THE OPPOSITE OF LA DOLCE VITA…FROM MY REGIONAL PERSPECTIVE But enough of the fun stuff. Let’s backtrack for a moment. I moved to Salerno in March of 2019, feeling buoyed by my friends’ supportive comments like ‘you’re so brave! I could never have done that !’ But moving was the easy part. There’s a dark side to living in Italy that was so unexpected. I knew I would miss my friends, but I thought I would make new ones quickly because I’m very outgoing, and I thought I spoke enough Italian to navigate my way around town and maybe make some friends in the local yoga studio. Wrong. I did not acclimate as quickly as I thought I would. Actually, I never thought I would have problems acclimating because I’m Italian on both sides of my family, so it’s already in my blood, right? Wrong again. Where I did make friends initially was in the language school here in town, but the downside of that is those same friends were only here for a week or two (on a language study vacation) and returned to their home countries, leaving me with separation anxiety. We shared meals, homework, and some cultural adventures through the school, and then in a flash, it was over. REALITY I tried so hard to connect with the locals, but for a couple of good reasons, it just wasn’t happening. The most important reason was that my Italian was just not good enough to sustain a conversation beyond the weather and their favorite restaurant. When I put myself in their gorgeous Italian shoes, I realized that perhaps they just didn’t have the patience to speak with me in Italian with all the mixed-up verb tenses. ( This is what I told myself.) BUT…NEWS FLASH. I’ve read and heard about this many times over the years and refused to believe that it could be true, (especially because I’m so fabulous-hahaha) but the Italians who are not well traveled or who have not lived abroad, or who live in smaller cities were not open in the least to having a new friend who was a ‘stranieri’, a foreigner, an outsider. Their friends went back as far as kindergarten, maybe from the same building they currently lived in, through university, and beyond. And they have no room or reason for a new friend. It has been virtually impossible to break through that glass ceiling. There’s little curiosity beyond where I was born and lived before I came here. Many of my friends in the expat group have related the same stories.

MY PEOPLE I will have my seventh year anniversary on March 1st of this year, never thinking I would stay longer than three months, which was the length of my visa, until I finally received my dual citizenship. We have a great group of expats from the U.S., U.K., Austria, Japan, Australia, Ireland, and a few from Italy who like to practice their English. It took five years to round up a good group like them. They’ve saved me from the loneliness that can accompany moving to a foreign country.

I bring this up because it is an incredibly important aspect if you’re looking to settle into a new country. That said, my friends who came here with a partner may not have felt the rejection as much as a single woman. YOU NEED TO LEARN THE LANGUAGE. There’s discrimination here on many levels. (If they hear American accents, get ready for an inflated price.) Many stores and local coffee bars do not have prices listed, so we can get charged different prices depending on the mood of the owner, not all owners, but definitely many. No matter how good I think my Italian pronunciation is, the minute I open my mouth with ‘quanto costa’, I can assume it’s going to be more than a local’s price. In fact, I’ve had certain shopkeepers totally ignore me until I happened to mention that I live here and I’m a citizen. Apparently, they don’t want to spend time on shoppers who might be on vacation…again, not just my experience.

Honestly, I grumbled to anyone who would listen about all the annoying things I encountered in southern Italy for about 6 years, and then it changed. Here’s a quick list of the dark side in no particular order: