Oltremànica

During the window of celebrations that accompanies humanity through the doors of a new decade, announcing the launch of something new adds a refreshing note to an otherwise merry, yet repetitive, moment.

The year has been a long one, full of changes and challenges, for Brits and Italians alike. As the prospect of Brexit becomes more and more concrete before our eyes, many of us feel betrayed yet unshaken in their determination to build our future here. Here, in a country that once exemplified a global vision of the world, at the forefront of innovation, and seems to now lag behind, blinded by his contrasts and internal struggles.

At home, the streets of Rome echo the screams and shouts rising from Montecitorio as yet another government attempts to govern a country that too many political scientists have used to exemplify the ungovernable. 2019 has been an odd year: Westminster has seen more governments come and go than Italy. If it may make someone smile for a while, it is one more sign of the rising uncertainty that reigns over our times.

It is indeed to help fighting such sense of insecurity that this blog sees the daylight for the first time.

As expats, we want to be a bridge, for newcomers, to an easier life in an evolving United Kingdom. To make them understand the new political realities, to make them discover the culture and never-stopping London life. To make them feel at home, starting from the bottom, namely the food.

As Italians, we want to make our endlessly complicated, yet dangerously fascinating, home-reality more intelligible to the British public. For one day making them understand the origin of the burning passions that burn us up when, between two slices of pizza, we complain about a country that we might have left for good, or for a while, and yet we so hopelessly miss.

As the sun sets on 2019, we look at a new decade in which the country where we live, the United Kingdom, set sail from the European Union and, therefore, our homeland. Through writing, photographing and debating, we want to be a bridge to a country that is once more and once again Oltremànica.