the waters were too “agitated” for the boats to cross. We were stuck in Naples for the day. This was somewhat disheartening. I didn’t know of many things to do in Naples and it was also rainy and incredibly windy. The good news is it was Easter Sunday. So four of us had at least one activity to do: Mass. We walked all over Naples’ dirty, flooded streets, looking for the Duomo and we arrived thirty minutes late to the service. It was a very neat experience. The churches (and all the buildings in Naples, for that matter) have a sort of strange air about them—a mix of smog-smothered marble and ornate, golden window frames. I didn’t understand a lot of the service (Latin and antiquated Italian are not my strong suits) but it was still worth the long walk with our sodden shoes. Afterwards, we met up with other people in the program and explored Naples some more. It became pretty miserable at one point, what with the pelting rain and wind, so we trekked over to Castel d’Ovo (a castle that extends out onto the water) and ate a three-hour lunch there in the shelter of a restaurant with heat lamps. By the time we had finished our lunch it was sunny out and we enjoyed some precious sunlit moments out by the ocean. I’ve missed the smell of salt and brine more than I could imagine.

Easter Mass

Mozzarella!

Enjoying the sunshine

Strolling alongside the ports

            Like true southern Italians, we took a nap in the afternoon afterwards. We met in the early evening to do a tour of Napoli sottoterranea—Naples underground. The tour was led by a very Neapolitan young man: tight dark jeans, denim shirt, laced-up boots and slicked-back hair. His accent was pretty strong, which made his Italian difficult to understand. Luckily, having lived just about an hour north of Naples, I had some experience with this sort of speech and I could understand a lot of what was being said. I loved the humor in the tour.

            Essentially, we were touring what was originally a Greek well, which then became an underground Roman aqueduct. Eventually, Renaissance palaces were built throughout the city and each of them had a direct line to the waterways. During this time, the rich lords of the palaces had these little men employed to them (I say “little” because their job actually required them to be of a short stature) who would almost live down in these waterways (there were walkways down there as well) to maintain the still-usable aqueducts. Whenever it was time for these little water-men to be paid, they would dirty the water. With this, the lords would pull up a bucket from their personal well, see the dirty water, and know it was time to leave a little pile of coins along the rim of the well for their water-men.

            The wells for these palaces were directly within the palaces most times. There’s an urban legend that these well-men would be climbing up the walls of the well to either go home or collect their money (climbing using only their hands and feet in foot-holds, straight up 40 m) and they’d take a peep into these palaces’ windows. Whoops! The well-man might see the lady of the house, undressing. And then maybe the well-man and the lady would have a little affair. She’d leave gifts for him around the house for him to pick up when he’d sneak in. If the lord demanded an explanation for what the gifts were for, the lady would simper and tell her husband not to worry, she had to leave gifts out for the “ghost of the well.” It’s bad luck of she doesn’t!

            The boy on the tour then made a joke about his Grandma and it was at this point of the tour that we discovered that the old man holding the flashlight throughout the tour was the young man’s Grandfather. He promptly yelled at him, gave him a slap on the head, and swore to all of us that his wife had never been involved with any of these well-men. The comedy of this duo was adorable.

            These wells and aqueducts were expanded during World War II. Italians dug out a staircase and painted the lower walls white, so as to reflect light better. People would come down here during bombings. They even built toilets and dug out little caves for people to live in. It spread throughout the entire city underground and could shelter approximately 270,000 people. Artists, poets and musicians escaped down here. As such, the best graffiti of Naples is underground—the pictures and drawings down there are beautiful. A young couple named Anna and Renzo were married down there. They got to have their own little alcove to sleep on their wedding-night, above which they carved their names and wedding date.

            The tour was just a really neat, different experience. Afterwards, we went to a restaurant called Brandi, where the first margherita pizza was invented for Queen Margherita. This was a wonderful dinner mainly because most of our program was there—including Giuliana and Ivan! Any dinner with our favorites within the ECCO staff is guaranteed to be a good one and the pizza was also delicious.

            The next day, we went on a walking tour led by our Pompeii guide, Alessandro, who taught us a few things:

·      Naples is a weird combination of Catholicism and lingering pagan traditions. For example, most Neapolitans are very superstitious. A lot of them carry a tiny symbol of Naples with them at all times, for good luck: that little red pepper made out of coral. Only today do people recognize it as a pepper. Before, it was actually the horn of the Roman god of fortune, which was then later converted into a pepper to be more Christian-friendly.

·      Back in the good ol’ days, Naples used to be one of the largest Roman cities (and later European cities) in the world. It still has the longest-standing Roman road in the entire world (called “Spacca Napoli”).

·      Because of its geographical position and the direction of the windflow, Naples has never been affected by the eruptions of Vesuvius.

·      Along Spacca Napoli, vegetable and bread-sellers would make their way down the street, yelling up to the people in the buildings. Typically, the woman of the house would emerge on the balcony and yell back before lowering a basket on a rope down to street level. Vegetables and bread would be exchanged via basket and if the woman didn’t pay him, the vendor would stand there for hours, screaming about how she had robbed him. He’d create such a ruckus that all her neighbors would emerge, staring, and she’d have to pay him.

·      Naples was occupied by the Spanish for a while, who were the first to introduce a mafia-centered culture to the city. The long, sloping alleyways in the center of the city that lead up the hill were originally built as barracks for Spanish soldiers.

After the tour, I stopped by a grocery store and bought a ball of mozzarella and ate it like an apple in the hotel lobby before heading to the train station. I feel no shame whatsoever. From there, I took a luxurious ride in Italo’s First Class cabin (the only tickets left available) in which I ate and drank for free and watched the rugged, southern landscape roll away and fade until I was back on the flat, green plains of Emilia-Romagna. Once in Bologna, I had just a few days to myself…before getting on a plane and heading to Greece. But that is another story :)