Vesuvio in the snow

It doesn't happen very often but before we headed north there had been snow falling on the top of the Vesuvio. And to my disbelief Gigi's sister has never been up the volcano...so we drove up one day and here is some of what we found...

Do plan to return shortly and do the full trek up to the crater for the tour inside. Expect it looks rather different then.

Photos from up north

Here are some photos from our week in the Friuli region, near the city of Udine, in the village of Lavariano...get out your atlas go on!

The holiday is over!

I'm not very good at individual communication at the moment due to the difficulty of getting onto the internet (have to come into the city to an internet point) and the limited time when I do (always rushing off to do other boring bureaucratic stuff when we are in the city). But rest assured that we are thinking about you (because if you are reading this blog then you are one of the lucky, invited few) and thank you for the emails, comments and updates.

Your emails remind me that life goes on, and it's a funny thing because when you are away from home it seems that the universe circles around you and your problems are the biggest and most important thing happening...when in fact most of the crap we have to overcome here is nothing in comparison to some of the problems facing friends and family. But to a happier thought I'm reminded that life goes on because friends are having babies, people are changing work, children are growing up and I believe my sister's childcare centre is even under construction.

We've just returned from an 'interesting' week up north where everything we hate about Naples gave us reason to come back to the city in the south. Decided to set up base here so this week starting to look at apartments (initially looking to share with mum and sister in law but not sure about that yet as his mum smokes and 24 yo sister is unemployed, sleeps til noon and is obsessed with cleaning...drives me nuts), buying a car and getting Gi working. He finally bought a massage table on the internet from Germany, it's a beautiful thing and I've tested it out.

What else? My italian language is improviing, so is my sex life, I've lost weight, and I'm not thinking about SDS at all until I get an email from Jennie (my replacement) asking for help about stuff I've already forgotten about (poor thing).

At the risk of insulting Gi's family who live up north, I intend to write a separate blog off line about the differences between the north and the south. The greyness up there is not only in the sky, it's on your plate and on peoples faces...but more of that later. It was however an astounding delight to become reacquainted with Gi's cousins who are now fully grown, real people with their own style, tastes and opinions....and they all love Australia and want to move to the land of Oz immediately if not sooner.

It seems that most of Italy has an crush on Australia actually because it's constantly coming up in conversations Gi has with complete strangers (yes, he and my mother are both Acquarians) even though they don't know we both hold Aussie passports. In fact when he then mentions his Australian wife we sometimes get the question "Is she really, really Australian?"....most people think I'm from Poland or Eastern Europe.

Anyway it seems that the holiday is over. We have decided to settle in Naples, so this week sees the start of the search for an apartment, car and work for Gigi. As I mentioned above. I mention it again because I'm remembering that in Brisbane we'd accomplish all of this within 2 weeks with a bit of head down and bum up, but Naples is a completely different story. So, that will no doubt provide me with plenty of fodder for further complaining over the coming weeks.

If you are sick of reading about it, just come back in 6 months when it's all settled down, and I'm pregnant and fully conversant in local dialect (just joking Mum).

Hugs and kisses to the children....love and smiles to all and sundry.
J & G

Perspective

26 Marzo 2006, Lavariano

Isn’t it funny how the behaviour of others gives you insights into your own behaviour?

Gi’s aunt has been running hold and cold for the last few days. Her children feel that it’s unusual for her to be this anxious, nervous, cranky and difficult and explain that it’s probably due to the stress of preparing to move into her new house. I can relate to that, having recently done it myself, except in reverse. Often when you move house in Italy you take the whole kitchen with you. Not just the fridge but also the cabinets, the stove etc. So Marina has been sourcing a new kitchen, white goods and furniture for the living spaces and bedrooms. The house has been painted this week, and now the gas and electricity need to be connected. I also understand that there isn’t an external telephone line so that needs to be installed.

Each time we are at the shops or supermarket she’s looking at general household items like dining utensils, ironing boards, cooking equipment etc. Effectively she’s setting up house completely from scratch…abandoning everything that she’s had for the last 25 years in the house she shared with Marco. I guess it’s about a fresh start, or part of their agreement, but it’s certainly an expensive business and she is often talking about her limited funds.

This is also the first time in 25 years that she’s had a real paying job. Marina was employed at the local post office part time for about a year, and has done a variety of volunteer work but doesn’t really have any employment history to draw upon. Not for lack of wanting to work, but more because she was never given any encouragement.

Anyway, back to the behaviour reflection thought. I know I was often difficult to spend time with during the last few weeks we were in Australia…always obsessing about moving out of the house, renting the house, selling the car, finalising the travel arrangements and organising for our affairs to be in order. And to that extent I’d like to apologise to family and friends who endured any of it.

