This post talks about my volunteering (Workaway – click here to sign up! ) experience in Naples, Italy! How I got a place there, what my work was about, and the amazing people I’ve met.
As I’ve mentioned, the hostel I contacted beforehand cancelled on me and I had zero plan on where to go for the upcoming weeks. I put up my workaway profile as a last-minute volunteer a few days before I left Sicily, hoping to find a host as soon as possible.
A lesson that I have learned later on is that sometimes there are so many coincidences in life it is hard to believe that things are not meant to be.
According to my original plan, I was going to stay with a Couchsurfing host in Naples. However, as the host had some family issues to deal with, we cancelled our arrangement.
One day before taking the night ferry to Naples from Palermo, I received an email from La Controra Hostel on Workaway. Alessandro, the one who was in charged asked me if I was available to volunteer in the same month or the following month. I was screaming in my heart, “hell yeah, I am available immediately like tomorrow!” We video-called on WhatsApp for a short while (I tried to act cool and not to sound so desperate) and agreed on the arrangement just a few hours before I headed to Naples.
The timing was so perfect it was fascinating.
I got the cheapest ticket for the ferry ride. It was a deck ticket for 47 Euro. I did not get any cabin as it was totally way out of my budget, so I slept on the couch in the cafeteria. It was not very comfortable as I did not have any privacy at all even though I was at the corner. There were many other guests including a big group of high-schoolers hanging around at the area, watching football on TV and chit-chatting. However, I was happy enough to have a couch to lay down on. At least I didn’t have to sit and cramp myself up on an armchair throughout the entire journey.
I arrived in Napoli the next morning. I fell in love with the hostel the moment I arrived there. Everything felt right in place.
There were three buildings in the hostel. I did not stay in any of the three. Instead, I stayed in a tiny church room that was connected to the hostel. It was actually an abandoned old church. There was a small window close to the concave ceiling of my room. I shared the tiny room with Federico, with me sleeping on the top bunk bed. On the wall right beside my bed hanged a weird painting with a figure of a weird alien priest and a cropped picture of a black man. I still haven’t figured out the meaning behind.
As volunteers of the hostel, each of us had to do 25 hours of shifts every week with two consecutive days off. The shifts included supervising breakfast, changing bed sheets, taking out the trash and cooking dinner for ‘Happy Hour’ a.k.a. an aperitivo.
Aperitivo: an Italian ritual where you get a drink (usually alcoholic) and you can have all the dishes (pasta, salad, bread, sausages, cheeses, etc.) served in a buffet style for free. Must try if you ever visit Italy.
For the breakfast shift which was usually from 7AM to 10AM, we had to make sure that everything is well-prepared and organized for the breakfast and wash the dishes after the guests are done.
We usually started changing bedsheets at 11AM. My colleagues and I hated it when a big group of guests checked out on the same day because that meant we would have many beds to do and a longer shift. My highest record was to change more than 80 bed sheets in 2 hours. I think my colleagues and I made a great team.
Taking the trash out was rather tricky. We usually stacked all the trash in a trolley and pushed it across the street. However, it was not easy to get the trolley there because the hostel situated in the middle of a slope and the trolley kept rolling downhill. The crazy Neapolitan drivers certainly did not make it easier. It felt like a warzone. I felt like a man every time I completed the task successfully without any help.
The cooking part was the most challenging to me as I hardly ever cooked in Malaysia. I had to make food for around 25 pax within 2 hours – that was like 1.5kg of pasta, 2kg of potatoes, and a big bowl of green salad.
It was ‘Happy Hour’ for everybody except me. It honestly felt more like ‘Stressful Hours’.
Let me tell you about this one mistake that got everyone laughing at me.
As usual, I took a picture of the list of ingredients I had to get and left for the supermarket. There was this dish named “cereal mix with peppers and olives” and according to the list, I was supposed to get “2 packs of cereal mix”. Feeling odd, I browsed through the shelves and spotted some cereal bars with a brand called Cereal Mix. There was no way I was going to cook that with peppers and olives. Thinking that it was probably a new dish that I hadn’t heard of, I grabbed some cereals and went back. I didn’t ask Chef Google because I ran out of phone data at that moment.
As I opened the packet and about to pour the breakfast cereal into a pot of boiling water, I had a second thought and went to the reception to double check with my colleague. Thank goodness I was not too stupid to actually cook the breakfast cereal. It turned out that I should be getting something called cereali, which was a box of mixed grains. My other colleagues knew what I had almost done and they were all laughing at me – “did you not have any common sense when you get the breakfast cereal?!”
Anyway, by the end of my stay, I did improve a lot on my cooking. From the worst Asian styled fried rice I ever had in my entire life to one of the best pasta I had ever tasted, I am extremely grateful for this learning opportunity.
