[The last in the "Don't Go There" series (so far), is my physically sickening October 2003 visit to the capital city of the tiny nation of Andorra.]

Being the typical uninformed American, I hadn’t known that the country of Andorra even existed until I got my hands on a large, detailed map of Europe near the beginning of my tour. Like a caraway seed stuck in the gums of Europe, Andorra is landlocked and sunk deep in the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain. According to the online CIA World Factbook, the entire country is only “2 and ½ times the size of Washington D.C.” My curiosity ran wild. I wanted to unlock the secrets of this obscure country and report on it while pretending like I knew it was there all along. (editor note: oops)

To say that Andorra la Vella, the capital city of Andorra, was a huge let down would be a disservice to all of the other things that I’ve called a “huge letdown.” In fact, it was a monstrous, stunning, flabbergasting letdown of biblical proportions. To the max. That about sums it up.

This scorching downer didn’t start immediately. In fact, my first impression of the city had considerable potential. As you descend into Andorra la Vella, population 32,000 – the entire country has just under 66,000 residents, only a quarter of which are actual Andorran citizens with the remainder comprised mostly of Spanish ex-pats – you can see the entire city in all its claustrophobic glory. The city is nestled in a gorge between two gigantic mountain ranges. From the bottom, picturesque peaks and landscape can be seen from any point in the city simply by looking above the rooftops of the shoulder-to-shoulder apartment buildings. The sprawl of the city has required that new apartment buildings be built up, seemingly hanging off the valley walls with narrow streets separating the buildings, planed crosswise into the mountain. You don’t walk up the streets in this part of town so much as scale them.

After the short, but steep walk from the bus station to my pension, I set out to explore the city and see what mysteries and attractions it held within its sharply rising streets. The short answer was: one ostensibly bottomless ravine of choking, duty-free despair.

I started to become a little disillusioned with the intentions of Andorra la Vella’s tourism-heavy industry as I walked block after block only to see endless strings of shops selling nothing but watches, jewelry, perfume, booze and electronics. I’d been half looking for a grocery store for a mid-afternoon fruit snack, but as I kept walking I saw nothing except more shops selling the exact same items, interrupted occasionally by streets lined with rows of hotels. Based on 15 grueling minutes of eyeball, totally biased research, I’d bet money that Andorra la Vella has more hotel rooms per capita than Las Vegas.

What I initially thought was an insightful, witty observation on Andorra la Vella resembling a city-sized duty-free shop turned out to be a no-brainer fact on the state of things. A little reading in the Andorra Cultural Itinerary pamphlet that I was given at one of the numerous tourism kiosks (they also have a higher tourism kiosk to tourist ratio that I have ever seen) revealed that in order to further their tourist appeal, Andorra had somehow arranged a tax-free, shopping utopia. It was truly a duty-free nation. You can walk into just about any shop on the street and save a whopping 25% on your indispensable bottle of CK1. On the flip side, you have to ask directions and stalk back alleys to find someone who will sell you a fricking apple.

After walking through half the city and seeing endless shops selling the exact same doo-doo at the exact same prices, things changed quite suddenly as I entered the Pimp My Ride district. Now, instead of being surrounded by shops selling the same five items, the streets were lined with automotive related businesses. Car and motorcycle dealerships, garages, parts and accessory stores and post-factory soup-up shops. This trend went on for about seven blocks before the city abruptly ended at a small pasture at the foot of one of the surrounding mountains.

That was it. That was Andorra la Vella. Crappy shops, wall-to-wall hotels and a population that loves its vehicles like wrestlers love lunch. I was starting to get annoyed. I was also starting to feel physically ill.

The dull feeling of my head trying to implode had started on the bus ride into Andorra la Vella during the undulating altitude changes in the Pyrenees, but now the head throbbing was reaching an incapacitating, ice-pick-in-the-eyeball crescendo and it was accompanied by a disquieting upset stomach. Moreover, I found that I was strangely short of breath and there was a nasty burning sensation in my nose. While I stopped to rest and do a bit of audile panting after walking up a small incline, once again admiring the mountains flanking the city, the full explanation of my maladies suddenly hit me like a racquetball to the groin.

To walk the streets of Andorra la Vella is to be constantly assaulted by the exhaust fumes from the non-stop procession of cars and motorcycles that are plainly not regulated by any emissions standards. Though I initially thought that the lung wilting air quality was a temporary condition, due to me walking down a busy street during rush hour, as I walked out of the city center and rush hour ended, the air quality never improved. I now realized that those picturesque mountains were preventing the carbon dioxide fumes from circulating out of the valley and letting fresh air flow in, turning Andorra la Vella into a tiny Mexico City. Those exhaust fumes were going nowhere except into my lungs. Andorra la Vella was slowly killing me!

I looked at my watch. Through the tears welling up in my burning eyes, I could see that it was going on three hours since I’d last gotten down a full gulp of fresh air and the combination of CO2 fumes and slo-mo asphyxiation was quite obviously causing my discomfort.

Being newly and acutely aware of the situation, my condition went downhill fast. The stomachache got worse. The inside of my nose was on fire. I could feel thousands of oxygen-starved brain cells silently expiring every minute and it affected my ability to think clearly. I was a basket case. I started panting more emphatically as I climbed hills and stairs, trying to get enough useable oxygen to my brain, but it was hopeless.