I was thinking a couple of days ago how much I miss my network. It’s one of those things that come with being away from home, but also one of those things that fades with time. Gigi is suddenly my family, my best friend, my only friend. And while he loves having me all to himself, he also has his family and the remnants of a friendship circle in Italy (although slightly scattered these days). I recognise that with time, and an improvement in my Italian, I’ll make new friends and get to know Gi’s family better but it’s always so much harder and never quite as rewarding when it’s not in your native language, in your native culture.

Anyway, we are booked on the overnight train to Naples tonight. Escaping the dullness of this area. The organized, civilised approach to life, good driving, clean streets and quiet don’t quite compensate for the life that surrounds you in Naples, the food, the inspiration and the beauty of the city.

Permit to Stay....do you really want to?

14 March 2006

I don’t want to sound like a whinger but by the time you get to the end of this you will no doubt have formed the opinion that I am exactly that. I know Gi and I have been through this settling in process before but it doesn’t get any easier and there never seems to be a lack of problems and issues for us to overcome. If you wish to avoid the full onslaught of whinging in the extended version of the last few days finish reading now, knowing only that we are healthy, well fed, and heading north on Friday 17th for a week or so to visit Gi’s relatives near Udine.

For those that wish to feel less jealous about our decision to move to Italy and embrace la dolce vita, here it is in black and white.

It’s been a challenging week. We spent Monday 6th driving around the central business district, mostly lost, looking for the Immigration Office of the City Prefect. It seems that many of these streets have become one-way streets, and there is a great deal of work going on around the city (restoration, as the Neapolitans seem to have realised the value of their historical buildings in recent years). Gigi was struggling as we went round and round in circles looking for the office where we thought I needed to apply for my ‘Permit to Stay”. Finally we arrive, follow the signs to the first floor only to be told we need to go to another building and upstairs. We are greeted by two lovely young women who don’t even understand the statement that I already have a visa and need to apply for a “Permit to Stay”. After an hour of conversation, with one of them running back and forth to an unseen supervisor it unravels that we are in the wrong place. The young woman seated behind the big desk asks how old we think she is. I guess 23, thinking she couldn’t be that young working in such a role but that a little flattery is expected. She’s 21, and reveals that they are both on work experience and still studying 1st year language (English and Arabic) at university to eventually be interpreters. They were accepting the initial application for people seeking citizenship, mostly asylum seekers from Eastern Europe, north Africa and the Middle East. Needless to say, my Australian passport with a valid spouse visa completely threw them as it failed to comply with the routine process that they’d rote learnt from the ‘unseen supervisor’. We are advised to go to the Questura – police headquarters – and it’s only then that I remember that this is indeed the instructions detailed on a sheet of paper that the Italian Consulate in Brisbane have helpfully attached beside my visa….full points to Jenny for wasting the whole morning.

To save the day from being a complete write off we visited the famous “Veiled Christ” (ask Margaret Barea, a friend of my parents who recently claimed it was the best sculpture she’d seen and the highlight of their trip to Italy). The “Veiled Christ” is an exquisite sculpture by Guiseppe Sanmartino in Museo Cappella di San Severo, a small chapel in a side street in the historical centre that is completely unassuming from the outside. The sculpture depicts Christ after he’s been removed from the cross, with his body covered by a shroud. According to the museum’s information sheet “it is a superb play of light and shadow, death is no longer seen as a painful separation from life, but as a poetic moment”. And indeed it is.

The next two days were emotional, with tears (Gi cries at the drop of a hat…J) and I felt like I was back to being an exchange student all over again.

Tuesday we went to the Police HQ in the downtown shopping area only to arrive there and be told again (!!) that we were at the wrong office. The Police HQ Immigration Office is back near the business district, and exactly the same place where I’d applied for my Permit to Stay some 5 years ago. Gi’s mother had advised that she thought the Immigration Office had moved. In accordance with the way Naples operates, her mistaken advice had now sent us on two days of wild goose chasing.

Wednesday morning was spent at Rosa’s office organising the relevant documents. Full of confidence that finally we were going to at least submit my application we arrived at the Questura Immigration Office to be confronted with a crowd of twenty people at the door and a policeman trying to maintain some sort of order. Bypassing the crowd looking for the relevant queue we were pulled up and told to return tomorrow morning, early, as they hand out 40 tickets each morning and that’s who gets served that day. This was, in fact, the same procedure as 5 years ago, and to say I was disappointed that things hadn’t changed (read improved) would be an understatement. In an effort to make ourselves known to this police officer and ease the following morning’s distress Gi spent a few minutes confirming what time we should arrive and what documents to bring with us. After all, as I was slowly starting to rediscover, Naples is a city where you need to have contacts, connections and ‘friends’, even if it is the police officer that you met yesterday with whom you exchanged local dialect and a friendly joke.

