The vertigo incident in Athens had rattled me enough to consult Dr Google, but Dr Google only ever has one theory - cancer, it's always cancer - so I sought a second opinion from my doctor friend David (who very kindly tolerated the imposition), on whether it could be something to warrant proper medical attention. It sounded like I might have an upper respiratory infection, apparently, that probably went on a little day trip to my inner ear. I didn't know respiratory infections could do that.
This was my first time on a boat in waters more exposed than Sydney Harbour, and I thought the combination of dizziness and inexperienced sea legs was a recipe for misery. However, there was little I could do about it - I didn't even have any real window to find a doctor before leaving Greece - so I put it out of my mind while enjoying the room to myself in Patra (and not enjoying the footy). Thankfully, my fears were misplaced. Boats are great. I spent an hour standing out on the helipad, watching Greece slip away. And I slept better than I had in weeks. The boat felt more stable than trains do, and not even my inner ear could leave me feeling all at sea.
From Bari, where the boat reached Italy and could take me no further, I had to catch a bus to Naples and then a local train - the wonderfully named Circumvesuviana, literally 'around Vesuvius' - before getting to Sorrento, so it wasn't until about 4PM that I arrived at the hostel. After checking in and taking my stuff up to the room, I once again counted eight beds where there should have been six. Apparently there was a maintenance problem with the dorm I should have been in, and there were no more six-bed rooms available.
I had let this slide in Bucharest, mostly because I lacked the energy for the fight, but I wasn't copping it again and I marched back to reception, pointed out that they had knowingly over-charged for what they were providing and made clear that I wouldn't budge until I was moved to a properly sized room: how they did it was their problem. So I sat, and waited, as they called the manager and I was finally able to extract a pledge that no more than six people would be in that dorm for as long as I was there. Victory.
As if to prove the rule that the squeaky wheel gets the most grease, they were very eager to keep me happy for the rest of my stay. When I asked if there was anywhere in the building where the wifi wasn't terrible they gave me access to the much better staff one instead, on condition that I told no one else. Unfortunately both networks only worked in the common areas, so what would usually be a space where people gather to talk to others instead became a space where everybody sat silently checking Facebook. A very sterile hostel.
Having finally sorted the hostel drama, I didn't have time for much more than a leisurely walk around town to find dinner. The hostel was actually in the next commune over from Sorrento, so it was a good half hour walk to the main part of town. Along the way I found a little beach and marina at the bottom of a 50m cliff, which you need to use an elevator to access:
The area is a charming little streetscape of narrow, winding roads, suited only to scooter and small cars, so you're constantly dodging out of the way and, if locals want to take anything in or out by truck they need to improvise. That's where these things come in:
After eating a disappointing dinner - you can either eat cheap or well in Sorrento, never both - I was immediately compensated by finding a West-facing lookout, across to the Isle of Capri, and settled in for the sunset. Good decision:
I'd thought about going out to Capri for a day, to see the remains of the Emperor Tiberius's villa and the Blue Grotto - a cave beneath the island where the water is bright blue at certain times of the day for reasons I don't really understand. But a ferry there was going to cost a minimum €32 return, then I'd need to negotiate a boat into the cave, and then find my way up the hill to the villa. It was going to be at minimum a €60 day trip, and I thought I could find more affordable fun closer to home.
It was a warm day - 29 and sunny (every single day in Italy was between 27 and 31 and sunny, by the way. Not sure how that compares to back home?) so I figured I'd go to the beach. There aren't any proper beaches on this side of the Bay of Naples, though: just a couple of corners with a little bit of volcanic black sand. And, outrageously, they've all been privatised.
Every beach supposedly has to have a 'free' portion in addition to a paid section where you cough up €10, €15 or sometimes even €20 for the right to sit in a deck chair, use a changing room and paddle in the water. But at the one I went to there was no free 'beach' at all: there was about five metres of jetty at the far end of the cove where you could stretch a towel out on the wooden planks and enjoy the 'free' beach. Not quite what I had in mind, so I parted with €14: approximately €14 more than I should have spent. Nice weather though. Not sure if I mentioned the weather earlier.
