When we asked him if he wanted to drive us to Naples, he was raring to go.

I had reluctantly agreed to write something about the Tadema exhibition at the National Museum, but was happily anticipating Naples all the same. Even the girls, who had had enough of our excursions and were no longer impressed by our promises, could hardly fall asleep the evening before we left.

On the morning of 12 December, however, it looked as if an escalating truckers' strike would defeat our lovely plans. I dialled one taxi number after another, to no avail. Petrol stations were running out of fuel, supermarket shelves were emptying fast, fruit and milk had already vanished from many of them. With suitcase, shoulder bags, and two girls we hurried to the Piazza Bologna. The metro, usually crammed full at this hour in any case, was pure hell — or perhaps what people like us call hell. Without Ralf, we would have missed our train with reserved seats. It was all Natalia and I could do to keep the girls from being squashed, so Ralf took charge of our baggage, but didn't make it on to the carriage. He showed up at Termini just before our train pulled out — with our suitcase balanced atop his head, bags slung over his shoulders, and a blue plastic bag of oranges dangling from his right wrist.

I'm always fascinated by the fact that it takes only two hours to get from Rome to Naples, and another two, in the opposite direction, to Florence. For me, it's always as if Rome lies at the equator, and Florence and Naples are overarched by two different skies.

It may sound like wild enthusiasm or at least an exaggeration when I claim that I had experienced the uniqueness of Naples two years before, when for the first time I climbed out of a taxi on the Piazza San Domenico Maggiore. This city has its own peculiar density — I know no other word for it than density. The volume of its squares, streets, alleys, courtyards is so supercharged that Neapolitans seem to me more mature than the inhabitants of other cities. And warmer, and maybe a little nastier too, depending on who you run into. They have neither energy nor time for illusions. Naples is a city that squanders its beauty, and not just in criminality and decay. All of a sudden the most splendid church emerges, but you can barely see the façade, let alone get a sense of it in its entirety. The real splendour is often first visible from a back courtyard. Nowhere is the air so saturated with smells, and the air changes with every step you take. 

You are given the once-over, patted, and jostled, silence doesn't exist. The rattle of motorinos demands a constant glance over the shoulder. But this density would be nothing without the expanse that accompanies it. All it takes is to climb a couple flights of stairs or to change from one side of the street to the other, or simply to turn around, and you're dizzy from the vista di mare, which I experienced the first time from the windows of the Hotel Britannique, where we were staying on this trip too. With its '70s décor, it looks pretty run-down. Only the high ceilings hint of its old grandezza. Just calling it to memory gives me goose bumps. I merely have to picture groping my way through the darkened room, pulling open the casements, pushing the wooden shutters out, and closing my eyes as the light crashes in. Despite all the descriptions I'd heard or read, despite all the paintings, photographs, and films, I thought I was prepared for that moment. In those few dazzled seconds of trying to orient yourself, it's as if you have wandered into a painting or movie — it's all so familiar, nothing is familiar. It's never a repeat view, if only because the light and the colour of the water always generate a different space. Each time I'm terrified by how close Vesuvius is, each time it seems unreal that Sorrento and Amalfi are located on that peninsula, that that island out there is called Capri. The expanse is the other side of the coin, the counterpart to the density so surprisingly and intimately related to it. Because the view across the Gulf of Naples embraces all that we are: from Virgil to Nietzsche and Wagner, from Benjamin to Malaparte to Saviano — seemingly random names chosen from so vast a number. That was my lecture once the girls had fallen asleep on the train, while Ralf peeled his oranges and divided them into thirds. I also said that I was well aware of the dubiousness of such generalisations, that they probably revealed more of my own ignorance than any factual knowledge, but were at least my attempt to get a focus on the place.