The Postcard Race Round 7 and winner announced ALL in one…

Round #7: Notes from Napoli and thereabouts…The Italy round

Images of Vesuvius, saints and the Naples of ye olden ‘Grand Tour’ times along with some compelling notes on Napoli and thereabouts make up our Italy round. Postcards were mailed from about four different locations in the city on September 12. We first approached the foreboding main post office building right near our apartment, on September 11 thinking naturally that we could; buy stamps, mail our postcards and send some packages from there.

The huge semicircular fascist façade Palazzo delle Poste, was completely unable to meet our needs. What do they do in that huge building that all roads in our neighbourhood seemed to lead to? Staff is behind glass where there is air conditioning while clients take a number and wait in the UN air-conditioned area. Tiny slots allow papers to pass from customers to staff, but packages must be passed through a cupboard door that opens on the customer side and does not open on the staff side until the customer has firmly closed their door. Well, our packages were wrapped incorrectly so the clerk told us, you cannot wrap a package with newsprint, it is apparently seen as advertising. The packages were passed back through the secret door and it was kind of like being in an episode of ‘Get Smart’. We did manage to get stamps and made our way to the post office store where we bought official mailing boxes for our packages. Not to be deterred, we returned the next day with our now properly wrapped packages betraying no sign of advertising, our number was next, but the woman who was free to take us eyed our packages suspiciously and waited and waited until some other poor worker was finished with their customer and would have to take us. Finally she had no choice but to deal with us. Back through the secret door, oh well one of our packages was just too big….limits to package size had not been communicated on our first visit. The other she calculated would cost a fortune to send…things were not going well. She was telling us about another post office near the train station (not our favorite place) where they seemingly could mail packages. Back through the secret door again we took our packages away and vowed never to return again. We boarded the R2 (that’s the name of the bus to the train station) and after seeking directions from both a janitor and a policeman and very long walk we located the very super efficient happy post office where packages had their own window the staff thought that prices should be lowered for our packages and everyone is in air-conditioning; staff and customers alike.

On our way home we realized that there are many of these smaller REAL post offices and in fact there was one in the Gallerie Umberto right by our house. Just outside of there we ran into Lara, she was all dressed in gold. She aims to resemble, a lady of some monarch’s court and had just arrived from spending the summer working in Rome, where she was an extra in the film that Julia Roberts has just finished filming there. Lara and her companion in his gold suit, not pictured here are available for parties, confirmations, films or any events that you might require people dressed in gold at….Lara agreed to mail the rest of our postcards for us. Finally round 7 was done! Sometimes one’s hobby can be overwhelming…..

AND THE WINNER IS:

Linda and Jody from Surrey BC IMAGINE THAT reported receiving their postcard September 18^th before anyone else!!!!!! CONGRATULATIONS Linda and Jody and the excellent postal workers of Surrey BC! Linda and Jody will be receiving something we choose especially for them in the markets of Barcelona.

The Postcard Race Round #7

September in Italy

"Funiculì, Funiculà" is a famous song written by Neapolitan journalist Peppino Turco and set to music by Italian composer Luigi Denza in 1880. It was composed to commemorate the opening of the first funicular on Mount Vesuvius, which was destroyed by the eruption of 1944. The song became a huge international success and sold over one million copies, representing for many the birth of the modern Neapolitan song.

Positano was a relatively poor fishing village during the first half of the 20th century. It began to attract large numbers of tourists in the 1950s, especially after John Steinbeck published his essay about Positano in Harper's Bazaar in May, 1953: "Positano bites deep", Steinbeck wrote. "It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone."

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards: The Rolling Stones wrote the song "Midnight Rambler" in the cafes of Positano while on vacation in 1968.

Belying the typical portrayal of the beautiful actress as vacuous and empty headed, Sophia Loren, darling of Naples, was known for her sharp wit and insight. One of her most frequently quoted sayings is her quip about her famously voluptuous figure: "Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti. She also said “There is a fountain of youth: it is your mind, your talents, the creativity you bring to your life and the lives of people you love. When you learn to tap this source, you will truly have defeated age.”

The most intriguing local musical form around Naples in the 1600s was the tarantella, name after a spider known as the tarantula. The only cure of the spider bit was to perform the frenzied dance the tarantella. During harvest time enterprising fiddlers roamed the fields in expectation of being hired by those that were stung.

A fun loving Bourbon King established the lottery in Naples in the 1700, the only viable way for the poor to escape from destitution. The authoritative text for understanding the mythical significance of lottery numbers was the Nuova Smorfia del Giuoco del lotto, by Giuleo Rume. A series of numbers, from 1-99, are chosen based on the association of each umber with a specific image, thereby allowing dreams to be interpreted as numbers and played upon awakening.

The first writer to ever describe a volcanic eruption in evocative and terrifying detail was Pliny the younger on the occasion in AD 79, when Vesuvius buried the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum. To this day, vulcanologists use the scientific term ‘plinian’ to refer to Vesuvius like explosions.

The poet Virgil’s best-known quote: “carpe diem”, or “seize the day” is the unofficial motto of the Neapolitans, who live in the shadow of Vesuvius. The quote continues: “ trusting as little as possible in the future”.

In 1985, the Capodimonte Museum held an exhibition entitled “Vesuvius by Warhol”. His 16 paintings of the volcano are a testament to his passion for Naples. Warhol understood that Vesuvius was to Naples what the empire State Building was to New York- a potent combination of myth and reality.

The volcanoes of Southern Italy: Etna, Stromboli, Ischia and Vesuvius were created, myth tell us, by Demeter who created light sources to help the sirens, (who she had turned into birds) fly over land and water and find her missing daughter Persephone, who it turns out had been carried away by a besotted Pluto, king of the underworld.

The sirens lived on an island off the Amalfi Coast. The best know siren Parthenope, threw herself to the sea after failing to attract Ulysses. She has come to symbolize the legendary combination of beauty and danger, attraction and repulsion, which defines the essence of Naples. The Italians still refer to Naples as the city of Parthenope, and the adjectives ‘Neapolitan’ and ‘Parthenopean’ can be used interchangeably.

It is impossible to predict when Vesuvius will erupt again and in what manner. The last eruption was in 1944 and the longer the volcano rests the stronger the eventual explosion. Over 3 million people now live in the sprawling Neapolitan suburbs built along the slopes of Vesuvius. Evacuation plans do exist, BUT a large eruption could destroy everything within 7 kilometres in 15 minutes.