Mall, short for Shopping Mall
the main hangout for American teenagers according to any tv series or movie (the main source of information on American culture for any Italian)
Here American adolescents sit with their friends, get informed about latest gossips and trends, meet their boy friends and girlfriends.
They have lunch or dinner at the food court
where they can pick one among at least five fast food, and then have an icecream or milkshake
or go to the cinema
That’s what they do since the 1950s
When in Italy all that teenagers could do was having a gelato in the gelateria around the corner, strolling in the park or in the city center, looking clothes and shoes they could not afford in the shop windows.
Concepts like food court, or milkshake are not really part of our vocabulary; malls themselves, even though quite common nowadays, are still something quite new in Italy. And something very different. Mostly a place in which families do the grocery once a month spending a few hours together, or where old ladies spend an afternoon taking advantages of the air conditioning.
(More on Italian “malls” here: https://misshome.wordpress.com/2014/03/25/266-i-miss-italian-shopping-malls/ )
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