The only day of the four I spent in and around Sorrento where I actually did something I'd planned to was a day trip to Pompeii, a guaranteed highlight for any Romanophile. I've been to Roman sites before, but nothing on this scale: the town is huge and, while most of the good stuff has been moved to the archaeology museum in Naples (which I missed out on, alas), there are still plenty of frescoes to see. One of the highlights, and one of the few pieces of furniture actually displayed at Pompeii rather than in the museum is the base of a writing desk owned by a certain Publius Servilius Casca. He was nobody of great historical significance. Only one of the assassins of Julius Caesar.
It's not really about the artefacts on display, though. Getting lost in the maze of streets, walking in and out of houses, temples, shops and bathhouses (almost) brings an extinct society back to life. The suddenness, the shock, of the calamity is still evident 1,938 years later. There are casts of victims in a couple of places - including a child who appears unannounced near the forum - and somehow the human tragedy is still raw. The guilty party - Mt Vesuvius - looms in the background as you explore the scene of the crime.
It all makes it just a little unsettling when you're wandering about a city destroyed by a volcano and, oh, yes, that's one erupting right over there:
"That can't get us here, could it?" a British school kid asked.
"I'm sure they have an evacuation plan in place if it were something to worry about", I replied.
"I bet that's what they said in Pompeii", came the response. Touché.
When I got back to the hostel I met a lovely American woman from Detroit named Lauren, who is about to start a course in occupational therapy for autistic children. An important job, I remarked, speaking from direct experience. Lauren and I chatted for a while, were joined by a Belgian guy and, inevitably, the conversation turned to American politics. Lauren mentioned the "riots" (she meant 'constitutionally-protected civil protests' I think) and I remarked that I hoped all of those people protesting had voted for Hillary Clinton. Lauren said nothing.
Later I commented that I'm going to Russia, as long as Trump and Putin don't blow the world up before that. "Oh", Lauren grumbled. "Do people really believe that? He's not going to do something like that!" An optimist, then. But on she went. "He's trying! He went into politics to help, he didn't have to!"
Oh fuck. Lauren's a Trump voter. Worse. She's a Trump voter from Michigan. It's her fault.
Breathe, Charlie.
"He might be trying", I said, drawing on all the reserves of patience I've built up from going three months without a work meeting. "But he's not doing a very good job, is he?" That was the Democrats' fault. They were blocking everything he was trying to do. "He's done more in his first 100 days than Obama!" Are you fucking kidding me, Lauren? You're from Detroit. You were just saying how everybody should buy American cars. Obama bailed out your car industry in his first hundred days.
And so it went. Lauren's big into guns. Having her gun in the house makes her feel safe at night, because if there's an intruder she can shoot him. He is also more likely to have a gun, we said. He could shoot you instead. All the more reason why Lauren needed a gun! And besides, guns don't kill people. People kill people. Yep, that old chestnut. I asked if being in Italy without her gun had made Lauren feel unsafe. Apparently an impertinent question: there was no answer.
I swallowed my bile, and kept my cool. It was good practice: I have every intention of being in the US in 2020, because friends help friends fight fascism and the US needs all the friends it can get right now. I will meet and talk to and attempt to win over more Laurens. And by the way, she's a genuinely nice woman. That's partly what's so upsetting.
I'd planned to use my last day in Campania to double up on doomed Roman towns and go to Herculaneum, and with that in mind I'd bought a combined ticket with Pompeii. Unfortunately I didn't get to use it, because I had reached the point where I had to reluctantly accept that the cough and fever weren't going away on their own and were actually getting worse. I needed antibiotics, and I could have gotten them over the counter if I had a regular type I always get and knew I wasn't allergic to, but because I haven't taken them in ages the pharmacist sent me to the hospital for a prescription.