Another thing I noticed was that although the traditional rush hour time had long since expired, the streets were still hopelessly clogged, requiring a supremely brave traffic cop at every decent sized intersection. Andorra was like a tiny Los Angeles. The citizens drove everywhere and there weren’t many streets to choose from, so traffic was bumper-to-bumper all the time.

I couldn’t figure out where all these people were going in their cars. I had just walked the entire length of their largest city in less than 30 minutes. Honestly, who needs a car or even a scooter when you live in a city that small? In fact, from what I had gathered, there was little excuse to have a motor vehicle anywhere in the entire country. One of the first things thrust upon me at the tourist office was a full country map of Andorra. My mouth gaped open as I noticed that the scale-distance ruler in the lower right hand corner was measured in meters! Not miles. Not kilometers. Meters.

Further utilizing my patented eyeball, totally biased research, I “calculated” that at its widest point, Andorra was only about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) long. After factoring in the twisting and turning of the roads and all the uphill walking you would be faced with, you could still probably walk the entire length of the country in less than seven hours. Maybe nine hours if you walked backwards and stopped for a long lunch. So, even if these people worked in the next town, even if they crawled the whole way, they would still be on the road for less time than the average commuter in the U.S.

Even the laziest American would have to admit that these short distances don’t require motor vehicle transport. Furthermore, when you factor in the constant traffic congestion in Andorra la Vella, the residents could easily walk to wherever they need to go in much less time than it would take to drive. Though come to think of it, with the air quality being what it is, I suppose I would drive everywhere in Andorra la Vella too. After half jogging up a short flight of stairs I nearly lost consciousness.

The air quality in the valley may also explain why so many Andorrans smoke so aggressively. Given the choice between filling my lungs with carbon dioxide and nicotine, I’d probably choose the nicotine too. At least that way I’d be able to get a nice little buzz while I waited for the slow, sweet embrace of death.

I struggled back to my pension as my multiplicity of ailments worsened. As I screwed on the courage to climb the stairs, it occurred to me why my pension was located on the top floor of the building. No Andorran was dumb enough to have an apartment up that many flights of stairs. They’d never make it home at the end of the day. I pictured worried little kids sitting by the door, cute little re-breathers pumping away, wondering why daddy hadn’t come home yet. Eventually the kids would open the door and find daddy passed out between the second and third floors, oxygen tank at zero, puke dribbling out of the side of his mouth. They could call these episodes an “Andorran nap”.

I had pre-paid for two nights at the pension, so I was stuck in Andorra la Vella for a minimum of 40 hours. Thirty-eight hours and 26 minutes too long.

The one and only high point of my internment in Andorra la Vella was the costly, but savory dinner that I managed to track down. Baviera Restaurant was pricier than I would have usually tolerated, but I had chanced upon a 20 euro note that someone had dropped, undoubtedly while in the death throes of emphysema, and it was begging to be spent. I ordered a magnificent meal. I started with a dish that was described something like “marinated, seasoned mushrooms and shrimp,” but it turned out to be a the classiest omelet that I have every eaten, mixed with savory scrambled eggs, piled on a flaky pastry. Then came the main course. Medallions of the most tender duck I have ever seen, in raspberry sauce with sautéed vegetables. I washed it all down with two glasses of white wine and finished with four extravagantly presented chocolate truffles.

While I was eating I couldn’t help but notice that Baviera, indeed none of the restaurants in the fine dining alcove I was in, had outdoor seating. Andorra la Vella, may be the only city in the world where outdoor dining is shunned like the table next to men’s room. I visualized a typical encounter at the hostess’ table:

Hostess: “Well, you’ll have to wait 90 minutes to get a table in the dining room, but we can seat you out on the patio with a stunning view of the mountains, valley and river right away.”
Patron: “Screw that, we’re going to Wendy’s.”

On my second day, I decided to do whatever was necessary to get an inhalation of fresh air into me. Not only was I suffering on the streets, but my pension room had the most dreadful, unidentifiable smell and I couldn’t decide what was worse, having the window open or closed.

I walked to the neighboring community of Escaldes-Engordany, Andorra’s second most populous city – for the record, even while gasping for air, I covered the distance in less than 20 minutes – to take pictures of the only cool building in the area; the savagely promoted and mirthfully overpriced Caldea Spa.

Then I kept moving out of town and up the mountain where there was rumored to be some nature trails. Sure enough, the higher I walked the fresher the air got, though I had to be careful not to over-do the exertion. Getting only a fraction of the usual amount of usable oxygen into my lungs, I didn’t want to pass out on the pavement and get run over by an Andorran screaming by on his motor-cross bike.

Eventually, I could go no further due to the road deteriorating into a narrow mountain pass with no sidewalk and almost no shoulder. By now the air quality was almost as good as one might find in the heart of downtown Minneapolis. I stood there and sucked down the wonderful, invigorating air for a long interval before seeking out the nature trail, which was disappointingly littered with trash and dog shit. With no other options, I reluctantly took the trail back down and into the city.