So, Wednesday morning we are up before 6am and at the Immigration Office, in the ‘queue’ by 7am. The concept of a ‘queue’ in Naples is something of a novelty. We joined the loosely formed line that was made up of North Africans, Polish, Chinese and others. All speaking accented dialect being the only language they shared. As the hour slowly passed Gigi became increasingly confused between his learnt habit of conforming to the queue system as in Australia and his Neapolitan habit to not allow anyone else to be in a better situation than him. In fact, if there is anything that seems to be worse in Naples it’s that everyone operates solely to their individual purpose, to the detriment of others wherever it’s required. The idea of developing a ‘win win’ solution is as alien to Neapolitans as the idea of life without pizza and pasta. As Gi’s stress levels rise, and his impatience increases he starts pulling up new arrivals that try to jump into the queue. One lady in particular, well dressed but obviously not Italian, joins the queue directly in front of me and after a minute Gigi politely approaches her to tell her the end of the queue is in fact way back there. Ignoring him turns out not to be a good tactic. Turning her back to him fails to stop his questions. Eventually she explains she is there for her mother (an older lady in a fur, smaller and speaking Polish), has only this morning available to sort it out and that she has to get back to work. Most of the growing crowd confirm that they are also on their way to work and don’t want to wait any longer than necessary. His anger increases, and he continues to represent those around us protesting that she should be at the end of the queue. Gigi is not the only local loudly complaining about her behaviour. Another man, much taller and more portly than Gi is making his opinion known as well. He also continues to remind everyone that he is the fourth in the queue (no one argues with him, despite the fact that he moves in and out of the queue, first to get a coffee, then to collect a pathetic looking umbrella from his car as a light rain begins to fall). But there is no moving her, and his scowling face, shaved head, various piercings and tattoos fail to intimidate her (to her credit, this is not a city where you want to be easily intimidated).

8.10am and the outer door rolls up. To my surprise they aren’t opening the door closest to the start of the queue, but the door which is just to my left where the Polish lady has established herself next to another group of Easter European woman. The crowd jostles forward, Gigi firmly plants himself behind me and we wait. Unexpectedly one of the Eastern European women declares that she has left an important document at home and is going to relinquish her spot in the queue (now one of the top three) for the Polish woman Gi argued with earlier. I’m incredulous but the exchange happens and no further protests are made. Several minutes later the next door opens and the police officer from yesterday appears, shuffling a pile of numbered tickets. The large portly fellow appears to my right and pushes his way to the front of the group, his loud and emphatic ‘excuse me’ paving his way until he reclaims his number 4 spot. The crowd had now grown to about 80 people and with only 40 tickets available there was obviously some contest to be one of the anointed few. The pushing had started, tensions rising as we struggled to keep our places (or gain a better one) and stand firm against those surging forward. The police officer requested everyone present their passports, so I struggled to find the space to open my bag and retrieve it as opposed to closely guarding it as I’d done for the last hour. The first few went through, holding the numbered ticket like they’d won the lottery. The Polish lady suddenly found herself inside with her mother still at the back of the group attempting not to get trampled. An African gentleman (for want of a better word) who had been behind me somehow appeared directly in front of me, placing his arm down across the doorway to prevent anyone else from entering ahead of him. I was struggling to not let the pushing crowd behind me impact on those ahead, conscious that I didn’t want the police officer to think I was contributing to any of the unruly behaviour around me. I unexpectedly found myself inside, with the police officer addressing Gigi, a flash of my passport and we’d secured No 8B. Relief flooded through me, as I’d been recalling a similar experience five years earlier that had been even more uncivilised (read brutal)*.

We found ourselves a seat, the intensity of the process finally hit me and I realised I was close to tears. However, Gigi brought my attention to the fact that the African ‘gentleman’ who’d pushed his way in front of us was sitting there holding ticket No 24B. As is the way in Naples, his pushing and manipulating his way physically was no match for Gigi’s polite conversation of the previous day, making it known that he was a local and respected accordingly by the police officer.

