Rome
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Tower of Babel: Sour grapes
13 November 20091 Cafebabel.com Paris -
Immigration: Rome, city of eternity for asylum seekers
9 October 20091 Cafebabel.com Paris -
Culture: The new squatocracy
2 October 200942 Cafebabel.com Paris -
Security: Mayor Giuliani for Rome
22 July 2009PresseuropLa Stampa
Sour as vinegar, a saying with many variants across the continent, but why? It starts with the word itself - vinum acetum means ‘wine turned sour’. Cafebabel.com unleashes its idiom of the week. 
They have travelled through Iran and Turkey, or crossed the Mediterranean to Greece, to find themselves blocked in Italy, waiting to obtain right of asylum. Cafebabel.com went to meet up these Afghan refugees in Ostiense, in the south of Rome. 
Squats have always provided a venue for alternative lifestyles and experiments in artistic creation, but in recent times, an increasing number of squatters in Paris and Berlin have succeeded in transforming illegally occupied spaces into legal art galleries and respectable cultural centres. Could this benevolent trend herald the end of squatting as we know it?