Pompeii is poop.

First off let me say I am exhausted. I have had less than 2 hours sleep. Not for want of trying mind you, I lay in bed for like... way more hours than that. I don't know if it's the heat, the stuffyness in my room, or just the fact that for some inexplicable reason Italy and sleep do not come together, like, EVER, but I have barely slept since I arrived in this country. Unless I manage to get to sleep and then not wake up. In which case I can sleep all day. Which kind of keeps that crazy cycle going... grrr.

Anyhoo, that's why I'm both grumpy and headachy and why this post may be less than belissimo. And kind of skewed to the side of hate. So apologies in advance.

Pompeii. Yeah, so, you know the story right? There was a town that was taken over by the Ancient Romans back in like, I don't know. Something-or-other BC. So then they were Roman, I guess, although not from Rome. My audio guide thought that was important. Whatever. So then there was an earthquake, in like 60AD or something? Then they rebuilt the city, and in the midst of that a volcano explodes and they're covered in ash. Then some guy discovers it back in the C19th or something and is all like "You know what would be cool and not at all creepy and disrespectful of the dead? If I pour plaster all over these poor dead people's bodies so people from all over the world can come and gawk at their tortured last moments, forever captured in creepy white plaster. Awesome. I'll make a million lire", or whatever currency was here before the Euro made everything expensive.

So now the world has the ruins at Pompeii. Apart from a bar somewhere in the middle, it's pretty much a big town of ruins, half of which was incomplete due to the earthquake anyways. Over half of which is inaccessible. The maps of which appear to be really well laid out until you try to use them. Also, they never explain why there are no roofs left. They explain the administration system though, which is WAY more interesting. The audio guides are a total rip off and should be destroyed for the good of humankind.

It's hot, it's incredibly dirty/dusty - whatever, my feet were black. AND it's full of tourists just as annoyed by the ridiculous heat, expense, crappyness of guides and lack of actual objects. Coz, see, instead of leaving things where they were found so they'd actually make sense and be worth the €11 you pay to get in, they go and cart off anything vaguely interesting to Naples where they can charge ANOTHER €11 so that you can look at the treasures completely out of context, probably in dimly lit room and in no particular order. Needless to say Archealogica de Romany whatsit won't be getting another €11 from me anytime soon. Bastardos that they are with their crappy maps and crappy audio guides that don't take account of the fact that they randomly close buildings, parts of buildings, or entire streets without bothering to change any of the instructions/signs.

Okay, so I guess you're getting the message that I think Pompeii is over rated. Or at least a very patchy experience. I think if you had a decent tour guide who spoke comprehensible English and took you to the places where there is something INTERESTING (i.e. not just "this was a take away joint. It has bowls. Wow, look at the bowls") then you might enjoy it. Also, if you didn't go when it's hot and filled with other tourists. So, like, maybe the middle of January would work? I don't know. All I know is don't buy the audio guide from the main entrance and go in the crappy entrance somewhere in between where the audio guide map begins and ends, and then spend a half hour trying to find the start and the "black boards" (signs in black, not chalk boards that give a number of every house) that tell you which number to press.

Apparently there is a brothel, which is not to be missed, and lots of other male genitalia lying around that the audio guide fails to mention. Or at least tells you is in the wrong spot. "See the male member next to the pot on the left counter." Well I would, poncy English dude, if it was still there. But obviously it got carted away to Naples along with the rest of the interesting bits of this city.

So, um, yeah. As my good friend recently accused me of being, I guess I'm a bit biley. I got sunburnt, a glass of icy stuff was like €3 and I needed about 4, I got lost a lot (have I mentioned how crap I am with maps?) and managed to walk for ages without seeing anything with a black board or whatever. My feet got really dirty, which is like one of my pet hates, and the pretty gardens were off limits, so you couldn't even sit under a tree to imagine what it might have been like to live there. And I like to imagine. I would have been Esmeneia, a pretty servant of the great... um, dude... see, that's all I got to because I didn't get to sit under a tree.