Though I loathe to do so, to be fair, I should mention that according to the pile of pamphlets that I was enthusiastically burdened with during my visit, the country of Andorra seems to have a fair number of seasonal sporting activities for one to partake in if you are looking for something other than a Rolex or getting a whale fin mounted on the trunk of your vehicle. Andorra has somehow squashed 275 kilometers (179 miles) of ski slopes at five different resorts within its borders as well as numerous nature hikes (though for the sake of your health, you should avoid any that take you below the city skyline), horseback riding tours, kayaking/canoeing, rock climbing, fishing, hunting, mountain biking and a few museums that you will love if you’re a car enthusiast. Zzzzzzz.

Additionally, you can go on numerous self-guided tours of the country, although you need a car to indulge in this diversion (surprise, surprise). The Andorra Tourism Bureau has gone through the seemingly quick task of cataloging each and every item of significance in the country and setting up several themed tours for you to follow (e.g. “The Silent Valleys,” “Unforgettable Scenery,” and “Gateway to Art”). Reading these tours, you get the clear sense that the tourism bureau was trying a little too hard. These tours document each and every building, bridge, church, sculpture, brick, rock and noteworthy blade of grass, no matter how minor, exhausting every possible attraction that the entire country has to offer, all in one little pamphlet. If I hadn’t been choking back dry heaves and wiping away tears from my bloodshot eyes at the time, I would have almost felt sorry for them.

I closed out my mercifully short stay in Andorra la Vella with some over-price, over cooked lasagna and a glass of red wine, before retiring to my stinky room where I breathed through my mouth non-stop until I got on the first bus out of town at 6:30 the next morning.

Don’t go to Andorra la Vella.

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[Continuing the shameless recycling of my "Don't Go There" series while I drink wine and sleep late, the Monaco installment was written after an October 2003 visit where we were made to feel like lepers, criminals and gypsies.]

I’d heard stories about the nonchalant, frittering of millions of dollars in Monaco for years. Though I’m not normally a supporter of raging materialism, I was nevertheless excited to see the effects of a little wretched excess in the form of fast cars, faster women and yachts so big that their helicopters had helicopters. I never imagined that I’d rate on the Monaco Welcome Scale just above gum on the shoe and just below an elevator fart (as if anyone farts in Monaco).

Our Monaco visit started out on a giddying high note. The first thing my hostel companions and I saw after exiting the lavish, marble festooned train station was a Ferrari that looked like it was about five minutes old. The guy apparently saw us staring because he laid extravagant rubber when the light turned green and gunned the car for a rip-roaring 50 meters to the next stop light. “Four inches” one of my companions muttered.

In the next five minutes we saw two more Ferraris, three Aston Martins and a sea of Mercedes and Porsches. It was flabbergasting and exhilarating. Sadly, Monaco’s allure wilted from there on out, sinking to tedious and then plummeting to tragically hateful with startling speed.

As we were quickly losing sunlight, we hurried to the top of the 60 meter high crag overlooking the two main harbors to take pictures of Monaco’s not-so-remarkable castle and laughably recent charm-starved 19th century cathedral which, if it weren’t the final resting place of Grace Kelly, probably wouldn’t even earn an honorable mention in any reputable guidebooks. Anything that is less than 200 years old in Europe might as well have been built yesterday. After you’ve seen countless breathtaking, 800 to 1,000 year old structures in multiple European cities, seeing a 200 year old dull dud of a cathedral is about as extraordinary as seeing a four hour old bagel. This “medieval” part of Monaco was very anti-climactic, but the panoramic views of the harbors and million dollar yachts from the top of the hill at dusk momentarily redeemed Monaco’s repute.

Having exhausted the “sights” around the castle in exactly seven minutes, we limped across town to Monaco’s famous Monte Carlo casino. Rumor had it that the casino had a dress code that could tighten the asshole of an aristocrat. After a long, hot, punishing day of touring the French Riviera by train and foot, my extravagantly hungover companions and I looked fractionally better than a pack of dogs with mange. We were, of course, dressed like backpackers. Most of us were admittedly in need of a county jail-like hose down after we’d spent four hours earlier in the day completely saturated in sweat, impulsively climbing a spirit-crushing mountain rather than patiently wait 45 minutes for a bus to take us up. That compounded with all of us being recently alcohol-poisoned, dehydrated and sleep deprived, we were probably the scariest looking people in town.

I was the worst of the group, in my usual ratty shorts and a t-shirt that hadn’t been washed in two weeks. My appearance was drawing constant stares on the streets, which isn’t that unusual because I got me an ass that don’t quit, but these stares had an unfamiliar, repellent edge to them. Rather than the longing “may I please fondle your buttocks?” allusions that I’m accustomed to, these looks were more akin to “the Prince’s illegitimate child escaped from the dungeon again.”

Needless to say, the Monte Carlo management and security goons trained their telescopes on us while we were still halfway across the harbor and started to mount a joint contingency effort to keep us off the casino premises at all costs.

The first hurdle was the dress-code. We skirted this easily as they had forgotten to throw a cloth over a sign saying that the code didn’t actually go into effect until after 9:00PM. Then they demanded that we hand over our bags and passports to the baggage-check people for some bizarre reason. The bags were no problem, but I was not in possession of my passport at the time, competitive pick-pocketing being what it is in the south of France, so I was refused entry and I wasn’t all that disappointed. The others coughed up their passports and were allowed to move to the next security ring within the casino by the increasingly reluctant and desperate guards.

