What I wish I had known before I moved to Southern Italy
I’ve lived in Southern Italy not far from the Amalfi coast, home of beaches, good food and wine, Pompei with its ancient ruins, and the crazy, beautiful and buzzing Naples, for just over a year now. I live here in a beautiful flat with great views alongside my Italian partner. We live close to his family and are living out a rather authentic Italian experience, one which I am very grateful for. My Facebook and Twitter feeds have been full to bursting point with pictures of food I’ve tried, places I’ve visited and adventures I have been on.
But there has been a much darker and more difficult side to this change, it’s something I’ve written about before in relation to past projects and dreams and I think it’s an extremely important issue to discuss.
In this post I want to share with you some of the things I experienced and wish I had known more about before I moved to Southern Italy. Think of it as my pearls of wisdom and an attempt to be honest about all sides of this journey. Please comment with your own experiences, or questions below, I’d love to read them.
So let’s begin with what I would have liked to have known or understood more about prior to moving here.
You won’t know anything — As much as I tried to be prepared for this it was still a shock and completely frustrating not knowing any of the normal stuff in day to day life. Yes the discovery aspect can be quite exciting at times, but more often than not it’s frustrating, time consuming and slows down the everyday aspects of your life, for example it took days to read about what type of coffee maker to buy or to build up the courage and understanding to call the utility companies. It makes you feel behind everyone around you as they all ‘just know’ how to do it and how things work, they grew up with it. And of course you know you used to be one of these people in your own country, able to navigate your own terrain with ease, by being a foreigner you lose that confidence.
It’s not only time, you’re not sure if you are being ripped off or being given a deal, are you getting the tourist or Italian price. There will be so many things you never thought would be important until you no longer have them. A whole lifetime of learning how a country, language, cultures, services, shops, food, restaurants, doctors, hospitals, taxes, streets, weather, bills, and workplaces becomes almost useless here, just reserved for conversations beginning “back home we do it like this…” .
If you are used to your independence and not having to think so much about simple life choices this is a real challenge. I certainly hope if you do this or are in the process of deciding to do this that your experience is far less challenging, but for me it was harder than expected and I feel a little useless here. I love to help and rarely can I help anyone else in a meaningful way, and what’s worse, I am always the one needing all the help. Writing about this experience is one way I’ve found to try to be a little useful to others.
At some point everything you love about your new home will annoy you — It’s hard to imagine when you are planning a move that all these amazing things that are so exotic and exciting will ever be anything other than an amazing paradise. But some days you will likely wake up surprised to feel that the very differences that made you want to be there in the first place are now more of a hassle.
For me the things I either loved and hated depending on the day included:
Chatty people — “oh so nice and welcoming And warm, nothing like the UK”
Another day “I just want to leave the house and get things done and it’s taking forever!! Everyone is chatting to everyone and I have an appointment, I just wanna get my milk and go!”
The climate — “oh it’s so warm let’s go to the beach drink cocktails and pretend we’re on holiday”
Then “oh it’s so hot, I haven’t left the house for days and I feel like I want to die, what I wouldn’t give for a cool drizzly overcast day”.
Hospitality - “aww they prepare coffee and nibbles and invite me into their home how lovely to feel so welcome”
Then you realise it’s your turn and you are not used to it “shit people are coming over I need to have coffee and nibbles and be all host-like! I have no idea what I’m doing…how do people find time to do all this?!”
Food — “It’s so tasty and awesome all this pizza and ice cream and I love going out to eat, it’s cheap and the cocktails are to die for!”
“I am getting really fat here, I can’t stop eating, where’s the healthy food, dam then for making good food so cheap!”
Food 2 — “wow the Christmas, New Years and Easter feasts are amazing, even Sunday lunches are nothing like what I am used to, so many courses and things to try, I’m in heaven.”
“Oh dear god how can we eat so much food, this is ridiculous, pure gluttony, I really hope they don’t expect me to be able to do this one day! My cooking skills are not up to standard! They’ll think I’m an awful wife/mum/woman”.
I could continue with many similar examples but I am sure you get the picture
It’s a daily struggle —This is, of course, very similar to a previous point I made, but in a more general way, as a new person, you’ll struggle between really enjoying all the newness of people, traditions and places to feeling like you just want a day to be easy — where you know all the variables. Where you won’t be that ‘English Girl’, where you can express and chat with people who ‘get you’. Chatting without thinking and with a full cultural context in place is great and freeing. You’ll miss being able to make people laugh with witty stories or words…so try to have a few expat friends so you can engage in this face-to-face, let down your guard, switch off your brain, vent if needed and be fully you. It’s also good to ring people back home so you can express this side of yourself and remember it’s still there; it hasn’t disappeared.