The camping ground I stayed in was really good though - Spartacus or something? It's right outside the main entrance and I got a bungalow all to myself for the cost of a shit hostel in Rome - €22. If you have 2 people it's €14 each or something, and of course if you deign to camp it's cheap as pizza. Speaking of, the pizza at the campground was really good and only €4. Internet was expensive, but not monitored so you could pay your €2.50 for half an hour and stay on it for way longer. No gelato nearby though, unless you pay exorbitant ruins prices, which I did not.
Hmm, so there you go. It's totally doable from Naples, but I'd recommend staying at the campground so you have somewhere to wash your feet and get a beer once you're done.

Grumpy Librarian Out.

The friendliness of Humans

I noticed when I lived in Canada ten years ago (oh my, make that eleven. When did I get old?) that although a wonderful people, the Canadians are generally a lot colder, or initially standoffish, than Australians. This is of course a generalisation, but I believe it generally holds true.

My very good Canadian friend was not a hugger when I met her - she got all tetchy if you touched her. This was of course slightly amusing, and after force-hugging her for a few months she came around to the hugging way of being, and is now more of a hugger than I am (hugging in warm climates is of course often sticky and gross, and therefore I believe Canada is much more suited climatically to hugging).

We had a few discussions about the friendliness (or not) of Kanucks v. Aussies, and she was firmly of the mind that it has to do with external temperatures. Canada, being of a frigid clime, creates a colder race of people, in terms of friendliness. Australia, being warm bordering on boiling, breeds a warmer, or at least outwardly more friendly, race. This is of course a simplistic definition. However, as the histories and cultures of our countries are relatively similar, I believe it's a relatively sound, albeit basic, theory.

This thesis has really come back to me after spending the last year-plus in England. At first I met a lot of Aussies, through my Australian friends, but once I joined choir I started to meet Brits. A greater bunch of people I couldn't have dreamed up, as my choir is the best in the universe and I won't hear anything bad about any member of it's angelic crew. What really struck me when I joined, however, was that these Londoners, who generally wouldn't talk to you on the street, suddenly would talk to you on the street - because they recognised you from choir. This phenomenon strikes me as very Jane Austen - you cannot converse until you've been introduced, i.e. until it's been established that you are in the same circle, have the right connections etc. This is not to say that any of my fellow choirsters are snobs (despite their Tory-voting, Cambridge-attending ways I won't hear anything bad said about them!) - it's just the way English society is. I know you, therefore I can speak to you. You're a stranger, you'll stay that way. Italy couldn't be more different.

The number of people I have met in Italy is astounding. I know I'm generally a relatively friendly person, but after a year of living in the UK I tend to plug in my Naom-iPod and sit on public transport like any seasoned Undergrounder, avoiding eye contact and waiting for this interminable hell to be over. Despite my new English demeanor, I have made friends everywhere I've gone on buses, trains and metros in Italy. Whether it's to tell me how beautiful I am (Italian men), to advise me to watch my belongings like a hawk (older Italian men), or to engage me in in-depth discussion regarding my plans for Italy, life and children (Italian women), I have been pushed out of my UG zone into a public-transport-is-for-making-friends zone (okay, so I couldn't think of a snappy description).

Concern for my well being has been the overall emotion I have detected from these people (except the horny blokes, of course, whose concern is only for... well, you know). This is not completely different from London, where if you are a tourist looking extremely lost someone might offer you some assistance - of course they are likely to be an expat themselves (I'm forever offering bemused tourists assistance, unless of course I'm in a hurry, in which case these bloody tourists better move out of my bloody way quick smart), but on the odd occasion they will be a native. English people often state this unfriendliness is a London phenomenon, which I can understand as it's such a big, hard city. However, my experience yesterday may point to it being more widespread.

The difference between this English (note: cold climate) and Italian (Southern Italy, at any rate: very hot) way of being really struck me yesterday when I came to Pompeii. On the train from Rome I sat next to a lovely Italian woman (from Rome, so not a country bumpkin by any means) who motioned that I should unplug my ears so we could converse for the two hour train journey. She apologised profusely any time she had to halt our conversation to answer her phone, and she offered me her number in case I had any trouble in Naples. The Marias of the world truly are wonderful.

