How It Started and How It’s Going

What's changed for me after six years in Italy

Photo by Kipras Štreimikis on Unsplash

Cari amici,

Six years ago today I arrived in Italy juggling four suitcases, a backpack, a cat carrier, a jumbo-size dog crate, and a freaked-out dog hustling me toward the airport exit doors. A lot has changed since then—I arrived with expectations both realistic and not, a good dollop of ignorance, and the conviction that Italy was where I needed to be. My conviction was right; even so, six years later I’ve learned a few things, and I’ve changed.

I’d been here barely a year when people started asking me what was different, what had changed in my life, my writing, my persona—but they were asking too soon. For a newly minted immigrant who’s trying to assimilate, so much is different in those early years that it’s hard to gain much perspective. You don’t know yet how your habits, attitudes, expectations, your sense of normalcy, will mutate over time. You don’t know what will stick. Now I do, though I expect to have a different perspective at my 10-year mark.

Italian is a sneaky language

I landed in Italy with what I’m guessing was an A2 level of Italian, overconfident in my ability to become fluent in no time. That’s what people said, including an Italian friend—immersion is the best way to learn. And it is. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to work at it along the way, though. Italian is a nuanced language, rich in subtle changes of meaning, of contextual variations and tonal differences—sfumature (singular: sfumatura), they’re called, a word that derives from the verb sfumare, meaning to blend or fade.

After six years of immersion, I’m still not what I’d call fluent, though I can talk to pretty much anyone about pretty much anything. There are days when I’m invincible and the words flow without English translations interfering, and there are moments when even the basics seem to have flown the coop. That’s because this language is complex as hell, and the more accomplished I become as a speaker of Italian, the more I realize that. A single letter can change a meaning profoundly, as can the placement of a word within a sentence or phrase. Where English might have a single word with a broadly applied meaning, Italian might have two or three that reflect small differences. Part of that sfumatura, I think, comes via everyday or idiomatic language in which meanings aren’t exactly literal, or even in pronominal verb forms that change completely a standard verb’s meaning.

Learning Italian is a classic example of “the more you learn, the more you realize you don’t know.” But I soldier on.

L’italiano is mutilating my inglese

It’s not the sfumature’s fault; the culprit is Italian syntax. At a certain point in speaking Italian, your ear gets tuned to what’s right and what’s not (even if you don’t know how to fix what’s wrong). That leads to small disruptions in the flow of English sometimes, especially when switching from one language to another. It’s not a vocabulary problem, it’s a structural or usage one. It’s not that what we say in English is wrong, it’s just that we say it in a way that’s, well, weird. One example: most English speakers, if they walked somewhere, would say just that—they walked. But in Italian we go on foot (a piedi). So if your English-speaking friends ask you how you got to their house and you say you came on foot, it sounds odd, right? But this is what can happen when Italian and English share space in your head.

Also, when you speak Italian most of the time, sometimes it feels weird to speak English and things come out sort of stilted. When that happens, I find myself throwing in Italian words and phrases, which is probably not the smartest thing to do with your friends who don’t speak Italian.

Patience is an essential ingredient of daily life

I’ll refer you back to this post about patience for this one. Here, I’ll just say that when people complain about Italy’s labyrinthine bureaucracy (which is often true, but it’s not always as bad as people like to say it is), they’re leaving out all the little daily challenges that have nothing to do with bureaucracy, like late trains and buses, a loose sense of time (I can be sure that if an event is scheduled for 6pm, it’s likely to start 15 or 20 minutes later), phones that go perpetually unanswered, and websites that are chronically outdated.

When I was a kid, my dad taught me that if you’re not 10 minutes early, you’re late, and I lived with that sense of urgency my whole life. That is, until Italy made me loosen my grip on time. I still like to be on time, but sometimes I’m not, and the world doesn’t end. Who knew?

What once made you gasp can become old hat

This is maybe one of the saddest things about living in Italy—there’s so much beauty at every turn, in architecture, paintings, ornament, city streets and vistas filled with snow-capped mountains or verdant valleys that you’re at risk of no longer appreciating what you’ve got. It’s habituation, not apathy. I don’t appreciate any less the familiar places, artwork, or views that once thrilled me, but I do have to remember not to take them for granted, to look anew, to search for details previously unnoticed or contemplate a building or a view from an unfamiliar angle. That’s why, when I’m photographing something for the umpteenth time—because I’m incapable of going to Firenze, for example, and not photographing the Duomo—I try to avoid the standard, first-time-tourist kind of shot, look for the new, the partial, the particular.

