Posted on 10/01/2009 6:25:54 PM PDT by Saije
It's 2 a.m. and the hours of sustained drinking are taking their toll. Smashed glass and plastic cups litter the streets, trash cans overflow with empty beer cans, and girls in high heels and short skirts totter unsteadily out of rowdy pubs. But this is not London or New York. It's Rome.
Italians have long been regarded as a model of Mediterranean restraint when it comes to alcohol consumption.
But all that is changing, for a complex mix of reasons. Italian parents, struggling in the country's worst recession since World War II, are working longer hours and have less time to supervise their teenagers.
The long-cherished tradition of drinking alcohol only as an accompaniment to eating has been severed, with drinking – and getting drunk – now seen as an end itself. The "rhythm of Italian life is changing," says the director of the Italian Institute for Health, Dr. Emanuele Scafato.
Beverage companies aggressively market ready-mixed drinks and "alco-pops" to teenagers, bombarding them with the message that alcohol consumption is sexy.
And Italians' attitude to alcohol has been transformed by the increasing numbers of young foreign tourists who descend on the country, particularly in the summer months. Budget flights have put Rome and other Italian cities within easy reach of young British, Irish, and other hard-drinking northern Europeans, not to mention Australians and Americans.
"We are seeing a strong Anglo-Saxon influence on the culture of drinking," says Gianluca Cecchini, the owner of Q's Bar in Trastevere, a cobbled Roman quarter of twisting alleyways and Renaissance piazzas just over the Tiber River...
For Italians, becoming drunk in public was once a social taboo – a cause for shame, particularly for women. But now, neighbourhood enoteca bars...are being crowded out by British-style pubs with names like The Drunken Ship and Sloppy Sam's.
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Its just spread there, nobody ever binged before.
The evil Anglo-Saxons.
Next thing you know Greeks will be binge drinking
When I was over there in the early 1980’s I was warned that if I got picked up drunk in public they would send me not to jail but to a mental institution, because they considered anyone who would get that sloppy in public to have some sort of mental problem. Obviously times have changed.
Well, at least it hasn’t spread to Russia.
BTW, how many people do you think won’t get the sarcasm?
Just in time - I leave Monday for Venice.
If they are bingeing more now, it is a change in pattern, but not necessarily in daily total intake or harm done.
Having spent most of my adult life in the hospitality industry, people will always find money for booze.
Civilization is in a state of collapse. I guess this is how we got regressives into power.
Lucky you!! I could give you the name of a couple of great restaurants if you’re interested....
I was just in Rome, the only people that I noticed being visibly (and audibly) drunk were the English. We could hear them singing their drinking songs from blocks away all through the night.
I’m only going to be in town over night before heading down to Ravenna for a couple of days, then to Kotor, Montenegro.
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