I ended up spending a month and a half volunteering with the hostel. I enjoyed most of my time there. I spent many nights hanging out with the hostel guests and the other volunteers at the big dining table. We talked a lot about almost everything. Here is a short list I wrote in my journal about all the remarkable people I met and what we did together:
- My colleagues – Sol, Vir and Federico from Argentina, Betilda from France, Freya and Helena from Denmark, Tar from Brazil, Belen from Spain… We all came and left at different times. Nevertheless, we got to hang out at the park, made lunch together at the hostel (miss the Argentinian styled empanadas!), went out for a gelato and sometimes hang around the piazzas late night. Also the receptionist Danny from Scotland! (avoiding the word U.K. because he hates England hahaha)
One of my regrets was probably didn’t take pictures with all of them! Ugh. So much of acting cool and “nah I don’t get why people love taking pictures all the time”. It’s not about the pictures, it’s the memories!
- Gary from Washington and Jerry from Hawaii. We went to Pompeii together. They were very funny! I could still remember Jerry made a horrible joke about the body plasters (shape of the dead bodies) at the archaeological park. “Damn, you can really tell who saw it coming and who didn’t. Look at that guy, you can tell from his (dying) pose that he definitely did not see it coming!” I felt bad for laughing but the way he said it was really funny.
- Sharon from China, Henry from UK and a girl from Canada. We went to see the Herculaneum archaeological park and Mount Vesuvius together!
- Lily from Amsterdam and Alice from New Zealand. We went out with Danny and the other guests on another Saturday night. They were really fun! We left the dance club earlier than the guys as I had a morning shift at 7AM on the following day. We sneaked into the hostel bar and got some breakfast cereals from the cupboard. How classic. I did not bother going to my bed as it was already 4AM. I slept on the couch at the common area instead with my ruined mascara and lipstick. Yes, I was very trashy that day. (Honestly, that happened quite a few times… I am rather embarrassed of myself)
- Angie from Germany, Michael and Taylor from Canada and two other guys which I can’t remember their names nor where they came from. Michael and Taylor told us about their adventure – where they had no idea how to drive a manual car and they rented one in Italy and had to ‘push’ its way up to San Marino haha with the Italians behind yelling at them. That night, we went out and got very drunk. It was a fun night – except Michael had to carry me back to the hostel as I was very disoriented I could barely walk. Girls, do not do this when you travel alone. Hahaha.
That night went rather weird. I did get back to the hostel safely. However, I felt uncomfortable when the receptionist greeted me and hugged me tightly and even lifted me up from the floor. He asked me if I wanted to sleep at the reception but there was only one couch there which he was sleeping on. I refused and slept on the couch at the common area instead, just like the other night. I had a blurry memory about the situation. I remembered I saw him sitting by the couch and asked me if I wanted to sleep at the reception. I remembered feeling uncomfortable but I guess I was probably being paranoid and thinking way too much.
- Omar from America but currently living in the Oceania. We had a deep conversation about life. The conversation made me rethink about how I had always lived my life.
“I have no idea what I want to do after I go back to Malaysia. God, I don’t even know where I am going in the next couple of weeks.”
“You sound like a very organized person. Can you go without making plans?”
“Maybe, I don’t know. I just feel like I should have something to look forward to.”
“Well, here’s one thing I learned about life – we should always try out best to live in the present. I am 30 years old and I am still trying my best to do that. We spend so much time dwelling on the past or thinking about the future that we often forget to live in the moment. As the Romans say, carpe diem.”
I had never really thought of it that way. Growing up, I always made plans – as you can see from the previous chapter. I was not comfortable with the idea of ‘just go with it’.
His words stuck in my head for a long time. Like even by the time I’m writing this, I’ve been constantly reminding myself to focus on the present when I start to feed on memories or dreams about the future.
When I was about to go to bed, I told him that I was very tired because I did this and that and this and that on that day.
He looked at me and said, “if you are tired, you are tired. Why do you need reasons for that?”
That question hit me hard. I don’t know why, but I had always needed solid reasons to give myself a break. Even by the time of writing this, I still feel the same. I guess that was how I was brought up – if you work your ass off then you will get a break as a reward or else, work harder.
I need to be honest – Napoli isn’t the best city for sightseeing. The streets are dirty, the walls are all vandalized and the traffic is very chaotic. However, the longer you stay here, the more you will feel the lively vibes of the Neapolitans. It has its own unique charm that you can only see it by immersing yourself in their culture. Many Italians told me that Neapolitans are nothing like the typical Italians. They have their own dialect and their own way of living. Many often told me that there is basically no law in Napoli and I should not be going there alone.
But it’s the born place of pizza! How on earth can you miss this city if you ever come to Italy?
Honestly, it did not feel as great as how I think about it now when I was there. Do you know about the expat cycle? It is basically a module that explains the ups and downs one will experience when he or she enters a new culture.
After half a month staying in Italy where everything felt new, I started to have some serious culture shock. I grew sick of pizzas and pastas. I had days where I felt so troubled that I couldn’t bare having conversations with anybody without getting pissed off. Why was everything so different? Why did all these people have values so different from mine? I was terribly upset with everything. The racism I faced in Italy definitely made it a lot more worse.
I’ll talk about the racism I faced in Italy in my next post!
The Dancing Wildfire 
2 thoughts on “Work in a hostel in exchange for accommodation – My Workaway Experience in Naples, Italy”