Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 14^th, 2009

This was the first class with Pro­fes­sor Lovell, who is a pretty neat guy that has a snarky sense of humor, a love of all things Supreme Court, and vaguely looks like me. After class was our first inter­view for the group project. After class we talked with an Ital­ian blog­ger and jour­nal­ist who was also involved in the Open Source Move­ment. A few hours later we were fin­ished and went off our sep­a­rate ways. This day also marked the arrival of rain show­ers in Rome. When I heard this thun­der­storm out­side while I was study­ing in the library, there was lit­tle choice but to run back to my apart­ment, throw on a coat, and wan­der around get­ting soaked.

Later that night a group of us went down to see the Colos­seum again at night, but this time the place was cov­ered in rain and mois­ture! When we got back I fin­ished up my response paper for class on Wednesday—we were dis­cussing inter­net and employ­ment law.

Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 15^th, 2009

After a typ­i­cal class with Pro­fes­sor McCann, we had our sec­ond interview—this time with a cor­po­rate attor­ney for debt col­lec­tors regard­ing the pro­tec­tion of data pri­vacy and other related mat­ters. His view­point was very procedural—as one would expect a civil lawyer’s view to be—but we still got a lot out of his view­point. It was rain­ing basi­cally all after­noon, so we stayed indoors and had a calm night.

Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 16^th, 2009

This was by far the busiest day for me in the pro­gram. I woke up early to pre­pare for class that day, and then after class had to run to the A. S. Roma ticket office next to the Pan­theon to get tick­ets for the Foot­ball (Soc­cer) game on Sun­day. Then I had to run back to lead my group to our third inter­view at the Guar­ante, which is an Ital­ian gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion set up to pro­tect the use of pri­vate data. The inter­view was a mix between very grand ideas from the upper man­age­ment, the real­ity from the case work­ers, and dot­ted with opti­mism for the future from every­one. As an added bonus we got free but­tons, stick­ers, and base­ball hats from the place.

After this long tour/interview, we briefly hit up a gelato place before rush­ing back to another lec­ture at 5:00pm about Italy and the death penalty. Finally after this two hour lec­ture and dis­cus­sion, Rachel and I fled up to the stu­dent lounge to quickly write our response papers for the next class. Finally after all of this, we went to grab a quick din­ner before watch­ing some of The Dark Knight before sleep­ing a very well-earned rest.

Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 17^th, 2009

This was the sec­ond class in two days where I had a response paper due, and things went well (I think). We were try­ing to plan out what to do with our last week­end in Italy, and this was the “free” week­end where noth­ing else was planned with the pro­gram. Quickly read­ing the tour book in class, we had our respec­tive group meet­ings after class before going to the library to try and fig­ure out where to go. After quite some time, Rachel and I decided to take a regional train to Napoli (Naples), stay in a hotel right next to the train sta­tion, and then wake up early the next morn­ing to go and stay at the Amalfi Coast.

Quickly pack­ing and rush­ing to the train sta­tion after miss­ing the first bus, we man­aged to get to the trian with 5 min­utes to spare. The only prob­lem is that with a regional train (the “slow­est”, cheap­est class), is that you can­not reserve seats, and they don’t limit the num­ber of peo­ple who can board. So we ended up stand­ing in the cause­way between cars with about 10 other peo­ple, sweat­ing away. Finally after about an hour some seats opened up and could sit down the rest of the way. About 30 min­utes before arriv­ing in Naples, the gen­tle­man across from us asked where we were from. It turns out he is a Dutch National who lived in New York (and thus had a very odd accent, kind of like a New York British thing) and was going to visit his daugh­ter who lived on Capri.

Get­ting off the train at around 7:30pm, we saw that Naples lived up to its rep­u­ta­tion. It was busy, dirty, and dri­vers gen­er­ally ignored cross­walks and traf­fic sig­nals. Luck­ily the hotel wasn’t too hard to find, and we dropped off our stuff before decid­ing to go to arguably the best pizza place in the world: Pizze­ria da Michele.

Wait­ing out­side for about an hour to get a table, we were put in a table with 8 peo­ple. Next to us was an older cou­ple who we spoke with in Ital­ian and found out that they were Napoli locals. The other side was a well dressed cou­ple of 35 or so. The place was unas­sum­ing, packed, and the ovens were right next to the tables. There were two choices of pizza: mari­nara or margherita, and they were four dol­lars each. Grab­bing one of each types and some beer, we quickly got the pizza.

