You know, I used to hate Naples once and I spent my teenage years wishing I could run away forever.
I had to travel a lot in order to finally appreciate it because I understood each place has its own peculiarities and that, if you're in the right mood, you can feel good everywhere and anytime.
If you look at the bright side here you can basically have a lot of fun just sitting down to watch people acting crazy, and if you manage to find a good spot it's not even too ugly to see.
I still feel the urge to take a break from time to time. And sometimes this break lasts a couple of years, but home is home and I do miss a few things when I'm away.
Like the square-life or the massive amount of street artists squeezed in a little space.
If you're lucky enough you can listen to 5-6 different songs while watching fire jugglers, painters and a bunch of handcrafts stalls in a five minutes walk.
Something I really like is my group of balfolk dances.
In the spare time they like to put an amplifier in the middle of the street and start dancing out of the blue.
I just got a message from them: "22:00, Pebiscito square". So I kiss goodbye to my little sister and I'm ready to go.
She's planning to become princess in chief of the Great Unicorn Association by the end of the year and I'm sure she will succeed.
She's a cute little girl, unluckily I cannot show you her face as she's not old enough to grant me consent to show her pictures on social platforms.
It usually takes a while for me to get to the city centre. It's not far at all, but I have to get there by train and, although it officially has a time schedule, it only comes by when it feels like.
People complain all the time and everytime the stationmaster has a different excuse ready for us:
If it's winter it's because of the rain, as trains indeed cannot swim (I wonder why we don't switch to boats as they did in Venice, at least it would be pitoresque); if not either it's broken or someone just killed himself jumping on the railway one stop before.
If this was true we would have the highest suicide rate in Europe.
Sometimes you have to wait for up to 2 hours, but today I'm lucky and it's coming by already.
Once in the city centre I have to face an immense peril: crossing the street.
I'm sure you all perfectly know how to perform a perfect road crossig everywhere but here, because in Naples we have our own peculiar way to do it.
As we didn't manage to understand how the highway code works yet we had to figure out a different way to communicate each other what we are going to do.
You better know how it works or you could easily get killed.
So, first you have to look both at your left and your right side and then you wait for a driver to notice you. You will know when this happens because he will stare you straight into your eyes and he will nod.
At this point you nod back, possibly smile and wave an hand as you do to say hello. This means "Thank you man for letting me pass. I was running late as I've been here half an hour waiting for someone to stop".
Now, if the street is a two lanes one things get a bit more tricky because you may need to stop in the middle of the street and do it all over again in the opposite direction.
But I swear, you will feel an hero every time you reach the other side safe.
And I do feel an hero today.
After a long walk, slaloming to avoid flipped garbage bins and groups of people I finally reach the place.
Sometimes kids go out without a ball to kick, but they get creative.
Each time they meet in a different place, but it's easy to find them: you just need to follow the music that spreads in the air.
