Plodding Around Plovdiv

Bulgaria was pretty much the first country I had no idea what to expect from on the trip.  I had heard some very, very mixed things.  It being Eastern Europe, I expected some poverty, beggars, ugly grey communist buildings and terrifying bureaucracy.  It took a while to realize it, but I was very wrong.

DAY ONE

I was still in Greece when I last left off, and still in Greece is where we begin.  The bus ride was really pleasant.  I had a go at sleeping (nope, impossible) and watched a bit of the low-res films they were showing (recent films, which was surprising – Life of Pi and The Hobbit were playing).  They also offered food, which was nice – a stale croissant with chocolate cream centre for breakfast (accompanied by lemon Fanta) and a packet of pizza-flavoured biscuits for lunch (accompanied by Sprite).

My first experience of Bulgaria was a little off-putting.  Previous border crossings had consisted mainly of the following: crossing the border.  No checks, no security, no nothing.

Well, Bulgaria is a bit different since it isn’t part of the Schengen agreement.  The bus stopped and a border security officer got on board.  People took out their ID cards and passports to show him.  He seemed to be just glancing at them and then handing them straight back until he got to the guy in front of me.  He looked at the ID, looked at the guy, said something in Bulgarian, looked at the ID again, and pocketed the ID before approaching me.

I handed him my passport.  He gave it a once over, looked at me, looked carefully at the passport and took it with him.  Oh.

For a good five minute period the bus just kind of sat there, the border security guy doing something with the ID cards and passports he had collected in his office.  I started imagining the kinds of horrible tortures they would put some silly UK backpacker through (I was travelling on my UK passport of course) and had just decided I could probably survive without my toes when the bus conductor got back on the bus and gave us all back our passports before the bus started up again and crossed the border.

Immediately after crossing into Bulgaria we pulled into a rest stop with a toilet (thank God) and restaurant.  We were greeted, upon stepping down from the bus, but a bunch of eager stray dogs.

“Hmm, they don’t look too bad,” I thought to myself just before one of them started barking insanely, grabbed another by the throat and tried to murder it in front of me.

It survived, I went to the loo, and we kind of all stood around the bus for a bit.  Two of the stray dogs came over to me.  They were looking a bit calmer now, so I just stood where I was.  Well… they were basically just looking for someone to hook up behind.  I turned around to see the big one humping the other about thirty centimetres from my leg.  I moved away surreptitiously, but they stopped as soon as I had moved.  I’m not entirely sure what relevance my presence had to their horniness, but whatever.

I was kind of glad to get back on the bus, and we headed through some fairly dismal, flat grasslands and cities before arriving in Sofia.  Which looked a bit like what Logan would look like if it were a factory town.  Not the most pleasant city I have ever passed through.  I kind of decided at that point it might be a good idea to cut down on the time spent there.

(At the point of writing I haven’t actually properly visited Sofia yet, so you’ll get a more clear indication of what the city centre and such is like once I’ve done that visit.  As learned in Naples, the centre of public transport isn’t always the best indication of the value of a place).

My first impression of Plovdiv was a little similar to that of Sofia – it was quite industrial rundown and dull.  The bus stop that we arrived at didn’t help my impressions.

I was expecting to arrive at the South Bus Station (Yug), and had written down the instruction from here.  Well, I arrived… somewhere and thought it must be the right bus station and followed a path that seemed to be the direction I had seen in google maps.  I was kind of wrong about that.  When I suddenly came across the train lines, which was supposed to be on the other side of the direction I was going, I started to worry.  Looking at the sun, I was fairly certain I was going north, but if the train tracks were anything to go by, and if I had indeed been dropped at the bus station I thought I had, then I was in fact going south.

Fortunately, it turned out I had been dropped at a different bus station to the one I thought I had been dropped off at, one which was a little further south (which begs the question, why call a station the SOUTH bus station if it’s not the MOST SOUTH BUS STATION).

I was still a bit uncertain about where the hell I was, but followed a random street anyway that seemed to head in the right direction.  Along the way I changed some money into Bulgarian lev (exchange rate 1:1.95).  I pretty heavily overestimated how much I would need (and I thought I was underestimating…) The street headed to a large, open square that had a tourist information centre.

The tourist information peoples’ eyes nearly burst from their sockets when they saw me waltz in.  I went to the desk and said I was just looking for a map.  They had great big tearaway maps that I could just take, so I took one.  Having figured out my bearings, I realized that I was not as far off track as I thought I was, and off I went once more into the old town.

Plovdiv’s old town isn’t quite as old as some of the other old towns I have seen, which is a shame because Plovdiv is one of the oldest settlements in Europe.  Old Town itself, though, is a nicely preserved chunk of 18^th-19^th century architecture from the Bulgarian Revival period.  I’ll give you a bit of a rundown on Bulgarian history (what little of it I could figure out, anyway) later on.  Anyway, the houses are very cute and colourful, the pavements are very cobbly, and the area is just really rather pleasant to walk through.

I was on a mission, though, seeking out my hostel, which was called Hostel Old Plovdiv.  Actually, the sign outside the hostel read ‘Guest House Old Plovdiv’ and this was probably more accurate.

I have become accustomed to a certain level of comfort offered at a ten euro per night price range.  That level is probably best described as, ‘Just enough.’

Well, Hostel Old Plovdiv is a whole other thing.  It’s housed inside a refurbished 19^th century house, complete with creaky wooden floors and gorgeous interior design and spaces.  I was housed in a two-bed room.  That is, I shared with one other person (and it almost looked like I would have the room to myself at the start!)  I was greeted with a little welcome sign on the chalkboard (“WELCOME ANDREW COUZENS” it read) and the receptionist referred to me by name the moment I walked in.  The owner, Hristo, came out of his office to greet me and offered me a Bulgarian herbal tea as a welcome.  Now, in most hostels they have some kind of free tea/coffee available.  Here they make you your tea and serve it to you in your room.

I was looking forward to a sleep in a bed at that point, so I didn’t go out for dinner or anything like that.  I just stayed in, collapsed, and was asleep by 8pm.

DAY TWO

My first proper day in Plovdiv began at around 4am, when my roommate arrived.  I didn’t actually meet him that morning, since he went straight to bed and didn’t rise again for quite some time (I don’t blame him – I later found out he had arrived at 3am on a bus from Istanbul).

I got a bit excited when I went into the dining room for breakfast and discovered that the remains of a Roman wall kind of just sat in the middle of the room, with the plaster walls built around it to accommodate it.

After breakfast (which consisted of what seemed like half a loaf of bread and some cucumber, tomato, Bulgarian white cheese, ham, bee honey and jam) I started to come up with a plan of action.  What I wanted was a bit of a briefer on Bulgarian and Plovdiv history.  I knew a bit, for example that Plovdiv was old and had been settled by Thracians, Romans, and Ottomans at some point, but I didn’t really know what that meant, or how it fit together.  There was a free tour at 2pm that I planned to join, hoping it would provide a bit of background, but before that I decided that the most ideal course of action would be to visit the Plovdiv Archaeology Museum, followed by the Museum of Modern History next door.  (The latter was part of a set of regional museums that detailed the history of Plovdiv in different eras that were spread all across the city).