The thing is, that we didn’t real­ize eat­ing pizza was actu­ally a race. The older cou­ple to the next of us basi­cally attacked their pies and fin­ished them before we had a slice each. Every­one around us was just scarf­ing this pizza. And we could see why, the food was amaz­ing. The dough was very thin, the sauce fresh and fla­vor­ful, the crust slightly burned, and cheese lightly sprin­kled on top. Com­ing to only (!) 11 euro com­bined, we exited this eatery with delighted taste buds and full stomachs.

Man­ag­ing to nav­i­gate the rough streets of Naples once again, we went to bed pretty early so we could wake up early and catch the 8am bus to Agerola so we could arrive quite early at the coast.

Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 18^th, 2009

Wak­ing up at 6:15 and out of the hotel at 7:00, we went down to the port where the SITA bus stop was marked on the sched­ule we had and on her tour­book. The only prob­lem is, we couldn’t find it. Wan­der­ing all around the ferry dock and port, we even­tu­ally took a long walk to another trans­port hub where we asked a group of Napoliese where the bus sta­tion was. They didn’t know, and didn’t speak Eng­lish, and we couldn’t con­vey what we were try­ing to find that well with my Ital­ian skills.

They were talk­ing loudly, as peo­ple of Naples tend to do, and started yelling at a port police offi­cer if he spoke Eng­lish. He waved us over, and we had a very excitable con­ver­sa­tion (for you see, they can never have a con­ver­sa­tion at nor­mal vol­ume, it must be loud and pas­sion­ate) before he pointed us to where the sta­tion was—the place we were just at. We began the long walk back, and were start­ing to get wor­ried about time. Find­ing the “Red” build­ing he men­tioned, we once again asked some­one where the SITA sta­tion was. He pointed us down the road even fur­ther, with 10 min­utes to go. We saw the small SITA sign and just started run­ning flat out with our back­packs and weight fly­ing behind us. Rush­ing into the ticket sta­tion at 7:57, we grabbed two tick­ets and got on the bus with a minute to spare.

This bus was quite the trip. Two hours of going through windy one and a half lane roads on the side of cliffs, we were treated with the beep­BEEP­beep of the bus horn every time he went around a blind cor­ner at blind­ing (bad pun, sorry) speed. Some­one man­ag­ing to sur­vive, we arrived in the lit­tle town of Agerola at 10:00, and found our hotel at 10:15. Perched on a cliff about 1km above sea level, the view was incred­i­ble, and the fam­ily who ran it gave us orange juice on their porch while we sur­veyed the scene.

Drop­ping off our stuff in the room, we took a bus down to Amalfi after an hour-long nap. This bus was was much like the other one, but instead of going some­where at the same ele­va­tion, this bus basi­cally went down switch­backs for an hour before deposit­ing us at Amalfi. We wan­dered around through this town and the one imme­di­ately next to it along the coast, and we got a tuna sand­wich (Ital­ian style) before set­tling down at the beach for some swim­ming and soak­ing up some sun.

Sat­is­fy­ing our sun absorp­tion quo­tas, we went to the Cathe­dral and main Piazza at Amalfi and did some shop­ping and wan­der­ing around in the small side streets and stair­ways that char­ac­ter­ized this coast. We also saw a Cara­binieri (mil­i­tary police and main police force of Italy) heli­copter drop off some hot­shot 30-something offi­cer, who wan­dered around town being awesome.

Tak­ing the last bus back to Agerola, we barely got a place to sit on the bus. Then we watched some Flight of the Con­chords before going to bed early.

Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 19^th, 2009

Wak­ing up at 3am to the sound of what was very much like I imag­ined what 2000 frog-lungfish hybrid crea­tures would make, we slept in until 9(!) before head­ing down to the recep­tion at the hotel to see if we could stay another night. After get­ting a pos­i­tive answer, we took the bus to Amalfi and then took another short bus to a nearby town to begin the 6 hour hike called “Path­way of the Gods.” We started at the oppo­site end that most peo­ple rec­om­mend because we wanted to end up in Pos­tiano at the end of the trip. Find­ing a (poor) map of the area and then going straight up for about an hour in rough-hewn stone steps, it was very much a hot and sweaty expe­ri­ence. We quickly drained 2 liters of water, and were start­ing to worry until we found a god­send: a cold water faucet. Occa­sion­ally by the trail were houses and small ter­raced farms built into the side of the hills, and this was one of theirs. Get­ting our heads wet and quickly hydrat­ing with mas­sive amounts of water, we tried to find out where we were. After quite a while of con­tem­plat­ing about it, Rachel had the idea of using my com­pass, the map, and the monastery that we could see to try and see what par­al­lel we were on.

