smoke signals

Pop quiz.

So you are driving down the road...  those painted lines - they indicate, what?

Yeah, you guessed it.  Not-so-much for the Italians.  Those lines appear to be merely a suggestion of where one may or may not hang out when driving down the road.  There may be three lanes of traffic, but there may indeed be around five or six (counting the shoulders and opposite side of the road that number increases exponentially).

I have come to the conclusion that the Italians are overly optimistic.  We actually saw someone driving the opposite direction on the highway yesterday.  Not backing up.  Driving.  The wrong way.

We are constantly witnessing death-defying acts of passing, speeding, careening, running red lights, racing through intersections without slowing down..

Here's a fun video (sorry, none of the media is mine today) of a typical intersection in Naples...

Needless to say, I am excited that my gigantic Honda CRV has arrived with all of its air bag glory.  You heard that right.  Gigantic.  When the majority of the cars are slightly larger than a Smart car, ye olde CRV is a towering giant.  I'm ok with that.  It does appear that the big car wins here.  I'm not looking for a fight, I just want to get there.  Alive.

Driving around on our various errands - that generally consist of appointments at bases Capo (the actual base here in Naples), SS (the Support Site base), JFC (Nato, where Major will be working) - we generally see (and smell) around a dozen or so fires burning in the area.

The fires seem to range from trash burning, to on-the-side-of-the-road cigarette starting, to burning off dead crops in a field.

Most of the fires we see are a little smaller than this, but we haven't approached the big ones in the distance...  You should turn the volume down before you watch this one...

I know that the midwest in the US has suffered many horrible fires this year.  It's interesting to me that fires here seem to be so normal.  In fact, I have only seen one fire truck at one fire that was pretty large.  And then they set up a water drop station at Carney Park (CP) a couple of weeks ago where there was another large fire...

we did see the helicopter dropping water when we were touring Pozzuoli.  

Wouldn't want the golf course at CP to go up in flames!

(These pics courtesy of the Living Abroad in Naples Facebook page)

Apparently the guards told one of the wives when they went to CP as the fire burned that a shepherd had set the fire so that there would be new, fresh grass for his sheep in a few weeks.

There is a whole lot of trash is some areas around here - I guess that burning is a normal way to deal with (and sometimes protest) it...

Naples Trash Burning

(*The images today are not mine)

Speaking of going up in flames...  a-hem.

When we first came over to Castel Volturno to look around, our realtor Rhode Island pointed out the women stationed every once in a while in little umbrella stations along the road.  "Whookerz."

She said it several times before the Major caught on.  I was by then laughing pretty hard.  She keep on repeating the word till the lightbulb popped on.  OH!  Those scantily clad, high heel wearing ladies sitting (sometimes stutting around) under umbrellas - offices!

How crazy.

It's a good thing Major doesn't like to stop to ask for directions...