Off I headed, and almost immediately found myself at the rather sad river that runs through Plovdiv.  I watched a guy fishing for a while before continuing on.

Passing some kind of public building, I noticed one of those “NO ______” signs, the ones with a big red circle and line that covers things like smoking cigarettes or cameras or whatever.  This one indicated that handguns were not allowed in the building.  I was a bit surprised that… you know… they actually had to spell that fact out.

The Archaeology Museum takes you through a series of rooms containing various bits and pieces covering discoveries around Plovdiv dating from 5000BC up to the 14^th century AD.  That is, it covers the Thracians, the Romans, and the Ottomans.  It also had a bit of information on the museum’s history.  Actually, the thing that stuck out the most to me was a small sign explaining that there used to be an important death mask displayed there, but it was stolen in 1995 or thereabouts by masked gunmen.  They were clearly into their ancient history.

Reading everything that was on offer (as I always do in museums) I got through the entire museum in an hour and a half.  That is to say, it was small.  It had some impressive things in it, to be sure, and it did give me a bit of background, but not as much as I was hoping for.

Actually, the period I was most interested in was the more modern times, so I was eager to head to the Museum of Modern History next door.  Well… I kind of walked in and there was a group of Bulgarians already inside who seemed to be friends of the curator of the museum or something… They looked official anyway.  I sort of stood around, hoping someone would explain what I was supposed to do to enter the museum, but was ignored and ended up losing my nerve and leaving.  So don’t ask me about recent Bulgarian history (or ancient Bulgarian history for that matter…)

My path took me down a major shopping street, where someone seemed to try and persuade me to enter a McDonalds.  Admittedly, it was a bit of a novelty being heckled to enter a McDonalds, but… it’s McDonalds.  So no.  I got a bit of pizza instead.  Fast food seems to be a really popular Bulgarian lunch, as there are stalls selling pizza and kebabs literally everywhere.

The pizza shops tend to just be windows with a guy inside a booth.  When you approach they slide open the window.  I went up to a random one along the street and pointed at the pizza I wanted.  He shook his head.  I was a bit confused as to why he wouldn’t give me a pizza, but he told me I had to go to another window beside this one, pay the lady there, get a receipt, bring him the receipt, and collect my pizza.  So I did.  I can only assume that this is some bizarre hangover from the communist era or something.

Anyway, they were all very helpful so it wasn’t long before I, like the many others wandering the streets at that time, had my delicious slice of cheap, greasy pizza.

I still had quite a bit of time to kill at this point, and just walked around.  Somehow I must have looked like a total tourist (I’m pretty sure it’s the hat) and it wasn’t long before a middle-aged man came up to me.

I should mention, at this point, that other than Switzerland, Plovdiv has had the least hassle of anywhere on my trip.  There appeared to be no beggars on the streets, no-one tried to drag me into their restaurant, people would speak to me in Bulgarian with a big smile on their face, then look a little disappointed when I indicated I was English only.  People seemed to just want to strike up a conversation.

This guy launched into English immediately, asking where I was from and saying he loved Australians.  He pointed at a side street and told me there were some great Roman ruins down there, or something.

“Come, come, I’ll show you.  Only one minute.”

Here’s the thing.  People don’t randomly offer to take some person on the street to see Roman ruins.  And Roman ruins don’t take one minute.  Something was most definitely up.

I told him I knew about the ruins and that I was going to go and see them later, but really had to head off now to meet people.

“Ah, very good.”  He kind of stood there a moment, then said, “I have two big boys.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Two big boys.”  He held his palm to the ground at his waist.  I thought he must be talking about his balls, so got seriously worried at that point.

“Five and one!”

Oh, he’d gotten big and small mixed up.

Then he pulled the neck of his jacket open and showed me a necklace with a crucifix on it.

“Catholic,” he said, indicating himself.

“Oh.  That’s nice.”

He gestured with his hand.  “Come, I show you the ruins.”

“No really, I have to go, but I will see them later.”

He tried one last time before asking me to wait and pulling out a laminated sheet from a bag, which he handed to me.  On it, the sheet explained that he was a builder who had been in an accident and now couldn’t work.  He needed money for rent to support his family including the two small boys blah blah blah.

I told him I didn’t have any money.

“Please,” he said beseechingly.  His face had lost the smile and now just looked sad.  Really sad.  As in, ready to cry sad.

I stuck firm, though I have to admit my heartstrings were tugged.  He really did seem genuine, and there were legitimate tears in his eyes.

Once he had ascertained that I was a cold, heartless bastard he nodded, biting his lip, took my hand in a rather friendly handshake and walked off.

I blame that experience for the next part of the story.  See, I had been worn down, my defences were shredded, and so when I stumbled across the ancient Roman theatre, the devious old woman selling trinkets on the other side of the street set her eyes on me.

Once the two young German sightseers vanished, the lady approached and spoke in Bulgarian.

“Sorry.”

“Ah, English?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t speak English particularly well, but indicated that she was an academic from the Ethnographic Museum, and that I should visit it (I fully intended to, actually, and did so the very next day).  Anyway, she managed to drag me over to her stall, mumbling things that I barely understood and showing me some pretty drawings.

“They’re nice,” I nod.

Then she grabs a little piece of red and white rope and shows it to me.

“Oh.  Nice.”

She starts wrapping it up in paper.

“Wait… how much is it?”

“One lev.”

And that’s the story of how I ended up paying 0,50 euro for a piece of string.  I mean, I knew it was a bit of a scam at the time, but I just found it really hard to be firm with such a nice, wrinkly old lady.

Fortunately getting ripped off in Bulgaria is not really an issue.  I mean… 50 cents.  Come on.

It was, by now, time for me to seek out the tour.  It’s run by a voluntary organization based in Sofia called FreeSofiaTours, and they have spread to Varna and Plovdiv.  The route took me through a large park (well… not that large, and it’s only a park in the sense that it has a few drab looking trees, though I was assured it is much nicer in summer).  I was distracted for a few minutes here by something that looked a bit like a cross between a squirrel and a rabbit, though I suspect it was just an East European squirrel.  It kind of darted back and forth nervously through the grass.  An old guy, seeing that I was interested in it, said something to me, but gave up when he realized I didn’t understand.

Ok, the tour.  It was a very small tour, consisting of myself and one other guy who was from Sofia and was visiting Plovdiv on business.  He was very interested in Plovdiv, asking plenty of questions about the buildings and history, many of which the guide struggled to answer.

The guide was basically a local student named Ali, who had an interest in showing people around the city – and for free, who needs more than that?  We went through the communistic building that now houses the Post Office and not much else, leaving Ali to complain that they were left with a big, ugly, grey building that wasn’t used for anything.

I got a bit of a better idea of Bulgarian history during the tour.  The Ottoman Empire basically occupied Bulgaria from about the 14^th century until the Russians came and booted them out.  Why the Russians?  Apparently the official answer is that the Russians like the Bulgarians (they share the orthodox religious beliefs and have Slavic roots) and the Bulgarians like the Russians back for that, though there is some recent controversy that suggests that actually the Russians wanted to establish a trade route through the Black Sea.

I also got a couple of details about the communist era, though this mostly consisted of anecdotes.  One that struck me in particular was about a violinist/entertainer, a very popular one, from Plovdiv.  He had a habit of making jabs at his audience.  Once he was performing at a dinner attended by a high-ranking Party official, and was playing at the official’s table.  The official, irritated by the music (because clearly communists hate music or something) asked him when he was going to leave.  The entertainer replied: “I’ll be leaving soon, but the question is, when will you be leaving?”

He was sent to a concentration camp where he died after eleven days.  And that, boys and girls, is why you don’t make fun of an oppressive regime in front of the people who enforce said oppressive regime.

The tour finished in quite heavy rain on the top of the hill in Old Town.  Plovdiv is sometimes referred to as the town of the seven hills, because it has seven hills.  Only it doesn’t.  It has six (in fact, I could only find four, and you’d think a hill would be pretty easy to spot).  The reason there are six is because one of the seven was dismantled in order to make pavement in Germany.

Luckily, this hill was about twenty metres up the street from my hostel, so I just went straight back out of the rain, where Hristo showed me where the umbrellas were and offered me a cup of tea.

It was around 4:30pm by this point, and I didn’t really see the point of going out again.  I did some housekeeping, like figuring out my hostels for Sofia and Bucharest, and doing a bit of research into how I was going to get to each of them.  Unfortunately the Bulgarian train timetables online aren’t all that helpful, what with them being incorrect (even the German Bahn website failed me this time, and that so very, very rarely happens).

I decided to go and reserve my ticket at the train station first thing the next day.  My roommate turned up around this time, a nice Italian (though he lived in London) who, as I mentioned before, had been on holiday in Turkey and decided he wanted to pop in somewhere else on his way back.

My mind was starting to ponder on dinner by that point, and I had been a bit worried that I would end up going out to eat alone, which is something I try and avoid.  Particularly in countries where I can’t even pronounce the menu.  I was relieved, then, when Antonio (I’m pretty sure that wasn’t his name, but it’s Italian-sounding) mentioned that he had seen a pizza restaurant on his way to the hostel that looked pretty good and had wait staff in traditional folk outfits.  He’d asked at the desk if they knew where it was, and we were directed to head down the street and ask the guard at the entrance to the old town where the ‘big glass pizza restaurant’ was.

Well… we got down there and asked, and the guard kind of gestured with his thumb vaguely over his shoulder.  We were near the main pedestrian shopping street now, and, following the guard’s directions, ended up at a dead end.

There was a young guy smoking on the corner, and Antonio went and asked him about the restaurant.  The guy enthusiastically took us just down the street and pointed out a little corridor leading to a doorway, promising that it was a great place.  It wasn’t the place Antonio had been looking for, but we were pretty much over searching by that point so went in.

The place was empty except for two fifty year old Bulgarian men drinking in the corner.  The décor was quite nice though, and the owner/waiter showed us through to an adjoining room where he lit a massive fireplace in a stone bowl in the middle of the room.

Looking at the menu, Antonio said, “Mmmm… Well, the menu looks ok.”  I think he was worried by the fact that the place was practically empty.  They did have traditional Bulgarian menu items (and, having done some research that afternoon, I knew that they were at least legitimate sounding).  I ordered a Shepherd’s Salad and some kind of cheese and sausage hot pot (and a large beer of course) and Antonio got some kind of aubergine salad and a chicken skwarma (like a stew). 

The salads came first.  Mine was a fantastic pile of chopped up salad vegetables, mostly consisting of tomato and cucumber, mixed with egg, white Belgian cheese (a creamy kind of feta) and yellow Belgian cheese, which has a texture a bit like a smooth mozzarella but has a bit more tang.

We were halfway through the salad when they brought out our mains.  See, in Bulgaria, courses aren’t quite as sequential as you’d expect.  They overlap, with food being brought out when it’s ready.  This doesn’t really matter with a salad, though.

The stews were served in these cute little earthenware pots.  I found mine very tasty, though I have to say I was a little cheesed out by the end, what with there being white cheese in both the stew and the salad.

All in all this cost about fourteen lev, which is the equivalent of seven euro (I’m talking about my food and drink only, not Antonio’s – total bill was 27 lev).  Yeah, it was a pretty expensive place.

I think Antonio was a tad disappointed at not having found the pizza place, but I was pretty satisfied by the meal.  On arrival back at the hostel we were greeted by the guy at the reception desk coming down to open the door for us (he had seen us coming on the security cameras – I should mention here that we had a key for the front door, so this gesture was entirely unnecessary) and asking whether we had found the place.  He seemed fairly hopeful that it would be found on the following day.

DAY THREE

The first task of the day was to head just up the road to the top of the hill that I had gone up on the free tour.  The reason?  The day before it had been foggy and raining, and the view hadn’t been all that good.  This time was a vast improvement, though I was a little disappointed to realize that the hill opposite was far taller and would probably offer the best view.  I quickly resolved to scale it after getting my train reservation.

The next place I went to was about ten metres down the street from the hilltop – the Ethnographic Museum.  It is housed in a beautiful wooden building and has exhibits detailing the lives of the people living in Plovdiv.  It only cost 2 lv entry, but they had an extra fee for taking video – 10 lv.  I briefly entertained the notion of pretending I was taking photos (5 lv), but then realized that I was paying so little to enter anyway I may as well just give them the lot.

Well, I made damn sure I got my money’s worth, anyway, taking video of all the exhibits and rooms (the interior of the house – all original – was absolutely gorgeous).  There wasn’t a huge amount of content (it wasn’t a very big house) but they did have some interesting stuff, including traditional Bulgarian peasant outfits and rooms lavishly decked out with authentic antique furniture.  I also found out that Bulgarians are famous for their honey, which explained why the little packets of honey I had been having for breakfast had been so good (for some reason they always called it ‘bee honey’ though – I wasn’t aware there was another kind?)

I took the opportunity while I was at the museum to use the toilet.  The toilets in Plovdiv have to be paid for, and what with the cold and me starting to get a bit sick (and having a weak bladder anyway) I was quickly running out of 50 stotchky pieces.  Well… I guess you get what you pay for.  Which is a nice way of saying this toilet had no toilet paper.  Unfortunately I only discovered this once past the point of no return.

