How Not to Expat

Plus an enabler’s note to self

The Vittoriano in Rome, symbol of Italian national unity. That’s right, unity; it means something here. Photo by Chris Mondoux

Way back in 2018, an acquaintance asked if I’d be willing to advise a couple who were thinking of moving to Italy. I agreed, and thus began four years of lengthy emails about weighing options, taking the leap, choosing where to live, getting an Italian driver’s license, and all the particulars of life in Italy. At times I felt like a cheerleader, at times like a counselor. Our exchanges were long and detailed and, I thought, honest. We met for lunch in Florence when they came to visit, pre-commitment-to-move. I liked them, and they appeared to like me.

And that’s my flaw. If I like someone, especially if we hit it off from the get-go, I invariably assume they think like me and share my values. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Several years after our communications began, this couple (let’s call them John and Judy) moved to Italy. They seemed to be settling in well, having found a dog park community and some expats nearby who helped them apartment hunt and served as general advisors. (I live in a different region, so I wasn’t one of them.) They came to visit me, then life intervened and we fell out of touch. Until recently. I messaged John to check in, maybe plan a get-together in their town, which I’d not visited. What I got back was a screed about how terrible life was.

John is angry. More than once, he and Judy have considered moving back to the U.S. The neighbors are noisy, the restaurants in town so-so. People are friendly but aloof (so he and his wife have followed suit). He wants to buy a car (because if he can’t drive here, then they’re not staying, “end of story”). But he can’t buy a car because they haven’t filed for residency (their choice). They want to travel but don’t (their choice), except to go back to the U.S. once. They haven’t finished fixing up their apartment. He needs to enroll in a driving school but hasn’t done it. They need to take language lessons but haven’t. (From what I’d gathered from our conversations, pre-move neither John nor Judy could speak much Italian.) Oh, and they really couldn’t do much of anything at all until recently because everything required a Green Pass (proof of vaccination). SAY WHAT?

Okay, let’s break this down. Here’s “how not to expat.”

1.     Complain about everything. The food? You’re in Italy, for crying out loud; how is it possible that every restaurant is so-so? And if that’s really true where you live, try eating out in another town. Noise? Life in Italy is generally pretty noisy—people talk loudly in the cramped medieval streets at 4 a.m., apartments are close together, and sound travels easily across narrow streets and bounces off stone surfaces. I can be in the back part of my house and jump out of my skin because someone in the street is talking and it sounds like they’re in the room with me. Noise happens.

All those wide open spaces around you that many Americans are used to? Unless you live in the country, you won’t have them. (So maybe leave the historic center and rent a house in a less-crowded area. It’s an option.) The noise is intolerable? Then move. Change apartments, change towns. No guarantee it won’t be just as noisy, of course. Or worse. I have a friend who has lived in two apartments in three years, and in both places she’s been plagued by construction noise for months on end. It happens.

2.     Say “two can play at this game” when people are aloof, because sure, isolating yourself will help. Not. How about inviting people over for coffee or an aperitivo? How about hosting a little neighborhood get-together? How about joining a community-oriented group (city beautification, language exchange, day tours, whatever), which will also help you learn the language, which will help you communicate, which will help break down barriers. My friend Graham, who lives in a tiny hamlet, joined a local archery group. His arrows might go astray more often than not (so he says), but he’s hit a bullseye in terms of integrating himself into the community. Actually, he’d already done that pre-archery group, but the group helps him remain one of the gang.

3.     Don’t learn the language. This is mysterious to me. Many expats come here with little Italian (sorry, Duolingo will get you only so far) and then don’t take lessons, or they learn only enough to get by at the grocery store or in a restaurant. What do they do when they need a plumber or a cardiologist? What happens when their internet service goes out? If you think having an in-person conversation in Italian is difficult, a phone call (always rapid-fire and often muffled and/or with tons of background noise) will leave you crumpled in a heap begging for mercy.

Not learning the language is an excellent way to ensure you’ll remain on the outskirts of life here. Your conversations will remain superficial, ranging from the weather to where you’re from to the breed of your dog. I’m not fluent, but whenever my friend Margherita and I chat over a glass of wine, five hours fly past, consumed by talk of art, local events, politics, books, movies, her work as an art conservator and a teacher of developmentally disabled children, my writing (she’s fascinated by the way characters evolve on the page), family histories (she’s the great-great-granddaughter of Giuseppe Garibaldi; some of my stonecutter ancestors were probably garibaldini), and so on. Do I understand every word? No. Are there moments when everything’s going along just fine and then suddenly my brain goes on the fritz and I’m listening to static? Absolutely. Do I get stuck trying to explain things with maddening frequency? Sure. But somehow we’ve developed a friendship, a close one.

