Vohu Manu

Naples is a city of ancient tradition. One of the many traditions is the Via Formidilosus, the Path of Terror. The first recorded instance of this is in the 13th century when Naples again became a busy nexus of land and sea trade, filled with careening carts through the cobbled streets. However some sources claim that the tradition goes back to Roman times and particular icons such as the popular Petrified Janus (with both faces frozen in panic) celebrate the same activity, but I digress.

The simple motion of the tradition is to close one´s eyes, scream as loud and as long as possible and attempt to dash across the road. The drivers around you (originally in carts, now in cars) will honk their horns in appreciation of the tradition and speed up to show onlookers how courageous you are. They would never, under any circumstances, slow or even Heaven forbid stop their vehicles to allow a pedestrian to cross. To do so is to call one a coward and Naples´ history is filled with tales of duels to the death which eventuated because of this insult.

In the spirit of liberation which was the Renaissance a slightly modified tradition arose. That of running, of course, screaming, but also of keeping one´s eyes open wide in such a way to show that you see the grim spectre of Death across the other side, scythe in hand, beaconing you to join the restless souls at his side.

This tradition remained unmodified until until after the wars to unify Italy in the 19th century. Returned soldiers adopted the attitude of laughing maniacally as they ran, their unfocused eyes glinting with the horror they had seen as brother slew brother and the hills ran red with gore, showing that they feared no mortal pain or petty punishment that this transitory world could deal them. Though this practice can still be seen today it is by no means the more popular, and will elicit disapproving frowns from the more conservative elements of society.

Athens was a city clearly struggling. For every five inhabited buildings was one abandoned. Interestingly the abandoned ones seem to be the nicest architecturally speaking, perhaps they predate the war. Much of the close-packed, tenement housing is in almost identical buildings, perhaps put up after the war. A Greek guy said that joining the EU had been disasterous for Greece, with the cost of living rising steadily for the last five years. I suggested that joining the EU was a gamble, but he laughed mirthlessly and said it was a chance guaranteed to failure.

The people were nice, the vast majority knew a smattering of English, perhaps because of the Olympics but even the others were patient and friendly. Early one morning we staggered into the Red Indian Cafe and asked for kafe and gestured at the coffee machine. There was some confusion, but 'espresso' did the trick. That was when she dusted off the instrutions and tried to oeprate the machine. Only later did it occur to me that "Cafe" obviously meant bar, open early, sure, but it was strange for anyone to ask for coffee...

Working with the Greek alphabet was quite interesting. Even if I knew what word I needed, such as a street name, it took some work to translate the phoenetic sounds of the text which you were looking at. Simple rules such as 'p's are 'r's and 'l's are upside-down helped. However sigma having three different characters did not.

The food was a surprising delight. Simple was all I'd expected of Greek food, and simple it was, but it all worked very well. Anna has since commented that European food was made for me as they serve bread at every meal. But of couse they do, 'tis the natural order of things.

We hit Hong Kong, and we hit it but good.

It was actually a very comfortable place. It was pretty much a larger version of China Town, with more of everything.

The only thing it was lacking was bars. Anna suggested that we were in the wrong place, but during our 5-10km of walking we didn't see one!

From what we saw of Hong Kong their culture is all about the eating and the shopping.