Over-familiarization makes us blasé. It’s normal, but it came as a surprise to me. Fortunately, Italy is so ridiculously beautiful that there’s always something to discover.

My latest take on the Duomo in Firenze.

Find your own Italy

If you’re on social media, you’re probably bombarded with must-sees, top-10s, borghi più belli, things-to-do-before-you-die, and so on. I always felt pressured by these amazing places cluttering up my feed—so much I want to do and see, so little time!—and that didn’t change when I made Italy my home.

Eventually, though, I realized how big a role hyperbole plays in these recommendations-gone-viral. As an art and history lover, I’ll always be a fan of Italy’s glorious museums and monuments (“touristy” doesn’t mean they’re not worth seeing), but I’ve learned not to feel compelled to see every jaw-dropping view (often Photoshopped) that scrolls by, or every dolce vita town with a flower-laden terrace overhung by dripping arbors scented with honeysuckle, where sipping a refreshing spritz and eating the most divine pasta ever made by a nonna’s hardworking hands and topping it off with an indescribably delicious dolce is guaranteed to change my life.

I’ve learned to temper my expectations, recognize the hyperbole, and find the places that speak to me. And that’s not a bad thing.

Driving Italian style

I was always a very law-abiding driver in the U.S.—okay, except for that one time I made a left turn on a red light in a major intersection, which I blame on my mental state at the time, which I “fondly” call Divorce Derangement, and for which I paid dearly—but I digress. I still consider myself a careful driver, but when in Rome, right? Driving in Italy is—well, let’s call it an adventure, which is absolutely a euphemism. On Italy’s roads you’ll need to change lanes constantly  because drivers either go too slow (like 40 in a 110-km zone) or too fast (like really, really fast), which makes driving the speed limit nearly impossible. Survival means becoming expert at ditching tailgaters and dodging drivers who prefer to straddle the center line (a cavallo) or enjoy passing on blind curves. I won’t say I’ve become an aggressive driver, but assertive? Definitely. But hey, I do use my turn signals.

An atmosphere of trust

As an American, trust isn’t something I give easily except to my family and friends. American society isn’t built that way—but Italy’s is. (Yes, yes, there are thieves and pickpockets and vandals and acts of violence. Not what I’m talking about.)

I’ve written about this before, but it’s worth saying again because living in such a society changes you. I thought about this the other day when I went to a neighborhood shop to buy my dog’s food, which comes with free delivery to the top of my hill. The delivery usually happens in the late afternoon, and when it was approaching 6pm and it still hadn’t arrived, I realized I wasn’t doing what I would have done in the U.S., which was to worry about having a stressful conversation about missed deliveries and proof of payment, whereas here I just shrugged it off. I knew if it didn’t arrive that evening (it did) it would come the next day. I trust them, and they trust me, a fact made abundantly clear at times when I call to order the food and don’t pay for it until I stop by the shop in the next day or two. After it’s been delivered.

Do you know how amazing that feels? Even after six years, I still marvel at the relaxed attitude most people have about money here. Every time I enjoy a coffee at an outside table, with my bill as yet unpaid, I think about how this would never happen in America. And it changes you, this culture of trust. You worry less, become more relaxed. Maybe after 10 years I won’t notice it anymore, but for now, color me grateful every time.

In Europe, the world is your neighbor

Growing up in America, at least at the time I was going to school, gives you a small-scale view of the world. My history and government courses taught me nothing about the rest of the world; it wasn’t until college that I studied European history. I’m continually surprised by the depth of world knowledge and awareness my Italian friends have, and I envy them that. Here in Italy, where other countries are as near to one another as states are in the U.S., it’s impossible to forget we’re part of the broader community of the EU and not far from other continents that are vastly different from Europe. I’ve lost the isolationist bent that’s so easy to acquire in a huge country that borders only one non-English-speaking nation. And I’m grateful for that.

On to year seven. Who knows what I’ll learn or how I’ll change?

Tante belle cose. Alla prossima—

Cheryl

P.S. My book! Which you can buy here or on the usual sites, or, better yet, order it from your local bookstore. Another fab option is to ask your library to stock it. If you read it and like it, please tell your friends and/or leave a few lines of praise on any bookish site. You’d be surprised how much a rating or review helps authors. Baci!