About 30 seconds later, they returned. Apparently, in a final, panicked fit of organized discouragement, the guards insisted that everyone pay 10 euros (US$12.50 in 2003) each to simply enter the casino. For the typical budget backpacker, 10 euros can fuel about four grocery store meals and none of the others were going to part with that kind of dough just to take a momentary look inside a mostly empty casino. They begged and pleaded and the most audacious member of the group actually tried to jump into the doorway to just get a peek, but the guard was ready for her and dove in front of her like a Secret Service agent taking a bullet for the president to keep her from even getting a glimpse.

On the way out there was a small altercation at the baggage-check desk. The three women manning the counter first refused to speak English as everyone collected their bags, though we had just conversed with them in English a few minutes earlier. Then they started to conspicuously deride the hiking boots worn by the female member of our group. Even though it was all done in French which none in our group understood, their pretentiousness clearly showed through their looks and gestures. Picture three women who are, let’s not forget, doing a job normally occupied by a single, teenaged, half-wit, coated in thick layers of makeup, emitting a near visible cloud of perfume stench, dressed as if they were heading out to a royal wedding reception and clearly feeling very majestic in their illustrious and self-important positions as bag check girls in the richest city in Europe. They were the personification of Cinderella’s three evil sisters, except with more eyeliner and no agreeable people anywhere in their lineage. We were lower than regurgitated worms in their eyes.

I couldn’t help but notice that while these women were gripped with a passionate fixation over things like foot apparel, they were obviously less concerned about other customarily essential details in life, like oral hygiene. One of the women had quite obviously not seen a dentist since her permanent teeth came in and she had a smile that could make a puppy wet itself.

After being brusquely shooed out of the Monte Carlo we happened by a small exhibit of classic race cars that appeared to be on display in the street for no reason other than bragging rights. Perhaps Prince Rainier had once crashed them. Two guys in our group happened to be zealous car enthusiasts and they examined the cars closely. The entire time that this was going on a street cop hovered almost preposterously close to us, with one hand alertly poised on his weapon in event that one of us were to dare breath on the vehicles in an unacceptable manner. Feeling increasingly put out, we decided to move on, muttering caustic remarks at conspicuous volume levels.

Rumor had it that Monaco’s Musée Océanographique had 90 seawater tanks and was the first and last word in European aquariums, but our escalating cynical attitude compounded with the ambitious 11 euro entry fee precluded our desire to drop additional money into the ballooning Monégasques economy.

In the space of less than two hours (closer to one hour if you subtract the walking time between the castle to the casino), we had exhausted all that supposed, mighty Monaco had to offer. With absolutely nothing else to keep us occupied, our unwillingness to drop five euros on a hotdog at the harbor fun park and the general unwelcome vibes we were being subjected to, we opted to make a prudent run for the train station.

We retreated back to Nice feeling defensively ornery and spent the rest of the night drinking $3 wine and trash-talking the soulless people and contrived atmosphere of rude, overpriced, contemptuous, materialistic, boring, pointless Monaco.

Don’t go to Monaco.

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[Continuing the reuse of my "Don't Go There" series, the Naples installment was written while I quietly whimpered in a corner of my hostel in November 2003. Unlike Berlin, Naples has apparently gotten worse in the interval since I visited.]

I’d initially only intended to stay in Naples long enough to break the Guinness World Record for Sprinting the Length of a City While Carrying Two Heavy Bags, before diving onto the ferry to Sicily. I’d formulated this plan on the strength of several reliable sources warning me that Naples was an unequivocal shithole and my feelings were that in the previous six months of backpacking Europe, I’d categorically filled my Shithole Quota.

However, in the days before I hit town, a few people had swayed me, enthusiastically ensuring me that Naples had been given a bad rap. I even ran into a native Neapolitan who was very nearly reduced to tears while singing the praises of his home town. So at the last minute, I dipped into my Lonely Planet to sort out accommodations. Things looked up immediately. Lonely Planet raved more ardently about Six Small Rooms, a hostel in the heart of Naples, than any other accommodations options that I had read about previously.

Although Six Small Rooms was within reasonable walking distance of the train station, I had it on good authority that the immediate vicinity around the Naples train station, Piazza Garibaldi in particular, was a free-for-all of thievery, hustlers, junkies and a few entrepreneurs employing a scary combination of all three. Those who weren’t in the aforementioned demographics were selling stuff that was so recently stolen that you could detect what the former owners had had for breakfast.

I wanted nothing to do with this action while I was carrying/dragging all of my very expensive earthly possessions. Although it probably meant more time and physical exertion than simply walking, my plan was to descend into the metro system without ever leaving the train station, bypassing all of that ugliness 30 feet underground, jockeying through two metro stops on two different lines and resurface four blocks from the hostel in a less seedy part of town. Unfortunately, Naples decided to have a transportation strike two hours before I arrived. I was left to either try my luck with the aggressive, unlicensed taxi drivers or walk the gauntlet through the worst neighborhood in Naples. I chose the latter.

I got into character for the perilous journey by messing up my hair to Unpredictable, Armed Drifter standards, changing into my dirtiest, smelliest shirt, which I donned inside-out and backwards for good measure, putting on my trashed sunglasses and screwing on my best “Fuck-off Face.” Thusly prepare, I crossed myself for the first time in my life, burst out of the train station and hurried across the piazza at a inhumanly fast pace considering the weight of my luggage.