Luck­ily this worked, and after another half an hour of just walk­ing basi­cally straight up, we hit the main trail and started walk­ing along an amaz­ing land­scape of water, farms, and aban­doned stone houses. Often it reminded me of a scene from Lord of the Rings. It was sim­ply amaz­ing, and there were lit­tle lizards every­where. We met about 6 other peo­ple dur­ing the entire time at the trail, and had lunch sit­ting out­side an aban­doned stone farm­house over­look­ing the towns to the east and west of us while soak­ing in the sea meet­ing the sky directly ahead.

After another hour or two, we hit Nocelle—which was a small town that was perched over a cliff and was accessed by a stair­case down to Pos­tiano boast­ing 1,700 indi­vid­ual stairs. Mak­ing this long descent, we hit the “jewel of the coast.” Pos­tiano was even cooler than Amalfi, and was even more of a ver­ti­cal city marked by a huge cliff split­ting the town into two. After some addi­tional shop­ping and soak­ing in the city, we went to din­ner in a place that was (sur­prise) perched over a cliff. I had Gnoc­chi with Tomato sauce and Moz­zarella (a local dish), while Rachel had “Frutti di Mare Mista” (Mixed Seafood). The gnoc­chi was excep­tional, and the seafood was pretty inter­est­ing. I caught Rachel star­ing at her food with a weird face, and she said it was like she was get­ting an aller­gic reac­tion. She’s aller­gic to peanuts, and her mouth was sud­denly dry like a reac­tion was occur­ring, even though it didn’t taste like peanuts.

I tasted the fish to see if I could taste any peanuts, and the same thing hap­pened to me! We fig­ure it was some weird spice that caused this effect. Luck­ily nobody was going to the hos­pi­tal, and we then semi-fled to the last bus to Amalfi. On the way there, the beau­ti­ful day started to turn very rainy, in a hurry. It went from sunny to absolutely pour­ing in 5 min­utes, with the sky cov­ered in cloud-cloud light­ning. We could actu­ally see a fast mov­ing thun­der­head surg­ing ver­ti­cally into the sky. Unfor­tu­nately, the bus “shel­ter” could actu­ally fit about two peo­ple, and we didn’t bring any rain coats or jack­ets. Hud­dling under a tree, we waited while soak­ing wet for the bus to finally arrive. Hop­ping on, we thought things were look­ing up.

Then the retards from the Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary behind us opened their mouths. They were every stereo­type we hoped to avoid while in Italy: they were loud, obnox­ious, drunk, South­ern, didn’t speak or try to speak in Ital­ian, and talked about very inap­pro­pri­ate top­ics on the bus. Loudly. It seemed that their idea of Italy was that since every­one was being quiet on the bus, they should talk as loudly as pos­si­ble about what­ever stu­pid topic they could think of. We slunk into our seats, embar­rassed, and decided that if any­one asked, we were from Vic­to­ria, British Columbia.

The “Amer­i­cans” finally stum­bled off the bus and we ended up in Amalfi in the midst of what I didn’t think was pos­si­ble: a harder rain than the one we left 30 min­utes ago. Hid­ing in a bus shel­ter, we were try­ing to fig­ure out what bus was going to our town. The issue is that SITA (the tran­sit author­ity), ran­domly had buses arrive, and usu­ally didn’t bother chang­ing their des­ti­na­tion signs. There were no route num­bers, and a bus arriv­ing from one place is prob­a­bly going to start a route to a com­pletely other town. We had to wan­der around look­ing at small hand writ­ten signs in the win­dows of very mod­ern buses to finally find our bus. And by wan­der around I meant dart­ing out from the tent we were hid­ing under and get­ting soaked in the process.