I did, however, notice a small bin near the toilet.  Well, I reasoned, all I need is a bit of paper or something that isn’t too grubby.  Leaving it was simply not an option (I blame all the vegetable fibers from the previous night’s salad) and so I opened the bin and sifted through the spongy tissues within.  They were all a bit damp, which weirded me out, and some of them had strange brown stains (dirt, not poo) but I did eventually find one that wasn’t too bad, and as it was heading somewhere dirtier anyway I think I ended up slightly cleaner for the effort.

With that out of the way, it was time to go to the train station.

The Wikipedia page for Plovdiv train station proudly announces that it “has eleven tracks!” (exclamation mark included).  So… it’s basically a small, regional train station.  I had a look at the board and was pleased to see that a) it listed the Latin name alongside the Cyrillic, and b) that there were a number of trains to choose from to get me to Sofia (though they were all at different times to the ones I had seen online…)

I went to the desk to ask for a reservation for the midday train, which I reasoned was late enough that I could be a bit slow in the morning, but would get me to Sofia at a time when I could still do stuff.

The lady at the desk didn’t speak a huge amount of English, but I didn’t (and still don’t) speak a word of Bulgarian, so who am I to judge?  We worked things out eventually, which is to say, she managed to indicate that I didn’t actually need a reservation for that train anyway.

On my way out I grabbed a chicken gyros (actually pretty good, even after coming from Athens) and made my way to the big hill.  The big hill had a statue on top dedicated to the Russian soldiers that had helped liberate Bulgaria, which made it very easy to spot.  It’s kind of difficult to get lost in Plovdiv anyway – it’s so small that you’ll eventually come across something you recognize just by walking around.

The hill was a decent climb, though it would have been a lot easier had I realized there was a nice, easy, paved ramp that circled up it.  As it was, I made my way up vague steps and abandoned, crumbling pathways that were probably quite dangerous (I think a man at the top was trying to tell me that I was an idiot for walking up a crumbling cliff face, but he spoke Bulgarian so maybe he was saying something else).

The view was good.  I looked at it for a bit then went back down along the ramp.  I mean, there’s really only so much view you can view.

On my way back I went to get a closer look at the remains of the Roman Stadium.  It was kind of just open for anyone to walk in.  The ruins are under the main shopping street, making excavation, I would imagine, fairly difficult.  As you go down the street some of the buildings are marked as having bits of the stadium visible in their basement.

I bummed around the hostel for a bit after that before Antonio showed up and we decided to have one more go at finding the restaurant.  We were given instructions on the map, but Antonio was certain that the instructions were incorrect and wanted to go by instinct.  So we did.  And we found it.

It basically just looked like a decent family restaurant to me, though it did happen to have a proper pizza oven.  The ‘traditional clothes’ Antonio had mentioned the day before turned out to just be chef outfits – you know, the funny hats and whatnot.  Around the brim of the hats was the Bulgarian flag, which was interesting as it was the same colours as the Italian flag, so actually the chefs looked like Italian pizza makers.

We didn’t end up getting pizza anyway.  We both had a pork steak (they were pretty large…) and I had a Shopska Salad, which is apparently a Bulgarian salad variety, though I thought it was pretty similar to the one I had had the previous night except without the yellow cheese.

This time I made sure to order a Bulgarian beer, though I’m afraid I don’t remember the brand.  It was surprisingly good, with a very rich, organic taste.  Not that I’m a beer expert or anything, but normally I don’t really like beer that much and I liked this one.

Antonio was taking a taxi to the airport the next day and needed to get some cash out for that.  We went looking for an ATM and, after searching the area for some time, began to migrate toward the city centre.  We ran dangerously across a major dual lane road in order to avoid a late night walk through the underpass and turned around to discover we had just walked to the opposite side of the street to the nearest ATM.  We were so close to the city centre by this point, though, that we just kept on.

Antonio found himself an ATM and got some money out, but ended up having to take out more than he intended.  Since lev is pretty worthless in the UK, he suggested going to a bar to try to use some of it up.

This was a Friday night, so we expected to see some lively places somewhere.  The streets were dead.  I should mention that Plovdiv has a university, so it’s not like there’s no Friday-night demographic in the city.  We were about to give up when we found a small street with a bunch of listless smokers hanging out outside a bar.  So we entered the bar.

It was a pretty nice place.  I was a little surprised by the fact that it was table service for drinks.  Antonio, wanting to rid himself of the unwanted cash, paid for two cosmopolitans.  I have to say, cosmopolitans are considerably less classic tasting than I imagined – it was like alcoholic apple and blackcurrant juice.

They were singing karaoke in an adjoining room, and as we left the dance floor downstairs was beginning to heat up, but as we were both leaving the next day we decided we needed some rest.

The hostel staff were eager to know if we’d found the right restaurant this time, and were happy to hear we had (we tactfully left out the fact that it was a different restaurant to the one they had pointed out).  And then I went to bed.

The next day I would be on my way to Sofia, so I think I will leave this story

TO BE CONTINUED

A Test of Resolve in Naples

Naples was the biggest turnaround of my trip so far.  It gave me the worst first impression of any place I’ve been to so far, but managed to do a massive flip to become quite high in my estimations.  It’s really the first place that has shown me that, with a little time and effort it is possible to overcome initial prejudices and appreciate what a seeming hellhole has to offer.

DAY ONE

Well, the first impression was really bad.  The interior of the train station was actually quite pleasant, but it was not long before I was outside.  And oh my God.

OH MY GOD.

Outside was chaos.  A huge rectangle had been cut up in the centre of the plaza where they are building a metro station.  Around this cars just go.  There is no rhyme or reason to it – they just slot into any gaps they can see.  Pedestrian crossing?  Just dodge around them!  Red light?  Maybe slow down a little just in case.  Impossibly narrow yet somehow incredibly busy one-way street (that is also a pedestrian walkway)?  Why not reverse the wrong way down it at top speed in order to take a parking space that just popped up?

It was literal insanity.  Mopeds drove the wrong way up multi-lane carriageways, cars honked and hooted, and pedestrians just waltzed right into the middle of this, trusting in the probably clinically insane drivers to dodge around them.

(To be completely fair I only experienced one incident the entire time, though I’ll go into that a bit later).

The streets smelled like piss.  I don’t mean that figuratively.  I walked down the street and I got whiffs of actual urine.  The entire walkway was packed with dangerous-looking people, many of them selling sunglasses, beads and other useless s***.  I was heckled by three separate people on one single twenty metre stretch, all of them selling ‘iPads and iPhone 5s’.  I got the feeling that was a load of hooey.

I needed to find a road called ‘Corso Umberto’, which would lead me into the city centre and my hostel.  Once again, clear instructions but troublesome searching.  See, this plaza where the metro was being built was large.  Large in the sense that it appeared to actually be two separate plazas.  So I was searching the area closest to the train station for Corso Umberto, when in actual fact it was on the opposite side of the square, leading directly away.  I did find it eventually, though, hands wrapped firmly around my bag and burrowing through crowds of people.  It was around this point that I realized that in order to reach Corso Umberto I would have to cross the road.  Unfortunately all of the pedestrian crossings I had been using had lead to a bit of a dead end and there was nowhere to cross.  I was on a small island in the middle of a sea of roads.  It was the centre island of a roundabout, though on this roundabout cars tended to be able to go either direction in any lane (yes, the roundabout was designed for that purpose, and yes it works somehow).