All around me I could hear hustlers accosting other train station departees with a hilarious, all-purpose opening line: “Hash/coca/cell phone?” I was moving too fast, with teeth clenched in an ear-to-ear grimace and looking too all-around crazy to personally attract this kind of attention. Instead, I ran into an unexpected, vexing snag when I made the sad discovery that Via San Biagio del Librai, the most direct street to the hostel, was one of the worst cobblestoned streets I had seen in all of Europe. The effort I was putting into dragging the Barge (my over-sized wheelie bag) slightly uphill, over loosely packed, irregular cobblestones put me in into such a pained, fatigued, sweaty state that my feigned “Fuck-off” face was dropped in favor of a very genuine “I Am So Close To A Gruesome Death That I Won’t Think Twice About Taking You With Me You Rat Bastard” expression. The streets were a shoulder-to-shoulder swarm of people/scooters/cars/stray animals and almost every time I looked up I caught guys taking long, intrigued looks at my baggage.

I made it the hostel in about 12 minutes, with all my belongings intact. However, the pinnacle of misery was waiting for me just inside the door. Six Small Rooms was at the top of four astoundingly steep flights of stairs. In my already beaten state, it took 10 minutes and two rest stops to climb the near-vertical, narrow staircase. Patrick the hostel’s Irish clerk waited good-naturedly as I slumped over the desk and wheezed out my personal information between gasps for air. He smiled sympathetically and informed me that my physical condition was common among recent arrivals. I later discovered that scaling those stairs carrying nothing but a gelato was enough to wind a guy with the air quality being what it is in Naples.

Six Small Rooms had the most intimate, family-like atmosphere I had seen in all of Europe. This close ambience was due to the hostel being run out of a roomy apartment. There were four dorm bedrooms, a living room and a kitchen. Six Small Rooms. The clerks and the residents alike fell into an amiable kindred groove, cooking meals, playing cards and watching movies together every night. The place was only about 1/2 full while I was there, making the personal space ratio just right, though during high season I imagined that it would be a little cramped, not to mention steaming with the unrelenting heat that southern Italy endures June through September.

After getting appropriately settled, I set out to find the gems of Naples. The problem was, there really weren’t any. And if there were, the supreme effort that was required to get your ass anywhere in Naples completely traumatized you, over-shadowing whatever it was you wanted to see.

I had gotten a very keen taste for the streets of Naples during the harrowing walk from the train station and quick pizza run soon after my arrival. Lonely Planet reported that Naples was one of the most densely populated, high paced, chaotic cities in all of Europe – further research revealed that Naples actually ranks quite high in worldwide population density levels – and it would either embrace you or ruthlessly destroy you. I feel ass-backwards onto the destroyed side of the fence.

Despite being the third largest city in Italy, the state of the frantic Naples street scene made even the unhinged streets of Rome seem like Quaalude, Montana. Take Rome’s hysterical ambiance, double it, add two parts dog shit, halve the number of mufflers, triple the number of people who wouldn’t think twice about running you over to gain two seconds on their drive and that’s Naples. Oh yeah, cut the amount of usable oxygen in half. That about sums it up. The 1884 edition of “Cook’s Tourist Handbook” offered the following; “Naples is an ill-built, ill-paved, ill-lighted, ill-drained, ill-watched, ill-governed and ill-ventilated city.” Nothing had changed. It was like Cook ill-wrote it yesterday.

To be fair, I should clarify my perspective and illustrate the delicate state of my mental and physical health at that stage in my voyage. I was six months into a balls-out, high speed tour of western Europe, trying to keep pace with a supremely ambitious, short-sighted and admittedly obtuse self-induced schedule that left me with precious few, genuine rest breaks. Anyone who has backpacked and lived out of hostels for a couple months knows how draining it can be. Take the general exhaustion involved with budget backpacking and imagine doing it for six, virtually uninterrupted, months. Then pile on several hours of writing duties and digital picture processing each night. Now pretend that you’re a 33 year old, out of shape American hauling almost his body weight in luggage.

Why yes, I am an idiot! Tell me something that I don’t know, Gomer.

As such, I had long since smashed into the wall of mental and physical fatigue, exploded pathetically, but determinedly out the other side and was now hobbling forward, with slow, dumb progress toward the goal line: a three week break back in Minneapolis at Christmas (and possible institutionalization).

Even in top form, the perpetual sensory-overload that is Naples can be maddening and irksome, but in my frail condition it was full on frightening. Cars, motorcycles, scooters, people and animals were coming at me so fast that my head couldn’t keep up with the action that my eyes were sending to it. This condition was aggravated by the jittery knowledge that one is never, ever completely safe from injury when you venture out of the house in Naples. You are in just as much danger of being killed walking down the sidewalk as you are lying in the middle of the street. Humans and animals aside, the sidewalks are fair game for anything on two wheels and sometimes cars if they feel that they’ve waited in traffic long enough.

Traffic lights, when they work, are heeded by so few people that drivers actually slow down a little when approaching a green light because there’s an even chance that the people approaching the red from the opposite direction aren’t going to stop. When Italy passed a mandatory seatbelt law, the Neapolitans rebelled, avoiding spot-checks by wearing t-shirts with shoulder belts stenciled on them.