Then the “Amer­i­cans” got on again. It turns out that they didn’t know where the tran­sit hub was and just got off at some bar to drink more before wan­der­ing back onto our bus. This time it was dif­fer­ent: they brought open beers with them this time! Con­vers­ing about what to do with their now passed-out friend and drink­ing more, they said only one word in Ital­ian: where they were going. Finally the bus dri­ver just opened the doors and said “Bomoro” (their stop), and they shuf­fled off the bus. The next morn­ing I saw where we stopped, and it was about a km from their actual stop. Turns out Ital­ians don’t take crap from nobody.

Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 20^th, 2009

Since we had an extra day, we decided to go to Pom­peii. The only issue was that in order to get there, we had to wake up at 5:15am to catch the 6:00 bus from Agerola to Amalfi. This ride was basi­cally empty, and we enjoyed the sun­rise over Amalfi for 5 min­utes before get­ting on the 90 minute bus­ride to Salerno before grab­bing some cof­fee at a local bar and then get­ting bus tick­ets for the two hour ride to Pompeii.

Wind­ing through small towns, we finally arrived at 11:00am to Pom­peii and entered the oft-cited ruins. They did not dis­ap­point. With Vesu­vius in the back­ground, we began to explore this ruined city. The site was larger than I had imag­ined, and the ruins were well restored and exca­vated. We went around for a few hours before get­ting rather bored with the ruins and fig­ured out how to get back to Naples.

Tak­ing a small local train to Naples, we booked two seats on the faster Inter­city Train to Roma. After an air-conditioned two hour ride in com­fort, we made it in Rome at 5:30pm. Grab­bing some food to eat and rest­ing for a few min­utes (remem­ber that we were up since 5am) we left at 7:15 for the A.S. Roma game. Tak­ing a very crowded and typ­i­cal Roman bus, we arrived at the sta­dium at around 8:20 or so. The police were out in force, and they didn’t check our bags or do any screen­ing of any sort. This will be impor­tant in a lit­tle bit.

Find­ing out that our seats were taken by some other very cranky Ital­ians, we grabbed some empty seats nearby and were in the midst of a Roman foot­ball match. After the first Roma goal, there was a large BANG in the empty sec­tion next to us. Then another BANG BANG BANG. Nobody seemed that con­cerned that some­one was throw­ing very loud fire­works into this sec­tion, and then all hell broke loose.

This empty sec­tion sud­denly flooded with fans, scram­bling like mon­keys over the bar­ri­ers and fill­ing the seats almost instan­ta­neously. They all brought scarves, ban­ners, and lots and lots of flares and fire­works. Imme­di­ately begin­ning to sing loudly, these fans used the explo­sives to “dis­tract” the guards while they bum-rushed the gate and thus got free admis­sion into the game.

The guards (and there were a lot) stayed out of the sec­tion as the party went on with flares aplenty. From what a guy in our pro­gram says, Euro­peans will occa­sion­ally do this for matches they want to go to. The secu­rity peo­ple don’t care too much because they are a loud fan sec­tion, and the explo­sives, while being very loud, were not very “dan­ger­ous.” The fire­fight­ers (yes, there were 4 of them at each cor­ner of the pitch), were uncon­cerned with all of this. After such a unique expe­ri­ence and A. S. Roma win­ning 3–1, we all waited to see what the loud and explosive-ridden fan sec­tion next to ours was going to do at the end of the game.

They just left. My the­ory is that if they were rowdy, secu­rity would try harder to keep them out and it would be bad news bears for every­one. We rushed out to catch a bus back, and when it arrived, we saw one of our pro­fes­sors from the pro­gram, who told us to “rush the bus.” Cram­ming the bus to the max, the doors were open for per­haps 20 sec­onds before we were on our way. Rachel and I were in the way back of the bus while two 16 year olds were sit­ting above us on the engine compartment.

Then the camp bus sim­u­la­tion began. The entire bus broke out in Roma vic­tory songs and chants, and it was like this for the entire ride back to our stop.

Get­ting back, I checked my long-ignored e-mail before get­ting to bed. The best we could fig­ure is that we took 8 dif­fer­ent pub­lic tran­sit trips in 20 hours.

