00:00:00.000if I had a dollar for every person who's come up to me lately and told me that they want to flee
00:00:11.720America and move to Italy or somewhere else beautiful and wonderful in Europe I would be
00:00:17.680a rich enough person to just screw off and move to Italy I really would it seems like everyone I
00:00:25.160know, is dreaming of abandoning America right now. And I get it. I do. But I also don't
00:00:31.880know if that is the answer. And frankly, it's probably a lot harder than most people think
00:00:37.220it is. We're going to talk about all of that today on Under the Influence. But we're also
00:00:41.880diving into something that drives me crazy. Something I haven't been able to stop thinking
00:00:46.480about since I was in Italy last year. Are influencers ruining Italy? Because I got to
00:00:51.720say, I was in Rome and my five-year-old daughter was pretty much knocked out of the way by a woman0.99
00:00:56.820trying to get a perfect pouty selfie of herself in front of the Trevi Fountain. When thousands
00:01:03.160of people descend on the same scenic cliffside in Positano or cram into an alley in Florence to get
00:01:10.040a glass of wine through a window, authentic travel pretty much goes out the window. So today we're
00:01:16.000talking about the unexpected economic and cultural consequences of travel influencers. How they're
00:01:21.560both overwhelming the infrastructure and also helping to erode the very charm that they came
00:01:26.580to capture. Now, this is not a story about bad intentions or bad actors, because I am also a
00:01:34.160person who posts travel pictures on social media. It's more of a story about how we can be mindful
00:01:40.360and better travelers in the age of the internet. My guest today is Fosca DiCerno. She is a proud
00:01:47.640Italian-American born and raised in Jersey, who moved to Italy, got married, had a baby,
00:01:53.900got divorced, dated as an adult, and now she helps other Americans with relocation to Italy,
00:01:58.680study abroad programs, and all different kinds of travel questions, most of which I'm going
00:02:02.940to be asking her today. Hey lady, how you doing? I'm doing great. How are you? I'm good. I'm good.
00:02:10.840I'm on my second cup of coffee this morning, which is not nothing, but with the time difference,
00:02:14.880you're probably about to get ready for dinner. I just had an espresso. It's if you count the
00:02:20.960first, which was a double. So that's three. I think that's my max for the day. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
00:02:26.960Yeah. Now tell our, tell our audience where you are right now. So I am in Florence, Italy,
00:02:33.480where I live and where I have lived for almost 26 years now as I've made my life here as a U.S.
00:02:41.620expat in Italy. Which is amazing. And we're going to dig into that because we're living in this
00:02:48.800world right now where so many people say to me, especially because I wrote The Sicilian
00:02:52.920Inheritance, so I'm constantly at book events and people are talking about Italy with me.
00:02:57.240So many people are saying, I'm going to move to Italy. I want to move to Italy. How can I do that?
00:03:01.480I need to escape here. I want to dive into that later in our episode. For sure. And you can put
00:03:08.280them in touch with me because i do that obviously um i get a lot of increase from people right now
00:03:13.800who are curious about what moving to italy might look like for them so that's something i'm happy
00:03:18.900to talk about with anyone who's interested perfect wait so has it increased since you know the the
00:03:24.780american situation is what we're calling now the situation yeah joe it actually has yeah wow yeah
00:03:31.940Yeah. Both people who are just seeking information about if they can get citizenship, if they have, you know, a birthright. Italian citizenship is fairly lenient. It has been up until now. So if you do have ancestry, you might have a very good shot. And then just people who are like, I want to move tomorrow. How can I do that?
00:03:50.960how can I do that? Let's help me move tomorrow. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Yeah. I want to dive
00:03:56.520into all of that. I want to dive into how plausible it is. You know, the things that are
00:04:00.580good about it. And then the things that are tough that people don't actually think about, because
00:04:04.020we love, we love aspirational planning is what we do. Exactly. Exactly. And it's not, I mean,
00:04:11.080it's a dream for sure for a lot of people, but it's not easy. So I'm happy to, but it's possible.