Once I got to Pompeii I asked a group of people in front of me if they knew where the ruins are, and they turned out to be English tourists. One of the girls (somewhat reluctantly) allowed me to engage her in stilted conversation, but they made several pointed attempts to get rid of me - even when we were standing in the tourist office awaiting maps. Now perhaps this attitude - that seriously bordered on rudeness - was because they were an established group, which some people may find understandable. I found it offensive, however, because I didn't want to attach myself to them, I simply wanted to find my way to the ruins and I didn't have a map. I was making conversation because that is what people do when they're tourists together in a strange land. It is worth noting they were not from London: they were from near Bristol. Perhaps I will now be told Bristolians (?) are an unfriendly bunch too, however it makes me wonder about that simple cold/hot theory.

Being of a contrary nature I have to point out the inconsistencies in this theory, primarily being that I found Ireland (cold) to be full of extremely friendly natives, and I met a fellow Aussie yesterday who was a total jerk, which may be put down to the fact that he's a cocky young jock from Sydney, but somewhat disproves my warm=friendly thesis.

Librarian Out.

You know you're not on the UnderGround any more when:

• standing on the left on a travellator just seems wrong
• if a space opens up on said travellator, you can't help yourself from running on the left, even though you have nowhere to be but lazing in a park with a lemon gelato
• you're totally disoriented by the lack of a logical, stylised representation of the totally illogical train lines, and end up getting off the A line, walking around the platforms like an idiot, until someone tells you you need to be on the A line going in the same direction you originally were travelling in
• there's no gap to mind
• the "next train" timer goes from 4 minutes to 1 in the space of 30 seconds, not the other way around
• you don't need your ticket to get out of the metro. Or, sometimes, in.
• it's less economical to buy a weekly ticket than to buy individual trips. Because instead of £4, a one way trip costs €1. Genius, really.

Librarian Traveller Out.

Only in Rome...

So I've been in Italy's capital for 5 days now. A quick snapshot:

• salesman changing his shirt behind the counter of an upmarket store. Totally bizarre.
• girls in short skirts and high heels on Vespers with designer bags at their feet
• Italian men stopping you on the street to tell you how beautiful you are, despite the fact your face resembles a pizza (or perhaps because of???)
• gelato. So, so, good. I recommend the raspberry. I have an Italian phrasebook, but it's easier just to point to the pink one.
• megaphones appear to be the order of the week in Rome. Thursday night at 4am a guy started braodcasting through one on the street. At first I thought it was a police action, but once he started crooning "Carolina, Carolina, oh Caroline", I realised it was just a drunk yobbo.
• subsequent admonishing tones by his mates silenced him - for a while. He finally stopped, or I managed to make it to sleep, about 5am.
• another megaphone came out on Friday night at a bar I was at. I haven't seen megaphones hanging alongside the fake designer bags at the Indian/Bangladeshi stalls/blankets that line the streets, so I don't know where they're getting them from.
• free water! Everywhere! Cold, delicious, gift of the Water Spout Gods!
• warnings from every man and his dog to keep your valuables close to you - apparently there are thieves everywhere. Personally I think there are people warning you there are thieves everywhere, and the thieves are on holiday in Spain.
• as Bill Bryson said, there are more ancient ruins here than dog shit. I can definitely confirm that. You can't walk for five minutes without running into a Roman ruin or a crazy Baroque fountain (unless of course you're actually looking for a Baroque fountain, in which case you'll walk around for ages, somehow missing the numerous signs to Fontana di Trevi)
• queue jumping. As I'm relaxed on holiday I can't be bothered snarling and pinching and doing whatever it is you need to do to ensure your place in an Italian line.
• constantly being told you look like a tourist. No! Really??? I'm wearing thongs (the flip flop kind, I'm on holiday, okay?), a backpack, I don't have makeup as thick as my finger on, I'm not teetering around on high heels, I don't have bleached hair, my skin is a patchwork of white and pink, and you're telling me I don't blend in?
• did I mention the Italian men? "Hello, where you from, you are soooo beautiful."

Librarian Out.