Pho­tos

Mon­day, Sep­tem­ber 14^th, 2009

This was the first class with Pro­fes­sor Lovell, who is a pretty neat guy that has a snarky sense of humor, a love of all things Supreme Court, and vaguely looks like me. After class was our first inter­view for the group project. After class we talked with an Ital­ian blog­ger and jour­nal­ist who was also involved in the Open Source Move­ment. A few hours later we were fin­ished and went off our sep­a­rate ways. This day also marked the arrival of rain show­ers in Rome. When I heard this thun­der­storm out­side while I was study­ing in the library, there was lit­tle choice but to run back to my apart­ment, throw on a coat, and wan­der around get­ting soaked.

Later that night a group of us went down to see the Colos­seum again at night, but this time the place was cov­ered in rain and mois­ture! When we got back I fin­ished up my response paper for class on Wednesday—we were dis­cussing inter­net and employ­ment law.

Tues­day, Sep­tem­ber 15^th, 2009

After a typ­i­cal class with Pro­fes­sor McCann, we had our sec­ond interview—this time with a cor­po­rate attor­ney for debt col­lec­tors regard­ing the pro­tec­tion of data pri­vacy and other related mat­ters. His view­point was very procedural—as one would expect a civil lawyer’s view to be—but we still got a lot out of his view­point. It was rain­ing basi­cally all after­noon, so we stayed indoors and had a calm night.

Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 16^th, 2009

This was by far the busiest day for me in the pro­gram. I woke up early to pre­pare for class that day, and then after class had to run to the A. S. Roma ticket office next to the Pan­theon to get tick­ets for the Foot­ball (Soc­cer) game on Sun­day. Then I had to run back to lead my group to our third inter­view at the Guar­ante, which is an Ital­ian gov­ern­men­tal orga­ni­za­tion set up to pro­tect the use of pri­vate data. The inter­view was a mix between very grand ideas from the upper man­age­ment, the real­ity from the case work­ers, and dot­ted with opti­mism for the future from every­one. As an added bonus we got free but­tons, stick­ers, and base­ball hats from the place.

After this long tour/interview, we briefly hit up a gelato place before rush­ing back to another lec­ture at 5:00pm about Italy and the death penalty. Finally after this two hour lec­ture and dis­cus­sion, Rachel and I fled up to the stu­dent lounge to quickly write our response papers for the next class. Finally after all of this, we went to grab a quick din­ner before watch­ing some of The Dark Knight before sleep­ing a very well-earned rest.

Thurs­day, Sep­tem­ber 17^th, 2009

This was the sec­ond class in two days where I had a response paper due, and things went well (I think). We were try­ing to plan out what to do with our last week­end in Italy, and this was the “free” week­end where noth­ing else was planned with the pro­gram. Quickly read­ing Rachel’s tour book in class, we had our respec­tive group meet­ings after class before going to the library to try and fig­ure out where to go. After quite some time, we decided to take a regional train to Napoli (Naples), stay in a hotel right next to the trian sta­tion, and then wake up early the next morn­ing to go and stay at the Amalfi Coast.

Quickly pack­ing and rush­ing to the train sta­tion after miss­ing the first bus, we man­aged to get to the trian with 5 min­utes to spare. The only prob­lem is that with a regional train (the “slow­est”, cheap­est class), is that you can­not reserve seats, and they don’t limit the num­ber of peo­ple who can board. So we ended up stand­ing in the cause­way between cars with about 10 other peo­ple, sweat­ing away. Finally after about an hour some seats opened up and could sit down the rest of the way. About 30 min­utes before arriv­ing in Naples, the gen­tle­man across from us asked where we were from. It turns out he is a Dutch National who lived in New York (and thus had a very odd accent, kind of like a New York British thing) and was going to visit his daugh­ter who lived on Capri.

Get­ting off the train at around 7:30pm, we saw that Naples lived up to its rep­u­ta­tion. It was busy, dirty, and dri­vers gen­er­ally ignored cross­walks and traf­fic sig­nals. Luck­ily the hotel wasn’t too hard to find, and we dropped off our stuff before decid­ing to go to arguably the best pizza place in the world: Pizze­ria da Michele.

Wait­ing out­side for about an hour to get a table, we were put in a table with 8 peo­ple. Next to us was an older cou­ple who we spoke with in Ital­ian and found out that they were Napoli locals. The other side was a well dressed cou­ple of 35 or so. The place was unas­sum­ing, packed, and the ovens were right next to the tables. There were two choices of pizza: mari­nara or margherita, and they were four dol­lars each. Grab­bing one of each types and some beer, we quickly got the pizza.