Eventually No 8B flashed up on the screen and we entered another room; cold white tiles gleaming and empty except for two Chinese men standing at one of the service windows. Two police officers dealt with my application politely and professionally. One reviewing the paperwork we presented and the other filling in the relevant forms. My heart sank at one stage when he asked for a copy of our translated marriage certificate – the only thing I didn’t bring because the Italian Consulate in Brisbane advised us it wasn’t necessary. I was suddenly afraid that without this bit of paper my whole application would be delayed. Organising for someone to find and get our original certificate translated and sent over from Brisbane was not something I wanted to think about. He called a colleague over for consultation and (thankfully) was advised that it wasn’t necessary, as I needed to submit it as part of my visa application.

Halfway through the process a young man from the local café came in with a tray of small plastic cups covered with aluminium foil. This is the Italian style for take away coffee, except you ring up the café and they delivery it to you. Our two processing friends disappeared without any explanation for several minutes, reappearing to say they’d had to take a coffee break. Gigi laughed, and confirmed that of course that was necessary at this time of the morning, under these circumstances. Inside, I’m thinking about why couldn’t they wait til they’d finished processing my application (knowing without even asking that in Italy coffee comes before work, always, without question). They finished up the application and then sent us back into the waiting area for the second part of the process.

This next stage didn’t happen five years ago. And I’m hoping that I’ll never have to do it again either. I was called into a small room, with a slight medical/laboratory look about it. Gigi asked the man in the white coat (I’m not kidding) if he could come with me explaining that my Italian was limited (thanks Gigi, but he knows I’m shy in these circumstances, although my Italian was sufficient for what was to follow). No, I am to enter alone. So I go in, I’m asked to roll my sleeves up, and while I’m doing that he confirms that my name and details on the sheet are correct. Then he’s using a roller thing on a big wad of what looked like tar, but must have been ink. Mr White Coat then runs the roller over my finger pads on my left hand. Taking my hand, in a completely unromantic style, he guides my fingers one by one into the allocated boxes on the sheet. This is repeated for the right hand. Then to my horror he applies the ink to my whole hand, palm and all and takes a full print of both hands, and a secondary print of each thumb. I’m feeling a bit mortified, imagining what it must be like to be arrested in Italy and finger printed. God forbid a cavity search. Mr White Coat tells me to wash my hands, we’re finished, and points me in the direction of the bathroom with a very basic hand washing facility where I spend the next five minutes, and five lots of soap trying to remove the heavy black ink from my hands. I bid Mr White Coat farewell, and exit looking none the worse for wear but feeling slightly violated.

We finally leave, walking out of the waiting room full of a menagerie of people; it now being almost four hours after we first arrived. Gigi makes a point of farewelling the police officer managing the ever-present queue. It’s now a matter of waiting. The system has improved slightly in that we are requested to send a text message to a mobile phone number quoting only my application reference number. When the ‘Permit to Stay’ is ready we will receive a text advising it can be collected. It will take over 2 weeks, but honestly if I get it within a month I’ll be surprised.

But at least the application is in, and we can now move on to obsessing about something else.

* I had to apply for a Permit to Stay in July 1999 last time we came to Italy. That experience was more intimidating as I was one of only two women in the pushing, heaving crowd of men using their strength and stupidity to secure one of the 40 tickets. We’d arrived early that morning only to find that those already there had started a ‘list’ of names, which they expected, would be translated into tickets in the corresponding order. Gigi refused to participate, knowing as a local that such a system was doomed. When the doors opened and they presented the ‘list’ to the police officer he quickly reviewed it and then screwed it up, throwing it out onto the street. But the thing I remember most from that morning is feeling distressed and at risk physically. During the pushing and shoving to grab a ticket I was sexually harassed. I remember the men in the crowd rubbing up against me, stray hands finding there way to my buttocks, elbows sliding across my breasts. As seems to be the case with me I was so mortified that at the time I did nothing. But with hindsight I will be prepared to stamp my heels down and swing my elbows should I be placed in similar circumstances again.

If you made it to the end you are to be congratulated. Feel free to leave me a comment to remind me to stop complaining and just enjoy the ride...I am after all living la dolce vita.

Down in the dumps

23 March 2006, Lavariano

A strange mood has descended over the house where we are staying with Gi's aunt and family. Our invitation to stay and help with the move, and possibly stay long term seems to be waivering. The hard thing about families is that they are made up of people, and people have problems, and problems require solutions, which requires action and a change in thinking and attitude...and we seem to have fallen smack bang into the middle of some sort of vortex where everything is too hard, too much, and too overwhelming.

We were seriously considering living up here, connecting with the family, sourcing work, sliding into Italy through the Northern back door where everything functions better, things are more organised and civilised. But the signals of the last couple of days seem to be saying it's not the right place. Maybe the problem is that we have too many options! And I'm not much help, with my 'I can be, write and study the language anywhere' rhetoric whenever Gi asks for some input. But things will resolve themselves. And in the meantime we have been observing the difference in the food from Naples ...and the pizza seems to be pulling us back south again.