Pedestrians were just stepping onto the road in front of cars, but it took me quite a number of to-and-fros before I built up the courage to just go for it.

I’ve only just left the emergency ward of the Central Hospital of Naples…

Kidding, I got across fine.

It was about a twenty minute walk to the hostel, and my impressions did not improve in that time.  Every set of traffic lights I had to cross was a potential deathtrap, the buildings surrounding the street were imposing and decayed.  The city just felt like a shambles.

I feel like this is an appropriate point to discuss something I think of as the Italian Contradiction (yes, I’m aware of the fact I’m naming everything the ‘ethnic group contradiction’, but this one is even more so).  See, Italians are incredibly concerned about their appearance – they are ALL decked out in fashionable sunnies, sleek, branded outfits and gelled hair.  I’m pretty sure the world’s acne cream industry could survive off the Italians alone.  Everyone is either really, really youthful (and hot) or a leather-skinned prune (that’s what all those chemicals and all that cigarette smoke does to their skin by the time they’re in their mid-thirties).

So, we’ve concluded that they are well-groomed and clean.  But this extends only to themselves.  They live in squalor (maybe not their houses, but their streets and cities certainly).  It’s as though no-one actually gives a toss about anything but their own individual appearance – they don’t feel any need to create some kind of communal impression like, for example, the Germans.  I suspect the governments may be so wrapped up in corruption and pettiness that they forget to take responsibility for the state of their services, and no-one seems to mind particularly.  It’s like the ultimate expression of capitalist egocentricity, no-one expects anyone to do anything for anyone except themselves.

I’m speaking in extreme generalities, of course, and only based on experiences in Rome and Naples, so make of that what you will.

I found the street of my hostel and was heading down it when I heard someone call out, “Hey, are you going to the hostel?”

“Yes,” I replied to the smiling young man.  He was carrying two large metal beams over his shoulder.

“I’m heading there too.  Come with me.”

So I followed him into a building and up to the seventh floor, where the hostel was.  On the way up I told him how confronting I had found the train station’s exterior, particularly having come from Switzerland.  He found that very amusing.

The hostel, called Hostel of the Sun, was a really friendly place (I particularly liked when the lady at the reception desk was telling me the price, and referred to the 1 euro tourist tax as the “bullshit tax” – so you know, all hotels and hostels in major Italian cities are forced to charge an extra amount of tax based on how expensive the place is.  In Rome the tax was 2 euro every night in a hostel, in Naples it was 1 euro for a hostel.  The accomodations are required by law to list the tax as a separate cost from the accommodation costs.  Which is weird.)

She then asked what I was planning to do in Naples.  I said Pompeii.  Then she gave me a map and proceeded to provide her suggestions of the best spots to visit, which places were free, where to get pizza, how to get to Pompeii, the works.  It was really very comprehensive.  As I often do after just arriving at a place, I decided to go to the Historical Centre (Old Town) to get a feel for it.

Well… it was a weird place.  As I have come to expect from Old Towns and Historical Centres it was filled with a winding network of narrow, cobbled roads, surrounded on all sides by towering blocks of apartments, shops and the like.  There were even the anticipated grand buildings – most of them churches or other religious buildings.

The main difference was this historic centre felt like the city’s slums.  The grand buildings were dirty and scuffed, generally with a single sign in front of them providing historical information (though good luck reading it under the stains, tears and graffiti).  They were just kind of slotted in with the rest of the street, unassuming and uninspiring.

That was a bit of a letdown, to be honest.  I like my history to be a little more… preserved.  Walking the streets, it soon became apparent that the old town’s roads worked a little like a scaled-down version of the plaza outside the train station.  That’s not to suggest it was safer – in fact, here the footpath and road were one and the same (they had little posts to mark out safe passage for pedestrians on the sides, but these ‘footpaths’ were generally blocked by parked mopeds or the sprawling shopfronts, making things no safer).

Nothing of particular note happened on my walk around the Historical Centre – an old woman started singing bad opera at me, I got a bit lost, got found again, considered buying some limoncello, decided to do it later and bought a hot chocolate.  There was a little chocolatier called Gay-Odin (yeah… not sure why) that I saw people leaving with little paper cups of the thick Italian hot chocolates.  Then I realized I was in Italy.  Exactly the kind of place you want to have an Italian hot chocolate.  Especially on a cold and rainy day (did I mention it was a cold and rainy day?  It was a cold and rainy day).  So you know, the hot chocolate was awesome.  And I ordered it in Italian.  To be fair, all I had to say was “cioccolata calda” and then “solo” when he asked if I wanted cream or not.  “Solo” means ‘by itself’ in case you didn’t know.  I worked that out ALL BY MYSELF.

I headed back to the hostel having quite enjoyed the hot chocolate but not much else.  The city didn’t speak to me.  In fact, at that point the words I was using to describe it were things like ‘hellhole’ and ‘very unpleasant’.  The hostel’s building had a lift that required 0,05 euro to work between certain times.  The hostel, recognizing this as a bit of a hassle, offered a pot of 0,05 euro pieces for people to take.  I hadn’t taken one, so walked up.  I earned that hot chocolate, damn it.

Inside the hostel they had a new sign: “DO NOT BUY IPADS OR IPHONES OFF THE PEOPLE IN THE STREET.”  I’m forced to conclude that some idiot had actually done so.

While attempting to finalise some of the bits and pieces online (I tend to need to do a bit of that upon reaching each hostel), a girl entered.  She was German and had been studying literature in Italy for six months or so, and had a bit of time before returning to Germany so was touring a bit.  She planned to go see Herculaneum the next day.  I had only a very limited amount of time for which I could stay in Naples, so had to give Herculaneum a miss.

Two American girls came in at that point.  They were also touring Italy, albeit for only a few weeks.  They’d just come from Rome, loved it, and were having similar issues with Naples as I was.

That’s about it for that first day.  At that point I was already kind of looking forward to leaving.

DAY TWO

I got up bright and early (8:30am is my new bright and early – don’t judge me) for breakfast and a shower, which I would tell you more about but it’s kind of really boring.  The American girls teamed up with an Australian girl that I only met that morning over breakfast with the plan to go to Pompeii.  I was meeting Li-Ting the following day for Pompeii, so declined to join them.  Instead, my plan was to have a castle-hopping day, since Naples seemed to have quite a few castles.  I frickin’ love castles.

I went off alone, which, in the past, has been a recipe for disaster (it tends to mean I avoid doing anything remotely interesting and just wander around, which doesn’t do wonders for my impression of the place I’m visiting).  Somehow, though, today would be different, and I would be given a chance to totally rethink my opinion of Naples.