The thing is, that we didn’t real­ize eat­ing pizza was actu­ally a race. The older cou­ple to the next of us basi­cally attacked their pies and fin­ished them before we had a slice each. Every­one around us was just scarf­ing this pizza. And we could see why, the food was amaz­ing. The dough was very thin, the sauce fresh and fla­vor­ful, the crust slightly burned, and cheese lightly sprin­kled on top. Com­ing to only (!) 11 euro com­bined, we exited this eatery with delighted taste buds and full stomachs.

Man­ag­ing to nav­i­gate the rough streets of Naples once again, we went to bed pretty early so we could wake up early and catch the 8am bus to Agerola so we could arrive quite early at the coast.

Fri­day, Sep­tem­ber 18^th, 2009

Wak­ing up at 6:15 and out of the hotel at 7:00, we went down to the port where the SITA bus stop was marked on the sched­ule we had and on her tour­book. The only prob­lem is, we couldn’t find it. Wan­der­ing all around the ferry dock and port, we even­tu­ally took a long walk to another trans­port hub where we asked a group of Napoliese where the bus sta­tion was. They didn’t know, and didn’t speak Eng­lish, and we couldn’t con­vey what we were try­ing to find that well with my Ital­ian skills.

They were talk­ing loudly, as peo­ple of Naples tend to do, and started yelling at a port police offi­cer if he spoke Eng­lish. He waved us over, and we had a very excitable con­ver­sa­tion (for you see, they can never have a con­ver­sa­tion at nor­mal vol­ume, it must be loud and pas­sion­ate) before he pointed us to where the sta­tion was—the place we were just at. We began the long walk back, and were start­ing to get wor­ried about time. Find­ing the “Red” build­ing he men­tioned, we once again asked some­one where the SITA sta­tion was. He pointed us down the road even fur­ther, with 10 min­utes to go. We saw the small SITA sign and just started run­ning flat out with our back­packs and weight fly­ing behind us. Rush­ing into the ticket sta­tion at 7:57, we grabbed two tick­ets and got on the bus with a minute to spare.

This bus was quite the trip. Two hours of going through windy one and a half lane roads on the side of cliffs, we were treated with the beep­BEEP­beep of the bus horn every time he went around a blind cor­ner at blind­ing (bad pun, sorry) speed. Some­one man­ag­ing to sur­vive, we arrived in the lit­tle town of Agerola at 10:00, and found our hotel at 10:15. Perched on a cliff about 1km above sea level, the view was incred­i­ble, and the fam­ily who ran it gave us orange juice on their porch while we sur­veyed the scene.

Drop­ping off our stuff in the room, we took a bus down to Amalfi after an hour-long nap. This bus was was much like the other one, but instead of going some­where at the same ele­va­tion, this bus basi­cally went down switch­backs for an hour before deposit­ing us at Amalfi. We wan­dered around through this town and the one imme­di­ately next to it along the coast, and we got a tuna sand­wich (Ital­ian style) before set­tling down at the beach for some swim­ming and soak­ing up some sun.

Sat­is­fy­ing our sun absorp­tion quo­tas, we went to the Cathe­dral and main Piazza at Amalfi and did some shop­ping and wan­der­ing around in the small side streets and stair­ways that char­ac­ter­ized this coast. We also saw a Cara­binieri (mil­i­tary police and main police force of Italy) heli­copter drop off some hot­shot 30-something offi­cer, who wan­dered around town being awesome.

Tak­ing the last bus back to Agerola, we barely got a place to sit on the bus. Then we watched some Flight of the Con­chords before going to bed early.

Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 19^th, 2009

Wak­ing up at 3am to the sound of what was very much like I imag­ined what 2000 frog-lungfish hybrid crea­tures would make, we slept in until 9(!) before head­ing down to the recep­tion at the hotel to see if we could stay another night. After get­ting a pos­i­tive answer, we took the bus to Amalfi and then took another short bus to a nearby town to begin the 6 hour hike called “Path­way of the Gods.” We started at the oppo­site end that most peo­ple rec­om­mend because we wanted to end up in Pos­tiano at the end of the trip. Find­ing a (poor) map of the area and then going straight up for about an hour in rough-hewn stone steps, it was very much a hot and sweaty expe­ri­ence. We quickly drained 2 liters of water, and were start­ing to worry until we found a god­send: a cold water faucet. Occa­sion­ally by the trail were houses and small ter­raced farms built into the side of the hills, and this was one of theirs. Get­ting our heads wet and quickly hydrat­ing with mas­sive amounts of water, we tried to find out where we were. After quite a while of con­tem­plat­ing about it, Rachel had the idea of using my com­pass, the map, and the monastery that we could see to try and see what par­al­lel we were on.