These are seriously unbalance drivers and you need to be in razor-sharp form just to step out for a gelato. I found religion in Naples. As Lonely Planet accurately foretells, you need the power of prayer to cross the street.

As if the danger-level and constant bumping of shoulders and elbows weren’t exasperating enough, Naples is also a city of unusual weirdness. Crazy, uncanny things happen in the streets of Naples that would confound people from anywhere else, but would likely draw an indifferent shrug and a dismissive solicitation of a cigarette from a local. I had been a resident of Six Small Rooms for less than 20 minutes, still seeing spots from the stair climb in fact, when a fellow hostel resident walked in and reported that he had just nearly been killed by a bag of chocolate chip cookies that fell out of the sky and missed caving in his skull by three inches.

A bag of chocolate chip cookies.

Fell from the sky.

Almost crushed his head like an egg.

That’s freakout material of the first order people.

Apparently he had just been innocently walking down the street, avoiding dog shit and side swipes by sidewalk-bound scooters and with absolutely no warning this bag of cookies plummeted from the clear blue sky – actually in Naples it’s more of a soupy, polluted, asthma-inducing sky – just in front of his nose and landed directly where his next footfall was going to hit.

I was aghast and speechless by this fantastic incident. Patrick however, sniffed and with as straight a face as there has ever been, simply asked if he could have one of the cookies. I understood at this moment that Naples had an entirely different scale of what was common and what was out-of-the-madcap-ordinary, which only succeeded in petrifying me even further.

Wishing I’d had the foresight to bring a re-breather, I embarked on my first exploration of the city, heading toward the disappointing harbor, only almost dying 17 times on the way, and then cutting into the market area. Calling this place a “market” is about as absurd a misnomer as “Coffee Shop” is for an Amsterdam hash bar. The conspicuous sale of stolen and contraband goods was alarming. Guys would have a cutting-edge digital camera just laying out on a table. No box, no manuals, no cables. Just the camera. At least in that case you would get something. If you decide to go slightly more legit and give your business to a guy selling a camera that’s still in the box, it would behoove you the check the contents before completing the transaction or you might end up walking away with a 100 euro, neatly packaged rock.

Heading back to the hostel, I stopped to snap the only pictures that I would take in Naples that didn’t involve some kind of disturbing street scene, peculiarity or near disaster. I have to admit that the 13th-century Castel Nuovo is fantastically impressive. Despite being surround by screaming traffic, unsightly parking lots and ferry loading docks, it manages to command complete attention from all sides and is so colossal and formidable that one will likely fall into an involuntary reverie while admiring it and wonder how the hell they built something so extraordinary 800 years ago. Then, of course you’ll be unpleasantly ripped back to reality by a motorcycle jumping the curb and screaming by two inches from your toes.

I returned to Six Small Rooms in time for a debriefing on how the men in southern Italy were even more aggressive in their desire to bed as many women as possible than the guys in the north, something that everyone had previously thought was impossible. A young Canadian woman led the discussion by describing her walk home from a museum. A man latched onto her two steps out of the exit and followed her all the way to the hostel, a distance of about 10 blocks, offering relentless propositions to bring her home for what he assured her would be supremely satisfying sex. As is common with Italian men, simply giving a firm “no” is completely useless, so she proceeded to attempt everything short of calling the police to shake the guy. Ducking into stores, faking a dangerously contagious sickness, telling him that she was on her way to meet up with her husband, brother and father. The man never batted an eye and was even kind enough to patiently explain that illicit sexual romps were the norm and indeed the height of etiquette in Italy. She didn’t even go out for ice cream without an escort after that.

The next day I asked around for advice on where I might find something pleasing without having to worry about asphyxiation or looking both ways before rounding every corner. I was directed up the hill to the spiffier, quieter Vomero neighborhood where I did indeed find calmer streets and fractionally fresher air. I had intended to stop in for a visit at Saint Elmo Castle which is gnarly looking and clearly visible from almost any spot on the hillside, but I somehow got myself into an inescapable series of dead ends, where the only road that didn’t end in a 10 foot wall or a cliff headed back down into the city center. It was going on 4:00PM and the sun would shortly dip out of sight. The last thing I wanted was to be lost in Naples in the dark, so I headed back downhill, through a maze of ancient, randomly planned streets and neighborhoods before being amazingly deposited back into the city at almost the exact point that I first started climbing the hill.

After devoting three days to finding something, anything to like about Naples, I felt that I had done my duty. The hostel was friendly, fun and good company, but otherwise the city was an overwhelming, filthy shithole, exactly as I had been prudently warned.

Don’t Go to Naples

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In the timeless, venerated tradition of writers reusing their own material when they’re jammed with work, super hungover or just don’t feel like it, I’m rerunning a short but popular series from my travelogue entitled “Don’t Go There.”

Chapter One, “Don’t Go to Berlin,” was written after a disagreeable visit in the summer of 2003.

I realize that any travel writer with even a shred of integrity wouldn’t title an article “Don’t Go to Berlin.” It seems as if doing this might be a sweeping, unfair summary of one of the largest and important cities in Europe and indeed the world. A city with huge and important historical significance. A city of countless ethnicities and cultures coming together. A city with a shameless level of admiration for David Hasselhoff. Well, if you are thinking these things, to that I say have you ever been to Berlin? If not, then with all due respect, shut your pie-hole.