00:04:16.060it's possible so yeah exactly but the reason that you're here today what we're going to start by
00:04:22.400talking about is something i started thinking about the last time uh that i visited or a couple
00:04:28.940times ago when i visited italy i hadn't been there for a while and the country was just overrun with
00:04:37.280influencers and you brought this up to me do you think influencers are ruining italy yeah i do um
00:04:45.100I think that I mean, I think they have the potential to I think we're still in time, maybe to hopefully reverse the trend. And I hope somehow our conversation, we're gonna help it. We just we fix things here.
00:04:56.220Well, we at least we give people ways to think about traveling, not just traveling to Italy, but just being very aware of the fact that this is not okay. And I'm not sure how much time had passed. But you know, I'm thinking a lot we're on the five year anniversary of the pandemic.
00:05:13.060yeah and that is a really important piece of this puzzle because i think that a lot of what has
00:05:19.640happened with italy in particular although italy is not an isolated case but i really think a lot
00:05:25.520of it has to do with the way italy was depicted during lockdown and then sort of the rise of
00:05:32.660people wanting to move to italy because of the dolce vita and stuff and then all of a sudden
00:05:38.200it just got out of control when people started coming back. So I think that's what you saw was,
00:05:43.780you know, this post-pandemic, very resilient Italy, very Instagrammable. I mean, sitting
00:05:50.380pretty for years. And then, you know, and then all of a sudden the influencers just came in and
00:05:56.120it was a perfect storm. Talk to me about pandemic Italy. Like what were, remind me what we were all0.93
00:06:03.100seeing? Because everything from pandemic time still feels like a fever dream. Yeah, it was so
00:06:09.060bad here. I say this all the time. When I went to the States for the first time in the midst of the
00:06:14.880pandemic, it was like already 2021 probably. But, you know, it was so different. We were really in
00:06:20.660lockdown. And that's when, so first the world saw Italy as, you know, the second country that was so
00:06:27.960really badly hit. And then Italians are Italians. And so what happened was there were depictions of0.69
00:06:34.200people singing out of their windows. And, you know, every people then started doing, you know,
00:06:40.940food videos and aperitivo videos and things like that. And the real thing that happened, Joe,
00:06:46.500was the wine windows. Oh, yeah. I want to just indulge in the wine windows again and also
00:06:54.200remind people of the Stanley Tucci of it all. He wasn't in Italy, but he was Italian adjacent
00:07:00.260making Negronis and being being very weirdly sexy in a way that I think that we never expected0.99
00:07:05.520Stanley Tucci to be. Oh, he has just gotten better and better. I just I adore him. And he did
00:07:11.700so much for Italy. And so, as I said, that was another piece of the puzzle. And so, you know,
00:07:18.040going to you know there's so then people started posting all you know as you all the food and the
00:07:23.880wine and people started posting the wine windows and you know what but that's a reality that dates
00:07:30.820back to the plague i mean that dates back to florence when you know we had the great plague
00:07:36.400that's literally decimated the population and then of course we have the renaissance which
00:07:41.420honestly joe is something these days that i i try to keep in mind um that there might very well be
00:07:47.220a renaissance um you know that's nigh um but what happened with the wine windows was wild so
00:07:53.440something that became a necessity it was just like a clever idea right oh let's bring this back just
00:07:57.960like you know back in the day a lot of these you know ancient buildings had wine windows where the
00:08:04.940families would sell their wine and of course during a plague or during the pandemic you wanted to you
00:08:11.480know, decrease any kind of contact. And so those went viral. So people getting their glasses of
00:08:18.260wine through a wine window out of necessity then became viral. So now if you come to Florence on
00:08:25.260any given day, even in what used to be low season, which is still now for a couple of weeks, in
00:08:30.120theory, there are streets that you cannot go down because people are waiting to take their selfies
00:08:35.820as they get their wine through the wine window. In front of the wine window, they're waiting for
00:08:41.080selfies in front of the wine window. And for me, when it comes to the influencing,
00:08:45.520there's a lot of different issues at play. One, it is the selfies of it all. And I want to talk
00:08:52.740about those because I truly think it takes you out of the moment if you're lining up to pose
00:09:00.000for something as opposed to lining up to experience something. And yet, I also think a lot of our
00:09:07.640brains have been reprogrammed to think about how certain things will be instagrammable right
00:09:13.440absolutely and you know i can give you a really good example of that you know because the wine
00:09:19.540windows it's i mean i it's not like a sacred space um when i went to rome this past um january
00:09:28.600i went to a church which is a has become a very famous church because it's a tiktok sensation
00:09:34.040something that my daughter informed back up back up yeah talk to me talk to me about how a church
00:09:38.980becomes a tiktok sensation yeah this is a problem okay so i didn't know this thankfully i have um
00:09:44.980a 17 year old daughter who is on tiktok and she knows that i follow these things
00:09:49.180so we're at this church which is called santiniatio di la rola it's in rome when i used to go i used
00:09:55.140to go to look at the beautiful uh trescoes on the ceiling and so what the church has is it has this
00:10:01.460strategically placed mirror so that you can get a unique perspective of the ceiling fresco mind
00:10:07.320you this is a church still okay this is a place of worship and now people are lined up because
00:10:13.860they want to get a selfie in this strategically placed mirror that has the frescoed ceiling don't
00:10:20.840ask me how they do it whatever so you have this infinite line and i have a real issue with that
00:10:26.020because not only are you not experiencing the beauty of that like the mirror is there so you
00:10:30.840can study the fresco not take a picture of your face or in you know with the fresco but also it's
00:10:36.400a place of worship so I have issues with that um you know just in terms of like cultural awareness
00:10:42.020and humility and I'm an atheist I mean but it's just like so you're not experiencing the art
00:10:48.740you're not experiencing the holiness of the place and the fact that you should be going in there
00:10:54.320with a sense of you know like approaching the culture in a way that's respectful
00:10:59.260yeah yeah and i think that's that's a lot of it so you know one my my favorite example is
00:11:08.140we were at the trevi we were at the trevi fountain and look i yeah i was gonna take a
00:11:13.880picture of it you take a picture of the trevi fountain right and i'm there with my kids but
00:11:18.100i'm also trying to get my kids to experience the fountain where we're you know looking at
00:11:23.100the sculptures i'm explaining to them and my daughter who i think at the time was probably
00:11:27.620for, was being pushed out of the way by a woman who was taking a thousand pictures of1.00
00:11:33.880her leaning, you know, somewhat sexily, trying to get the best angle of her thigh on the
00:11:43.720It was less enjoyable than it should have been.
00:11:45.580And frankly, a lot of things when we were in Rome, less so in Sicily.
00:11:49.880I will tell you that I don't think the influencers have ruined Sicily yet.
00:11:52.480But in Rome, so much of it was difficult to enjoy because of the constant presence of people who may be real influencers, but then also people who just wanted to capture content for social media.
00:12:08.400And that's the problem. So, I mean, and that's exactly it is that it's inter there.
00:12:13.380Well, there are several problems and it has unfortunately arrived in Sicily.
00:12:16.940And I can give you a couple of examples there as well.
00:12:20.860But I think the problem is that is, yes, the people who are just so self-absorbed that they can't possibly experience the moment because, well, I just want to, you know, it's a FOMO thing.
00:12:31.480Maybe it's a been there, done that thing.
00:12:34.420Maybe it's an I want to show the world that I'm doing everything everybody else is doing.
00:12:39.560And that's where I get tripped up because I want to see things.
00:13:17.160it's at every italy is bigger problem because it's so tiny and then we'll get to sicily but
00:13:22.020you know you go to a museum and it interferes with your being able to see the painting and
00:13:26.880have a relationship with it and have it speak to you right it's very yeah yeah yeah it's very
00:13:32.020very interesting i mean i just saw it very very intensely in in amsterdam at the van gogh museum
00:13:40.060i was doing some research and the number of people this is this is a phenomenon you take a
00:13:46.360selfie with the self-portraits of vincent oh i know i know and because people it's the line
00:13:53.080to do this and it's it's difficult i'm a person i don't do it's very i don't do audio tours i like
00:14:00.700to read the plaques i just i really love reading the plaque on the wall of a museum uh i can't get
00:14:05.760to them i can't see them i know i know and it's the same every time i went to when i went to rome
00:14:11.760on this last trip it's the same thing and i'll tell you something else joe which is kind of sad
00:14:16.180because I think when we travel I mean when I travel I think about the people who live there
00:14:20.040I think about locals a lot but I'm not sure um I think what I'd like to do with this conversation
00:14:27.480is just kind of like you know have people think more about these things because I know that we do
00:14:33.180but I think we have to more and more uh because we're really risking uh ruining things on on a
00:14:40.520greater scale because what's the point of going to a museum if I can't read about the work I'm
00:14:45.840looking at if I can't even see it and so influencers unfortunately have played a huge
00:14:50.660part in this and but we as a society are the problem because we're listening to them and you
00:14:57.940know and so it's terrible so you go to the Van Gogh Museum like I do because you love Van Gogh
00:15:03.180and you want to experience the paintings you don't go because somebody told you to go and
00:15:08.260so I really want to encourage people to think about that there because of the wine windows Joe
00:15:14.000I there well it's a gelato window I think I talked to you about this I oh wait wait wait wait I don't
00:15:19.520think we've gotten into the gelato windows we didn't hold on let's oh okay let's take a quick
00:15:24.060break let's take a quick break and we'll think about that think about a gelato window and when
00:15:28.060we get back I want to know all about it okay we are back tell me about the gelato windows
00:15:42.900okay this is a big deal here in florence it went viral um in florence in italy in general we have
00:15:50.060local influencers and then of course we have the expat community or the digital nomads the content
00:15:55.120creators right and then you have the people coming in for their trips so it's like three layers three
00:15:59.340layers of influencers right right it's a lot and the student population which is also huge and young
00:16:04.640and very much on tiktok so um there's my favorite gelateria in florence is vivoli they're wonderful
00:16:11.400I mean, they've been here since forever. I used to live right in the neighborhood when I was pregnant. It was the only thing I could eat. So I have a very intimate relationship with this gelateria and I don't go anymore. I can't go because there's always a line and there's always a line because they like the wine they have in their historical building.
00:16:29.860they have a former wine window and so during the pandemic they got very creative and i have to say
00:16:36.040it was super smart because it ended up being so successful um they started serving an affogato
00:16:42.040a gelato affogato and they serve it beautifully and it's so wonderful to watch the influencers
00:16:47.760just ate it up and it went totally viral and so people go there to order the gelato affogato
00:16:53.520and get it through the wine window and that's another pandemic remnant because people saw that
00:16:59.560during the pandemic again when it was a necessity and then it became a sexy delicious necessity
00:17:04.860which is like oh even better but a lot of us locals now can't go to that i'm not going to
00:17:11.740wait joe i mean i have gelato everywhere i'm not going to wait for five minutes or 10 or whatever
00:17:18.480i have to wait when it's hot out and i want ice cream and so i think we need to think about the1.00
00:17:23.720fact that influencers don't don't think about it there has to be you know with views and clits and
00:17:28.940whatever money they're getting but we need to be more responsible travelers and think about the
00:17:34.180fact that when you do that um you create problems i mean you create you know traffic you create
00:17:41.300issues and there are much more concrete examples of it that i can give you um including sicily
00:17:47.320which is a problem i want all the examples actually like i'm just i'm so curious about
00:17:52.160the things that have become instagram famous okay for visitors tell me tell me everything
00:17:57.240Um, I'll tell you about Sicily because I think that it's a place that you're so close to. Um, you know, probably about, I don't even know, I think about a month ago and this, this article, this piece of news made it to the international press.
00:18:12.380You know, the eruption of Mount Etna is very Instagrammable. It's very TikTokable, if that's even a verb. And, you know, a recent weekend, some influencer, you know, people had just been posting and posting about the eruption.
00:18:30.000And evidently, one of a very highly followed influencer, probably Italian, posted something.
00:18:36.060And all these people descended within a very small time frame, just descended upon, you know, Aetna.
00:18:45.020And so people were unable to, you know, there were traffic jams, emergency vehicles were unable to get through.
00:18:50.800People like children were lost and needed assistance.
00:18:56.180And, you know, and the thing, the irony of it for me, Joe, is when I think of Mount Etna, I think, wow, this is a place that we should really be thinking about in terms of sustainable tourism.
00:23:08.580Yeah, and it is. And that's why I don't understand why people do it. You know, like I there's another example. I'll give you another example in Florence. And and it's a it's a real success story. I'm thrilled for them. Same as with Vivoli. It's called Antico Vinayo. It's a sandwich place. And it was the only place in Florence that had a line during the pandemic. I have no idea why. And I still I've never been there. I'm sure their sandwiches are absolutely delicious.
00:23:33.800I'm thrilled that they are such a success story because it's a small town business that became
00:23:39.340global. But I will never wait on mine for a stuffed sketchata, which I can get at any place
00:23:47.240here in Florence that's equally good, maybe better, maybe less expensive. But what you say
00:23:54.940is so true. I'll tell you a funny story. I've recently gotten back into contact with my
00:24:00.640roommate from when i studied abroad here in florence italy in 1990 oh my gosh so fun i
00:24:07.440my roommate she was wild she was yeah doing why i don't we had to know if she's still around
00:24:16.000well i recommend it we had a really nice zoom and she sent me about 30 photographs of us in
00:24:25.880Florence when we were 20. And I have to tell you, you know, there's one of them up at Piazza di
00:24:32.940Michelangelo, which is like the most touristy place you can't even like. It's so crowded all
00:24:37.280the time. And it's just the two of us. And it's the middle of the day. And it's probably like
00:24:41.200October. And I was looking and it's exactly the same thing you you said. Every picture is crap.
00:24:47.280I mean, they're blurry, they're terrible. Yeah. So, and Italy was still so magical back then,0.99
00:24:55.820but it still is. That's what I'm trying to tell people here. Like, I really invite you to, um,
00:25:01.440to do like Joe, what you were saying, like what I did, like I had my guidebook. I, I also loved
00:25:07.480reading about places. So like, you know, if somebody is going to go to Sicily, read your
00:25:11.820book, I, you know, I really feel that those are ways to be more respectful of the culture because
00:25:18.100you have more knowledge. And so I don't knock like the culture, the content creators, if they
00:25:24.440have a, because they do have an understanding of the culture, if they do. In other words, my problem
00:25:29.500is with the influencers who are just trying to get the clicks. They're just trying to get the views.
00:25:33.820They're just getting the pretty gelato, but they have no concept of the culture. And so why are we
00:25:40.160listening to them this is i mean this is something i grapple with all the time when we talk about
00:25:48.460influencers on this show what makes someone an expert on anything right yeah and it's hard it is
00:25:58.360this is this is why we still have this show and why we still talk about it because you know as
00:26:02.980our culture and as our media continues to evolve in so many different ways i think we have to talk
00:26:07.940about this and we are going to continue to travel. I look at influencer accounts. I take pictures.
00:26:15.620I'm guilty of it. And so how do we want to be? How do we want to be in the world? How do we want to
00:26:21.120balance our travel? How do we want to be thoughtful? More thoughtful travelers, I think, is the thing
00:26:26.340that I want to talk about more and, you know, just treat the places with respect. I mean,
00:26:34.000you talked a little bit about the locals. And I'm sure there are benefits. There are economic
00:26:39.200benefits to influencers coming places. But how do the locals see influencers?
00:26:44.520Yeah, this is complicated. I mean, I think it's very hard right now because there is so much
00:26:51.320money coming in. And as I said, Italy has bounced back beautifully post-pandemic. And it's such an
00:26:59.660important part of the economy. I really don't feel comfortable even contemplating. I'd like to
00:27:06.560find solutions, but I would like for people to be able to live well, obviously. But what's happened
00:27:13.140is locals can't live well anymore because the rents are impossibly high. And this is true in
00:27:20.000Florence. It's true in Venice. It's true in Siracusa, if we want to bring Sicily back into
00:27:26.420it and this is the problem with airbnbs but it's also just the problem with foreigners who have0.85
00:27:32.680more money who want to live in italy because they don't want to live in the united states or the uk
00:27:37.980or australia or wherever anymore and um that so locals can't afford rent anymore and that's
00:27:46.000extremely problematic because foreigners have foreign salaries and foreign pensions and they
00:27:51.440can pay outrageous rents locals cannot so locals love the business and are thrilled italians are
00:27:58.460so welcoming to tourists i think more than many many countries i've seen in the world and are so
00:28:04.260appreciative if you even make the slightest effort to speak the language or understand the culture
00:28:09.860even in the midst of all this um crazy over tourism i have not heard of anything like what
00:28:16.360happened in barcelona or maybe other places but i'm not sure uh how much longer how much more
00:28:22.140patience they can have because it's become very difficult um you know on several levels
00:28:29.220yeah it really has it really has i want to talk about solutions when we get back from from one
00:28:36.820more break um just you know what what kinds of tips you like to give travelers and then also
00:28:41.800to answer the questions that people have asked me about, how hard is it to actually move to Italy
00:28:49.900right now? And would then people be becoming part of the problem?
00:29:02.660Okay, we are back. What do you think the solutions are here? I don't like to throw out a bunch of
00:29:08.000just just rants and not give any solutions or takeaways again because the social media train
00:29:15.420has left the station it's not going anywhere so how can we our listeners and you and i just be
00:29:22.060better at this i mean i think having conversations like this about it as you said are really
00:29:29.320important the situation is always evolving if anything it's getting faster it's getting worse
00:29:34.380it's getting, you know, it's not going anywhere. I, but I think we can do things. I think we can
00:29:40.100be more intelligent travelers. I think we can do our homework. I think we can have cultural
00:29:44.640humility. I think we can also look at the influencers or the content creators, but the
00:29:49.980ones that have true insider knowledge, I think consulting people who do know the country,
00:29:58.220something I tell my clients and my friends is, you know, what I was saying before,
00:30:02.840Italy has so much to offer. I'm not saying don't go to Venice, don't go to Florence, but
00:30:07.480don't you want to make discoveries? Like, don't you have your own agenda? So I guess I want to
00:30:13.360invite people to start listening, maybe to go a little old school, but really to listen to what
00:30:18.880are they like to do when they travel? I mean, some of those things might be the same things
00:30:23.400that all the other influences and followers are doing, like, you know, wine windows. But
00:30:27.920I don't know, something I love to do when I travel is go to supermarkets. I don't know,
00:30:31.580I just love supermarkets and barn trees.
00:31:07.220And it's hard not to listen to those voices.
00:31:10.560But then I think it's also easy to be disappointed because then how sad that you're only in Florence, for example, for a day or two, which is typical for the average U.S. traveler.
00:31:20.260And you spent half of it waiting on lines, you know, and you don't need to because there are museums that have very few visitors.
00:31:28.460You whine outside of a window. Yeah, exactly.
00:31:31.380Why? Why would you whine from a window, if you want?
00:31:34.800Exactly. It's not a bad business idea. I think I read that somewhere in the U.S. they're starting to do it.
00:31:41.660Yeah, there's a couple. I mean, you know, alcohol laws in the U.S. are so weird that it's especially in Philly.
00:33:17.600I mean, I think we if we think more openly about the way we travel, I think we'll also just have, you know, you talk about serendipity, those kind of encounters that you have, whether they be with people or pieces of art or music or supermarkets or, you know, wine windows.
