How Things Change (or Don't): The Garbatella Market

It's said that Rome is Eternal, and that may be true in any number of ways too complex to get into. But having spent time in the city and taken thousands of photographs, often of features of the landscape we had photographed before, we can say with some authority that changes do occur.

The Garbatella Market is an example.  When we first went by in 2009 (or that's when we took the first photos that we still have), the iconic market stairs were in disrepair--as was the rest of the facade-- and covered with political graffiti and an ode to Sancho Panza and Don Quixote.

Two years later, the market had been restored, the stairs repaired, the brick walls cleaned, and the graffiti removed--though a few tags had appeared.  Progress!

In 2017, the stairs had been reborn as a political space--Garbatella is a leftist enclave, and the stairway's bricks, having become impossible to maintain, had been painted yellow.  The 2010 message, about the necessity of struggling against injustice, had been replaced with something similar, but also different:  "In every epoch and in every circumstance, there will always be many reasons to give up the struggle.  But without struggle, one will never have liberty."

Inside the market has changed as well.  It was once a regional city market; then (as late as 2010), it was an empty, derelict space.  Now, on Saturdays, it is a fledgling farmers' and artisans' market.

Maybe Rome--even modern Rome--is, indeed, Eternal.  Everything changes, everything stays the same.

Bill

Coins - but not in the fountain; modern Romans and money

Cultural differences over change? You bet! First we noticed many Italians (just Romans?) don't like to put change into your hand.... like dutiful Americans, we held out our hands, only to have money dropped on the counter. When we got back to the US, we had to learn to hold out our hands again.

The shops even have a small tray for you to put your money in and the cashiers to drop your change - and your "scontrino" (receipt).

On the other hand (ahem), Italian shopkeepers will reach into your hand, or your coin purse, to get the correct change, if they see you fumbling a bit. At first, we thought it was just us foreigners; they thought we didn't get the monetary system or understand them. But, no, they do it to everyone. More than once we've watched a waiter or shop person reach inside a person's coin purse (which he or she held open for him) to pick out the correct change.

Then there's just the mania (as we see it) for change. If you give a cashier anything that requires even a little bit of change, they ask you if you have coins to make it a coin of a larger denomination. For example, for a Euro 3.3 item, if you give them Euro 4, they'll ask you for the 30 cents. Or, if you don't have that, do you have 50 cents? Anything to pare down the change.

At major museums, there are signs for correct change. So, tourists at Castel Sant'Angelo are supposed to have the Euro 6 exactly? How can this be? How can they not have enough change? This is a far cry from US shops that have "we need 5s and 1s" or "we don't take anything over $20) - that's nothing compared to the Italian coin mania.

We thought maybe this coin obsession dated to the Italian conversion from Lire to Euros in 2000 - were there not enough coins to go around? But a long-time English bookstore owner told us the Italians ran out of small lire coins in the 1980s and were giving a piece of candy instead of some lire in change. She told us she saved up enough candy from the "change" her regular coffee bar had given her to pay for a cup of coffee with the candy, and the bar owners (who may have been taking advantage of the apparently coin shortage) were clearly ticked off at this.

Anyone with better explanations for these cultural differences - we'd be happy to hear them.

In the meantime, another money fact to bear in mind is a study that showed older Italians are better at math conversions than the rest of us - it appears because they had to convert all those ridiculously large amounts of lire into amounts that made sense to them. Since the lira disappeared in 2000, we assume the Italians will gradually lose this edge. Of course, 9 years later, there are still signs in shops (especially meat stalls in markets) showing prices in Euros AND lire. Some things, even if they're ridiculous (like pricing in lire) die hard.

Dianne