Hi All

I got back from Italy on Friday night, i spent two weeks in Umbria teaching in a country area near Foligno and near Montefalco, Spello and Trevi, also went to Spoleto.

I was thrown into the deepend and I was teaching 6 year olds but I really enjoyed it...so that is a good sigh for the whole change in career.

So I then trained down to Rome and met the husband we spent the evening wandering around Rome to Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona and Spanish Steps very touristy but such a lovely atmosphere. I took a picture of the largest priest I have ever seen having a gelati, if I can get it off the mobile phone, I will post it.

Anyway so we got to Naples, not really knowing what to expect, the reputation of the city seems to precede it. Anyway we had a great time. There are lots of interesting things in the city to do, good food (the tomatoes and pizza are the best in the world).

A highlight wasdefinitely the San Lorenzo excavations, we did not get to the Archeological Museum as were too busy, but I am lookinf forward to it.

As with any city usual rules apply no dark alleys, dont flash your cash but those rules apply from Dublin to Darwin!

Anyway aplogies to Zidanie for not meeting for a coffee but I did not have interent access for the 2 weeks in Umbria and we kept meaning to find an internet cafe and then get distracted. But I promise we will meet up!!!

Although along with our food rule of the greyer the pistachio gelati the better it tastes we have added 1 more: If there are old men in the restaurant or cafe the better the food and coffee.

I did meet up with a TEFL teacher in Naples and she has been very supportive of my plans and the job prospects in the south.

So at the moment I am waiting to hear about another temp job in Italy and have to seriously tackle my CV in Italian and brushing up on my Italian.

So in conclusion I loved Naples and I am looking forward to having a chance to move there!!

got a job in Naples this morning. Leave next Thursday and start on the Friday.

Let the excitment begin!!!

Wow Melbournegirl, I wish it all goes very good, you're in Naples now!
And you don't seem to be affected by the cultural shock!
I miss Naples terribly, it's been a month since I last was there, but tomorrow finally I'll be back in my city
Tell me when you can meet for a talk and a coffee, I'll be in Naples also 10, 16, 21 and two more days yet to decide in September
Where are you going to sleep, which zone?
When we meet I tell you all little secrets about how to move around in Naples, how to get a good coffee and how to eat a great pizza

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Well

When I was in Umbria the teacher I was working for had a friend who used to work in Naples, now to be fair she was not that positive on Naples no transport, dirty etc etc, but she did give me the name and number of a girl she taught with in Naples.

Also we had an Italian friend in Dublin helping us with the codice fiscale (bit of translation) and he said Naples was awful, had we not seen Gommorah? That we were crazy.

So it not that we arrived to Naples with any expectations...

But we got there and as we pulled in, the first thing we noticed were the modern buildings behind Stazione Centrale which reminded me of the Central Business District in Melbourne (all that blue glass). But we jumped off and the piazza is mental as is the whole main street as there are lots of building works and new Metro stations. There were lots of hawkers selling bags etc but I have seen that everywhere, I owuld rather have someone trying to sell me a dodgy leather bag then having to resort to pick pocketing.

Anyway I met up with the teacher in Piazza Bellini and she gave me the details of the school and the owner to contact.

So I have been e-mailing him back and forth for a few months and I was bit worried about finances, but that seems to be ironed out for now and I fly to Rome next week and then catch the train down to Naples.

The school is near Salvatore Rosa around Vomero and so far we have been recommended Vomero and the University area as a place to live.

I was also pleasantly suprised by the good tranpsort that I found, I just wish the funiculars were above ground what a great view they would have.

Zidanie I would love to get your perspective as someone that studied there you would know all the cheap, student places and money will be tight for the first few months. And after seeing the pictures of your town Benevenuto (is the spelling correct?) I would love to come out by train one weekend and meet up! Let me see the lay of the land of the first week and we can set a time and place.

I have to say I liked Naples, and what I liked about it is that it really comes across as a working town and although still beautiful it is not like a film set, in the sense that it is untouched if you get what i mean. I am sure it has it's difficulties but what big city doesn't?

Also the food was fantastic and I am looking forward to learning some tricks.

So that is a quick summary.

Prologue: I don't expect anyone to read all of this, it's way too much beyond the line of TL;DR, but if someone does, correct the awful lot of mistakes I've surely done please I had to express some concept difficult to put in a language which is not yours. (And sorry for using so many Bolds and Italics and colours and fonts but it was too difficult to read without as it looked like a block of concrete, I know it's even more a mess now but the problem is that the lines are too long in this system and it makes things difficult to read with long texts)

Well Melbourne, as I said in some other threads Naples is not a city for everyone. Whoever is afraid of chaos, vitality and confusion won't feel good there, whoever loves the established way of life of modern society will feel uncomfortable.

