Tag Archives: Italy

Europe, Italy, Self Improvement, Traveling

Di Dove Sei?: A Not So Undercover American

September 29, 2025 SamuelLMoney Leave a comment

I’ve been oddly quiet on socials the last few years with posts mainly to update that I’m still alive and around, but while I’ve been enjoying a life less documented, I haven’t been doing nothing. For the last few years, I’ve been living in Italy, with the first year being the trials and tribulations of navigating Italian bureaucracy to get my citizenship. This is something I wrote a post about but it’s hard to talk through without the conversation being full of negativity, so I’d rather that not be the end of a hiatus. Something I get asked a lot about is how is it to live in Italy. Is so and so true? Do you just eat pasta? So lets break some stuff down.

For context, I moved here in the fall of 2022 and started the citizenship journey. I didn’t end up getting it until November 2023 after moving to a small village in the center of Italy. I met Carla shortly after moving here and stayed after to continue the relationship and spend more time in Italy. I got a remote job for an Irish company and work close to normal hours, albeit remotely. Working for an American company pays more, but working 4pm to midnight is not that fun for the long term.

The relationship didn’t quite work out, but I’m enjoying the company I found and I’m finally becoming fluent, so there’s likely more Italy in my story. Here’s some fun information and hopefully some helpful knowledge for if there is some Italy in your future.

Almost 3 years in Rome, so the Colosseo must be involved

I Had a Great Trip But I Need To Eat Something That Isn’t Pizza Or Pasta

This isn’t a cute heading, this is the exact sentence that it has become my mission to destroy. After I first moved here, more than one friend left Italy saying this exact sentence. So we’ll get into how different Italian life is to American and if by the end you don’t think you could leave Italy without saying this sentence, message me directly and I’ll make sure that isn’t the case.

First things first, the Italian life has an entirely different motivation and to be honest, I still haven’t nailed it down, but we’re getting there. The main goal for most is to enjoy the wonderful things with people they care about. I can already hear you, “Duh, that’s what everyone wants.” , but that hasn’t been my experience in most places, especially America. Most of my time spent living in America was with people saying that is what they want, so they chase fame or money or some other sort of mountaintop that will eventually lead them to the wonderful things with people they love. What I’m saying is that Italians have access to a ton of the best things in life (think California but way cheaper) and acknowledge that they don’t need much more. Eating the same food with the same people every day is a joy when the food is good and the people are nice.

The capitalism bored deep into my soul as an American is set ablaze every time that we go adventure somewhere and I am at a beach club over a mile from the next closest place to get water or food and I am able to get a good lunch and drink for under ten euros. My brain can’t fathom the universe where you have me trapped and I have currency and a need and you don’t wreck me on the price. But this is where we get into the entire mentality shift. They are overcharging me. The coffee usually costs one euro because it costs them next to nothing to make. They are charging me two euros because I am trapped, but that is so close to the original price, I don’t even see it as a difference. The entire country (exclude the north in any of these sentences as someone taught them more capitalism at some point) functions like this. Again to my California comparison, in a few hours, you can go from mountain to beach to forest in Italy. Each region has its own food and it is all delicious. Because no one is trying to gouge you on the price, you can enjoy all of the nice things here without having to gouge anyone on price.

Another example would be Sunday speed. Italians have a different speed that they walk on holidays and weekends. It’s probably not an intentional thing, but if they have nowhere to be, they basically crawl to their destination. When I moved here, I was flying past everyone, even when I had nowhere to be. As I’ve spent more time here, to the detriment of my calf muscles that are no longer in constant strain, I’ve learned to slow down and just enjoy the walk. Piano piano, slowly slowly.

I’m sure you’ve seen the countless videos online of people trying to piss off Italians by breaking a food rule and as funny as some of the videos are, it comes down to a similar mindset. Dishes and food in Italy have been figured out. Perfected. Their disbelief in you doing it wrong is because they can’t comprehend why you wouldn’t want the best thing. I find it really romantic. As an American, you can order whatever you want and do whatever you want to it, as long as you pay for it. Here in Italy, they want you to have the best thing they can give you more than they want your money.

