Ten Things You Must Do Before Moving to Italy

That's assuming you ever get a visa. Which you likely won't.

One of those places you just randomly find while driving in Italy and it takes your breath away. Photo by author.

First, Cappuccino would like to extend a heartfelt apology for not posting yesterday. No Internet service, no Cappuccino, and this is but one of many drawbacks to living in a medieval Italian village, including but not limited to: having to park half a kilometer away from the house, leaky roofs, insanely noisy neighbors, and stairs.

In this way, living in Italy becomes something of a Darwinian struggle. It tests you, Italy does. It laughs at your ambition. Never assume you can accomplish more than one task a day here, and be grateful for even that many. The store you assumed was open, isn’t. The bus you assumed was coming, didn’t. The bill you wanted to pay, forget it. Why? You forgot to bring the paper with the right barcode on it.

Never mind that all twenty papers in the bill packet have barcodes. Don’t expect to go somewhere or call someone who will be able to just “look up your account.” Silly you! Nor will you be able to pay most bills online. Many Italian businesses still use fax machines.

Your Italian for Dummies book will never prepare you for the AR-15 strafing of Italian you will be on the receiving end of every time you leave the house. Italians talk fast, drink lots of coffee, and understand, as you do not, that Italian isn’t spoken so much as performed.

All Italian is performative.

This country will kick your ass until it’s a brand new shape, but if you go into it knowing that, you’ll be okay. Remember: hope for the best, expect the worst. Also, rules are unevenly applied here, so if you get a “no” in one place, you might get a “yes” in another. In Italy, nothing’s etched in stone. That’s all part of the Great Adventure. Your job is to find the loopholes.

Unfortunately, no loopholes will be forthcoming with Italy’s digital nomad visa. Nor, in this writer’s considered opinion, will the visa itself be offered anytime soon. If and when it is available, I predict so many terms/conditions/flaming hoops, few people will actually qualify for the visa or have the courage to apply for one.

No digital visas will be issued until an official decree is issued, and there is no sign of that happening so far. With the installation of a new, anti-immigrant, rightwing government (even though one of its coalition partners, Five Star Movement MP Luca Carabetta, is a proponent), few people are optimistic that the digital nomad visa will receive the support it needs. Even so, the visa is only for “highly skilled workers,” and that’s such a wobbly, interpretive condition to meet that, again, I have my doubts.

Are there other visas? Yes, but I only know five types of immigrant that are successful at getting one: retirees who can show a sizable fixed income, people who can claim Italian heritage and have years’ worth of persistence and determination, women (mostly) who marry Italian men, students studying abroad, and poor refugees crossing the ocean in rubber dinghies.

If you don’t fall into one of those five categories, getting an Italian visa is going to be difficult, if not impossible. And if you’re British or American, you can’t get mad about it because what our countries do to people who try to immigrate legally is nothing short of draconian. As a friend of mine once quipped, “If getting legal in Italy were easy, everybody would live here.”

Bussana Vecchia, a ghost town/artists colony. Photo by author.

We could have a whole conversation about how borders are a made-up idea and social contracts like money, the ownership of real estate, democracy, laws, religion, and again, borders, are purely delusional. But I’ll spare you my musings on that subject. Instead, let’s assume you’ve gotten the go-ahead and are ready to make that trans-Atlantic jump to Italy. What do you bring with you? And most importantly, what can you do to prepare for your new life here?

I’ve got some answers.

1. Learn how to drive a stick shift. There are very few automatic transmission cars in Italy. Sure, you can pick up a rental at the airport, but at some point, you’re going to find yourself in serious trouble unless you know how to drive stick. Lucky for me, my last two American cars were manual transmission, so by the time I made it to Italy, I had an ingrained skillset. But I know plenty of folks who don’t make learning how to drive stick a priority, and their lives are limited because of it. In fact, I’m so adamant on this subject, I’d say being fluent in stick as almost as important as being fluent in Italian. You’re going to need both at some point.

2. Get your International Driving Permit before you arrive. Note: your International Driving Permit is not a driver’s license. It’s more of an internationally recognized translation of your driver’s license so when you get pulled over, which you will, the carabinieri can’t get salty with you about not having one. Your IDP is a 4”x 6” booklet that contains your personal information (name, photo, place and year of birth) and then nine pages of that information translated into various languages. While it’s true that you can come to Italy and apply for one by mail (not online), it will literally take you months to receive it. Make life easy on yourself. Get your IDP before you leave the United States. All you have to do is go to your local American Automobile Association. Brits can apply here, Australians here, and Canadians here.

