Our final destination was Italy, and the focus of our visit was ancient ruins. There, we went to the city of Pompeii, an ancient city that was destroyed by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius thirty years after the birth of Jesus Christ. They have not rebuilt the city; they have only excavated it, so that the semi-ruined buildings and the arenas for gladiator fights are visible. Pompeii was very ancient, yet modern; for instance, all the streets were paved; the tracks of carriage wheels were left on the streets, indicating that people used carriages for transportation at that time. Another interesting thing was that at the entrance of each alley branching off the streets, they placed a carved stone to prevent carts and carriages from entering. What’s more astonishing is that the city had water plumbing, with copper pipes extending to all the houses. It’s clear that this city was very modern and beautiful, and its people were wealthy; this can be inferred from the quality of the buildings, which were mostly made of very beautiful carved stones.
Of course, most of the buildings’ roofs have collapsed, and only parts of their walls remain. Some of the people’s belongings and utensils have been preserved, items like fishing gear and toys; these have been placed in an exhibition for visitors to familiarize themselves with the lifestyle of those people. Another thing that caught my attention in that city was a bathhouse, a very large one with a spacious changing room; there were large braziers that still had coal, presumably to keep people warm while dressing.
There were two types of pools there, one that was deep below ground level and another like a bathtub, above ground level; it seemed likely that the nobles and aristocrats used the bathtubs, while the common people used the pools, similar to those we had in ancient Iran.
In summary, visiting that city was a good and interesting experience. After that, we went to Sorrento; we stayed overnight in a hotel. The next morning, we took a boat to the island of Capri, where we were supposed to have lunch; it was a very pleasant place, and many tourists had come. Before going to the island, an elderly lady was assigned to us as a guide; I told the hotel manager, “You should have told me, I would have brought my mother”; they laughed a lot and assigned us a young guide; the hotel manager said she was Marshal De Gaulle’s guide when he had come here.
The lady guide was very clever; during lunch, I said I wouldn’t eat this Italian food, order me a steak instead; they brought the food, but it wasn’t steak; I got up from the communal table, went to another table, and ordered a steak; when leaving, the lady guide wouldn’t let me pay, and we had a little argument; in any case, the meal was paid for. After lunch, we headed to Rome and then returned to our province. Before going to Rome, an interesting story happened. Our group consisted of twenty-six people, eighteen of whom were representatives of city associations; two people had come from Mashhad, one of whom was a very respectable middle-aged woman. When it was time to head to Sorrento, everyone got on the bus, except for that woman. I went after her, knocked on her door, and said, “Ma’am, the bus is waiting, we’re waiting for you”; she said, “I have a problem, my dress is torn, and I don’t have a needle and thread”; I said, “I have some”; immediately, I brought her a box I had with me, with several colors of thread, several types of buttons, and a few needles; she sewed her dress and came; she said, “I’m a woman, and it didn’t occur to me to bring these things, how did you think of it?” I said, “In our culture, our fathers advise us to always carry three things when traveling: something to light a fire, something to cut with, and something to sew with.” This advice is for one to be able to handle necessities in special and critical situations; one might get stranded in a forest and need matches to make fire, or if hunting, one would need a knife to prepare the game for cooking. We must always be cautious; such an event might happen once or twice in a lifetime, but when it does, one feels pleased to have solved a problem. In the past, the lack of facilities made people very careful; they were cautious not to run into problems; now, there are many facilities, and people have become careless; this leads to problems in critical situations. The trip was at our own expense, but it was very useful, and we learned interesting things; we asked many questions to European mayors, and they answered, talked about their problems, how their incomes were secured, and how they spent and such issues. It’s true that many of their experiences couldn’t be implemented here, but overall, the trip was beneficial; it lasted forty days, and we learned a lot.