If managed well this isn’t too bad as like all things it passes and the next day you sit there with your cocktail on the beach all smug and go “ok, it’s not so bad, I should really quit complaining”. So at times it feels a little like you are going crazy, but the highs and lows of moving countries are pretty normal from what I can gather from expat friends and Facebook groups. Over time the highs a lows will level out and become less extreme and more tolerable.
Home sickness — it is really, really bad sometimes, making such a big move away from the things and people you love is amplified by the distance and being in a different culture. If something bad happens to you or someone you love you can’t be there easily. At times I’ve cried quite a lot and felt extremely lonely and longed for ‘home’. I’ve threatened to leave and go home more times than I can count. This has been awful for me and my partner who has had to deal with my regular lamenting and rejection of his way of life. It’s not that my life here is bad in any way it just doesn’t feel like it’s mine yet, it’s not Home, maybe it never will be…
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve woken up with a plan in my head for how I would like my day will play out, got excited, jumped out of bed then realised where I am, and that I can’t do those things here. What I need is not on offer, a brunch and a stroll in the large park, an amble round a charity shop and drinking some tea with a older lady I just met. So then I would get sad and disappointed and become even more resistant to my life here. Finding new ways to meet my needs, new habits and routines has taken effort and work, short supply when I was already over extended with all the other things I mentioned.
Very few people speak good English — Outside of big cities, not knowing the language is likely to be ridiculously isolating and scary, particularly if you are a sociable person like myself and rely on that regular interaction in your day. Though I do have some English-speaking friends here, lots of them make a huge effort with me, but the average person you meet has no idea; no one but my partner spoke any English in his family. So, on many occasions and at family events, I felt like the dumb and mute English girl, with no identity or personality of my own, just someone’s girlfriend defined by my Englishness.
It wasn’t so bad at first; in fact, I felt special, interesting and exotic. But quite soon, the novelty wore off and over time, it really grated on me, it left me feeling continually ‘different’ from everyone else and like I didn’t truly belong. Unintentionally, I was left out of jokes that didn’t translate well or people’s personal stories too complex for my personal understanding of the language or quick translation. My partner translated as much as he could for me, so thankfully I got the gist of things, but it’s not the same as being part of it. I was passive, not active and reliant on people changing how they did things so I could be involved. I felt like a real burden.
Also, I am not a languages or study person, never have been. I prefer to work in my strengths, which meant I was not a good student of Italian. I put things off, got bored and sulky, and felt like a six-year-old, “I’m learning all this just so I could ask for an apple!!” and not understand their response *frustration*. It was soul-destroying; I had many scary experiences of being out of my depth and panicking before I realised I needed to learn this language or forever be apart from the community I lived in. I was fortunate that after many failed attempts with apps, my partner or studying books, I met a local girl, intelligent, friendly and fluent in English, who kindly offered to regularly help me with my language learning through conversation and friendship, and since then I’ve made great progress and am incredibly grateful to her for all her knowledge and support.
Just learn the language — There’s no getting around it. It’ll be challenging, but if you put in the hours and the time, it’s so worth it. Losing your voice is pretty lousy for an extrovert and the most isolating part of the move for me.
The easiest, most common, and possibly only work you’ll likely find will be low paid and teaching English — It’s all people offer me, and every person I meet who is English teaches English. For me, who has big ambitions and dreams, it was disheartening to discover no matter how successful they were in their own country, this was the skill their new country wanted from them.
It’s also weird as everyone is perplexed about why you are in Italy as they want to get to where you came from. The local job market in the South, which is suffering quite a bit, means many young people are moving North or out of the country to find work. It's not easy to find work for anyone. Many people work in jobs far lower paying and beneath their capabilities or educational training.
It’s who you know that counts and working your way up, valid everywhere but important here too. You’ll ideally need to get to know people, and of course, to do this in any meaningful way, you’ll need to learn the language or meet other expats and enlist their help and advice. It will be hard being a non-native speaker, so please have a real plan in place for your finances and be realistic about your options/expectations before you go.
People commit to things for long periods — this one freaked me out a little. It’s something I had never even thought would be different. Most rentals we looked at started from 3-4+ years!! 3–4 years — I had to decide what I wanted four years from now in a country I’ve only just moved to. The flat where we have chosen to live is on a contract of 4+4 meaning after four years, if we and the landlord want to continue, we could live here for eight years.
