9.9.05
Life at Spartacus
About camp life (finally). The project as a whole lives in tents at a camp site called Camping Spartacus. The Campground is located on the Via Plinio, one of the main roads of modern Pompei. European campgrounds work differently than American ones, or atleast to the degree that I've been exposed to them. They're more like camper stops, I guess. As you enter Spartacus, you come down a paved ramp that leads into the campsite proper, and splits off into three little paved roads that give access to the mildly tree-lined tent spaces. Little areas of tent spaces are divided off by bushes and azaleas and the like, making little compounds for tent communities (we call them insulae, latin for blocks in the sense of city blocks). The AAPP takes over about half of Spartacus for the summer.
At the back of the campsite is a restaurant/pizzaria and bar/market area. The restaurant is owned by the same family that runs the campsite (Orlando, his wife, his parents, and kids, along with several other family members, the connection between I'm not entirely clear on). The restaurant is where the project has all its meals. Breakfast is a buffet-style spread of cereal, bread, some meat and cheese, a lot of fruit and yogurt. Lunch is usually some pasta dish or rice or something of that nature. Dinner is complicated and not really worth going into.
The bar (so it's called) is where we spend the vast majority of our time when not on site. It's a little building with a bar counter that serves all manner of things from beer to cappuccini to basic packaged food. Out front of it is a grape trellis-covered seating area with tables which we take over enmasse at 6pm when we come down off the hill.