Matter of truth Naples is one of the few places of the so-called modern civilization where you can be yourself, where you don't follow a pre-determined path, where you are not a dot in a bunch of other similar dots.

I'd call it the last fortress of living life as a pleasure, and not as secondary thing, beaten and made useless by the same grey working days.
Probably I'm biased, but once one succeeds taking its negative sides and turning them into positive ones Naples become a living dream.

I can't agree with you when you say there are the problems of all other cities, Melbournegirl, Naples is unique in the world. Its problems have always an element of exaggeration and ridiculous that renders them a bit of a challenge and a bit of a thing to laugh about. Naturally this can only happen when you're full of life and of happiness of living.


To explain I post the impressions of the first days of University in Naples:
I had never been there before except for tourism stuff (and we all know you can't get to know a city just by that), and I was with a long-time female friend of mine, we went to school together for 8 years before starting the same University.
Naturally I didn't know what to expect, only things I've heard which scared me a little, but on the other side I was so willing to get to know the city and the new life expecting me that no obstacle could have stopped me from laughing and watching it all curiously.
We were both coming from 19 quiet and quite boring years in a little town, therefore everything was pretty new to us.

As we got off the train we were astonished by the clear disorganization of the station an of Piazza Garibaldi.
It was like a dozen of retarded monkeys had scribbled on a paper, and some drunk engineer had decided to use it as a plan for the Piazza and the Station.
In this mess a thousand people moved, all kinds of people, scary ones, horrible ones, lovable ones, weird ones, lost ones. It was an extreme melting pot of lives, very different from what you meet in other cities, where there are tourists only, poor only, rich only and so on zones.
In that place being amongst hundreds of people didn't mean your personality was hidden and unimportant, you didn't become merely part of an homogeneous whole.

The amount of emotions one can prove altogether in Naples are astonishing. But especially two of them were the ones we felt that day: fear and curiosity.
The mixture of those feelings is unavoidable when you first start living Naples, and it puts you in a strange mood in which you're particularly receptive.
That said, a couple of hours in Naples can tire you much more than a whole day elsewhere, as every minute you absorb exceptional amounts of informations (in the broader meaning of the word), and a headache is just a few steps away, helped as it is by constant noises of cars, ambulances, screams and works in progress.

When your first days are over and you start getting accostumed to Naples, joy and despair replace fear and curiosity. You can bounce from an extreme to the other in a minute or less.
The contradictions of Naples and its total lack of coherence are guilty for this.
A city in which there is no border between the touristic and the poor side, in which people has no clear understanding of the concept of privacy and yet they manage to give you more respect than the indifferent average person of a normal city.
It's the only place in Europe where in case you have a big problem a dozen of people or so is suddenly around you, forgetting anything they have to do, without giving any real help, but trying as hard as they can.

After a lot of time you learn a lot of little techniques to avoid the bad sides and suck all of the good things. You learn that walking alot is necessary when you're in Naples, but the only way to enjoy it is arriving sooner, so you can walk slowly and take a coffee or a pizza everytime you want, watch weird things (there's never lack of them), try a new path (which leads to precious little discoveries).
But one learns to take Naples this way only when there is no trace of prejudices anymore, when one realizes that the bad sides witnessed everyday are simply the added ingredient which makes the cake special.

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Thanks Zidane

I am exhausted just reading that!!

I am looking forward to comparing and contrasting my experiences.

When I say the problems in Naples are no more then other countries, I suppose I am saying that from the standpoint of living in an area of dublin where you would be careful if you go out after night and some fairly dodgy things go on. For example a suspect devise was made safe at the end of our street a few weeks ago.

I must say I love walking and finding my own short cuts and I know some better shortcuts then the other half and he is a local, what stops me, doing more is the weather!

WE tookt he local train to Sorrento and that was a bit of an eye opener.

But I think as we wanted a place that was not the typical Rome, Florence, Milan I think Naples will be a great place to live.

And i look forward to you showing me a few of the sneaky ropes!

Melbourne, Congrats on your new job and move to Naples! I can't wait to read about your new experiences!

We have a program that runs here in the states called Visions of...where they use a helicopter to fly over different countries and show the cities from a much different prospective. The episode on Italy was the first time I saw the business district of Naples and couldn't believe my eyes! So metropolitian but still so European! Good Luck and Best Wishes!!!