Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Expat evolution In Italy

nick Says:
August 27th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
This comment by an Italian came up on one of my blogs and I thought Id let you hear it from the horses mouth so to speak, and so feature it here as a guest post.

Let’s talk about the standard evolution of Living in Italy for English/Irish/American/Australian/South African people:
step 1: people read about Italy (wonderful)
step 2: they decide to come to Italy for holiday (wonderful)
step 3: wonderful x two = let’s go to live in Italy!
step 4: settling in Italy (not too bad)
step 5: dealing with Italian bureaucracy (very bad)
step 6: dealing with Italian laziness, Italian TV addiction, Italian closed mind, Italian xenophobia, Italian soccer obsession, lack of opinions (dreadful)
step 7: f… Italy! Let’s go back to our country.
90% of the English/Irish/American/Australian/South African people I met followed this evolution (I am just an Italian witness).
Good luck

Do you agree, disagree what has your experience as an expat been? leave a comment below.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's a pretty clever observation, but I think the "settling in in Italy" is much harder than "not too bad."

I also think that for a lot of us, or for ME at least, that I will be positive and see the good things as outweighing the bad.

It seems it is always better in our home countries, and just to prove me wrong - I had a horrible experience with Fed Ex when I was in TX. See? It isn't only the Italian Post!! :-)

AmyEmilia said...

I suspect that the expats who are married/partnered with Italians will have a far lower recidivism (spelling?) rate than those who are there "on their own". Not being an expat myself, I can't really comment on my own experience. My Italian husband is not interested in moving back to Italy!

Anonymous said...

That was 100% our experience! Of course nothing is perfect anywhere, and you can't leave expecting that (our experience in England has in many ways been worse than in Italy, but at least there's no language barrier & cultural misunderstandings), but for us Italy was a challenging, interesting, at times wonderful experience that we are now happy to leave in the past.

Como the beautiful

Como the beautiful
walk near the lake

Hidden Italy, the places we visit regularly from Tuscany to the lake district above Como.

When I became a resident in Italy in 2001, I already knew how visitors liked to praise her places, food and art.
I had visited many times as a visitor myself, and been enchanted.
This site is rather designed to show the hidden Italy, the real Italy experienced by it's residents.
The events of the year, from registering as a resident, to celebrating Christmas, Easter and many other festivals, buying a house, working, banking, and still enjoying its beauty, are to be found here.

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My favourite writings on Italy

  • Italian Education/Cara Massimina Tim Parks
  • Where angles fear to tread E.M. Forster ISBN0140180885
  • A small place in Italy ISBN0330338188
  • D.H.Lawrence and Italy ISBN 0140095209
  • The Italians by Luigi Barzini Touchstone books ISBN 068482500

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