2023 Author: Cody Thornton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-24 11:20
“Due to unpleasant inconveniences due to the lack of education of the parents, in this place it is not welcome the presence of children under the age of 5 left in disarray ”.
Tell the truth: how many of you would like to read these words at the entrance of the restaurant they are going to, perhaps in sweet company, looking forward to a sweet and romantic candlelit dinner?
Instead, you have often caught yourself in the order: screaming and crying children everywhere, strollers and prams almost pushed into their arms, screams of parents who, far from the idea of lifting the backside from the chair, continued to eat, thinking of appeasing the little animals shouting with a simple yell thrown from one end of the room to the other.
And of course, woe to say something: you would have caught the righteous ire of parents quick to remember what kind of despicable individual you are, ready to vent your personal frustrations on the little pearls that run between your feet by making your mouthful of creamed risotto go wrong. with fresh thyme and upstream the quiet and romantic dinner.
But finally someone, some time ago, had also thought about the sacrosanct rights and tranquility of those without children.
This someone is the owner of the restaurant La Fraschetta del Pesce, who a couple of years ago had displayed a sign at the entrance of his restaurant that informed in no uncertain terms, with the words shown at the beginning of this post (also visible on the website of the restaurant), that children in disarray were not welcome in the restaurant.
Open up heaven! Unanimous choruses of indignation followed the sinister initiative, even reaching the opening of a Facebook page called "Closing La Fraschetta del Pesce di Casal Bertone".
In short, when we had already resigned ourselves to the disappearance of every "child-free" place, and consequent tranquility, a few days ago, reported by Il Post, an article in the Wall Street Journal appeared that seemed to many of us like a breath of oxygen.
In fact, it is pointed out that the singular initiative of the Casal Bertone restaurateur is not singular at all, and that indeed in Germany the places forbidden to children, or "kinder verboten" are a widespread and popular reality.
The TUI hotel group, for example, prohibits children from entering as many as 250 of its 300 hotels worldwide, while the Thomas Cook group doubled the presence of these places between 2013 and 2015, for a total of 198 hotel facilities forbidden to children.
A site was even created, by this Renè Weiss, called "Urlaub ohne Kinder" and dedicated exclusively to the search for hotel kinder-verboten, with 672 structures currently listed, many of which in Mallorca, a destination where children they are considered, more than in others, a nuisance and a nuisance for those who are not their respective parents.
Very varied are the prohibitions as well as the minimum ages of children to access facilities such as swimming pools, wellness areas and restaurants, ranging from 14 to 16 years. A policy that had already been undertaken in the 1970s by Club Med, a famous tour operator, and later by the Sandals chain, which created the first "vacation packages" aimed at adults.
Returning to Germany, it should be noted that it is one of the countries most attentive to the general issue of noise and that until 2011 the screams of children were considered "harmful from an environmental point of view" (how to blame them).
How then can the question be resolved, between those who rightly demand a bit of tranquility during the meal, especially when this tranquility is paid for, often at a high price, and parents who would like to enjoy an evening with the family all together, including the little ones?
Meanwhile, we recommend that the latter read the solutions generally adopted to limit damage.
In Italy there are also places where families with children receive ad hoc offers. Brunch is especially strong: children eat schnitzel with chips and then off to the play area, and parents peacefully sip a bloody mary, waiting for the saturated fats.
At the brunch of the San Vittore in Milan, the children have at their disposal an animator, make-up artist, magician and puppets. At the Bar del Fico in Rome, the little ones are busy making collages and cake design (!). At the Ketumbar they play and draw in a beautiful setting and at Rec 23 they even deserve Tibetan bridges and slides.
The equation is simple but not to be underestimated: make children happy, parents happy, and they make you happy by booking and rebooking together with friends and children
But what do they, those directly involved, the children think of it? If we may like to go out to dinner to enjoy refined dishes or in any case different from the home meal, we can be so sure that our pleasure does not correspond instead to a deadly boredom in the minds of small creatures, who react in the way that is their own., that is, with games, runs and screams?
Here, perhaps this is the key to resolving the question: children are not a package to be dragged along, willy-nilly, regardless of their just needs: a few tens of euros, once in a while, to be paid to a trusted baby - sitter, or the use of grandparents, uncles or various relatives, can be the right solution to make everyone agree: parents, singles and even children.
Because where common sense is in force, prohibitions do not apply.