Brindisi, July 15th

15th July 99, Thursday, 2055hrs. Somewhere in Italy. Dusk.

My Barclaycard is safely in my shoulder wallet, along with my Connect Card and Europe opens up to me once more. We’re in transit to Brindisi, and the ferry leaves tomorrow night at either 2030 or 2230, depending which we catch. Lucky that there’s no ferry tonight or we’d have missed it because of our missed connection at Carseta from Napoli Centrale. We’ve a hostel sorted (nice and cheap at £.18000) (Hostels in Greece are even cheaper! Wahey!) and a prospective day vegging at the beach planned tomorrow.
On Saturday morning, we’ll be in Greece.

Yesterday was enjoyable, but very tiring, and the ever-present atmosphere of death and mortality in Pompeii got me down once or twice. There’s so much of the city left that it still feels like a city. We had to give people directions once or twice! I could feel the ‘lack’ of the place – it isn’t alive. It was an enjoyable day, it intrigued, interested, fired my imagination, but the town was dead.

We had a good time, and took a photo of us crossing a roman pedestrian crossing a la Abbey Road. It’s a magnificent feat of archaeology – Pompeii’s been being excavated for over 200 years. I can’t really sum up how I felt yesterday. In the arena when we first arrived, I thought of the crowds, the gladiatorial ring, the life and the glory of the town. The streets of house after house, empty and ruined, with pumice littering once mosaic-ed floors spoke of mortality despite the grandeur of Rome – and spoke it over and over. The garden of the fugitives with the figures of thirteen Pompeians who tried to dig their way out of the ash only to be suffocated, and the more traumatic postures of the casts near the Forum were horrifying. Magnificent and terrible, beautiful and morbid. Pompeii.

After we left we got back to the house at around 9:30pm and cooked and ate dinner. The conversation got around to ‘The Fast Show’ , so after dinner we watched a video, and went to bed late.

This morning I was up and showered early, and we said our goodbyes outside Pozuoli at about half nine. Out in the suburbs by myself, hunting for the DHL courier’s office where my Barclaycard was waiting for me, I wandered with absolutely no idea where I was going, with hardly any pavements, huge roads and no passers-by to ask for directions, and I only eventually found the office by pure luck. We managed to catch our train at 1400. Tonight we’re staying unexpectedly in Brindisi. The ferry is tomorrow night – DOH!