Admittedly, it didn’t start off that way.  In fact, it started with me heading in the direction of Castel Nuovo, which was just down the road from the hostel, on the waterfront.  It was a very impressive castle from the outside, though I had heard the inside wasn’t nearly as worthwhile and required payment, so I didn’t bother entering.  The atmosphere was ruined a little by the fact that there was work being done on a new metro station here, too.

Walking towards my next castle, Castel dell’Ovo (literally “Castle of the Egg”) I came across something else that ruined the atmosphere a little.  Now, Naples is a pretty grotty city at the best of times, with rotting garbage piled on the sides of a lot of the streets without any sign that it will ever be cleaned up.  But it takes a special kind of city to have a street lined sporadically with human excrement.

From that low, though, things started to lift dramatically.  Castel dell’Ovo came into sight along the coast.  It was an imposing block of stone and brick, waves breaking dramatically at its base.  The structure was accessed via a single path across great chunks of stone spread out across the sea.  Castel dell’Ovo was originally built on an island, completely separate from (though very close to) the coast of Italy.  It’s accessible by foot now.  Across the bridge you go inside a large stone gate leading to a ramp that takes you up along the side of the structure.  Did I mention that it was free?  It was free.  For a moment I thought I might be kicked out as there were a bunch of official-looking fellows standing at the base of the ramp, but as was quite a common occurrence in Italy the officials didn’t seem to be serving any purpose other than to stand there wearing a uniform.

Going further up I was greeted by a number of placards detailing some of the history of the structure.  It had quite a lot of history, most of which I can’t remember, though I do remember where it got its name.  It was customary, at the time the castle was built, to put an ostrich egg inside a cage inside the building as a protector for the city.  At one stage the egg broke and there were ferocious storms until the king replaced the egg.

Naples also has links to Greek legend, and the island was supposedly where one of the sirens that Odysseus fooled ended up.  Or something.  It was related to the Odyssey, anyway.

All the way up the castle (it was basically a single path that took you higher and higher until you reached the top) I kept bumping into young Italian couples making out on the battlements.  It seems the castle was a popular spot for romance, something the Italians seem very adept at.  (As a brief aside, one thing I noticed was that all of the couples I saw making out in Italy were extremely attractive.  As in supermodel level.)  It’s extremely awkward when you’re trying to do the tourist thing with your camera out and there are these two bodies in the middle of your shot.

About halfway up there was a little room with more information.  I was reading it when some kind of custodian or something came up with a flyer for me.  I thought that was very sweet, though I suspect he was just excited that someone was actually taking an interest (it was practically empty other than the couples, who weren’t really there for the historical significance).

There was an art exhibition inside as well.  I made the appropriate nodding motions and so forth on walking through it.  A group of Japanese tourists were getting really excited about the art, taking their photos next to it and everything.  I thought that was a bit weird.

After Castel dell’Ovo I wanted to make my way up the hill to the Castel Sant Elmo.  The hostel receptionist had told me how to get up there via the funicular (cable car), but as it was still fairly early I decided to go for a bit of a walk up the hill, grab an ice-cream and then see the castle.

The route wasn’t exactly clear on the map (it was a map for the public transport system, so was very clear on how the funicular worked) but I surmised that as long as I kept going up I couldn’t go wrong.

To reach the hill, my route took me by the waterfront.  And it was stunning.  Somehow the water is totally crystal clear, there’s no garbage, and the (enormous) road is blocked off to traffic, meaning the whole area is solely for pedestrians.  I couldn’t believe I was in the same city.

Walking inland a little reminded me where I was, though even that didn’t last.  As I made my way uphill the streets became cleaner, the walkways wider, the roads less busy.  This was the wealthy part of the city, and it showed.

Up, up, up I went.  After some time, a bit of backtracking and some confused studying of the map I reached the main shopping street at the top of the hill.  I was looking for a specific gelateria that was supposed to be one of the best in the city, and this was the right street.  It didn’t take long for me to find it.  The gimmick, if you can call it that, of this place was that it made gelati flavours that reflected some of the famous Naples pastries.  I had the darkest chocolate flavor I could find (of course) and baba.  My understanding of the way gelato works in Italy is as follows: you do not pay for a particular number of scoops.  Instead, because gelato is a lot smoother and more malleable than regular ice-cream, they spread it into a cone.  You pay for a particular sized cone and are then able to make a selection of flavours.  I’m not sure how many you can have, but they adapt the amount of each to the size of the cone and total number of flavours.  I typically had the smallest size cone and two flavours.

The baba flavor was nice, and made me resolve to get an actual baba from one of the stands filling the streets of the historical centre.

It was now time for the Castel Sant Elmo.  I followed the signs around to an imposing entryway guarded by official looking people.  This seemed to be some kind of government facility or something, so I kept following the footpath around.  This took me to the building next door: Certosa di San Martino, and a fairly spectacular view.  Oh, and another kissing couple.  This time on a moped overlooking the view of Naples.

I had clearly missed the entrance to the castle, so I headed back to the official-looking spot and walked in.  The official-looking people didn’t blink.

I saw a sign saying ‘tickets’ and followed it.  Unfortunately the building it pointed to was shut up.  There was a man on the other side of the building, however, so I went over to him.

A very jovial man with an enormous grey mustache greeted me.  When he saw I was beginning to take money out of my wallet, though, he stopped me and spoke in Italian.  I shrugged.

“Ah,” he said.  He gestured towards some of the officials, then seemed to change his mind.  He pointed down toward San Martino.

“San Martino,” he said.

“San Martino?”

“San Martino.”

“Grazie.”

So I went back down to San Martino.  I walked into the entrance there, but there was no ticket office.  Then I realized that this was not, in fact, the entrance, but the exit.  The entrance was an unassuming little door a few metres back from the exit.  Inside I asked for a ticket for the castle.  She looked confused and gave me a ticket for San Martino.  So I went there instead.

It was actually more interesting than I was expecting, having a mix of history and art present.  History in that it was an actual palace with an actual story behind it and some nice rooms and frescoes, and art as in part of that story was that it had been designated as an art gallery in the 19^th century in order to promote the art and culture of Naples.  It was a nice palace, but it was certainly no castle.  Never mind, I managed to get over it.

I was about ready to head back to the hostel by this point, so walked past the mountains of smooching couples on the hilltop and made my way down the hill.  My path took me back past the historic centre, and I thought, why the hell not?  So I went looking for pizza.  Why pizza?  Because Naples is the birthplace (apparently) of the true pizza.  Their pizzas are world famous, and there is a special pizza organization that many of the restaurants belong to.  This organization has a standaradised measure for a true Napolitan pizza, related to the thickness of the base, the limited amount of topping, the fact that it must be woodfired and the bubbliness of the cheese.  Restaurants conforming to these standards proudly display a sign with an image of a man putting a pizza in the oven.

