Buon Anno!

Although my memory is chiding me for waiting so long to write a New Year's post, there are some things about it we will never forget. We decided to heed the warnings of our fellow expats and make it a quiet night in. "Why?" you may ask. "What could be more romantic than enjoying a tasty Italian dinner for la Festa di San Silvestro, then heading to our choice of beautiful piazzas to view the local fireworks?"

A lot, as it turns out.

Now, before you think all of Italy goes nuts on New Year's Eve, remember that many of the idiosyncrasies mentioned in this blog are Naples-specific. At the very least, they are Italian traditions exacerbated by this passionate and headstrong community of the south. (Believe it or not, the horror stories about crazy driving and rampant theft are recounted everywhere else on the boot. On the train to Rome, a chatty Neapolitan lady told us she loved her birthplace, but was now happily living up north; at her age, she could now take Naples only in small doses. And during the return trip, a Roman couple urged us to watch our bags carefully in the station.)

So what exactly had our friends on base warned us about? Fireworks. Lots and lots and lots and LOTS of fireworks. Not only the sheer number of explosions, but also the direction in which they were shot off: did you know fireworks could very easily be launched laterally? While I'm sure Neapolitan partyers, for all their enthusiasm, don't intend any violence, there were a few deaths last year (purportedly by stray gunshots). Needless to say, we decided to admire the colorful display from afar, and celebrate from our little hotel room on base.

We did have an errand to run that afternoon, and headed into the eerily deserted town around 3 p.m. It was as if everyone was locking themselves up for safety. As we got closer to the center, we were relieved to see more people venturing out...until we noticed the frequent explosions and saw a big green splatter in the sky just a few hundred meters away. Our errand accomplished, we decided to leave the Neapolitans to their celebrating and book it back home to ours.

After a repeat session of canapés and Christmas music, news-watching and mimosas with our leftover Christmas bubbly (we're nothing if not totally wild), we retired to bed with a couple of books. Alan lasted a few minutes and I eagerly promised to wake him up for the big display. (Mind you, we had been watching and hearing explosions all evening long.) Those of you who know me well know what's coming next: two minutes later I had passed out on the pages of my gripping novel.

A few minutes before midnight, we both woke up to this:



Please forgive the quality of the video; it was taken on our digital camera, which doesn’t have too many bells and whistles for video-recording. If your volume is up, though, you will get a pretty good idea of what it was like that night. Keep in mind that (a) the hotel doesn’t have a tin roof, nor was it raining, and (b) the base is a good half-hour away from Naples. The sky was literally covered in fireworks for as far as our eyes could see; though they died down after an hour or so, the explosions kept going well into the night. (There was even the occasional stray pop-pop-pop in the days that followed.)

We can only imagine what it must be like to observe the show from an apartment within the city, and we’re looking forward to finding out at the end of 2010. We hope all of you had a wonderful start to the New Year, with as much (or as little) excitement as you wanted. Auguri!