Adventure in the Supermercato (supermarket): Allow me to quote Tennessee Williams’ words coming from the mouth of Blanche DuBois in “A Streetcar Named Desire” when she spoke about the “kindness of strangers”. If it weren’t for the kindness of Neapolitan strangers, I would not have made it through the grocery store yesterday.
What should have been about a 20-minute walk from the apartment where I’m staying turned into a 60-minute walk in the intense late morning heat in the absolute wrong direction. Eventually realizing my mistake, I saw that I was standing in front of a hotel and figured that surely someone there would speak English. And the gentleman at the counter spoke perfect English. He was kind enough to give me a map where he had noted where I’d come from, where I was now and where I needed to be – at the Carrefour Market on Corso Europa. (I’d zigged when I should have zagged, and overlooked the left turn on my way down the long, long hill). He even indicated the Tobacco Shop nearby where I could buy a ticket for the bus to take me right over to the Corso Europa. The supermercato would then be almost right across the street.
The only down side of all this was that I had to wait for a 1/2 hour at the bus stop with no shade but it was so hot by then that I just could not have walked back up the steep hill and made the correct turn without melting in the heat. Two teenage boys heard me ask the bus driver about my stop on the Corso Europa (they did not speak English) and I thought they were ignoring me. But when they got off, they turned back to motion to me that this was my stop, too, waited for me to step off the bus and then pointed out the correct direction for me to take to find the supermarket. This, to me, was one of the most remarkable examples of the “kindness of strangers” that I’ve experienced in Naples so far, although there have been many, many other such examples.
So, I approached the grocery store and attempted to wheel in a cart from outside the door. But I had grabbed 2 carts chained together and could not understand why they were chained. I figured that I wasn’t planning to buy too much, anyway, so I could do without a cart. Next to the produce display, however, I noticed what appeared to be an abandoned cart and when I walked past it a few minutes later, I decided I would use it. I asked the produce clerk “e libero?” which to me meant “is this taken?” or “is this available?” and he responded “si” and pushed it towards me. So off I went.
I only made a few purchases because I had been planning to take the bus back to the apartment all along since I would be carrying bags in the heat of the day. So I bought 2 packages of two containers each of yogurt at 1.56 euros each pack, two bottles of local white wine at what I thought were about 2.50 euros each from the sign posted near them but upon examining the bill I can’t match the three remaining items and pr