Joy. At least I didn't need to clear this with the travel insurer because there's a reciprocal arrangement with Australia, so it would have been covered by Medicare (thank you Gough, thank you Bob). But it never even came to that. After arriving I presented myself to the translator on duty and described my symptoms. Sorry to waste the ER's time on something so trivial, I said, but I'm leaving town today, so I can't wait for a GP appointment, and I'm diabetic, so -
The translator told me to come inside and sit down. Five minutes later I was shown through to the ER. Italian hospitals have a four colour-coded triage system - code red is more or less unconscious and not breathing, then it's down through yellow, green and white. Code white is presumably all the annoying time-wasting stuff, because they charge €25 for it. Anything above that and it's free. Italian, Australian, it doesn't matter: they waved away my Medicare card. I was a code yellow.
I was shown into a room that had a senior doctor sitting behind a desk. She asked a series of questions about symptoms in rapid staccato fashion before passing me onto a more junior doctor. The translator stuck by my side. Junior doc approached with a small sword and said he was going to use it to test my blood sugar, but there was no way I was letting him near me with that thing, and I managed to hold him off while I extracted my own lancet from my bag.
My blood sugar level was 19, approximately three times what it should be, and the balance of power shifted entirely. I was marched to a bed and instructed to lie down. The doctor approached to my left with another small sword - no argument possible this time, he was taking blood tests for pathology - and a nurse appeared on my right with clamps for an ECG.
ECG?
While I was busy protesting that there was no need for the clamps and that I just needed antibiotics, the blood test was finished and before I had turned around to defend my left flank a drip had appeared in my arm. This was all getting out of hand. The doctor said he was going to inject me with some insulin. Sure, I said, just let me grab it from my bag and tell me how much to inject -
"No", the translator interrupted. "You have come to hospital and while you are in the hospital you will only use the hospital's medicine".
Right. ECG complete, drip in, insulin injected, pathology tests pending, I had no idea what the plan was from here but I hoped it involved getting a prescription and being sent on my way. When I asked when I might be able to leave I was told I wasn't going anywhere, not until the blood sugar was down, and then they'd need to wait for x-rays.
X-rays?
The wait took about an hour, during which time my blood sugar was checked twice - it was coming down rapidly - and the drip was replaced with a second bag, despite my protestations that I had a perfectly good bottle of water in my bag. Eventually the x-ray studio was available, and an orderly came into the room with a wheelchair.
Wheelchair!?
This was too much. I had walked nearly 3km from my hostel, I said, I can walk to the lifts. But no, I had come to hospital and hospital patients get pushed around by orderlies in wheelchairs. Resistance was futile. I was at least allowed to walk when I got into the studio, but despite demonstrating that I was fully ambulant I was ordered back into the chair to return to the ER. There we waited for a few minutes - I was begrudgingly permitted to stand - until the x-rays came down and showed that I had a chest infection (Dr David has elite remote diagnosis skills), and I was prescribed antibiotics.
"You can leave now, if you want", the translator told me, "but do you prefer to be hospitalised?"
No, thank you.
Surreal though the whole thing was, I don't want anybody to mistake my humour for ingratitude or, worse, criticism. I fronted to hospital and in the space of two hours I was triaged, given insulin, had pathology tests taken, an ECG, an x-ray and two drips. I was looked after by two doctors, a nurse, a translator and an orderly. If I hadn't been confident in managing my condition I could have been admitted at my own request. And despite not being Italian I wasn't asked to pay a cent, and I headed off to the pharmacy to buy drugs that were even more subsidised than they are on the PBS at home.
Bravo e grazie, Italia.
only you could maintain this unique brand of humour while sick. hope the anti-biotics kicked in fast
ReplyDeleteAn overnight stay in a hospital in another country is another awesome part of the travel experience. How was it?
ReplyDelete