Berlin is a city full of drunk, ornery, rude, tourist-haters. It is a city that boasts countless, expensive tourists sights ostensibly catering to people from all over the world, yet not having gone through the trouble of printing any information or literature in any other language except German. It’s a city where the ongoing, open competition of Let’s-Give-the-Tourists-Wrong-Directions-on-Purpose has been honed to a fine art. It’s a city that has been abandoned by all dedicated and talented map makers. It’s a city where authorities target tourists for minor, laughable offences like J-walking. In short, it’s a city that will take your money and dignity and give you nothing in return.

I arrived in Berlin with the intention of having a great time. I had never been to Germany, so I was ready to do some major adventure seeking and polishing of my long forgotten high school German language skills. My first introduction to the gaping void that is the Berliner’s dedication to customer service was within seconds after arriving in the city when I tried valiantly, but unsuccessfully to find my hostel.

For the first (and last) time in my travels, I’d booked my hostel online under extreme duress and then run off without noting the address or directions. My bad. But never mind that, I was in one of Northern Europe’s primary tourist cities and staying at one of the largest hostels on the continent (Generator Berlin). There should be some kind of tourist assistance scheme, right? Someone will be kind enough to at least tell me which direction the metro is, right? People in a civilized country will have at least a basic grasp on manners, right?

The only information that the two guys at the bus station “Information Desk” were willing to impart was “Ask at the hotel across the street,” then returned to the exhausting task of chain-smoking and idle chitchat. Undaunted, I requested a map so I could try to figure out my next move on my own, but to my amazement they didn’t have a map of the city. This had never happened to me before. In every other European city I had visited, complimentary city maps were forced on me a minimum of three times a day. Whenever anyone wanted to give me directions, they’d whip out a map and a highlighter, draw a clear line to where I needed to go and send me on my way. I left every city with about 16 marked-up and crumpled maps at the bottom of my daybag. A bus station information desk not having maps was like a Republican not having an affinity for reckless slander of a sitting Democrat president. I was dumbfounded. I asked if I might look up the address of the hostel in their phonebook, but they didn’t have one of those either. I resisted the urge to ask them exactly what information they did have to offer and instead heaved my worldly belongings across the street to the hotel.

They were one step closer to being reasonably helpful as they had a phonebook that I could look through, but much to my dismay, my hostel was not listed. I was starting to get pissed off. The first of many pissed off episodes for the week. Eventually, after roaming through half the city on the admittedly robust and efficient metro, I was able to find my hostel and get settled without the benefit of assistance or even a half-smile from anyone in the tourism industry.

Even after this discouraging series of unpleasantness, I was eager to get out and see Berlin. After mulling over my options, I decided to get started by walking in the general direction of the TV Tower, the highest vantage point in Berlin and easily visible from my hostel. Unfortunately, the TV Tower was so big, that I disastrously misjudged the distance and time it would take to walk there. What I thought would be a pleasant 15 minute walk turned into a 45 minute trudge-a-thon down busy, dirty, loud Berlin streets.

After waiting in line for 40 minutes and paying five dollars to get into the elevator to the top of the tower I was treated to an amazing view of Berlin sprawling in every direction. Every part of the observation deck of the TV Tower had maps highlighting all of the notable buildings and monuments visible in every direction.

After reading dozens of descriptions of the visible sights from the tower – my first and last encounter with anything at any tourist sight written in a language other than German – I began to notice an unpleasant, yet slightly amusing pattern. The last sentence in virtually each description read, “After being totally destroyed in World War II, such-and-such was rebuilt in 19-blah, blah.” It was sad to see that every structure in Berlin over two bricks high was only 50 years old at best, but it started to get predictably comical when one description after another ended with “Of course, (fill in the blank) was completely leveled during the war…” I started walking around saying something to that effect about every sight that I observed from the Tower. After scrutinizing each sight for a respectful amount of time, I’d mutter to myself in a low voice, “After being blown to smithereens, in the war…” Typically, no one was in ear shot to hear, much less understand, this hilarious monologue, but nevertheless I succeeded in entertaining myself immensely.

This fleeting moment of enjoyment was cut short, however when I stepped up to the completely deserted bar where I used one of the stools for support as I fished through my daybag for my camera. The surly bartender, obviously having nothing better to do, was on top of me in seconds. I don’t know precisely what was said, but my dim grasp of German allowed me to glean enough to understand that unless I was planning to buy an over-priced drink, I was not allowed to take up precious space at the bar on account of the possibility that 22 thirsty people might suddenly appear out of nowhere and the stool I was using would be needed by a paying customer. I picked up my bag, took one purposeful step away from the stool and continued my search while complimenting the bartender on his tireless dedication to his work.

Knowing now that Berlin had no original historical buildings, cathedrals or ruins to tour, I crossed that task off my list and started visiting a never-ending succession of tourist sights that offered nothing in the way of non-German literature. Even such tourist-ground-zero sights like the Egyptian Museum and the zoo had nothing written in any other language. For a nation that shares boarders with countries whose native languages include Dutch, Danish, French, Czech and Polish, not to mention the bus loads of Italians, Brazilians, Spanish, Japanese and countless other nationalities arriving every day, one would think that the sausage-brained drunks in the nation’s capital might have invested the time it would take to make their tourism offerings a little more accessible to non-Germans.