More photos soon.

Jenny

Supermarkets

21 Marzo 2006, Lavariano

The supermarkets in Italy are a cause for long, quiet periods of concentration. Not only am I trying to decipher the language, but also I’m unfamiliar with the brands, some of the products, the prices and the quality. Of course things are done differently in almost every country when it comes to supermarkets. Oh sure, the overall concepts are the same, that is, get a trolley or a basket, walk up and down the aisles, locate your desired items, go through the checkout (a.k.a. cashier) and pay for your items before placing them in your car.

However there are always little things that trick you up until you learn the ropes and play the game like a local.

The shopping trolleys here (and in other parts of Europe) require a coin to release them from the brotherhood, and at the end of your shopping experience you return the trolley to the brotherhood to reclaim your coin. This of course eliminates the need for the trolley boys and girls that we navigate around in the car parks at home as they push a snake of trolleys back towards the bays inside. It also stops customers from taking trolleys home, where they then end up in backyards, or abandoned in local creeks, or on street corners like sad, lonely bachelors.

Things are arranged differently at the supermarkets here. The selection of clothes, underwear, and household items is much more extensive. More like Target or Kmart but with a comprehensive selection of food as well. Of course, this being Europe you can also purchase alcoholic beverages at the supermarket. The range available will change in accordance with your location. In the north of Italy I’ve noticed a more extensive selection of beer from Germany.

There is always a huge delicatessen section with cured meats, cheeses, and antipasto. Imagine your normal deli at Coles. That alone would be half of the cheese section. This of course is in addition to the two aisles of pre-packaged cheeses. It’s hard to imagine how so much cheese gets consumed, but when you return home and look in the fridge it becomes obvious that there are at least 5 varieties in this house alone.

The fruit and vegie area is just different. Apart from the different variety of fresh product available, you put your items into a plastic bag and then take it to a weigh point where you usually (sometimes it’s staffed) have to put in the corresponding code, take the bar coded sticker, seal the bag and label it with the sticker. This means that at the checkout it just gets scanned as any other item. If you get halfway through processing your trolley load and have fruit and vegie that haven’t already been ‘tagged’ it causes real havoc. It’s a bit like being declared the dunce of the class and placed in the corner, but only more public and delivered with a look of complete incomprehension from the cashier who suddenly has to deal with your incompetence as a shopper.

The supermarket today also had little plastic gloves for shoppers to wear as they were selecting their fruit and vegies. Very hygienic and simple but I was shocked by the common sense of such an initiative. It’s ironic; this country seems to often lack common sense (from my cultural background) but it’s also full of inventions and ideas to circumnavigate problems….Naples is full of examples of this, instead of addressing the problem itself, they create a way around it.

Why do they cross the street?

20 Marzo 2006, Lavariano

Why is that when Gigi and I walk down the quiet, empty streets of the small village of Lavariano people walking towards us cross to the other side of the road?

Gi tells me it has something to do with being a stranger in such a small, close knit community, and that doing so they respectfully make it easier for us to walk in a straight path, without having to be inconvenienced by getting off the footpath. Apparently, after seeing us around a few times they’ll stop. I’m yet to be convinced.

There was no coffee in the house this afternoon (only decaf, imagine that, and this is Italy) so we ventured out for a stroll to one of the three bars in town. It’s a bit like a small town in Australia where you’ll find a post office, service station and three pubs. Anyway, we are enjoying our 30-second hit of caffeine (yep, no sitting down lingering over a cup of coffee chatting with friends for 2 hours in this country) when in walk two gentlemen. One was upstanding, stern and dressed in a sombre, black dress. The local priest, I assumed. His companion was a man of lesser stature, slightly shabby who appeared to be propped up by the priest, if not physically then at least by association, perhaps psychologically. The priest sweeps in to the café, recently renovated to a surprisingly modern décor, surveys us with surly, unwelcoming look and promptly places his order, completely ignoring our presence in the otherwise empty café. I was struck by the coolness of his assessment of us, for even in a ruthless city like Naples the locals, as strangers, greet each other with a salutation.

The bells of the local church seem to be always ringing here. In fact, Gi’s aunt said this morning that they know I’m in town and will thus make a point of tolling regularly to ‘break my balls’ (as the Italians so eloquently express it). She was joking of course, but it does seem that I’m constantly aware of the nearby clanging. I mentioned over dinner that we’d run into the local priest at the café. Gigi had completely missed that one of the gentlemen had been a priest. I’m not sure how he missed the long, black dress! I described his attire, and his facial expression to the family, and yes, they confirmed that it would have surely been the priest. After such a warm welcome I can only imagine what would happen if we turned up to mass on Sunday.