3. Start learning Italian now. Reader, I’m not going to lie to you. Learning a second language is a daunting process. I’ve written on the subject before, and you might find those suggestions helpful, but studies show that with each birthday candle we stab into our respective cakes, it becomes harder and harder to get our brains to accept a second language. Not impossible, of course. Just harder. Apps like Duolingo and Babel are decent introductions, but an app isn’t going to ask you questions in rapid-fire Italian over the phone while a jackhammer is chewing through concrete right next to your feet, which, as you will soon discover, are the exact circumstances you will find yourself in when you need to call the gas company about an emergency leak. The best and perhaps only way to learn not just Italian but the kind of Italian you will need here is full immersion. If getting hot food, a clean towel, and a place to lay your head is predicated on your ability to communicate in Italian, trust me, your brain is going to learn Italian. So, start learning the language now, but don’t expect what you’ve learned to work for you once you’re here. Italian Italian with all its various regional accents is next level, and trust me, you’re not prepared for it. But it will come. Slowly. Amid endless cursing. Be patient with yourself.

4. Don’t bring more than one pair of high heels. Or any heels, for that matter. Coming from a state like Texas where the hair is blonde and shoes are spiky, I foolishly thought I’d need them. Ha! There’s a mistake you only make once. After tottering down a cobblestone street while clinging desperately to John’s arm, I went home and threw out every pair of heels I owned, replacing them with sneakers and sturdy boots. Italian women can navigate cobblestones in high heels, but I’m not Italian, so there’s no point in trying. Most of us can kiss our elegant footwear goodbye.
   

   

   The only people who can navigate these surfaces are Italian women. If you’re not Italian, forget it.

5. There are a few things you might want to pack a lot of before leaving the U.S. In this Cappuccino, I detail what they are (Ziploc bags, deodorant, tinfoil, Saran Wrap and tampons), and if you read the comments section in that article, you’ll discover even more. But once you get here, you will likely find that the Italian version of these consumer goods leaves a lot to be desired. Much of that has to do with European Union environmental regulations (no aluminum, triclosan, parabens, phthalates, or propylene glycol in cosmetics and deodorants, for example), which I’m a big proponent of, so technically, I’m not complaining. But you may want to load up anyway, just in case. Those pits aren’t going to de-stink themselves, you know.

6. Maintain a non-P.O. Box American address. At some point, you’re going to need an American address, so find a friend who will let you use theirs. Many companies and government services require one, even if it isn’t your official residence. More importantly, Italy is brilliant at many things, but postal delivery isn’t one of them. About 80% of what people send me actually makes it here. Side note: it’s prohibitively expensive to ship things, even personal items, from the U.S. to Italy, and they can get hung up in customs for weeks—even months—where you will then pay VAT (Value-Added Tax aka extortion). Think: hostage situation. One way to avoid that is to print Oggetti Personali on the side of the box, but they’re probably going to X-ray the contents, so don’t lie too obviously. An iPhone, for instance, hidden inside three layers of sweaters. Customs will sniff that out like a dog.

7. Leave your small appliances behind and buy new ones once you get here. Even if you brought a multi-country adaptor, you’re still going to need a voltage converter—more than one. Italy uses three plug types: C, F and L, and it operates on a 230V supply voltage/50Hz. Legislation is underway to “normalize” Italy’s chaotic plug situation. I hate to sound pessimistic, but as a rule, Italy rejects all attempts to reform her. I predict many more years of John swearing volubly in his beautiful Italian after bringing home a new lamp and trying to plug it into a wall. You need adaptors just to live in Italy.

8. Start getting in shape now. With few exceptions, Italy is built on an incline. This is not a country where you can count on driving your car up close to where you need to be. You will walk, that walk will be longer than you thought, you will likely be carrying things, it will be uphill, and you will be sweating. When I first came to Italy, I’d been teaching fitness classes for sixteen hours a week at a gym, and this uphill/downhill thing still kicked my ass. It kicks my ass even harder now. There’s no avoiding it, so you may as well train like the mountain goat you will become.

9. Get an e-reader or an app like Kindle. One of the biggest adjustments I had to make coming to Italy was lack of access to books in English. As in, they don’t exist here in sufficient denominations to satisfy even a modest craving. I made the switch to Kindle, and I’m grateful to have access to on-demand mother-tongue media, but nothing beats the smell, feel, and heft of a physical book. The problem is, shipping your library to Italy is going to cost you thousands. If you have that kind of money, great; for the rest of us, an e-reader it is.

10. Learn to use WhatsApp. Everybody in Italy uses WhatsApp, which is an international cross-platform instant messaging, phone call, and video call app. Italians use it because a lot of phone plans are not unlimited, the service is sketchy, and no one wants to eat into their minutes, especially when WhatsApp is free. You will need an Italian phone plan to use it, but plans are relatively inexpensive here ($10.00 as opposed to $100.00 in the U.S.) We’ll ignore the fact that WhatsApp is owned by Meta, which was formerly known as Facebook, and Facebook is Pure Unadulterated Evil.
    

    

    The sumptuous basilica in Spoleto. Photo by author.

    And there you have it! A list of must-dos that was fully ten years in the making. If you have any additional questions or suggestions, be sure to chime in. I always read your comments, and I am always happy to hear from you.

    For me, Cappuccino is about community. Our community. And I sincerely consider you to be a part of that.

Copyright © 2022 Stacey Eskelin