If, as I mentioned in my last post, it's truly difficult to "do it right" when taking a weekend excursion to Paris, then I would imagine that it's nearly impossible in Naples. For one thing, it's not a very well-known city outside of Italy and very few of the people speak English (or Spanish, for that matter). For another, it's impenetrably chaotic and tough to navigate, with people driving through the narrowest streets at the fastest speeds that I've seen since I went to Tehran when I was ten - when Mexico seems tame by comparison you know you're seeing true insanity. However, all that being said, thanks to my immensely cool roommate Andrea, I was able to fully experience one of the most wonderful cities I've ever stumbled upon, Barcelona included. Actually, I probably loved Naples so thoroughly, at least in part, because it resembles Barcelona. Like Cataluña's crown jewel, Naples is situated on the Mediterranean coast and is absolutely-stuffed with people, many of them left-leaning students who like to congregate after hours in the many bustling plazas that make up its historic center. In addition, Naples has a strong regional identity apart from (and in many ways, in opposition to) it's parent country, which is reflected in the strong regional dialect of the Italian language called "Napolitani"(?) - which, coincidentally, strongly resembles Catalan in both its vocabulary and pronunciation. If Barcelona is best personified as a whimsical art-school dropout, Naples could be its brash prankster of a little brother.
But as I indicated above, the biggest reason for my immense enjoyment of this metropolis of good vibes was that I got to spend it with friendly locals who showed me all the gorgeous sites and fed me their incredible cuisine for free. And what incredible cuisine it was: after all, Naples is the city that first spawned what we Americans cynically call pizza, although what we refer to as such has about as much in common with the original as it does to taco salad. As Andrea told me (with no shortage of his overflowing hometown pride), even the "pizza" in Rome has no right to bare that title, because everything from the method of baking it to the air and water that go into the dough make pizza a uniquely Napolitani invention. And you know what? The dude is completely right. As you can tell from the picture above, the pizza in Naples is thin, with smoky, over-toasted crust, and features far more tomatoes (and other vegetables) than fatty cheese. Not only that, but you can get a large one at any of the famous pizzarias there for about three euros, which isn't even enough to buy McDonald's in Barcelona. Add that to all the wonderful pasta they eat for *every* *friggin* meal, I'm truly shocked that everyone in Naples isn't grotesquely fat.
But the wonderful thing about food culture in Naples is that although everyone loves to eat well, they also love to cook well, which isn't always the same thing. Andrea, a professional chef in his own right, brought us to a party thrown in his honor where ten of his friends - girls and guys alike - contributed to own of the best feasts I'll likely ever take part in. Smiling dark-eyed Italian girls laughed and sipped wine while they crushed walnuts to throw into the salad. Pepe, Andrea's best friend, grinned at me mischievously as he marinated pumpkins for a truly succulent pasta sauce. I had previously thought of dinner parties as solely a right of passage into boring twenty-something-dum, but Italians have got that one figured out: you drink plenty of wine, yes, but you never get too drunk because every second someone's handing you a new dish that makes you thankful for being born. Seriously, I don't know what life of good deeds I've led to deserve all of this good karma, but I lived like a King for this past weekend, and - unlike Paris - I (almost) didn't want to leave.
It helped immensely that Andrea has a host of interesting and hilarious friends who talked to me drunkenly about everything from the insurmountable greatness of the British post-punk band Joy Division to the moral relevancy of French social theorist Michel Foucault. Chalk it up to whatever you want - being close-minded, watching too much of the Sopranos, whatever - but I had never imagined that I could meet so many Italian dudes with the same exact passions and world view that I have, and that revelation was inspiring. This was embodied perfectly in the universal reaction I received from everyone in Naples once they discovered I was from America: "You're from America? Obama! Yes-We-Can!" It as if, by sheer virtue of our electing a black man to the presidency, the United States had become an ahead-of-the-curve symbol of hope and optimism instead of the last, worst world-empire. In the packed plaza we stopped by every night next to the city's main university, complete strangers overheard my accent and couldn't wait to congratulate me on my country's achievement, and for the first time in maybe my entire life, I felt a genuine pride to be American. I was afraid that my being out of the country had robbed me of the chance to witness what was surely a triumphant and cathartic moment, but - thanks to modern mass communications, I guess - it felt even more special to me because I got to see the universal joy and admiration it inspired in nations that used to strongly resent the United States.
