– I don’t believe that, this is impossible, this must be a joke, – was hardly breathing the Englishman appeared in front of us on the way to the seashore with his luggage the shoulder. The Italian woman accompanying him was smiling with the same “Well, this is it, whether you want it or not” smile, with which Stella who was accompanying us a week ago was answering my questions. “And if someone has a heart attack, or someone is going to be in labor, or someone gets a fracture, what shall you do, how should the ambulance get here?” – in response to these questions, Stella who met us in Atrani was just smiling, “we are used to this life here, this is our life.”
Atrani with its 913 inhabitants (by data of 2010) and 0.12 square kilometers is the smallest commune in Italy and is located in one of the most beautiful parts of Italy, in extremely popular location by tourists and Italian vacationers, in Amalfitana, Campania region, province of Salerno, on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Atrani is just 200 meters far from the town Amalfi, the center of Amalfi Coast, with its municipality, coat of arms and its uniqueness – the stairs that serve as a street.
Many towns of Amalfi Coast have a very high layout, they start from the shore and climbed into the rocks, but Atrani appears to densify this unique structure, in this city, except for the main square and the main street, all the remaining streets represent stairways, the houses are built one on the other, and to go from one side of the town to another, you need only to overcome stairways, there are dwellings even in the caves.
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No means of transport enters this town, except for motorcycles, which run by the main street only and tiny “FIAT” and “Smarts” owned by the locals. You need to have no mobility problems in order to live here, otherwise you will be doomed to stay indoors, simply there is no opportunity for wheelchairs.
Once we moved to our rented house in one of the skyscrapers of Atrani, every day we were walking down 200 stairs to the sea and back by the same stairs. To get to the city center, we were overcoming 189 stairs. On the way, you have to greet all the neighbors on the street-stairs without exception. Almost all the doors are open, and people are getting in and out “on their street”. In one place, a grandmother is cooking pasta, in another place, a child is playing with a dog, ten stairs below a young woman is drying the laundry … And everywhere you can take a delicious smell the tomato and garlic, from which you can judge that almost everybody here is eating spaghetti in tomato sauce every day and several times a day.
From one of the stairs-built streets, you can get to the neighboring town of Amalfi. 
There was a road from Atrani to the wonderful Ravello town located on top of the mountain, but we did not have the courage and the breath to cross this distance, though we saw many young tourists that were on their way to Ravello. This town known for its classical music festivals is located just 6 km. away from Amalfi, but the buses cross this distance in 35 minutes, at best. The road represents a sinuous road thru the mountains designed for two tiny cars that can pass simultaneously by almost getting too close to each other.
In case of the bus, especially at the turns, the cars coming from the opposite direction should stop, drive back giving way for the city bus to pass. Prior to every turn, the buses were giving a signal so that the opposite direction cars would stop, those who had missed hearing the signal had to go back a long distance.
To the point, about the transport. In all travel guides, those who travel here are strongly recommended not to come here by cars, indicating that the road is quite complicated, there are a lot of jams and the public transport network is so developed that it can take you to your desired place. The SITA bus network connecting the whole Amalfi shore together operates pretty well, but not with German punctuality. For example, once to return from Pozitano, we waited for more than 1,5 hours, while buses were scheduled to start the engine at the interval of 50 minutes. Returning from Sorento, the departure scheduled for 15 o’clock was canceled, and the 15:30 bus was crammed enormously. For us, all of this was not particularly impressive, but you should have seen the anger of German, English and even Serbian tourists towards this unpunctuality. The buses from Amalfi to other cities were departing so overloaded that I recalled our 1990s.
Generally, in Italy, the more to the north, the more the society is punctual, disciplined and developed, and those who live in the south are known for their unpunctuality, noise, and “non-European” behavior. People are talking in a loud voice, with strong gesticulation of hands, drivers are pressing on the signal necessarily and unnecessarily, yelling at each other, the bus may deviate from its path a light to take an acquaintance to the destination and so on. And most interestingly, they “do not care” whether or not their hosted Germans, Englishmen, and Americans like their narrow roads, their stair-streets, the closed shops and companies from 12 to 18 o’clock, their unpunctual buses and ships, and so on and so forth … This does not mean at all that there is a bad attitude towards the tourists, on the contrary, they are very warm, very friendly, especially when you try speaking a few words in their language. As well as it does not mean that any foreigner gets disappointed because of these everyday problems.
One should see and listen what kind of exclamations and shouts are heard in the bus when the next turn appears in the sight, the next fragment of the sea, the white sailboats or the lemon (by the way, Amalfi lemons are a separate story – too big and too sweet), orange, fig and grape vineyards established on the crevices of the hill, “O~ my God, O my Goodness” is heard here and there across the way, and when the bus makes a turn on the highest zigzag and it seems that falling into the abyss is inevitable, all the passengers in the bus take such a deep sigh with the taste of joy of salvation in the mouth and horror of death phantom that the bus driver blinks his eyes into the mirror in front of him with a grin. …When different people in Rome were interested in where we were leaving and were hearing – Amalfi, their eyes were sparkling. This unique place is also one of the best sights for the Italians who enjoy the favor of nature and the God.
Melania BARSEGHYAN, “Aravot” daily
