Back to Pompeii, the city that found its way to be seen again

English:

Back to Pompeii, the city that found its way to be seen again.

When we think of Pompeii, the modern city that has grown up around those ruins covered by the lava of the Vesuvius volcano in the year 79 does not come to mind. Instead, we directly think about that city which, despite being buried for centuries, managed to find a way to resurface from those ashes and present itself again to the world. Majestic, magnanimous and imposing, this is how the ruins of Pompeii are presented to all those visitors who dare to walk on those stones which one day were its streets.

If you ever go on a cruise in the Mediterranean Sea, regardless of the harbour from which it departs, bear in mind the possibility of visiting Pompeii if the ship is moored in the harbour of Salerno. The harbour itself is a fairly commercial place and there is not much to see, so the best option is taking a taxi and spending the day in the ruins of Pompeii. And that was exactly what my students and I decided to do: we took some taxis that would leave us right in front of them, entered, and marvelled, once again, at their beauty.

Amsterdam: from Van Gogh's paintings to nightclubs and coffee shops.

English:

Amsterdam: from Van Gogh's paintings to nightclubs and coffee shops.

In my last year at school, in February-March 2006, two months before turning 18, we went on a school trip to Amsterdam. We were given three different options and we chose Amsterdam for one specific reason: because there we would be able to see many Rembrandt and Van Gogh's paintings and, since we had been studying their work for one year at school, we were really interested in seeing them live. I suppose most students' main reason to go to Amsterdam, specially taking into account that we were between 17 and 18 years old, was because they could go to nightclubs and smoke joints in one of the many available coffee shops; but I wasn't at all interested in that. However, we did enter a coffee shop one night and we did party at the weekend. I like to think of Amsterdam as a clash between culture, tradition and history and the willingness to be an inclusive and updated society where an ancient building, church or museum can be located next to a nightclub, a coffee shop or a sex museum. We spent those days visiting those ancient places and marvelling at the exceptional artists that had been born there and the nights dancing in packed discos. We visited Anne Frank's house during the day, and ate a weed muffin at night. We went around the outskirts of the city by bicycle during the day, and entered a sex museum in the afternoon. If I think about it in depth, at that time, we - my classmates and I - also represented that transition from innocence to adulthood. We were still an in-between when we went to Amsterdam - we were still kids -, but, after that year at school, most of us would go to unversity and we'd have to grow up whether we liked it or not.