I went to the two places the hostel had recommended – Sorrelio Gino and Di Marello.  Fortunately they were on the same street, along with another pizzeria called ‘El Presidente’ or something, which Bill Clinton had once been a patron of (back when he was president – hence the name).  The other famous place is the one in the book Eat, Pray, Love.  I refused to go there, partly because it was in Eat, Pray, Love but also because they only served two types of pizza – Margherita and Napolitan.  I’m sure they’re delicious, but come on.

Well, Sorrelio Gino was closed (it opens at 7pm each night) and Di Marello looked a bit difficult to work out – it was kind of a takeaway desk, but no-one seemed to be serving there, and I didn’t really want to sit by myself, so I went and bought a baba instead, having tried the gelato flavor.

I got a baba with chocolate.  The guy put it in a plastic container and poured syrup over it.  I’m pretty sure the syrup was just really bad rum and water mixed together.  It tasted foul, like shooting bad rum only keeping the taste in your mouth for the amount of time it takes to eat a cake.  The chocolate on top was delicious though.

Back at the hostel I was greeted by the Australian girl who had gone with the Americans to Pompeii that day, and the British receptionist.  When I mentioned that I’d actually started to quite like Naples, the receptionist seemed very pleased.

I told the Aussie that I wanted pizza that night.  She had been to Di Morello before, so we decided to test Sorrelio Gino.  Then the American girls turned up – I hadn’t expected to see them again as they had checked out that day.  Apparently, in order to save some money, they had decided to couchsurf the next night somewhere in the vicinity of Naples, and they had to call the person who would be putting them up.  For those who don’t know, couchsurfing is an online community where people offer to allow travelers to sleep on their couch for a night or so, and the expectation is that if you take advantage of these offers you make the offer yourself when you are home.

The receptionist was a bit dubious about the whole arrangement.

“Be very careful staying with a guy, girls,” she said.

“Oh, don’t worry,” came the reply.  “It’s an older guy, so it should be alright.”

I’m afraid I don’t know whether they got out of the experience alive, as my path diverged from theirs at this point (though we all watched Hitch for just long enough for me to decide it was a load of garbage).

It being 7pm, the time Sorrelio Gino opened, I went with the Aussie to check it out.  The place was about half full when we arrived, so we got straight in.  The cheapest pizza was the Margherita.  It cost 3 euro.  I got one with ham and mushrooms for five euro because I felt like splurging.  The pizzas are maybe 35-40cm in diameter.  They come unsliced on a large plate, and the expectation is that you order one each.  We did, of course.

It was good, though I’m a bit of a fan of toppings and the rules of the game in Naples are that the topping must be scarce and mostly consist of cheese and tomato paste (albeit delicious homemade tomato paste that you can see the pieces of crushed tomato in).  It is too sloppy to be eaten by hand, though the idea is that you are supposed to cut slices with a knife and fork before eating it.  I tried that to begin with, but my attempt lasted all of two seconds.  In the end I was scooping up great stacks of dough, cheese and mushroom and shoving them unceremoniously into my mouth.

The base is worth talking about as well – it has a kind of stretchy quality, being a much softer and less crispy dough than many pizza bases I have come across.

That done we had some gelato.  Yes, it was my second one that day.  Shut up, I only had small ones.

Back at the hostel, two Australian guys were watching Kill Bill.  I sort of half-heartedly joined them.  When it finished everyone wanted something funny (the female members of our party had not particularly enjoyed Kill Bill) so I put on Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, which I hadn’t seen before.  It was a bit of a trip, and I must give credit to everyone for actually sticking with it when they clearly had no idea what was going on.  I loved it.

There was to be no early night that night, which was not what I had planned at all seeing as I wanted to be up bright and early the next day in order to get as much time in Pompeii as possible.

DAY THREE

I probably ought to mention here that the reason I had come to Naples in the first place was really in order to visit Pompeii.  I had promised Li-Ying that we would go together, as she was coming down from Rome for the day.  No problem!

Just before leaving to meet her at the train station, I signed into facebook in order to check up on all the goss, as you do.  I got a panicked message from Li-Ying: “Andrew!  My train ticket was for a different train to the one I expected!  I won’t be at the train station.”

I asked what time she would be arriving.  1pm.  Well, I wasn’t about to wait around that long.  I organized to meet her at the entrance to the site around 2pm and went to catch the train.

The train to Mt Vesuvius and Pompeii is not run by Trenitalia, the public train service.  It is a privately run stretch of track managed by a company called Circumsivenia (that’s probably not the exact spelling but I can’t be bothered reaching over to my bag in order to check).  Thinking a private company would have to offer a better experience than the public one, I went to buy my ticket.  Service was the typical Italian disinterest.  The ticket machine didn’t work.  The seats were uncomfortable and plastic.  The train was crowded.  All in all, not really any different from the public trains.

At least it was very obvious which stop to get off at.  The Pompeii Scavi stop had a stall at the entrance advertising tickets and audioguides.  This confused me a little, since I was kind of expecting the tickets to be sold at, you know, the entrance.  The audioguides were advertised as being free to take home, so they were purchased rather than rented.

Noticing that everyone except American tourists was ignoring this little stall, I ignored it and followed the sign towards the site.  At the entrance was a much more official-looking structure offering tickets and audioguides.  Better.

I got a ticket and the audioguide.  The audioguide lady pulled out a map in order to show me how it all worked.  The map had numbers all over it, showing you where to key a particular number into your guide.  She offered a recommended path: “All the interesting stuff is in this area.”  She circled a great swathe of the map.  “If you have some time, you should move up to here.”  She circled another spot right up in the corner of the map.  “You must get the guide back by five PM at the latest, or else you won’t get your ID back,” (I had given her my driver’s license as collateral).

Of course I’ll have time, I thought.  I have like six whole hours!

Two hours later I was still on the first street, having spent most of the time walking around the structures within a single plaza.  Pompeii is huge – hey, it’s basically an entire city that has been turned into a historical tourist attraction.  You don’t just get one theatre, but two (and there may have been another on the other side of the city, but I didn’t make it that far).  Pompeii is one of the few places I have been where it is next to impossible to see everything there is to see in a day, so you have to prioritise.

The streets, walls and many artifacts are in an extraordinary state of preservation.  The site gives you an excellent idea of how a Roman city would have felt and been structured.  Slightly more harrowing are the plaster casts of victims of Vesuvius’ eruption, faces contorted in fear and pain, often with a complete skull visible beneath the cast.

The most interesting buildings that I saw were the theatres, the main square, the various temples, particularly that of Jupiter, the bathhouse, and the brothel.  The brothel in particular is in a remarkable state, with many of the frescoes (depicting lewd sexual acts in order to give patrons ideas of what to try on the prostitutes) perfectly intact.  I have my suspicions that the archaeologists were digging it up and, realizing they were uncovering 1^st century pornography, started to go really carefully so as to be able to get a good look at it.  One of the perks of being an archaeologist?

