Will It Flush?
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: Lee and I have been in Milan this week; today we’re renting a car and heading out on a road trip. First stop: Cinque Terra.
Will It Flush?
Naples, Italy—or Bella Napoli, if you prefer—is often described as ‘gritty.’ It’s one of the most densely populated cities in Europe, and it has all the characteristics you’d expect in a proper city center—graffiti, street vendors, some homelessness, cafes on every corner, and life happening on the streets at all hours. The modern city of Naples (as Lane and I learned on a fascinating subterranean tour) is built literally on top of the medieval city, which was built on top of the Roman city, which was built on top of the Greek city. You can’t get that kind of history just anywhere—I’m in my element.
Based on the reviews of our apartment in Naples, though, not everyone appreciates the ‘grittiness.’ Some of the reviews of our Airbnb make the neighborhood sound like some kind of ghetto, but it’s actually perfectly fine—if you’re expecting Naples. The ‘burbs it is not.
I’m glad we ignored those ‘sketchy neighborhood’ reviews, when we were choosing our apartment, because it was perfect—for us.
On the other hand, all the pizza places we’ve been to in Naples get rave reviews, and I mean rave. It turns out tourists are pretty enthusiastic when it comes to Neapolitan pizza—we love it all (or maybe it’s really all that good, but I’m guessing the locals would be a bit more discriminating).
The interpretation of reviews takes practice, it turns out. I read a lot of reviews. A LOT. All day, every day, I’m reading reviews of hotels, restaurants, Airbnbs, rental cars, tour guides—even doctors and pharmacies and optometrists and supermarkets. When you don’t live in a community, you have no one to ask for recommendations, so I’ve learned to read reviews very carefully, with a deeply critical eye. I’m pretty good at interpreting what a reviewer means, and whether or not the issue will bother me, especially if I can tell what the reviewer’s nationality is. For instance: Americans will often complain about tiny showers in Paris. Eh—I ignore that. All showers in Paris (at least the ones we can afford) are tiny.
We encountered the opposite review situation in Tunis last month, when we were staying in a Sheraton. It was fine, but maybe not exactly what you might imagine a Sheraton to be, at least in the US. Breakfast was a little frustrating—you had to get coffee/tea from a server, and they tended to congregate in a group and avoid eye contact with the guests. They moved as one—I called them the amoeba staff. The food selection on the buffet was mildly indecipherable—the hard-boiled eggs were labeled, every single day, as hard-boiled eggs (yeah, okay—I know what hard-boiled eggs look like). But the soupy, brown Tunisian gruel that I never did figure out was not labeled a single time. I still don’t know what it was called (it was tasty, but not like anything I’ve ever had before, and sadly, I can’t tell you how to Google it).
None of that mattered to us, though, and certainly didn’t warrant leaving an unkind review. Maybe it did to the business-people who were the majority of the guests, but maybe they knew what to expect in North Africa, and didn’t care. The reviews of that hotel were all perfectly balanced and reasonable—because of course we read them before we booked.
On the other hand, the restaurant reviews in Tunis all seemed to focus on the staff more than the food, for reasons I never did figure out. They all seemed to convey some variation on the theme of ‘the food is good, but the staff are rude.’ I don’t actually care all that much about how polite the server is, so again, I ignore that part of a review. But I’m fascinated by how ubiquitous it was—apparently some element of the population (locals? Tourists from other countries?) expects a certain amount of sociability or obsequiousness or formality or something, and is disappointed.
I’ve finally learned that reading reviews through my own cultural filter is worse than useless. People from different cultures have sensibilities/priorities/values/aesthetics that can be quite different from mine, and failing to be aware of my own biases trips me up pretty regularly.
That’s another tricky thing about reviews—we read them, even rely on them, but we try only to write very positive reviews. I’d rather not write one at all than publicly criticize something that I might not understand—like the center of Naples, or the breakfast buffet at the Tunis Sheraton.
Some of the most useful reviews I’ve ever read, though, were of an apartment in Ecuador—every reviewer mentioned that it was okay to flush the toilet paper. We booked it for a month, based on that fact alone. Now that’s a priority that matters to me.
From my writer’s notebook:
A robotic dog named Spot has been tasked with guarding and documenting the ruins of Pompeii, the ancient Roman city that was destroyed by the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius in the year 79. Looters began pilfering at Pompeii several hundred years ago, and it’s still a rich target. We visited Pompeii last week; all artifacts have been removed from the areas that have been excavated, but large areas of the city remain unexplored. Spot is going to keep a digital eye out for bad actors, as well as their dangerous impact on such a fragile, precious site.
I wonder what he’ll do if he meets a thief in a deep, dark tunnel—bark?
Take care,
Lisa
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