The phrase has been imported from the English language because there is no Italian equivalent. Its meaning, however, has been graphically illustrated from Rome to Milan throughout the summer.
“Binge drinking,” a vice more commonly associated with British tourists, has become a national controversy in a country that has traditionally taken a moderate approach to alcohol.
Police were this weekend patrolling historic piazzas in Rome to enforce a summer ban on drinking alcohol in the streets, put into effect after months of drunken mob scenes.
“This is a huge step forward, backed all the way by Romans,” said Dino Gasperini, the city official who masterminded the ban. “Drinking in the street is just not part of Roman culture.”
A government study this year revealed that nine out of 10 young Italians were drinking at weekends and said that achieving a state of drunkenness was the goal for two thirds of boys and a third of girls. That was enough to convince Milan city council to land parents with 900 euro fines if their children were caught drunk in public.
In Rome this weekend, the normally chaotic Campo de’ Fiori was unseasonably calm, save for a few teenagers surreptitiously sucking on straws poked into plastic beakers, out of sight of two parked police cars.
“What has changed in Italy is that my father would not have let me back in the house if I was drunk,” said policeman Massimiliano Benedetti, 45, on patrol in the quiet Piazza Trilussa, the square known for its gushing fountain, river views and, until recently, wild party atmosphere thanks to revelers spilling out of the nearby bars.
Michele Sorice, a sociologist at Rome’s Luiss University, said the crackdown was a response to a fundamental shift in Italian society.
“For the first time, the link between drinking and sitting down to eat with the family in Italy has been severed,” he said. “Add to that the discovery of spirits by the very young. My students tell me I am old-fashioned because I like a pint, not shots.”
Alcoholism in Italy is not the sole preserve of the young: Overall rates have tripled since 1996. Moreover, scores of new pubs opening over the past decade have targeted Italian teenagers with cheap alcohol deals.
“Young men see losing control as a way of living a life of excess, just as their fathers saw fast driving,” Sorice said.
The Italian language has no word for “hangover” or “pub crawl,” but six organized crawls now wind their way around Rome on a nightly basis.
Last week Patrick, an 18-year-old waiter, was looking unsteady on his feet during one tour, chanting “Beer! Beer!” and downing drinks at a pace more normally associated with British tourists.
“This pub crawling is great and could take off among Italians once they find out about it,” he said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema