Napolitan: So? Did you buy the tickets to come to Naples?
Turist: Say nothing about it, I couldn’t use the ticket I bought the first time because I had some important matter at work.
Neapolitan: …The ones you bought the first time?
Turist: Yes, I bought them a second time because there was Trains Strike!
Neapolitan: Wua, Ma teniss’ l’uocchie ‘ncuoll?
Turist: What??
Neapolitan: You’re right, I forgot you cannot understand some things if you are not Neapolitan.
 Let me explain…Naples is the City of Superstition. Everybody believes that the outcome of an event or situation is somehow connected to a negative or a positive vibe. By saying you have: “gli occhi addosso” like I mentioned before in dialect, it was really to say that someone with some superstion’s technique kept you from getting to Naples. But it’s only one of the many things spoken in Naples regarding the malocchio.
Turist: Malocchio??
Neapolitan: Yes, it’s a different way to say “staring badly” at someone, wanting purposely to creat problems or to damage the person concerned
It may seem absurd but everybody in Naples tend to believe that if something wrong happened to them, it’s just because somebody “has laid their eyes (negatively) on them” even if they are a non-believers.
It’s a pet phrase that nowdays has become a real proper saying.
Turist: absurd! It gets harder and harder trying to understand neapolitans, it’s like if you’d live in a world on your own, built on beliefs, traditions, culture, art… No one could be like you.
Neapolitan: I don’t want to say it, buti t is just true. You need to embrace Naples in order to understand it. It’s not enough to take a walk on the sea side, or having a pizza, nor thinking if wandering around in the Spanish Quarters it’s the right choise because it might be “dangerous”.
On the sea side you need to walk admiring the Vesuvio and drinking a beer whilst eating hot taralli “nzogna e pepe”, eat pizza in the historical centre where evrything seems to be left as in the past, se if by walking through those little streets someone was narrating it’s story and you need to go to the Spanish Quarters knowing that it’s nothing but one of the many neighborhood where there is a different reality…
Turist: I hope to be there for Christmas, I would like to aldo visit San Gregorio Armeno, as you suggested last time.
Neapolitan: please come and we will buy the “Tombola Napoletana” and I will show you how during Christmas, all the beliefs and the neapolitan saying have a free pass into people’s life even if only to joke around.
Turist:What does any of this has anything to do with the Tombola? Is it that game with all those little numbers?
Neapolitan: exactly. Every number refers to something that only neapolitans can understand.
Turist: like what?

Neapolitan: it happens the 17 but if you have 16 and can get here on 25, all together it’s 20!
Turist: okay, I give up!
Neapolitan + Turist: 😂 😂 😂 

Ornella Donatellis 

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