Luck­ily this worked, and after another half an hour of just walk­ing basi­cally straight up, we hit the main trail and started walk­ing along an amaz­ing land­scape of water, farms, and aban­doned stone houses. Often it reminded me of a scene from Lord of the Rings. It was sim­ply amaz­ing, and there were lit­tle lizards every­where. We met about 6 other peo­ple dur­ing the entire time at the trail, and had lunch sit­ting out­side an aban­doned stone farm­house over­look­ing the towns to the east and west of us while soak­ing in the sea meet­ing the sky directly ahead.

After another hour or two, we hit Nocelle—which was a small town that was perched over a cliff and was accessed by a stair­case down to Pos­tiano boast­ing 1,700 indi­vid­ual stairs. Mak­ing this long descent, we hit the “jewel of the coast.” Pos­tiano was even cooler than Amalfi, and was even more of a ver­ti­cal city marked by a huge cliff split­ting the town into two. After some addi­tional shop­ping and soak­ing in the city, we went to din­ner in a place that was (sur­prise) perched over a cliff. I had Gnoc­chi with Tomato sauce and Moz­zarella (a local dish), while Rachel had “Frutti di Mare Mista” (Mixed Seafood). The gnoc­chi was excep­tional, and the seafood was pretty inter­est­ing. I caught Rachel star­ing at her food with a weird face, and she said it was like she was get­ting an aller­gic reac­tion. She’s aller­gic to peanuts, and her mouth was sud­denly dry like a reac­tion was occur­ring, even though it didn’t taste like peanuts.

I tasted the fish to see if I could taste any peanuts, and the same thing hap­pened to me! We fig­ure it was some weird spice that caused this effect. Luck­ily nobody was going to the hos­pi­tal, and we then semi-fled to the last bus to Amalfi. On the way there, the beau­ti­ful day started to turn very rainy, in a hurry. It went from sunny to absolutely pour­ing in 5 min­utes, with the sky cov­ered in cloud-cloud light­ning. We could actu­ally see a fast mov­ing thun­der­head surg­ing ver­ti­cally into the sky. Unfor­tu­nately, the bus “shel­ter” could actu­ally fit about two peo­ple, and we didn’t bring any rain coats or jack­ets. Hud­dling under a tree, we waited while soak­ing wet for the bus to finally arrive. Hop­ping on, we thought things were look­ing up.

Then the retards from the Amer­i­can Mil­i­tary behind us opened their mouths. They were every stereo­type we hoped to avoid while in Italy: they were loud, obnox­ious, drunk, South­ern, didn’t speak or try to speak in Ital­ian, and talked about very inap­pro­pri­ate top­ics on the bus. Loudly. It seemed that their idea of Italy was that since every­one was being quiet on the bus, they should talk as loudly as pos­si­ble about what­ever stu­pid topic they could think of. We slunk into our seats, embar­rassed, and decided that if any­one asked, we were from Vic­to­ria, British Columbia.

The “Amer­i­cans” finally stum­bled off the bus and we ended up in Amalfi in the midst of what I didn’t think was pos­si­ble: a harder rain than the one we left 30 min­utes ago. Hid­ing in a bus shel­ter, we were try­ing to fig­ure out what bus was going to our town. The issue is that SITA (the tran­sit author­ity), ran­domly had buses arrive, and usu­ally didn’t bother chang­ing their des­ti­na­tion signs. There were no route num­bers, and a bus arriv­ing from one place is prob­a­bly going to start a route to a com­pletely other town. We had to wan­der around look­ing at small hand writ­ten signs in the win­dows of very mod­ern buses to finally find our bus. And by wan­der around I meant dart­ing out from the tent we were hid­ing under and get­ting soaked in the process.

Then the “Amer­i­cans” got on again. It turns out that they didn’t know where the tran­sit hub was and just got off at some bar to drink more before wan­der­ing back onto our bus. This time it was dif­fer­ent: they brought open beers with them this time! Con­vers­ing about what to do with their now passed-out friend and drink­ing more, they said only one word in Ital­ian: where they were going. Finally the bus dri­ver just opened the doors and said “Bomoro” (their stop), and they shuf­fled off the bus. The next morn­ing I saw where we stopped, and it was about a km from their actual stop. Turns out Ital­ians don’t take crap from nobody.

Sun­day, Sep­tem­ber 20^th, 2009

Since we had an extra day, we decided to go to Pom­peii. The only issue was that in order to get there, we had to wake up at 5:15am to catch the 6:00 bus from Agerola to Amalfi. This ride was basi­cally empty, and we enjoyed the sun­rise over Amalfi for 5 min­utes before get­ting on the 90 minute bus­ride to Salerno before grab­bing some cof­fee at a local bar and then get­ting bus tick­ets for the two hour ride to Pompeii.

Wind­ing through small towns, we finally arrived at 11:00am to Pom­peii and entered the oft-cited ruins. They did not dis­ap­point. With Vesu­vius in the back­ground, we began to explore this ruined city. The site was larger than I had imag­ined, and the ruins were well restored and exca­vated. We went around for a few hours before get­ting rather bored with the ruins and fig­ured out how to get back to Naples.

Tak­ing a small local train to Naples, we booked two seats on the faster Inter­city Train to Roma. After an air-conditioned two hour ride in com­fort, we made it in Rome at 5:30pm. I’m pretty sure we got the last two seats on the Train, as we were in the way back in the mid­dle seats. Grab­bing some food to eat and rest­ing for a few min­utes (remem­ber that we were up since 5am) we left at 7:15 for the A.S. Roma game. Tak­ing a very crowded and typ­i­cal Roman bus, we arrived at the sta­dium at around 8:20 or so. The police were out in force, and they didn’t check our bags or do any screen­ing of any sort. This will be impor­tant in a lit­tle bit.

Find­ing out that our seats were taken by some other very cranky Ital­ians, we grabbed some empty seats nearby and were in the midst of a Roman foot­ball match. After the first Roma goal, there was a large BANG in the empty sec­tion next to us. Then another BANG BANG BANG. Nobody seemed that con­cerned that some­one was throw­ing very loud fire­works into this sec­tion, and then all hell broke loose.

This empty sec­tion sud­denly flooded with fans, scram­bling like mon­keys over the bar­ri­ers and fill­ing the seats almost instan­ta­neously. They all brought scarves, ban­ners, and lots and lots of flares and fire­works. Imme­di­ately begin­ning to sing loudly, these fans used the explo­sives to “dis­tract” the guards while they bum-rushed the gate and thus got free admis­sion into the game.

The guards (and there were a lot) stayed out of the sec­tion as the party went on with flares aplenty. From what a guy in our pro­gram says, Euro­peans will occa­sion­ally do this for matches they want to go to. The secu­rity peo­ple don’t care too much because they are a loud fan sec­tion, and the explo­sives, while being very loud, were not very “dan­ger­ous.” The fire­fight­ers (yes, there were 4 of them at each cor­ner of the pitch), were uncon­cerned with all of this. After such a unique expe­ri­ence and A. S. Roma win­ning 3–1, we all waited to see what the loud and explosive-ridden fan sec­tion next to ours was going to do at the end of the game.

They just left. My the­ory is that if they were rowdy, secu­rity would try harder to keep them out and it would be bad news bears for every­one. We rushed out to catch a bus back, and when it arrived, we saw one of our pro­fes­sors from the pro­gram, who told us to “rush the bus.” Cram­ming the bus to the max, the doors were open for per­haps 20 sec­onds before we were on our way. Rachel and I were in the way back of the bus while two 16 year olds were sit­ting above us on the engine compartment.

Then the camp bus sim­u­la­tion began. The entire bus broke out in Roma vic­tory songs and chants, and it was like this for the entire ride back to our stop.

Get­ting back, I checked my long-ignored e-mail before get­ting to bed.

Pho­tos:

Regard­ing pho­tos, I don’t have time to process all of them right now. Any that haven’t been posted yet (and it’s been a while), I will post when I get to my apart­ment in Seat­tle where I have a proper com­puter set up to deal with them. :)