I’m 31, so that’s pretty much the whole of my 30’s.
I have lived in 18 houses over the course of my life. I am averaging about 1.7 houses per year. Most of these moves happened as an adult. This statistic might reveal something about my personality. I like to be able to change things if I don’t like something. I’ve always tried to create flexibility in my life to accommodate changing needs.
You can find shorter lettings in Italy for sure, and I am not experienced in the whole of the Italian renters market, but we were in a small town, and this seemed to be standard here, so perhaps this applies to more areas.
AND, Another thing, you might have to buy your own kitchen! It appears to be pretty standard that you have to BUY A KITCHEN to rent somewhere. I was shocked; the locals weren’t, so I assume this is relatively common. Rarely do places (in my experience to date) come furnished, so you have to budget for not only for a kitchen not just the white goods, so be prepared to buy kitchen cupboards, fridges, washing machines, and sometimes even installing a sink or buying your own boiler. It’s not unusual for people to take everything they add to the house with them when they move out, including light fittings, toilets and sinks!!
I really had no idea I would be having to invest this level of commitment and money into renting a place. I found it hard and shocking and really pushed against it. I imagined I might own a kitchen if I bought a house one day, not now, but we did it eventually. It’s actually a nice kitchen too if you like that kind of thing, have a peek.
Friends and family will visit, and it will be hard — Oh wait, that’s meant to be the best bit?!Quality time with you… and it’s like being on holiday with all your nearest and dearest. Win-win. Well the reality can be hard. because you miss them it puts lots of pressure on the time you do spend together to be high quality, it’s so intense when they do come and it’s great because you love them and want to share your life with them but some difficulties may arise when managing expectations on both sides.
If you live somewhere warm and with beaches nearby and someone had to fly over to see you, they will likely want the money and effort to pay off in the form of a holiday. The first couple of times that’s great, but then you realise a few things. You live there, have to budget and are not able to be on holiday all the time. So unless you live in a holiday resort and live on a holiday budget your friends and families expectations of their time spent with you can be pretty hard to fulfill.
My first year here has been exhausting and depressing and I have loved having people visit, but unfortunately for them I have needed more looking after than being able to host. This has not been fun nor ideal for my visitors who were looking for fun, sun and sand. It’s a far cry from how I imagined my first year to be.
You might discover things you don’t like about yourself, your relationship and your beliefs, things you weren’t aware of before. Coming here brought up so much pain from my past I thought I was healed from, turns out I had just developed great coping strategies, all of which I had no access to here.
My relationship that was my haven in the UK became challenging and painful at times as our life there was so different and so was our dynamic. We both worked through the very different experience that this life adjustment was for each of us but it wasn’t easy. I have seen some of the worst parts of myself, my partner and my relationship and he has had witness the same in return. It’s been an extremely tough and sobering experience and knocks you out of the honeymoon phase into real life pretty quick!
You might be running away from something — When you make a move please look to see if you are running away from something. I say this as at times I am not convinced I wanted this as much as I thought, I was at a point in my career where I needed to do some serious work, make choices, choose paths and I was juggling a lot and not sure where to go next with it.
My life had got a little dull and repetitive too, I was bored with city living, and I wasn’t sure my partner would enjoy the UK like I had in the past as he was used to a Mediterranean way of life. I think I reacted to a lot of these hard things on an unconscious level and didn’t or couldn’t acknowledge it the time. The dream arose and appeared to solve every one of my problems….
So what I learnt is to look deeper for what your motivations are and look in the dark parts too, because changing countries doesn’t fix anything in you or your problems; it’s likely any problems you do have will, in fact, magnify and become even harder to solve. Take a long, hard look at yourself, try to be honest about what you are like and, what you want and what you’re prepared for as not all your dreams may come true and you’ll have to deal with consequences and sacrifices, which leads me to my next point….
Take your time — You’ll want to be impulsive and just do it; you’ll ignore all those jealous, pessimistic people telling you to take your time, “What do they know, huh?”. No matter how much of a sure thing it seems, I strongly suggest spending a little longer thinking it through, visiting a few more times than I did before deciding to make a big step and making sure you have a way out if it doesn’t work out how you planned. If you are in a couple, work out what you both need in life to be happy and healthy, what you’re willing to sacrifice and what you’ll do if it doesn’t work out for one of you.
You might not want to kill the buzz and excitement, but don’t play these things down, otherwise they will blow up in your face at some point once you’ve moved and find yourself in the reality and stress caused by ignoring your needs. That’s not fun for anyone.
