ninme

IHT - In Italy, a winter of discontent

ROME: All the world loves Italy because it is old but still glamorous. Because it eats and drinks well but is rarely fat or drunk. Because it is the place in hyper-regulated Europe where people still debate with perfect intelligence what, really, the red in a stoplight might mean.

But these days, for all the outside adoration and all its innate strengths, Italy seems not to love itself. The word here is “malessere,” or malaise, and it implies a collective funk - economic, political and social - summed up in a recent poll: Italians, despite their claim to have mastered the art of living, report themselves the least happy people in Western Europe.

“It’s a country that has lost a little of its will for the future,” said Walter Veltroni, Rome’s mayor and a possible future prime minister. “There is more fear than hope.”

The weather’s grey. It’s drizzling slightly. It’s not cold enough for a heavy jacket and not warm enough for a light one. I have a ton of grocery stores to go to. This Christmas office party tonight is a pot luck, which is annoying me to no end. The stupid book I just finished was incredibly annoying. And the first thing I see of the outside world is a little bit more of Europe dying. La, what an auspicious beginning this day has had.

Augh, read the whole thing.