Pompeii

 Today was virgin territory for me and John (and everyone else except Rachel) as we went to Pompeii.  The ride to Naples on the train was nice because everyone was able to catch up a little on sleep and our feet got a break.  We did arrive in Naples and get the tickets for the

  Circumvesviana train that goes around Vesvius to Pompeii and all the other towns around there.  The train out was jam packed and hard to grasp which one to take, so we were kind of unsure if everyone had made the train and whether we were all being targeted by pickpockets. 

 There were a few that were on the prowl, but nobody lost anything, but a bunch of the girls (including me so you can imagine the desperation of some men) got pressed against and touched a little too familiarly in the crowded train.  Since there is no gender bias in Italy, one of 

 the guys got propositioned in the men’s bathroom at Pompeii, so equal opportunity here.  The train to Pompeii stops right at the entrance to the ruins and I guess I just never realized how huge this city was.  Knowing that they had a 20,000 seat amphitheater should have 

prepared me, but it didn’t.  There were miles of houses, shops, villas, forum, baths that are just exposed concrete and brick.  It was really like walking through what you would expect in Dresden or in the French town (Ordur sur Glane?) that we saw three years ago that was firebombed by the Nazis in retaliation.  These places are interesting, but they make me

 incredibly sad.  I always think of people in horrible shoes with cameras and tour guides making their way through towns I know like Chicago or New York in 500 years, talking about the things that we put on our walls, the way that we arranged our city, the innovations that we

  had toward civilization, but “why would you put your town that close to (insert disaster area here)?  How dumb was that?”  But this place was beautiful.  Peaceful, warm with a cool breeze and plants everywhere.  You can see why 

anyone would build a house here and why the rich had their villas here.  They didn’t know that mountain was a volcano and even if they did, should the possibility of it erupting in your time make you avoid a place?  If that’s the case, we should tear down San Francisco, Tokyo, and New Orleans now since they’re suicidal towns.