Navigating Berlin is more difficult than any city I have ever visited, including St Paul, Minnesota. Unlike cities throughout the rest of Europe, Berlin does not have a clear, defined city center that one can walk across in 20 minutes or less. Being a very young city by European standards, Berlin seems to have suffered from the urban sprawl that is so common in the United States. It’s rare to find anything within walking distance of your current position and if it was, there was no way you would know it. Even if you could get a map of Berlin, it would be as useless as Windows 98. Berlin is so big that without an alpha listing of the street names, it is totally impossible to orient yourself. That didn’t matter, because decent maps of Berlin are maliciously not available in Berlin.

If, after I’m done slagging this place, you’re feeling lucky and decide to waste your time visiting this unfulfilling pit of bad vibes, I suggest that you purchase and bring along most, if not all, of the following items:

• A professional, satellite charted, fully detailed street map with a complete alpha listing of the streets on the back, acquired before you arrive
• A compass
• Ten miles of string
• A European-network cellular phone
• A GPS wrist watch
• A bi-lingual, ambidextrous guide with at least 20-20 vision, who has spent a minimum of 10 years traversing the streets of Berlin
• A clairvoyant and
• A sherpa with a full Mount Everest-issue gear and food supply, including a mountain yak to carry everything

If you do not have these items/people/beast, you will be doomed to spend most of your time lost and confused, with one of those itty bitty muscles in your eye twitching uncontrollably as a result of your dangerously heightened blood pressure.

If you are still naïve enough to ask anyone for directions in Berlin by your second day, you can count on one of two things happening:

• They will happily give you wrong directions on purpose
• They will be unwilling to even try to deal with the language barrier for a second and instead they will just look at you like you are speaking in tongues and refuse to help you, even if you pronounce the street or destination name perfectly or write it down for them.

One frustrating afternoon, a fellow hostel resident and I spent a ridiculous amount of time wandering around looking for the Berlin Zoo. The Berlin Zoo is monstrously huge and we knew we were close having alighted from the metro at the ‘Zoo’ station, so the mere fact that we could not find the goddamn thing in the first place was embarrassing enough, but then, like idiots, we tried to ask directions from an ice cream vendor.

First we asked in English, which isn’t as culturally insensitive as it sounds when you factor in that English is required for eight years in all German primary and secondary schools and that ‘zoo’ is the same word in German as it is in English, with only a slight adjustment in pronunciation (roughly, “tszoo”). Nevertheless, the ice cream man feigned total confusion. Then we asked in simple, but perfect German. More contrived confusion. Then, gluttons for punishment that we were, we just said the word “zoo,” repeatedly, and slowly. This couldn’t have been any simpler, but the man just emphatically shrugged, twinkle-eyed, barely suppressing a shit-eating grin of mean-spirited delight. The bastard pretending to not know the word ‘zoo’ was exasperating enough, but we were two blocks away from the effing place!

After a few minutes of that maddening insanity, he grew tired of the gag and brushed us off onto guy standing off to the side who, of course, proceeded to give us careful and detailed directions in the exact opposite direction.

So, by the end of Day Two, the tourist wisdom that I’d acquired regarding getting around Berlin was as follows; maps were useless/unavailable, asking directions was a hilarious waste of time, signage was almost non-existent and nothing was easy to find, even if your destination took up one fricking square mile of real estate. I managed to get to most places using the meager tourist brochures that were available at the hostel, which usually provided a metro stop to each destination and then once I got that far I’d just follow the crowd.

One of my failed goals in Berlin was to rent a car, get on the Autobahn and drive like a bastard. I had daydreamed at length about the moment of my arrival at the car rental place.

Me: “Hi! I’d like to rent the fastest car you have for two hours please!”

Car Rental Guy: “OK. May I ask why you need our fastest car for only two hours?”

Me: “Well, I plan to get on the Autobahn, drive like a maniac for an hour, then turn around and drive back even faster.”

Car Rental Guy: “Will you be buying insurance then?”

Me: “Was Hitler a repressed homosexual?”

Unfortunately after randomly walking around Berlin for five days, I did not run across a single car rental office. I’m pretty sure this was all part of yet another massive anti-tourist conspiracy to keep us doofus Americans from getting on the road and biting it at 190 MPH and creating a ton of paperwork for the guys who are in charge of shipping foreigners’ body-bags home.

One compliment that I can honestly offer about Berlin is that the people watching is deeply enriched by the massive beer consumption that goes on there. If you have ever so much as seen a beer before, you know that Germany is the center of the beer universe. Beer gardens are everywhere, serving beer in one liter mugs. No wimpy pint glasses here. People can be seen meandering around in public places as early as 10:00AM shamelessly swigging from cans of beer without having to go through the laughable practice of disguising it in brown paper bags like us silly Americans. Having that many drunks wandering around the city 24 hours a day made the simple experience of sitting on a bench in a square with an ice cream and watching an impromptu, all-star cast of winos re-enacting “Swan Lake” more entertaining than a Three Stooges marathon.

I tried to like Berlin. I really did. I hung around for five days, walked all over the city, ate the food, visited the sights, got babbling drunk at an obscenely early hour… I simply could not find a formula for general enjoyment or any redeeming qualities beyond the renowned, but culturally limited clubbing scene.

It’s a hell-hole, plain and simple. Don’t go to Berlin.

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