Protecting the Expat Dream – this is a weird one. I think it’s like marriage, parenthood, work. Everyone wants to believe the dream side of it, and it’s true for some or in part, but there are always darker parts no one mentions. The dream of moving to somewhere exotic is that it holds the answers to the rubbish bits of life, and is a one way ticket to a new and more amazing lifestyle. But no matter how wonderful, every single place has it’s downsides. Expats may post all their awesome photos and fun stories that make all their friends back home jealous, but there is always a dark side to this: the things they don’t share publicly. And this keeps the expat dream going as a concept we all help perpetuate it; friends back home will struggle to understand how can you be depressed with all of what you have gotten as you complain you know they saw your snap last week having a cocktail on the beach, so you know they’ll be thinking you can’t be all that stressed, you must be exaggerating. The weather, the food, the beaches, what more could you possibly ask for in life….
This idea of life being ideal somewhere else makes it even harder to admit when you are struggling and if it falls short of your expectations. Also if you are like me you’ll see so many people in your new home are trying to make you feel welcome and therefore you don’t want to be ungrateful by complaining about your struggles to them, so you have even less people to talk to, and even if you do give it a go no-one really ‘gets it’.
So the only antidote I’ve found to this is to stop pretending and write and share just as much about the hard bits of my experiences as the good. Try to be more real and talk about the bad bits in our lives in general or we all feel like we are living a lie. Also to share and connect with groups online with others going through similar experiences so you feel less alone.
The warm climate has its drawbacks — I’ve never been so hot in all my life, or for as long, without a relief. My biology is not adapted to it, my first summer of 2017 was one of the hottest Italy has had in a long time. I could not function at all.
I learnt that my productivity and intelligence seems to decrease inversely with the rise in temperature. I also felt trapped in the house between certain hours as outside it was just too intense in terms of heat and strength of the sun. As an outdoors person this sucked and as red-haired girl I barely left the house through July and August.
The scale of the impact of the heat was completely unexpected and a real challenge. It impacts the jobs you do, how you do housework, how you cook, how you socialise and spend time. I could not walk in the daytime, something I have done all my life, and this brings me to my next point….
You have to change how you like to do things — You must adapt and change to survive and eventually thrive. The climate, opening hours of shops, types of restaurant, food in shops, if all this stuff is different then you will have to adapt and change to make the most of it. For example in the UK I love to leave the house in the morning wander about in shops, coffee shops, parks and museums and stay out till around 5/6 pm. In this time I get things done by working on my laptop and running errands so by the evening I can relax and unwind…in bed by 10.
So firstly coffee shops are not cool places to work on your laptop like I did in back home, very rarely do I see people doing this and so its put me off, and because the shops and cafes shut from 1–4/5 pm— you have to go home or wait it out as there’s nowhere else to go! It’s a complete ghost town unless you are in a really tourist area. But it’s ok I can spend a few hours in the park right? Like I mentioned the heat is unbearable but also, at least near where I lived, the parks tended to be very small and not large enough to spend time cycling or walking in, you need to go into the hills and mountains of nature reserves to find a good walk in my region. This is doable of course but changes the nature of your leisure time. It’s a day hiking instead of a nice 50 minute amble, I was spoily with lots of easy to access green space in the UK to get a regular nature dose without much effort.
In the South the food is great, partly due to the awesome culture and culinary skill and partly because because it’s local grown. But locally grown means farms are abundant, this land use means there is little that remains untouched and unlike the UK there’s not much right of way through peoples land.
Culture differences between countries even regions are common — So you may find strong differences in environmental values, education and relationships/family and perhaps much of what you value may not have fair representation in your community. This can make integration hard and change the kind of cultural things that are on offer compared to what you are used to. You’ll need to stay true to yourself whilst letting go of old ways and habits to make room for new ones, you’ll need to learn from the locals how to do things and at times you may feel like you are losing yourself in the process.
You may feel a great loss at these changes, not all chosen, but you will also adapt eventually.
Beaches are different to UK — I had no idea how important tourism is and how it would impact nature. I have seen very few unspoiled, natural and free beaches (at least in the south I have little idea in other parts of the country). So many are private, built up and busy.
You’ll probably need to drive — it’s hard to survive here without it. I’m not a fan of it, and luckily my partner drives. I hold a UK licence but have only driven once in Italy. I’m a tad scared of the driving style here.
In cities you might be ok relying on buses and trains. But they are less frequent and reliable than what I am used to and the locals complain a lot about how unreliable it is!