Li-Ying hadn’t turned up at the appointed time, so I went off without her and saw as much as I could – maybe half.  I was on my way to the point the audioguide lady had circled on the edge of the map – the Villa of Mysteries – which was actually a long way from everything else, when I happened to come across Li-Ying, who was now flanked by a young American boy named Shepherd who was travelling with his father and she had met at the entrance while hoping to find me.  I went off to the Villa of Mysteries and organized to meet them back at the entrance at 5pm, which was in about half an hour.

It took ten minutes to get to the Villa of Mysteries.  I was listening to the audioguide when I realized I had ten minutes in which to get back to the audioguide booth so that I could get my driver’s license back.  So I ran, still half-listening to the information from the guide, back to the entrance, arriving just in time.  Looking around I saw no Li-Ying.  I waited twenty minutes, joined by one of the many, many stray dogs that hang around inside Pompeii.  After twenty minutes I gave up and went to the train station.

While waiting for the train, I spotted her arriving at the other platform, so I went over to reveal myself, met Shepherd’s father, and we all caught the train back to Naples.  I had instructed Li-Ying that she was not allowed to leave without trying some Napolitan pizza, so we all went to Di Matteo in a taxi for dinner.  It was very similar to the previous night, so I won’t get too detailed about it.

I got Li-Ying back to the station in order for her to catch her train back to Rome in order to get the one to Verona she would be getting next.  Then back to the hostel I went, taking the same route I had done on my arrival, this time at night.  Somehow the city seemed much more comfortable this time around, even though it was dark.  Somehow the feeling had completely changed.

Back at the hostel there were some newcomers – two Canadians travelling Europe together, an American guy going through Italy and a guy from Amsterdam.  We had a few bottles of wine along with the German girl I had met on the first day before moving into the bar where the others wanted to try some shots.  Well, they didn’t end up doing shots, as they got distracted by a cocktail.  In the bar a Russian girl was enjoying her drink.  She owned a language school in China, or something along those lines, and had a lot of interesting things to say.

I needed to get to bed at a reasonable hour, though, as I would need to be up early to catch my train out of Naples.  As it turned out, Italy had one last adventure for me.

DAY FOUR

Technically this was not a day spent in Naples, but I will put it here anyway.  I had booked myself in on a ferry crossing the Adriatic Sea over to Greece.  It would leave from the Bari ferry port that evening at 8pm, and the instructions had ordered me to arrive at least two hours early in order to pick up my ticket and check in.

I planned to play it safe, so got a train at 9:04am to Caserta, which is famous for a palace that is supposed to be as luxurious as Versailles.  Well, I had no time to see this palace, unfortunately, since I needed to catch a train at 10:38am to get me to Bari at 14:30, giving me plenty of time to find the ferry port, get my ticket and get on board.

Ha.  Ha.  Ha.  Please, this is Italy.  Of course it was never going to be that easy.

The problems began when I looked up at the board and noticed that the train I was to catch was listed as being 90 minutes late.

“That’s pretty late,” I thought to myself, but as I had given myself plenty of time I thought nothing of it.

Half an hour later, the train was listed as running 2 hours late.  In the meantime, a middle-aged man from Gambia came over to have a chat with me.  He was very friendly, and I felt a little guilty afterwards for being suspicious of him (the man on the train to Milan had put me on my guard), but we had a fairly lengthy conversation about interesting tidbits from around the world, and he told me I should visit Gambia, assuring me there were no political problems there.  I told him I planned to visit Africa some day, but it might be some time away.

When the train finally arrived at 12:40pm, I was starting to check my watch with a frown.

“Well,” I reasoned, “as long as it doesn’t get any later than this, the train will get me to Bari by about 16:30, which is still plenty of time to find the ferry terminal.”

Things began to look up when the conductor of the train handed me a bag containing a croissant, a bottle of water and an orange juice.

“For train being late,” he explained in broken English.  Naw, how sweet.

Well, Trenitalia (the train company running the public trains) wasted all the goodwill they earned with that gesture not a moment later.  An announcement came over the intercom in Italian.  I waited for the English version, which never came (it seems to me the only time they translate announcements into English is when they either provide self-explanatory information, advertise something or welcome you on board the train).  The fact that everyone started getting up to grab their bags raised some grave concerns, however.

I asked a man seated near me if he could translate what had been said.  He told me we would be stopping at a station called Foggio, where we would have to get off and find another train to our destination.  Well… ok.

Fortunately there was another train from Foggio to Bari.  Unfortunately it would arrive in Bari at 17:30, giving me half an hour to reach the port.

And it was ten minutes late.

I stared out the window intently, looking for some indication of which direction the sea was in so that I would be able to find it quickly.  Once I found the sea, I reasoned, the port would be easy to spot.  Luckily the sea was easily visible from the train, and I even thought I could see a ferry docked.

Once I got out of the train station, however, my confidence began to wane.  I had initially assumed that Bari would be one of those cities that is defined by the presence of its port.  Well… this is not the case.  It’s really a city that happens to have a port nearby.  There are no signs, the city is large and it has that irritating European building that basically funnels you down each street preventing you from looking around in order to get your bearings.

I ran down the street in the direction I thought the sea was.  I decided not to look at my watch as it would only serve to stress me out, and I didn’t need any more of that.  I was very aware that I was to meet Dad in Athens, making a late arrival not an option.  I didn’t know it at the time, but there was another potential problem: the Greek Seaman’s Union had organized a strike for that weekend, and my ferry would be the last ferry to cross for two full days.

It’s probably a good thing I didn’t know that.

The street I was following eventually seemed to end, which was a little concerning as there was still no sign of the sea.  I found a small pedestrian path that took me through the great block of apartments and out in front of a castle.  The castle looked a little as though it belonged on the ocean, so I kept going and, rounding a corner, saw the port.

YEEEEEAAAAAAHH!

Only it was fenced off.  To my right I could see the ferries, so I started towards them.  However, as I approached the fence, I noticed a sign pointing left, reading ‘Porto’ and with a picture of a boat on it.  So I followed it.

Ten minutes later I reached a car park.  This had to be some kind of entrance.  I walked around the car park, searching for the entrance.  There wasn’t one.  I asked the guy at the desk working at the carpark.  He pointed the way I had just come.

“One kilometer.”

F***.  My.  Life.

I raced that one kilometer, sweat dripping off me in the irritatingly warm Italian winter.  After an age I found the entrance to the ferry port, went in, followed a sign towards what seemed to be my ferry, got lost, asked one of the port officials, was sent in the same direction I had already been going, found the ticket office, got my ticket and headed for the boat.  The ferry was really designed for truck drivers, so the area was filled with trucks and there wasn’t really any pedestrian way to be seen.  I just blundered my way across the tarmac, got through security and got on the boat.

This was it.  I had made it.

All that was left was to navigate the mysterious Greek public transport system from Patras to Athens.  There was no way that could be as stressful as this leg of the journey had been.

Could it…?

TO BE CONTINUED