After the coffee we strolled in the direction (according to Gi’s teenage recollections) of the local water-powered mill. Gigi remembers taking the local girls to the stream beside the mill as a boy, his agenda purely focussed on stealing kisses. It’s now a local heritage site, with only one of the water wheels in operation, and not really an inspiring or particularly romantic spot. But I can see what lured the young Gigi.

Everything is a bit strange here at the moment. It’s been years since we last visited and it feels like the family I remember has been taken away by aliens and replaced by a new one. My memories of Gi’s aunt Marina are as a happy woman, light hearted, at the very centre of her young family. Marco, her husband, seemed to be conservative but interested and engaged. Caterina was a teenager, but is now 24, has moved out of home, is part of a band and lives independently. We are yet to catch up with her, as she lives in Trieste, some 1 ½ hour drive from here. Nicola was about 9 years old the last time we visited; he is now 19 and definitely a young man. Confident, finishing high school, long hair and an eagerness that is charming. The youngest, Marianna, I recall from photos we took of her as a toddler dressed in a nappy and singlet in a shopping trolley, with delightfully curly hair. Upon reflection I’m sure we must have taken photos of her on a subsequent visit when she was slightly older but the toddler photos are firmly etched into my memory bank. Marianna is 13, expressing herself through her clothes, her pale complexion offset by a mass of dark thick hair. Her eyes take in everything. Australia is her favourite destination. English is her favourite language. Needless to say we seem to be the favourite distant cousins. The clue? My handwritten cards and our photos pasted to her bedroom wall! Marianna is keen to practice English but is caught up in the shyness and unfamiliar awkwardness that comes from speaking a language you only use in the safety of a classroom. I catch her looking at me, or Gigi, when she thinks we are unaware. I remember being 13 and enamoured with my older cousin…and suspect that Gigi is having a bigger impact on her that he realises.

Things have changed in this house. Marina and Marco are separating, and while they continue to share the same living space the irritations and frustrations are increasingly obvious to Gigi and I. Marina is in the process of starting a new job, and moving into a new house, but it obviously can’t happen soon enough for her. Her health is suffering and I can only hope that with Gi’s support and treatment we can help her move through this change.

And so it is that we are staying for longer than we anticipated. The six days I packed for is turning into more than two weeks. Needless to say I will end up buying socks and underwear, but the up side is that we are only 7 hours drive from Lucie, our Swiss AFS daughter, so a quick visit to Switzerland is very much a possibility…and a distraction from the civilised mess in which we find ourselves.

Oh, and for those that are interested in a culture update (read comparison) below is a quick list summarising my current assessment of what is better where:

Naples does it better….
Food
Pizza (you’d think it would be under food, but it really is a food group of its own)
Drama
City views
Demonstration of emotions
Coffee
Locals with personality
Buildings with character (read run down, but colourful)

The Udine area shines at….
Civilised driving
Hot chocolates
Clean air
Clean streets
Clean waterways
Organised, correct street signs
Taller locals with manners and varying hair colours (the tall bit is relevant if you don’t want to always stick out like a sore thumb, the hair colour is the same)
Well-maintained buildings (read, lacking in character)

Work in progress

Gigi and I are catching an overnight train to Udine tomorrow night. We expect to be away for about a week as we have two birthday parties to attend in Naples and the possibility of a weekend at Positano on the Amalfi coast luring us back from the cold and snow up north.

I have an update in progress but it's not quite ready. We've been busy though...don't think this is a holiday, but it is nice not to have to get up to go to work.

Here's some more recent pictures to whet your appetite.

Testing the new camera!

Pics from Thailand.

We made it!

So, here we go - the first of hopefully many email updates from afar. If you only want the quick version read the first paragraph. For more detail keep reading.

Quick update: Gigi and I left Brisbane 21 Feb for Melbourne to spend three days with my sister and welcome my new nephew Lachlan into the family. 24 Feb we flew to Bangkok for 6 days of shopping and eating before arriving in Naples on 2 March. We’ve gone from 35 degrees to 11 but it doesn’t seem that bad. We are staying with Gi’s mother and sister. The jet lag is almost passed, our bags unpacked and the pizzas as good as ever. This week will see Gi assessing work options while we consider whether to stay in Naples or move north. Watch this space!

