Newsgroup: it.hobby.cucina
Titolo: Rome's disappearing shops and cafes

Scusate se e' in inglese ma mi e' parso interessante, ed e' almeno in
parte IT. 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/4619383.stm
By Jeremy Bowen
BBC News, Rome
People in Britain often lament the changes in the nation's towns and
cities, as more and more national and international chain stores, banks
and coffee outlets force out local businesses and city centres all seem to
look the same. But this is not just a British phenomenon. Jeremy Bowen
says that Rome is also yielding to the relentless march of globalisation.
 
Customers in cafe in Rome
Romans still take their morning coffee and pastry at their local bars
It may be hard for many people who live in the teeming cities of our
globalised world to understand, but my commute to work is one of the great
pleasures of my day.
To get to the office, I walk for about half an hour through what must be
the most beautiful city anywhere.
The centre of Rome is not remotely busy before 10 o'clock in the morning.
The day feels fresh and new.
Even the Pantheon, the great domed building that started as a Roman temple
2,000 years ago and was preserved intact because it became one of the
earliest Christian churches, is serene and cool when I walk past it.
The tourists must still be sleeping.
My most senior colleagues here say that the 1950s were better, before mass
tourism, before there were many cars, when eating in a restaurant was
cheaper than cooking at home.
But I suspect that, when I am old enough to be able to say it was better
in my day, I might reminisce about Rome at the start of the 21st century.
Life may be less charming than it was in the 1950s but I suspect it is
much more attractive than it will be 50 years from now.
Shrinking world
 
Adverts on TV show happy Italian families eating something that mamma
bought in the supermarket and warmed up in the microwave
The world is shrinking and it is squeezing everywhere and everybody.
Almost 25 years ago, I spent a year in Italy as a student. It was
fascinating and fun, but no paradise.
It was still recovering from the turbulence of the 1970s, when there had
been bombs, kidnapping and ideological conflict between the right and the
left.
And it was very Italian.
Everyone had Italian cars - Fiats for the masses, Alfas for the sporty,
Lancias for the rich.
On every corner of the city where I lived small shops sold salami, ham,
cheese and wonderful fruit and vegetables.
Losing a way of life
 
The Coliseum
Romans have a strong sense of their own identity and a huge pride in their
city
In bakeries, as well as bread there were strange flat sheets of dough,
dusted with flour or knotted into little parcels. In Britain I had never
seen fresh pasta.
Twenty-five years ago, not many foreigners lived in Italy and not many
people spoke foreign languages nor appeared to have any desire so to do.
But now, in the globalised world, some middle-class Romans send their
children to international schools so that they will grow up speaking
English fluently.
The Italian father of one of my daughter's classmates speaks to his
Italian children only in English.
In restaurants the waiters are usually Italian but, if you look into the
kitchens, the people that are turning out local favourites like buccatini
all'amatriciana or spaghetti carbonara are very often Asians.
And the way of life that seemed routine and ordinary 25 years ago is
disappearing.
The businesses that paid for it - that produced things that people wanted
to buy because they were well designed and well priced - are struggling to
compete against cheap competition from China.
Microwave meals
The wives and mothers, who would have spent the morning shopping and
cooking, often go to work now.
Many of the small food shops they do not have time to visit any more have
closed. Adverts on TV show happy Italian families eating something that
mamma bought in the supermarket and warmed up in the microwave.
Sometimes on my way back from work, I stop at a poultry butcher who sells
excellent free range chicken and eggs.
His brother sells the red meat at a shop just across the road. I have
never seen any other customers in the shop when I have been buying my
chicken.
Long before closing time, which is about 7.30 in the evening, the shop is
immaculately clean and he is pacing up and down in the street outside,
packed up and ready to go home.
All the shops like that seem to be run by men and women in their 60s, and
most of them will turn into boutiques or jewellers' shops when their
owners retire.
I do not want to overstate the sense of change.
Local produce
Walking through Rome every day is a delight which I will never forget.
There are still workshops in beautiful medieval streets fixing scooters or
espresso machines, or making boxes or strange balls of wire.
The greengrocers - and there are still plenty of them - sell local fruit
and vegetables that are in season, not tasteless cotton wool balls that
have been flown in from the other side of the world.
Tourists can buy Big Macs to eat on the Spanish Steps but hundreds of
thousands of Romans still take their morning coffee and cornetto - a kind
of sweet croissant - standing at their local bars.
They have a strong sense of their own identity and a huge pride in their
city.
But the commercial forces that are taking away too many of the differences
that make the world interesting are at work here too. And it is a process
that goes in only one direction. 
-- 
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 BBC News, Rome
Ma sono cose che noi italian già sappiamo !!! :)))))
 D'altronde questo Bowen non è che ha fatto la scoperta dell'America dicendo 
che nelle cucine italiane  vede asiatici cucinare i bucatini 
all'amatriciana!
Come se io scrivessi: sono andata in Inghilterra e ho visto un cinese 
cucinare il fish anda chips!
ps. Ma cos'è ? la tesi di laurea di Bowen? :)
-- 
Ciao da Pandora
Amante dei gatti,
della cucina, della natura
e delle cose belle

 cucinare il fish anda chips!
C'e' modo e modo di scriverlo.


Violino ha scritto:

sulla repubblica di oggi (in cronaca di roma) c'e' un trafiletto su 
questo articolo
steo153
-- 
Non mi legga chi non e' matematico nelli mia principi
						[Leonardo da Vinci]

 questo articolo
Occhio al quoting :)
-- 
Enrico C
it-alt.viaggi.londra
(Per quelli che... Ci vediamo a Piccadilly)

 
Potresti farne un "Bignami" per cortesia?
Garfield