M

AYBE it’s sacrilege but I passed through Rome without visiting the Colosseum or the Trevi Fountain. I had no interest in sites I’d seen countless times on glossy postcards, for in reality they inevitably become obscured in a forest of scaffolding and selfie sticks. Instead, I headed for a city that, I had been told, embodied the real character of Italy: Napoli.

I arrived on the afternoon train, hungry and tired, as my wallet had been carelessly granted to the pickpockets of Rome the night before. Armed with my small backpack and only a few euros in change, I exited the station and entered chaos.

The crowds were not made up of the usual American tourists and touts, but of North African men, all collared shirts and shiny watches, who had stalls selling bags, sunglasses, belts, umbrellas and cellphone covers. Cars hooted and people bustled and the din rose through the thin alleyways. The restaurants spilt out onto the pavements and I looked up to see people shouting to one another across balconies. The streets became more and more labyrinthine, merging and splitting again to reveal yet another empty fountain, another cobbled square filled with the yells of kids and thrumming of small feet chasing an old soccer ball.

As I recounted this later, my couch-surfing host Ferdinando laughed.

“In Napoli, Italian stereotypes are exemplified 100 times,” he said. “Italian is a language not just spoken. Every conversation is a piece of theatre. The hand gestures, the voices, they resound through the streets, for everyone is part of the audience.”

He told me to call him Nando, which he said was fitting because I’m South African so I must like Nando’s.

Well, Nando’s has nothing on Napoli. That evening, we went to a tiny restaurant surrounded by a crowd of boisterous people drinking from plastic cups while waiting for tables. It was clearly a popular place, though you wouldn’t guess why from the exterior: haphazard tables stood crooked over the cobbles, old white plastic chairs and red-andwhite chequered table coverings.

The restaurant seemingly only had one waiter and no menu — Nando asked them to bring us whatever they recommended. We received an antipasti of parma ham, olives, ricotta cheese and crisply fried mozzarella balls. Then, pasta al pomodoro, with whole Italian tomatoes, so good, I could have written a ballad to my plate. The meal was ended with two peaches, handed to us from a cardboard box, and some sweet red wine. We sat in silence — the contentedness needed no words. The meal cost à10 each.

We walked in the warm night. Nando took me to a square housing one of his favourite statues, The Nose, by our own William Kentridge. Depicting a nose riding a horse, the statue is based on the story of a fascist general whose nose jumped off his face and also became a general. It’s a satirical critique of the militaristic, nepotistic system that Italy became under Mussolini. The statue is at the meeting point of the old Spanish Quarter and the new quarter characterised by the clean, cold, regimented forms typical of the fascist frilled curtains and young boys loiter and spit and smoke cigarettes. The sun beats down on the grime-blackened streets and eyes peered at me out of the darkened doorways. I savoured the unfamiliar: the jolt of being somewhere new.

Over the next few days, Nando and I did many things. We rode bicycles along the coast to Parco Vergiliano, where 1st-century Roman poet Virgil is said to be buried. Sitting on a bench overlooking the sea, we ate taralli (bagel-like snacks) and drank cold, fizzy red wine, a local speciality, from a plastic bottle. We trawled musty second-hand bookshops, and visited beautiful chapels. But I never forgot that feeling in the street, that one day, of being somewhere completely different, and being awake to the world. — © Catherine Rudolph

Share your travel experiences with us in ‘Readers’ World’. Send your photos — at least 500KB — and a story — of no more than 800 words. Please note that stories should not have been published in print or online. ALL winners receive R1 000. Only winning entrants will be contacted. E-mail

travelmag@sundaytimes.co.za