Details: so, we checked in at Brisbane airport for the domestic flight to Melbourne without any problems. The amount of luggage and associated weight was to be my biggest stress factor over the coming week or so. Gi has packed twice as many clothes as me…definitely the Italian part of him…and has a bag full of computer bits and pieces plus the two didgeridoos. It’s a bit like travelling with a group of musicians and their entourage. Every time I get off a plane I’m looking for the trolley, fully aware that there is no way in hell that we can manage all of our luggage and the hand luggage. Gigi has three times the official hand luggage allowance but somehow manages to look like he isn’t carrying 25 kg of weight on his back and shoulder. The nonchalance seems to waiver as the exhaustion of a longer trip sets in though!

But I digress, back to Melbourne. My sister Kim had her baby a week earlier so we were greeted by little Lachlan who was just as we like babies to be … quietly watching the world with interest, feeding or sleeping. He still has that smudged look that new born babies have, you know, that look like they’ve been squeezed out and haven’t quite regained their composure. He has a little jaundice but looks very much like his older brother Joshua (something to do with coming from the same gene pool one suspects) who was learning to hold Lachlan and not poke out his younger brother’s eyes. The house was full with my mum and dad in residency as official helpers. Daddy Noel is lovely to watch with his boys and Kim was slowing recovering from the birth. Melbourne itself was a site unseen this time except for a brief meander down Acland Street at St Kilda.

Mum and Dad took us out to the Melbourne airport late on the 23rd Feb for our 1am flight on the24th. It seemed like a good idea at the time when I was booking it but all I wanted to do was go to bed, not deal with the stress of checking in for an international flight with my musician look-a-like Gigi and all of his excess baggage. We managed to get checked in with a warning that we may not be so lucky in Bangkok. After teary farewells to my parents we got through the passport control doors only to be pulled up by the security guy who wanted to weigh my trolley bag..which clocked in at 17 kg! He sent me back to the check in counter where I somehow smiled sweetly enough to get the damn thing sent as checked in luggage and a waiver on what now amounted to 17 kgs of excess baggage.

The flight was okay, with us arriving in Bangkok at 6am local time. We had booked into the Baiyoke Sky Hotel and arrived there soon after to check in early to our 4 ½ star room. The Baiyoke Sky is now the tallest building in Bangkok, with an observatory and revolving restaurant on the 87th or so floor. Not that the view of Bangkok from that height is very inspiring as the city is totally flat with no mountain or sea views. The whole establishment seems to have the strangest architectural configurations. We were upgraded to a suite but still I wouldn’t recommend you stay there. The rooms were large but badly designed and oddly furnished. The stale smell of smoke was something we became accustomed to but to our surprise there was smoking throughout with sandy ashtrays next to all of the elevators entrances. We did enjoy a massage and manicure at the hotels spa centre but I decided not to venture into the pool.

However the rest of Bangkok was, as always (forgiving the humidity, traffic, pollution and ten million residents), a delight. We spent the 6 days shopping, rediscovering favourite spots, exclaiming at the changes that had occurred since our last visit 5 years earlier, eating the widest variety of Thai street food as possible and spending time with friends. I particularly enjoyed catching up with two old school friends from my AFS exchange time some 18 years ago. My best Thai friend Doeng is now married to a Japanese girl and has two daughters Hannah, 2, and Kyoka, 8 months. He has the most delightful family and was very much a proud father when we visited their home. Doeng treated us to a couple of typical Thai meals; one was at a seafood open-air restaurant by the Mekhong River. We also enjoyed seeing the late night flower market where two-dozen fresh roses cost about $2. Warn, a girlfriend from school, is still asking me to hook her up with a foreign man so she can live overseas. Her criterion has changed little in the 18 years I’ve know her – tall, handsome, with dark hair. One day I’ll surprise her and have someone suitable in mind.

The other highlight of our Bangkok bash was the weekend markets at Chatuchak. They say if you can’t find it at Chatuchak you can’t find it in Bangkok. It’s a lively place and certainly very popular with both locals and tourists for bargain shopping. It doesn’t matter if you are looking for clothes, home wares, Thai souvenirs or illegally imported reptiles it’s available at the JJ markets. Gigi went back on Sunday to acquire two new tattoos. And in accordance with his Italian desire for company I spent most of the day sitting in the tattoo booth, sweating and waiting (im)patiently while the whole world passed by openly staring at the two foreigners – one with his armed under the tattoo needle and the other looking hot, bored and generally bothered. Needless to say the next day was ‘whatever Jenny wants day’!