I’m not saying it’s easy. Italian is a difficult language, and many Italians have family nearby, and lifelong friends, so they don’t need more people in their lives. “Difficult” isn’t a synonym of “impossible,” but not trying does, in most scenarios, mean NO. And you know what? Speaking another language is hella cool.

4.     Establish your priorities but don’t act on them. You want to buy a car asap because you absolutely cannot live in this country without one? Then establish residency asap. As soon as you do, though, know the limits: you can drive (legally) on an American license for only one year (yes, that includes rental cars); after that you need to get an Italian license, which is no easy task. Especially if you don’t speak the language. Welcome to convoluted business-speak/bureaucracy-ese, in which the goal is to trip you up. Really.

You want to travel but don’t have that car, so you get depressed and stay home instead? That’s on you. I know rentals are expensive and can be difficult to get. But there are beautiful, fascinating places everywhere, including in your own town. (J&J admit they haven’t seen everything their town has to offer.) Walk. Hike. Take a bus or a train. Hire a driver. Hop a flight. There’s a whole world out there, and even I, an introvert and world-class hermit, know that.

5.     You feel unsettled/not at home here but only do so much to make your surroundings comfortable and yours. Sounds like a commitment problem to me. Sure, it can be hard to feel at home in a furnished place, if that’s what you’ve got. But the less settled you feel, the less you feel really at home, and then the more you’re going to wonder if you made the right choice. And maybe you didn’t. Maybe Italy isn’t for you. That’s fine. But if you really want to stay, you have to engage with Italy, take her on her own terms. You have to be willing to change for her, because she sure as hell isn’t going to change for you.

6.     Come unvaccinated to a country ravaged by Covid in the earliest days of the pandemic, a country whose people (for the most part, because always, always, there are exceptions) stood strong together for the good of the community. I know, I was here. We endured lockdowns and restrictions unimaginable to some Americans. If we left our homes, we carried documents to show we had a justifiable reason to leave. Only one person per family was permitted to shop for groceries. I had to walk my dog within 200 meters of my home. (Maybe it was 250; I can’t remember.) Restaurants and bars were closed except for takeout, including gelato. (Italy learned, with record-breaking speed, to embrace home delivery). We wore masks, inside and out, from early on and only in the last months have seen those restrictions ease. But go right ahead, come here with your conspiracy theories, because yes, of course, that random guy who came to your house to fix something knows way more about pandemics and the spread of viruses than the national health agencies of countries worldwide. Never mind that 12 billion doses of anti-Covid-19 vaccines have been put into human bodies, you go right on focusing on the very low rate of adverse reactions. You go right on believing vaccines don’t work, though you’re alive today because of vaccines for polio and mumps and measles and on and on. You go right on taking whatever those supplements are you mentioned, because surely whoever sells them knows more than doctors around the world. You have a lot of goddamn nerve.

Now, back to me, the enabler. Yes, I’m the angry one now. I was in shock, to tell the truth, that I had spent tens if not hundreds of hours writing and talking to these people and yet it turned out I knew them not at all. When John complained about the Green Pass restrictions, I was so stunned that I didn’t reply for several days. Finally I wrote to him to say, “Am I reading this right? You’re not vaccinated?” In reply, I got a 20-minute voicemail response “justifying” their choice to remain unvaccinated, in which John encouraged me to be honest in my response. I was. I said, for me, this is a question of ethics, and ours don’t align.

It takes two, as they say. It was on me to know who I was dealing with, who, exactly, I was encouraging to come and live in this country I love. This isn’t just a place I retired to; I have roots here, deep ones, and this is my home. I care about the people in my neighborhood, in my city, in this country, and I’m furious that I helped to open the door to people who have so little interest in the common good.

Next time (if there is one), I’ll be on my guard.

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Books of the week:

• Italian Neighbors by Tim Parks

• In Altre Parole by Jhumpa Lahiri (editions in Italian, English, or both)

Poem of the week:

“Two Travelers Meet by Chance in a Phrase Book” by Hans Ostrom

Comments? Questions? I’m all ears!