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Weekend Wanderlust: Picnicking Roman-style in the Castelli Romani

We’re sitting on picnic benches cluttered with carafes, stomachs full of cheese and chicory, cheers-ing with strangers and singing along with two senior gents on guitar: in other words, it’s Tuesday night in the Castelli Romani.

Weekend Wanderlust: Picnicking Roman-style in the Castelli Romani
Dinner outdoors in Frascati, less than an hour south of Rome. Photo: Hotel Colonna Frascati/Facebook

Specifically we’re in Frascati, one of the largest of the ‘Roman Castles’, the scattering of towns in the Alban Hills south of the capital where for centuries those who could afford it would retreat to escape the malarial heat of Rome. The area is studded with their summer villas, many still in private hands and barely glimpsable through locked gates and down long, tree-lined drives.

But there’s a more accessible side to the Castelli. The same volcanic hills that made them an ideal summer retreat also made them perfect for growing wine, and Frascati’s light, crisp white of the same name is one of the area’s biggest exports (one of the town’s other specialities is a biscuit in the shape of a woman with three breasts; the third is supposedly for wine).

READ ALSO: Ten must-do day trips from Rome


Villas and vineyards in Frascati. Photo: DepositPhotos

While visitors flock to the Castelli’s famed Grape Festival in October – when statues are decked with fruit and the fountains quite literally run with wine – I’ve come for a tradition that’s just as regular and at least as old: a fraschetta, a boozy picnic to celebrate the year’s new wine.

I was invited by a friend who grew up in the Castelli, Jan Claus Di Blasio, who is an enthusiastic guide to the area’s heritage (see his blog, Latium Mirabile, for more on the history, legends and nature of the Lazio region).

READ ALSO: 14 reasons why Lazio should be your next Italian holiday destination

The word fraschetta, he explains, originates from the days when, come late summer, wine producers would hang a branch – a frasca – over their door to show that the new batch was ready to be drunk. Not having kitchens to speak of, the makers would invite customers to bring their own food and eat at tables set up for the occasion outside.

Today the custom is a little more systematized: at the handful of establishments that still host fraschette, some have introduced a €1 cover charge, while the one we visit, Osteria Dell’Olmo, invites guests to buy their fare from their preferred supplier across the road.

But the etiquette remains simple, Jan Claus assures: pick up bread and side dishes from one of Frascati’s old-fashioned bakeries or forni, and cold cuts and cheese from a salumeria, such as Fagotto. The osteria will provide the tables, plates and cutlery, and of course the wine.

Make your selection – the choice is simple, red or white – and prepare to order several carafes of it, each one tallied on the paper tablecloth as your server drops it off. Straight from the ceiling-high vats inside, the young wine is even more drinkable than usual; dunkable, even, if you finish your meal with the hard, sweet, local biscuits tinged with anise and made for dipping in your glass at the end of the night.


A fraschetta in Frascati. Photo: Osteria Il Fuoco/Facebook

Jan Claus scans the other diners sharing benches, still tanned from the obligatory August beach break, still bare-armed and legged after sunset on a late-summer night. He’s hoping the entertainment will show up. Before too long we spot them: a jovial pair of white-haired men in shorts and teeshirts, one of whom is bearing a guitar and will be referred to exclusively, by strangers and friends alike, as “maestro”.

They’re here to sing stornelli, a form of musical poetry from central Italy that was traditionally improvised between competing bards but can also be addressed to lovers, drinking companions, entire towns or even inanimate objects (our minstrel performs a particularly memorable song addressed to the nearby water fountain, informing it of the numerous ways it falls short compared to a jug of wine).

Everyone seems to know the words, or at least the next song they want. As the only group that includes non-Italians we get special treatment, the pair stationing themselves by our table while other customers call out titles they think we should hear. We get odes to love, to Rome, to Romans, to the various merits of the Castelli – before the musicians announce it’s time for coffee and amble off.

By the time we leave to catch the last train back to Rome, there are five litres of white wine tallied on our tablecloth and we’ve exchanged goodbyes with more strangers than we can count.

Fraschette take place only in the charmed weeks between the end of August and late September: as the holidays are ending but before they’re over entirely, warm but no longer too warm and remembering why it’s not so bad, after all, to come home from the beach. As late-summer evenings go, it’s hard to picture a better one.

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TRAVEL NEWS

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

Germany's Deutsche Bahn rail operator and the GDL train drivers' union have reached a deal in a wage dispute that has caused months of crippling strikes in the country, the union said.

German train strike wave to end following new labour agreement

“The German Train Drivers’ Union (GDL) and Deutsche Bahn have reached a wage agreement,” GDL said in a statement.

Further details will be announced in a press conference on Tuesday, the union said. A spokesman for Deutsche Bahn also confirmed that an agreement had been reached.

Train drivers have walked out six times since November, causing disruption for huge numbers of passengers.

The strikes have often lasted for several days and have also caused disruption to freight traffic, with the most recent walkout in mid-March.

In late January, rail traffic was paralysed for five days on the national network in one of the longest strikes in Deutsche Bahn’s history.

READ ALSO: Why are German train drivers launching more strike action?

Europe’s largest economy has faced industrial action for months as workers and management across multiple sectors wrestle over terms amid high inflation and weak business activity.

The strikes have exacerbated an already gloomy economic picture, with the German economy shrinking 0.3 percent across the whole of last year.

What we know about the new offer so far

Through the new agreement, there will be optional reduction of a work week to 36 hours at the start of 2027, 35.5 hours from 2028 and then 35 hours from 2029. For the last three stages, employees must notify their employer themselves if they wish to take advantage of the reduction steps.

However, they can also opt to work the same or more hours – up to 40 hours per week are possible in under the new “optional model”.

“One thing is clear: if you work more, you get more money,” said Deutsche Bahn spokesperson Martin Seiler. Accordingly, employees will receive 2.7 percent more pay for each additional or unchanged working hour.

According to Deutsche Bahn, other parts of the agreement included a pay increase of 420 per month in two stages, a tax and duty-free inflation adjustment bonus of 2,850 and a term of 26 months.

Growing pressure

Last year’s walkouts cost Deutsche Bahn some 200 million, according to estimates by the operator, which overall recorded a net loss for 2023 of 2.35 billion.

Germany has historically been among the countries in Europe where workers went on strike the least.

But since the end of 2022, the country has seen growing labour unrest, while real wages have fallen by four percent since the start of the war in Ukraine.

German airline Lufthansa is also locked in wage disputes with ground staff and cabin crew.

Several strikes have severely disrupted the group’s business in recent weeks and will weigh on first-quarter results, according to the group’s management.

Airport security staff have also staged several walkouts since January.

Some politicians have called for Germany to put in place rules to restrict critical infrastructure like rail transport from industrial action.

But Chancellor Olaf Scholz has rejected the calls, arguing that “the right to strike is written in the constitution… and that is a democratic right for which unions and workers have fought”.

The strikes have piled growing pressure on the coalition government between Scholz’s Social Democrats, the Greens and the pro-business FDP, which has scored dismally in recent opinion polls.

The far-right AfD has been enjoying a boost in popularity amid the unrest with elections in three key former East German states due to take place later this year.

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