Bangkok quickly came to an end. Doeng works as a steward for Thai Airways and was scheduled to fly to London at about the same time that we were flying to Munich. I’d arranged for him to accompany us to the airport to ‘help’ us check in, fully aware that Gigi had shopped the pants off me and only increased the weight of our luggage. (In an attempt to minimise mine, I’d decided to discard the sneakers I’d taken as I’d bought new Converse in Bangkok…only to have the hotel porter spy them in the rubbish bin when he came to collect our bags for checkout and promptly sit down on the bed, remove his shoes, try them on, exclaim at how good they were and take them off for himself!) With four pieces of luggage plus the didgeridoos I think we had well over 90 kg between us. Doeng was standing with us in the queue looking quite resplendent in his Thai Airways uniform. As soon as the check in staff spotted him we were whisked into the business class queue (but not upgraded!) and checked in without a word about the luggage restrictions. In true Thai style Doeng asked a number of inane questions like ‘Is the flight full?’ and ‘What sort of aircraft is it?’ while the luggage handlers struggled to lift Gigi’s backpack bypassing the scales. Thank goodness for old friends!

The Lufthansa flight to Munich was somewhat painful. Somehow we ended up in the children friendly zone with 2 squirming babies in front and some 6 or so older children close by. The seating is much smaller than on Thai and I swear as well as being too wide across the derrière I’m just too tall. Legs hanging over into the aisle are fair game for every fool that wanders down to the toilets in the dark, not to mention the food and drink trolley. It was a long, uncomfortable flight followed by a long, slow transit wait at the Munich airport which was only made slightly better by the availability of the free tea and coffee as we watched the sun come up over the patches of snow around the airport.

We finally arrived in Naples at about 11am, collected all of our luggage with a sigh of relief and exited passed the relaxed customs officials to be greeted by a shriek and tears from Gigi’s mother Rosaria. We crammed everything and ourselves into her little car and headed to her apartment at Casalnuovo. His sister Irene, who is now 23, lives with her mother and the four of us are sharing a space that would normally house only one person in Australia. We are however safe, warm, comfortable and well fed. Gigi’s mother has accepted his vegan-ism with barely a ruffle. I’ve already had the pleasure of two true Neapolitan pizzas, fresh mozzarella and prosciutto, pasta with lentils, fresh artichoke, local salami and bread, and last night we dined at a seafood restaurant. And we’ve just gotten off the plane.

We are still waiting for any of the four packages to arrive from Australia. I’m trying not to worry about them, just like I’m not thinking about the missing bank statements and ATM card I ordered before I left Australia. The local post seems to be a mystery but I’m told we’ll be approaching the post office to make them aware of our arrival just in case something is sitting in the back room as ‘undeliverable’.

Gigi and I drove to the other side of Naples today to visit the Vulcano Solfatara. It’s a natural volcanic area that is basically a crater that looks a bit like you would imagine the moon’s surface to look like. Except there are patches of boiling mud, sulphuric gases and vapour escaping from the ground and evidence of the Romans’ use of the area historically for sauna and therapeutic purposes. Gigi was very excited to visit the Solfatara as he hasn’t been since he was a child. We later drove into the historical centre of Naples for a ‘real’ pizza and a Sunday afternoon stroll around the quiet piazzas as a light rain started to fall.

So, the jet lag is okay. My Thai language is pretty good considering I haven’t used it at all for 5 years. My Italian is not as crappy as I’d expected but I do have a lot of work to do on the verbs. And I’ve started writing already…six months ahead of my deadline. This week we’ll be doing official stuff like sorting out my ‘permission to reside’, checking out the campervan options for when my parents come to visit in August and assessing Gigi’s employment opportunities. We are planning a visit north to see Gi’s aunt who lives near Udine within the next ten days or so as well. Gigi is torn between wanting to stay in Naples close to family and the city he has love/hate relationship with and moving north where things are move civilised but not as ‘earthy’ as they are in Naples. It’s not as cold as I’d expected…the snow around the Munich airport was just quietly rather disconcerting but Naples just seems to be a bit windy with odd rainy days. I can’t quite believe that we are here. Rather I can’t believe that we managed to rent the house, sell the car, pack up our lives and make it to the plane on time. But here we are, the start of all things new, in a city that sits under a volcano and is older than I can imagine.

Just hope to see some of you here – it’s worth the effort, if only for the pizza alone!

In the beginning...

So, it's started. The move from hand written diaries, to lap top entries, to a blog for all and sundry to see. For those of you that know Gigi and I the following will hopefully entertain and alert you to all the reasons why you shouldn't follow in our footsteps and make the same life decisions that we have made.

But I've been interrupted by the call to a late lunch in Naples.

Arriverderci!