By the time I arrived in Naples it was getting dark, the sky was dark orange as the sun set. I headed towards my hostel called Naples Pizza Hostel, totally shattered from the lack of sleep and travel. The area around the hostel had lots of tiny roads with old unplanned high rise buildings. Some of the roads were too small even for a single car to pass through, everyone whizzed around on mopeds, even what looked to be children riding them. A very disorganised and busy city, nothing like my village back in England.
I found my hostel, booked in and had a shower. At this point all of my clothes were dirty as I did not see an opportunity to wash anything on the ferry. I put all of my clothes, including my rather smelly jeans in the shower with me. I then hung everything out on the rails around my bunk bed, getting the floor wet in the process.
I had no plans to explore the city at night so I grabbed my laptop and sat in the common room. Within a few minutes I had started talking to an English woman and a Pakistani woman. I told them about my journey around Europe and how I had caught a ferry to Italy unplanned. They said that they were jealous of men, they did not believe women could travel so freely. But I had met many women who had travelled in the same way as myself so I tried to convince them otherwise, but they did not believe me. We spoke for a bit longer when they invited me out to get Pizza, Naples is apparently famous for Pizza, but as it would turn out not my favourite Pineapple pizza. They explained they invited me out because they needed a man to keep them safe in the city at night.
We headed out, it was now totally dark outside being about 9pm. I had spent almost no time in Naples so I did not know the area, I followed the two women out and they wanted to stop at a bar. We got some drinks, the Pakistani woman did not drink alcohol so she had a soft drink. We spoke for a while and then decided to head out further to get Pizza. We found a street full of small busy restaurants, people sitting outside at night on little white plastic chairs and tables. Mopeds were constantly humming in the background, an almost unbearable amount of noise. We walked down the street and settled on what looked to be a busy and clean restaurant selling Pizza. The menu however only had "traditional" pizzas, almost all containing ham. Fine for me and the English woman so we ordered, but the Pakistani woman could not eat ham, and only halal meat. Ramadan had just started and she had not ate anything all day so she decided to head to a Kebab shop the other side of the street to get some Halal food.
She came back quite quickly and sat down outside the Pizza shop, apparently they had given her free food because she was following Ramadan. I found it interesting that a woman with such conservative religious beliefs was not wearing any kind of head scarf and also travelling alone around Europe living in shared hostels of all things. I have previously known a woman from Saudi Arabia who told me it was even illegal for her to travel alone, I imagined it was similar culture in Pakistan.
I could tell just from our conversation that she was deeply unhappy with her life. The way she talked and answered questions, I knew that her life style was likely causing friction with her conservative views. I found that a person can have either liberal or conservative religious views and these are both expressed inwardly on themselves and outwardly on society. Some people are liberal both inwardly and outwardly, others conservative both inwardly and outwardly. But she was conservative inwardly and yet liberal outwardly, I had never met anyone who shared this. I knew it must have been quietly destructive, to be so forgiving to the world around her while holding herself to such a high standard, constantly punishing herself.
We ate our food and headed back to the hostel. I found out that the Pakistani woman was following the same route as me up to northern Italy so we exchanged contact details and I offered to meet up with her a few days later in Rome. I was only in Naples for 1 night, I had visited the city when I was a child and had no interest to spend any longer here. I went to bed.
I woke up as late in the morning as I could, most of my clothes had already dried out because it was so hot in the hostel room. I checked out and left the hostel, only just seeing Naples in the sun light for the first time. I walked back to the bus stop I had arrived at last night, it was called Metropark Centrale. The city and bus station were completely unrecognisable to me in the day light. I stood around the station for a while eating chocolate then got on my bus and headed to Rome.
YOU ARE READING
My Backpacking Memoirs
Non-FictionIn 2017 I embarked on a three month backpacking trip around Europe. Motivated by the many accounts of travel from within religion, I went to learn. But what I experienced was not what I was expecting. This was my first time leaving the UK since I wa...