How hard it would be as a person to adapt to the change
I am aware I am rather complaining now but I feel most days one tenth of the person I was in the UK. My skills, my knowledge that I have spent years gathering feels more or less useless. I’m still not used to this new paradigm . I’ve moved from being an independent and adventurous character, leading discussions and sharing ideas, creating things for my community and starting/supporting initiatives and projects, to barely being able to order a coffee or handle a trip to the supermarket alone. In the UK I took part in pole dancing, cycled everywhere, was active in a coffee and startup scene, I attended women’s circles, yoga and 5 rhythms (awesome by the way), I spoke at and attended conferences and events. I had friends who inspired and motivated me in every aspect of my personality and life. I wasn’t unhappy at all and I thought naively my happiness in the UK and personality would translate to the same kind of thing as I had before, just in Italy.
When I moved here and the honeymoon phase wore off I realised just how small my life, my world, had become. Facebook became a form of torture, seeing the life and people I had loved carrying on…. without me. I wanted to chat and talk with people there, but was also scared of missing home even more. So I isolated myself a lot. I became down and depressed. I was really really negative about the place I lived and the life I now had. Nothing was good enough or compared to what I had back home. I felt our choice was stupid and irresponsible. It’s been really dark.
Culture shock and expat depression is common when you move countries. I looked into this after really struggling for a couple of months. Please read up on it and be prepared before you move.
If you have ever struggled with anxiety, stress and depression then you have to be sensible and expect that some of that may be triggered by the move. Without your support network you can go downhill more quickly. I felt helpless, alone and isolated and my feelings worsened an already challenging situation. I became very depressed here, it began to seriously impact my relationships and prevented me from doing the necessary work required to adjust to life here.
I was sometimes scared to leave the house. I was ashamed, embarrassed, and humiliated at how difficult I found it. Living as a foreigner in a new land provided some insight into what refugees may go through in adapting to a new country. I now have so much more sympathy and empathy for how challenging it must be, just imagine how it must be for them. I mean I felt all this despite having a huge amount of support from friends and family back home and newly made friends and family here.
So please take a minute to imagine what it’s like to be an immigrant or refugee entering a new land, entering your land for example, after a potentially traumatic past that lead to you being forced to leave all you know behind. Potentially you’ve lost friends, family and work, your qualifications and job experience counting for nothing, not speaking the language or understanding the culture you moved to. You end up living somewhere you likely didn’t choose and feel isolated, unwelcome and treated as less than human by those around you. How truly terrifying that experience must be and how much courage it must take to build that new life for yourself against all the odds.
In these times of division I just wanted to take an opportunity to remind people to please not be part of making life any harder on other people who are in challenging situations. They are likely suffering a great deal and need compassion and support over any judgements, resentments and rejections. I’m hoping most of you reading this know this already, to get this far in my post you really must care quite a lot about the suffering of others, but still a worthwhile mention.
Anyway, This is such a long post as it was hard to explain to people why this move has been so hard on me, it was not any one thing that made life here so difficult, it was everything combined, lots and lots of little things all adding up on a daily basis.
Accepting your choice with all the challenges that come with it can take time and be difficult to live through. But it also forces you to learn and grow and become stronger. I eventually reached out to people and upon reflection have realised I was very lucky: a psychologist friend who’s helped me thoroughly through it all with kindness and love, and reminded me no matter how hard it gets no time is wasted and I am sincerely grateful; Another sunny beautiful friend who moved to Spain from the UK is there for me and we regularly support each other, transition buddies we call ourselves; My new expat friends we share and commiserate about life here and encourage and share our learnings, also I have Facebook groups and they have all shared advice and tips and understanding to get me through; My best friends from back home are always on the end of a text with love and encouragement and listening to all the above, you are all saints!; My new Italian friends here who help me adapt and try to make me feel part of their world; My Italian lovely partner who has been through and put up with so much but each day has a smile and love for me and helps me again; His whole huge wonderful Italian family who have made me feel so welcomed and truly loved without even words. So in all this pain and darkness there is love, light, hope, kindness, happiness.
A year on I know a lot more than I did, if I reflect back I’ve made huge strides, I’ve learnt enough of the language to be understood and continue to study (thanks to a lovely girl who helps me called Roberta, you are a star!!), I am becoming braver and adapting and facing my fears more often and with more strength and positivity. I am doing more things for me that I never had the time for before like yoga, painting, cooking and writing blogs — ta da! I have not won the war just yet, everyday is still a battle, but I’m winning more often than I used to, I feel now it’s possible!
After a year here I have learnt some surprising and funny things about Southern Italy so please read a bit about — What it’s really like to live in Southern Italy (for a Brit).
