Time for a few more of those old holiday snaps then. As you know, I'm copying out my diary from three years ago when I went to Sorrento. In this installment I have an odd conversation with a waiter and then go to Pompeii, an ancient city destroyed by the eruption of the volcano that still overlooks the bay of Naples. Then an Italian piano player plays some German folk songs in the lobby...
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I don't think the staff at this hotel much like me speaking Italian. We have these weird conversations in which I, the English person speak in Italian and they, the Italians, speak in English.
"Un caffe signore, per favore."
"With milk?"
"Si, con latte."
"Which room please?"
"Due cento ed uno."
"What?"
"Due cento ed... Allora... Due. Zero. Uno."
(I remembered that nobody here understands the concept of treating the number like a number. I get blank looks at what I'm certain means 'Two hundred and one' so I need to remind myself that it's Two Zero One instead.)
"Two-oh-one, sir?"
"Si. Questo tavolo."
"Ah this table here. Okay, thank you."
Weird. Part of me thinks I should just give in and speak English. Ah! But then the Italians have won, yes? I tell you what, next time I meet lost Italians in England, I might just explain everything in full-on Sixteenth Century Elizabethan.
"Forsooth good man! Thou hast turnéd widdershins bout this noble square in thy solicitations."
However, I'm a typical Englishman so I'll probably just scratch my head and help them out.
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In other news, today, I went on my selected trip to Pompeii and Vesuvius.
Yes, the mountain that loftily rises above the bay with its feet in the sea and its head in the clouds, and of course, the city it destroyed in 79AD.
The Apostle John was still alive when Vesuvius erupted. The Roman Empire was thriving across the vastness of Europe, and Pompeii, here on the shores of this glorious Neapolitan bay, was a very ordinary town in the peak of summer. On the morning of August 24th, 79AD, the city almost certainly awoke to these same crystal blue skies and the lazy heat of the Mediterranean.
Fabio led us into the Main Street, a broad thoroughfare of slabs of pavement, uneven, cobbled ruins of shops and houses either side. In the distance, capped with cloud, Vesuvius loomed dark and conical against the hazy sky.
Pompeii is the most alive-dead place I've ever seen. The streets have a strikingly modern feel to them, even though the piles of stones have no roofs, the pillars reach forlornly to the open sky and the frescoes are worn and faded. But somehow, walking round, with Fabio pointing at ancient laundries, snack bars, temples, brothels, houses, pipes, graffiti - it made it all seem so real; so yesterday.
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I think Tuesday must be music night at the Gran Paradiso. A kind of travelling pianist has set up a single speaker, a little mixing desk and a Yamaha keyboard in the bar here. Rather charmingly, he's running through the repertoire of Italian jazz classics. It's good but just a little loud for conversation. It is having the lovely effect of reminding us which country we're in.
I can't help thinking about Pompeii, just going about its business; people dancing, drinking, listening to music, living their lives and enjoying the summer. The pianist has dipped into something in German now, a kind of country and western number which he's jazzed up. Some of the older feet, clad in sandals and slip-ons... are loving it, tapping away involuntarily. He knows what he's up to this fella.
I think I'm getting close to being ready to go home. I'm starting to crave close company - I am a terrible introvert when it comes down to it. A German woman is clapping the end of the song. No-one joins in with her applause. She stops. I need to stop writing and go to bed, I think.
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