It shouldn’t be the only thing you eat, but carbonara is a must in Rome

Now on to the pizza and pasta fiasco. This comes down to the difference in dining rituals between Italians (and other Southern Europeans) and Americans (and other countries, I’m sure). When you look at an Italian menu, you’ll see antipasti (appetizers), primi (firsts), secondi (seconds) and contorni (sides). We don’t really need to talk through desserts but we’ll get to after dinner. In America, you order one dish (and maybe an appetizer to share) and that dish will come with everything on it. Pasta, meat, vegetables, whatever. You ordered, you paid, you eat, you get out (and don’t forget to tip). In Italy, those aren’t just cute names. The standard procedure is usually that you’ll have an antipasto to split and then a first plate (maybe to split depending on the occasion), followed up by a second, maybe with a contorno to split. Why isn’t everyone a million pounds? Because this whole affair doesn’t take place in forty five minutes like in the US. Usually dinner is a whole evening affair, taking between one and three hours depending on group size. The point is the time you spend with the people you are with (and the food doesn’t hurt either). When most American friends are presented with the menu, the standard dilemma occurs, “Do I have pasta or the chicken as there isn’t a plate with both?”. There won’t be a plate with both, they’re meant to be separated. Outside of a lunch spot, you’ll never see it. So let me guide you. Come to Italy. Split the pasta with a friend, follow it up with deliciously cooked meat, enjoy.

Next, I guess we should cover wine. For context, I never drank wine in the US. It is expensive or low quality and I never quite got the point and stuck to whiskey or water. Thanks to the owner of a wonderful osteria across from my apartment (shoutout Fabrizio, if for some reason you ever read this in English), I now have a better basis for wine. Wine in Italy is a mainstay. It’s very common for wine to just be made available. It does not follow the same rule as in the US where a higher price tag means a better wine. Wines, like food, are regional. If you’re in a restaurant with a waiter who knows their stuff, they can suggest you a wine that matches with what you bought. If you’re not, red goes better with meat and white goes better with fish, you still won’t have a bad time following this in general in Italy. Usually if there is a house wine (vino della casa), it’s usually pretty good and will only cost you a few euros, so you can’t go wrong there. For an added bonus for reading this far, grab a bottle of Primitivo if you ever see one. It’s usually under 10 euros and has become my gift of choice. I’ve yet to hear a complaint about it and have heard more than once that it has ruined other more expensive red wines for others. Just another beautiful output of Puglia. Anyways, that’s wine. Drink it with friends, be happy, tell stories.

The undefeated under 10 euro champ, even in the airport

Lets chat on after dinner while we’re here. Desserts here are so hard for me to explain as someone with a sweet tooth. Delicate is the only word that comes to mind. Nothing is so insanely sugary that I’m ready to sleep after, but I’ve never had one where I thought “This needs to be sweeter”. If we exclude gelato (which now that I’m mentioning it, I’ll get to later), I’m not big on other desserts, so I don’t have much more to say here other than it follows the same rules as the food, each region has their own specialties. Next is the amaros, the digestive liqueurs. This for me is a joy as you can find them in almost any flavor profile, and they are small but meant to be sipped. A nice little strong alcohol post meal does the soul good. Now, the infamous after dinner coffee. I know this one feels crazy, you just ate a bunch of food for several hours, it is now close to midnight (or well after depending on how far south you are) and you have ordered a coffee. Yeah, but this is an Italian coffee, small with little to no milk. The point is to help your digestion, not to keep you awake , maybe to counter some of that wine.

Gelato abound, the reason we’re all here

Finally, gelato, the crown jewel, my eternal post meal destination. What a wonderful thing to live in a country that has gelato shops everywhere and they are open very late, and are super full in the late evenings. I don’t have much to say here that you don’t know as these aren’t a secret. Maybe that you can ask for panna (cream) on top and if you know the right spots, you can get chocolate covered that hardens (like the Magic Shell when you were a kid but way better). So get some every chance you get and enjoy it. Also, pistacchio in Italian has two c’s so it is pi-sta-key-oh. Hit it with some Italian flair and you won’t get any weird looks when you order. You’re welcome.

Wait, before leave dinner, let’s touch on tipping. In the US, tipping is at least twenty percent and is essentially mandatory. No one is happy to give or receive, but it must be done. I don’t need to get into the details on this, but just for context. In Italy, this is not the case. Food costs what you will pay and workers are paid what they are expected. For exceptional service, you can leave a euro or two. Any time I’ve left a bit more has been met with some resistance, but overall, people are genuinely happy to receive the small recognition of a job well done. Notably, for one meal I had the best steak I’ve ever had, recommended by the waitress and an amazing bottle of wine suggested to pair with it and I left five euros. After some resistance, she accepted it, which is wild, because if I walked out of that bill only leaving five dollars in the US, I’d be famous on the internet for the ensuing scene. That said, no need to tip, but if they do a good job, leave some coin.

But Your Last Name Is Italian

I guess we can hop into what it’s like to live here, not just come here for a week. First off, Italians are great, Italy is great, the food is great. I fully understand that anything here that seems to be a complaint is coming from a place of privilege and I am basically crying in a paradise, but I’ve never hidden things on this blog before and I’m writing, so I’ll cry where I want to.

When I lived in America, I always considered myself not quite American. I never felt that I had the same motivations as others, that I didn’t quite fit the American standard. Let me say that after over two years in Italy, I can assure you that I am American. While there is some semblance that American culture tends to take over other countries as globalization occurs and Americans tend to bring tourism and cash flow, that is not the case in Italy. Italians live as Italians and if you move to Italy expecting to live the Italian version of your American life, I need you to know that you will be sorely mistaken.

That being said, I’ve been blessed to do quite a bit of traveling so had some idea of what to expect and there are some super cool things. After all the learning of riding scooters in Asia, scooters are wildly accepted here, so that’s my main form of transport. Actually, driving here is closer to driving in Vietnam than anywhere else I’ve been, so whipping in between cars to avoid traffic is super cool. Italians have a deep love for driving in the middle of two lanes though, so driving in a car is not. I’d say that’s just for a city like Rome, but as I’ve driven around most of the country…this is a nationwide phenomenon. Parking here is also comical. Driving in Italy mostly follows the “If you aren’t hurting anyone, you’re fine” type rules. Around dinner time, you will see some wild parking. Like double parked over a crosswalk wild. Every time I’ve ever parked and though “this might be too illegal”, I come back to my vehicle with someone parked more illegally than me.

Eating is also a big topic that comes up about living here. The food here is super fresh and not that expensive. Even if you remove the large amount that I save from not having to tip, things are generally cheaper here. They aren’t processed and don’t last as long, but it’s fresh, so eat it. With all of the high quality ingredients, it’s super easy to throw something healthy together that tastes great. I would say option wise, food is much more limited here than anywhere I’ve spent time, but their market is Italians and that’s what they want to eat. I’ve never seen a group of people so passionate about their own stuff. I won’t even get into the number of countries I’ve been to with Italians where we have gone to an Italian restaurant for dinner. I can’t argue with results though.

Next up we have my great adversary, the language…which is gorgeous, but frustrating. As of this post, I’ve been to 42 countries. Of that list, in my experience, Italy in general has the least amount of English spoken. Growing up with an Italian family, this realization was wild to me, but I understand it. Imagine you’re somewhere that has mountains, beach, forest, you name it and then some of the best food and drink in the world and you speak that language. What is your motivation to learn another one? Even in the capital cities, once you leave the center, fluency in English goes out the door, your mileage here may vary depending how far North you are. I’m not complaining, as it does kind of force me to constantly be learning and improving my Italian, but it does inform some of the more difficult things about living here. Things like going to the dentist or mechanic, which can already be stressful, are two-fold when even a choice of words can change your experience, since you likely won’t have English to fall back on. At least most Italians are conscious of the lack of English, so they’ll do their best to help bridge the gaps any way they can and you get some nice compliments when you actually speak the language (whether they fully understand you or not).

The language itself sounds beautiful. Saying things feels nice when you get it right. The language contains no silent letters and words are pronounced exactly as they are written. This makes learning a new word super easy, however, it means that if you pronounce that word with one t instead of two, no one will know what you’re talking about. Then we have rolling your R’s, which is a skill that requires more practice than I’d like to admit. I still can’t hit an R followed by an L without using 100% of my brain. There’s also conjugation, but that exists in a lot of languages and I’m just lucky (unlucky?) that we never had to learn that with English. Not to say English isn’t a psychotic language because I’ve had all the English weirdness pointed out to me since I’ve lived here.

Since most Italians don’t speak amazing English, they really cut you some slack when your Italian is lacking and they try to work with you. Until they find out your last name is Italian, then you’ll likely get blasted for not speaking Italian and have to explain the societal implications of having an Italian accent in early 1900’s America, but worth the price, I guess.

That’s it. I’ll stop there, maybe I’ll follow up next time with more Italy stuff or living abroad or cool travel stories like before. I’m going to try to be a bit more consistent with my writing, so I’m going to kill this here or I’ll never publish this and it will sit in drafts forever (because it has already been there for over a month). As always, thanks for reading. Let me know what else you want to read about and if you ever grab a gelato during an adventure and think of me, send me a picture.

Some well cooked meat (not pizza or pasta) and a glass of wine, a perfect Italian evening

Arriverderci, alla prossima

Estonia, Europe, Italy, Norway, Traveling

On The Road Again

October 30, 2022 SamuelLMoney Leave a comment

A farewell to cool dogs, Lady Bird Lake and my favorite downtown to see the sunset hit

It’s been quite a bit since I’ve written one of these…and if you go back to the first one, the writing was not so good…so I’d expect the same here as I get back into this. It’s not that I haven’t been adventuring, but I have been finding it difficult to sit down and write. This month, there have been a few milestones…and humans have the easiest time starting things when there is a milestone so it seemed like the perfect time to start writing here again.

This month, I turned 30 and moved out of Austin…to live in Italy. Over the last two years of bloglessness, I have been practicing Italian. After meeting a few Italians via volleyball and other friends, I started coming to Italy every other month to practice the language and see the country. The more time I spent here, the more I felt aligned with my heritage. Learning Italian in Texas is a bit difficult and I was becoming a bit exhausted with America and missing adventure. I did some work to get all of my documentation lined up and am going to get my Italian citizenship by descent while I live here. Outside of that little update, this blog post is going to cover the trip out to Italy.

The trailer made it from Austin all the way to my sister’s house in Olmsted Falls

At the beginning of August, Ryan came down to Texas and I did a little farewell tour to Austin. I spent some time with all the various friends I met, ate at all of my favorite restaurants and sold a lot of my things. Needless to say, I spent too much time doing fun stuff and packing didn’t take priority. Ryan and my dear friend Becca did all of the packing while I lolligagged around last minute. One day, I’ll stop procrastinating…but as long as it keeps working out, probably not. We attached a trailer to my Encore and set off on the twenty four hour drive back to Cleveland. Pretty boring drive, but it preempted the three weeks I got to spend in Cleveland with my family and enjoying the city for the first time in summer in four years. The three weeks were mostly filled with family time, volleyball, a dadchelor trip to West Virginia, and a wedding celebration.

Shout out Guardians for a win when I took my Dad for our birthdays

When I decided to move to Italy, I had no idea where I wanted to live(spoilers: I still don’t), so I came to Italy a bunch to check it out. To finish my citizenship, I have to have a lease and have to stay in the same city for four to six months while they finish all of the processing. I decided that I should spend a month somewhere while I get comfortable being in a foreign country before signing a lease, so Ryan agreed to spend the month in a small town we visited earlier this year called Cesena. We came here in February to visit our friend Andrea that we met via Beachbox Camps and he agreed to train us if we lived here for a month. Last time I was in Europe, I realized I had been to twenty seven countries. This gave me the idea to hit three more countries before we got to Cesena so that I’d hit my thirtieth country just after my thirtieth birthday. The battle plan was to leave Cleveland on August 29th.

Like any of my travel stories, they don’t go as planned. I spent the day of the 29th saying goodbye to my family and finishing up packing (see earlier for other procrastination references). An hour before I was supposed to meet Ryan at the airport, the flight got delayed by two hours. No big deal, just some more time to spend with family. After clicking into the app to check on the exact time of the delay, I saw another message stating that the delay pushed us into a storm, so the flight was canceled. After interacting with support for the booking site and the airline, nothing had changed. They booked us for a flight the next evening, which would have us in London later than we were even planning to stay there. Ryan headed to the airport and got an agent to get us another flight in the morning to Oslo, Norway so we wouldn’t miss our plans there. Once that was settled, we spent the evening playing Mario Party and eating pizza with my family, so overall, not too bad.

Prior to leaving, my dear sweet nephew, Max, couldn’t help but be a little plague bearer (because that’s what children do) and so I left Cleveland pretty congested. We got to the airport the next morning, no problems and headed off to an eight hour layover in New York. My work wife, Chelsea, also happened to be in New York for the weekend and was heading to Europe that afternoon. The plan was to hop into the city, hang out and then take an Uber back to the airport with Chelsea since she was heading to the same airport. What I didn’t plan for was the pressure change of a plane descending to smash my eustachian tubes with the congestion, making me feel like I permanently had an earbud in my ear. So basically, my few hours in New York were spent feeling like I had my head underwater and I couldn’t hear anything. Regardless, we met up with Chelsea and her friend, Rachel for drinks with a view of the Brooklyn Bridge and wandered around the city for a few hours.

The taxi and flight were pretty uneventful. At some point in the air, the pressure had changed enough that I was able to clear my ears and finally feel normal again. It was all a ruse though. As we descended, my ears became congested again, but this time both of them. This time accompanied by a brutal pressure in my head. Not a fan, but not too bad.

Bring Me Your Best

Of all of my travels, I have only checked two bags. One when I moved to Austin…and one for this trip. I thought I could just ship a package to Italy after I arrived…but right before I left, I found out that would cost me upwards of fifteen hundred dollars. So this trip, I had my regular travel bag (around thirty pounds), my Yeti laptop bag (another twenty) and a large checked bag (almost exactly fifty pounds). This is important because it dictated some of our movement for the week.

Back to the actual trip, we landed in Oslo, got all of our bags to a nice hotel that our friend Jenny booked for us. With little to no sleep and both of my ears congested to the point where I couldn’t hear, Ryan and I head off to a tournament. We ubered to the event and walked up. We got lucky and it was around 75 degrees, which is rare for an evening in Oslo at the end of August. We made it a priority to make it to this tournament because the Olympic gold medalists are from Norway and they would be playing. This was also a threes tournament where you randomly got different teammates of various skill levels every game.

Exhausted and with the inability to hear, being social wasn’t really on the menu. Everyone there spoke English well but were obviously defaulting to Norwegian. I got the chance to play against both olympians, but it’s always difficult with random teammates to play a solid game. Ryan didn’t get so lucky. Seven or eight games later and the tournament came to an end. We stuck around to play a game with our friend Jenny and Adrian that we met in Zanzibar earlier this year. After the event, we roamed our way back to the hotel. It was around 10pm…everything was mostly closed. We tried ordering things but didn’t have texting in Norway…so ended up getting pizzas and kebabs. Our eyes were bigger than our stomachs, so we definitely got a bit too much.

The next day, we stored our bags and headed to the Oslo city center. My favorite thing to do is go to a single point of interest and then just walk as we find other things. So we headed to an area of Oslo called Barcode and roamed around. The architecture of Oslo is gorgeous, it’s like a mix of modern and older European. It’s a bit odd because they will make buildings that look like older European cities but are obviously new. The city is surrounded by water and nature, which is always a beautiful backdrop. There are also places to sit everywhere, which seems so odd. Around 3pm on a Thursday, the area was full of people just sitting around. Norway has a really interesting situation because it was one of the poorest countries in Europe before they found all of the oil. After getting all of that oil money, they made a lot of decisions with the good of the people in mind, which seems a bit wild coming from America. Every citizen has a large pension set for them and they did a lot to improve the quality of life there, knowing that eventually the oil will run out. It seems crazy that like 5 Norwegians didn’t take all that money but I guess we don’t all capitalism so well. Anyways, after that, our friend, Adrian, met up with us and we walked around the city a bit more. He left because he had to get ready for a Rome trip and we realized we had walked about 15 miles so we headed back to the hotel and ate some food.

Norwegians sitting around with some nature

The next day, we had a flight around 6pm, so we went to find some Norwegian waffles with yogurt and strawberry on one half (amazing) and caramelized cheese on the other (not so much). After we tried this, the weather turned gloomy. Our hotel was actually attached to an IMAX and despite my deep love of movies, I had never been to one. Ryan doesn’t really love movies, but it’s raining, so too bad. We looked up some movie times and NOPE was playing in IMAX and ended right at the time we needed to leave. So we packed our stuff, brought it to the main desk and headed over. Norway apparently treats their concession stands like a convenient store filled with snacks, which is pretty cool, and after posting that, I found out apparently a lot of Europe does too. We saw this movie, it was great, and then hopped in a taxi on our way to the airport.

A Land of Castles and Friends

Next stop: Estonia. This one has been on the list for a while. We’ve met a lot of Estonians via Beachbox Camps, since they’re neighboring countries. I had heard it was all castles, so what’s not to love. The part we were a bit quieter about (shout out Americans lack of geographical knowledge) is that Estonia borders Russia and Russia wasn’t so happy with them when we arrived. I wasn’t particularly worried, but no reason to make loved ones worried. Anyways, we flew in, walked around some castles and found the closest open restaurant….an American themed pub. Whatever, food is food. The next day our friend, Merike, picked us up with her boyfriend and we met her beach volley partner and some others from Beachbox Camps at the indoor facility they play at. Upon walking in, I noticed it looked strikingly similar to the one in Riga, Latvia, which I found out is because it is owned by Renars, who runs Beachbox Camps. Small world. We played an hour or two of sideout and then Martin gave us a tour of Tallinn.

During the tour, we stopped for some lunch and walked by the seaside. They had some historic battleships that we were just allowed to climb all over. I always enjoy these things because Americans would die or break things if you let them do this. As proof, I immediately climbed into a gunner seat to mess around. Other than this, jet lag was starting to hit me and Estonia doesn’t share the same love of seats as Norway, but luckily we found some public bean bag chairs overlooking the sea to get some fresh air. After this, we saw some other volleyball places and then went to relax in the hotel. A few hours later, we ordered a straight up American portion of food and met our friends for a board game night. Other than Mafia, I haven’t played board games in any other language and we immediately realized that if we played in English, we likely hold an advantage, but if we played in Estonian, we just can’t play. After some solid hospitality and friend time, it was time to head home to sleep before an early flight.

We flew into Venice and grabbed a train to Rimini, the Myrtle Beach of Europe. One chill night here walking along the beach before heading to Cesena for our month long stay. After this, I spent the month in Cesena, hit Belgium to see Amine and my thirtieth country. At the end of the month, I headed back to Austin for 5 days and immediately flew back to Spain for Beachbox Mallorca. These things will just be covered in an IG post in favor of writing more vaguely about Italy and living here. Thanks for reading while I knock the rust off. Ciao ciao!