Why I Moved To Italy

The featured photo above is the medieval aqueduct at the bottom of my street. So cool.

Why I moved to Italy

My new friends and neighbors in Salerno, Italy frequently have a perplexed look on their collective faces when I tell them, “yes, I actually chose to move to Salerno from Los Angeles” (Why on earth would I leave the film capital of the world, not to mention year-round sunshine, beaches and movie stars galore to live in a small city like Salerno?) I still don’t have enough Italian vocabulary to explain the subtle and not-so-subtle reasons for my Big Fat Move.

But since my blog is in English, I have no excuses for not having enough verbs and adjectives to express my need for this decision. For anyone who’s known me for forty years or more, they’ve heard me either dreaming about living in Italy or complaining about living in L.A. Apologies on the latter. But, hey, there’s so much material to work with on my complaints : traffic everywhere all times of the day or night, no city center, with the exception of Santa Monica… no pedestrian communities, overall hideous schizophrenic architecture, no seasons, relentless sunshine (rarely did we have a surprise day of precipitation…I used my rusty umbrella to block the harmful rays of the sunshine while racing to and from my car.)

LA Blues

The cost of living in L.A. continues to rise, same for the crime. The only thing that seemed to decrease was the quality of life. The political direction of my country was changing and not in a good way. My anxiety increased on a daily basis. My friends were moving out of state and out of the country, retiring to places that didn’t resonate with me. Worse, my closest friends were passing on, all prematurely. That’s the one that got me thinking the most. The old ‘life is short’ conversation…mortality… blah, blah, blah.

And here’s the one that I’d been struggling with for years in L.A….Where have all the men gone? I joined every Meetup I could think of that would be fun, went to my fancy schmancy gym on a very regular basis, joined an appropriate dating website or two, and got the word out to all my friends that I would like to meet Mr. Right (now.) So, being tired of being disappointed, I decided for all the above reasons to get out of Dodge. And subito !!

The Checklist

I had already started the process of filing for my dual citizenship for Italy in 2016 and had been waiting for it for a year already by the time I reserved my one-way ticket to Italy. How I decided on Salerno was through a process of a ‘must have’ list. Here goes (in no particular order):

Move to a city where I could be immersed in learning Italian…duh
be able to walk everywhere (sell the car…yay!)
Live in a community where I would know my neighbors and merchants (I have several different coffee bars I go to on a regular basis and they all know I like my macchiato. And my produce guy gave me a little cup of coffee after he weighed my fruit. So cute!)
a climate similar to L.A. (Salerno is more tropical, but with a subtle change of seasons.
Visually appealing (love the ancient architecture mixed with fascist pre- WWII palazzi and post WWII modern apartment buildings, also called palazzi-who knew?)
Near a body of water- Mediterranean. Check.
Share an apartment with a local. Check.
Absorb the local culture, ie. History, food, entertainment (Learning military time, centigrade and the metric system I ignored in school continue to challenge, but I’m getting there.)
Travel throughout Italy and to different nearby countries
Better cost of living than U.S. (fyi, it’s less expensive in the south of Italy than the north) This one was critical after not finding everything on my checklist in the U.S.
Good healthy food, locally grown (no such thing as expensive organic. It’s all organic as it comes from local farmers, no pesticides)
Simpler more natural lifestyle. ( I sold everything and stored fifteen plastic bins of memorabilia with friends (mille grazie! You know who you are xo Packed my clothes and laptop only)
A place where a woman can grow old gracefully.
A place where the men appreciate women of all ages. ( Hurray! I’m no longer invisible.) I’m not kidding, ladies. They’re all so damn handsome, and they’re everywhere. I almost did a 360 ala Linda Blaire on my first trip to the local outdoor produce market. A family of four brothers and a father all with the most incredible pale blue eyes against the year-round bronzed skin. Ten kilos of fruit per me? Si, grazie. Here’s my plastic bag!
A slower pace of living (most stores are closed on Sunday. Even my gym! Forced adaptation to my new culture.
Be closer to my Italian cousins. My father’s family lives about an hour away and my mom’s about three.
Meet up with my friends living in Europe

So, I put all this information out to the Universe and went about my business of de-cluttering, selling my furniture, closing out accounts, final doctor appointments, modifying my finances, changing addresses and generally telling my friends of my plans. I’d been crying wolf for so long, no one really believed I would follow through with this new adventure.

The Big Leap

Once I made the decision and bought my one-way ticket, that was when it got easier and easier to focus on The Move. I had no second doubts about any of it, but I did have a lot of anxiety about coordinating the sale of everything at the right time. ie, the bed was the last to have to be sold and the car. I sold the car to CarMax-I highly recommend this as they made the awful process very easy and even pleasant. I was sad to sell certain pieces of furniture but kept telling myself, ‘it’s just stuff.’

Once I got past that hurdle of letting go, it became easier to stay laser focused on my priorities. I drove my friends crazy with the details of selling my stuff (George Carlin did a very funny bit on our ‘stuff’) and the logistics of storing my fifteen bins of ‘stuff’ with different friends. Every night I went to sleep with major heart palpitations. Of course, it was just stress. I wanted ‘out.’ I wanted the move to be over with. I wanted to be in Italy.I chose to depart on March 1^st because the Italian classes I was taking at the Italian Cultural Institute in L.A. had a partnership with an Italian language school in Salerno. The class for the over-fifty students was starting on March 4^th. And I was fortunate to get a two-week scholarship of classes, Monday through Friday, three hours a day with extra cultural activities. Perfect.

Interestingly, I didn’t have any crying meltdowns during the de-cluttering/packing process. I didn’t allow myself to think of how much I will miss my friends. When I finally had my teary meltdown, it was in the American Airlines lounge shortly before departure. My friend Lou in Jersey lovingly talked me off the ledge, for which I will be forever grateful.

Yes, leaving my friends behind was the hardest part, but I promised to post my adventures on Facebook and stay in touch on Facetime and Whatsapp. The days go by so quickly with all my activities, and the language learning curve seems to get steeper every day (the more I learn the less I know. But, hey, I’m keeping those brain cells active.) The Universe brought me everything on my list that I asked for…and then some. I got myself an Italian boyfriend twenty days after I arrived (I told you-they’re EVERYWHERE). I feel so comfortable here with my ‘peeps’. It’s like I’ve been here forever.

Yes, there are hurdles to jump, but the good news is I am no longer waiting for my dual citizenship. I can stay in Italy as long as I want (instead of having to leave the European Union after three months on a tourist visa) since I received my citizenship in May. Yay! It took three years from the time I started gathering the documents I needed, but it was worth it. I love almost everything about my newly adopted country (more on that in another blog). Stay tuned for more Big Fat Adventures in Italy. Ciao tutti e buona giornata !

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