My friends and I decided to go to Napoli. After two buses and one train, we finally arrived at Napoli la frizzante. I decided to call the city this way because I have rarely seen such a sparkling place! We didn’t have anything special planned, but each of us still had purposes. Mine was obviously food, and my friend Mariam was interested in history and museums.
I must admit that I have some problems with big international cities. I don’t like visiting places you need to pay for and selling you their vision of history. I like to get lost in the streets, meet people, choose or feel like I am choosing the places I wish to go to. We started the day with a typical Italian breakfast: a pastry and a coffee. It is not the most filling breakfast you could have, but since it is a lifestyle here, it is hard to get away from it. I am used to staying for hours in coffee shops, reading, talking, writing, and ordering drinks again and again. But Italians are acting like a coffee shop in a train station, which is pretty funny when you see how they live such a slow life. I learned here a sentence I absolutely fancy: Dolce far niente. Sweetness of doing nothing. The concept of slow living is a therapy for all souls. Starting to take time to enjoy the length of a shared meal or looking but actually looking at what is happening around you …
Napoli is loud, Napoli is diverse in its culture, art, and food. We walked almost 20 kilometers that day. I could not say which streets we went to, how much food we ate, which museum Mariam made us go into, but I can say we tried to see the maximum we could.
While walking in the Spanish quarters, I found this street painting that depicts really well what our association is trying to do. Doing your best to be independent, promote homemade over buying compulsively. It is a kind of a constant fight against the big industries that attract others into their consumer society, to try with less money to build another sense of community.
Napoli made me face how much I am used to living in a bubble. My mountain. Tramonti. Seeing so many people, so much different energy palpable in the air got me quite off guard in the beginning, but I just jumped into the common energy like I always like to do.
Written by Laura Clement