Naples Stinks + Ma che vuoi?

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Naples has a trash problem. Check out this video for proof.

In other news, I haven't given up on the blog, but school and work continue to dominate my weeks (which, coincidentally, have been flying by). We recently enjoyed an Easter break trip to Prague, Vienna, and Budapest, but I was teaching again within 3 hours of landing in Naples. Additionally, last night marked the start of summer classes, which will keep me up until 4 AM every Monday until August.

Life is busy but good, and I am reminded almost daily of how Neapolitan I've become. Example: just the other day I had a brief altercation with a taxi driver who had just about run me over. Granted, I was taking my sweet time to cross, but only because I was following the Neapolitan custom of, well, taking your sweet time. My Americanness would be totally out of the bag if I ran to avoid traffic. Hurrying--even in the face of oncoming traffic--just isn't done here. Non si fa.

Anyway, he honked, so I turned around nonchalantly and gave him a little of this:



I keep meaning to write a post about Italian hand gestures--Italians' body language is just so expressive--but for now I will introduce my perennial favorite, which means, "ma che vuoi?!". Translated roughly, "what the heck do you want?!"

You can't go five seconds in Naples without seeing this gesture. Just bunch up your fingers (as in the picture above), repeatedly flick your wrist back and forth, and you'll blend right in. I have a sneaking suspicion that the more slowly/deliberately you make this motion, the more offended/annoyed you are...but I haven't yet found a local to corroborate my theory.

Back to my encounter with the taxi driver: once I had had my fill of wrist-shaking, I flung my open palm back towards the street, indicating the crosswalk. In Naples, the other guy is always in the wrong. The taxi driver knew this very well, so he retorted with a fist shake of his own and a fiery "si, ma fai presto!": "Yeah, but hurry up!" (A discussion board on wordreference.com describes this phrase as "quite curt").

As he sped off into the distance crawled along with the traffic, I bitterly muttered under my breath, But I learned this from you guys! What was his big rush anyway? I had just trekked 30 minutes from my home to my first lesson of the day--sadly, it's often faster to walk than to wait on the buses. Absentmindedly, I brought my fingers together and went for a second shake of the fist.

The moral of the story is this: if I'm taking my sweet time to publish posts, it's because I've adopted the Neapolitans' deliberate pace of life. Everything else is beyond my control. I am posting once every blue moon...what more do you want? ;)