00:33:34.840i think it comes down to what you want you have to have an agenda why why did we lose that you
00:33:41.140know why did we lose that it's a good thing to have a sense of what's important to you
00:33:45.940when you travel you're investing time you're investing money again why would you want to
00:33:51.060wait online when you can go and see a museum that maybe has you know three other people
00:33:56.440ambling around so yeah yeah yeah yes yes and yes and yes I do I think the amble I love the amble
00:34:05.940right like I'm just I like going with no agenda and again that is that is a privilege to be able
00:34:10.660to do because I find myself doing it a lot more when I'm somewhere for the second or third time
00:34:15.960right not necessarily if I'm there for the first time I'm like I must do all of the things and
00:34:22.000maybe I should let go of that too. Yeah, I'm the same way. I'm terrible because I dispense advice,
00:34:27.620but you can ask anyone, any family member who travels. It's a nightmare, but that's how I0.87
00:34:33.940travel. And so I think it's important that we all kind of embrace how we travel. And, you know,
00:34:40.320as I said, again, like for maybe like large percentage of us, that's not going to correspond
00:34:45.160to, you know, a viral video on TikTok. And so we should just embrace that and do our homework and
00:34:50.620try to find voices that we trust and that seem authentic to us and again like go back to the
00:34:57.540guidebooks we get lost you know have serendipitous encounters and those can happen on first visits
00:35:02.780for sure if you're open to them and if you're not spending all your time you know with a whole bunch
00:35:08.500of other people who are just taking pictures of themselves which is really quite silly if you stop
00:35:12.560and think about it right it really it really is all right final question yeah should americans
00:35:19.280be moving to italy right now um well regardless of you know my opinion they are um and i don't
00:35:31.240think it's necessarily a bad thing again the same way um you know a tourist becomes i just think
00:35:37.040people need to be very respectful of the culture if you know if u.s citizens or any other citizens
00:35:42.820of the world are coming in and they're investing for example if they're bringing business if they're
00:35:47.980creating jobs because, you know, it is different. There is a lot more money outside of Italy than
00:35:53.780in Italy. And so if they're creating opportunities, you know, deepening cultural understanding,
00:36:00.500reinforcing bonds between, you know, the U.S. and Italy, I'm, you know, all for it. But if they're
00:36:07.320just coming as sort of very superficial, looking for the dolce vita and then just perpetuating
00:36:13.520this simulacrum that life is life here is just all you know sitting around a table drinking
00:36:19.140spritzes and chain smoking you know and looking at a beautiful sunset that's that's not the reality
00:36:23.780here you know um but people do think it is and so long people who are coming for the long term
00:36:29.340might be disappointed um because it's it's not easy um to move here or um to live here necessarily
00:36:37.020but no i think americans have always been coming here joe and they'll keep coming forever
00:36:41.280Florence, Italy, you know, the life is really quite good. You know, if you I mean, if you have
00:36:47.560to sort of do a checks and balances, it gets pretty high marks. And I don't think Americans
00:36:53.500are going to stop coming. And I think as long as they're here with that kind of, you know,0.99
00:36:57.720embracing the culture, like learn the language, you know, understand, help the community,
00:37:02.660you know, things like that. Make it better. Make it better. Don't just again, don't just
00:37:08.060perpetuate and exacerbate the problem. Right. Right. Yeah, exactly. And I talked to a lot of
00:37:16.000people who have become expats. We've talked about it before. We're like, oh, do we want to live
00:37:20.380somewhere else for a year? When would we do it? How would we pull our kids out of school? Should
00:37:25.140we just move to Sicily full stop? And I do think the important thing is to realize that you're not
00:37:31.340going to be living a vacation. You're going to be living in a different place. And, you know,
00:37:44.180I think talking to people who live there and finding out what their pain points are is
00:37:47.980really important before moving, before making a change.
00:37:51.440Obviously, it's a lot easier to do as a single person than to move kids around.
00:37:55.700But I love the idea of moving to Italy at some point, even just for the short term,
00:38:01.300because, you know, I love my Philadelphia.
00:38:02.380But it is interesting to me that a lot of people kind of hold on to this pipe dream that leaving the country is going to fix things when it's kind of, you know, it'll fix some things and then there will be other problems.
00:38:16.160Exactly. And I think it really depends on your situation. And you touched on a really good point. I have clients who moved here. They have two small kids and they just took a sabbatical year.
00:38:23.960and they said you know let's they picked a good year I tell them all the time I'm like boy did
00:38:28.940you pick the right year um and you know they're young and they they said you know if we don't do
00:38:33.840it now when are we going to do it so I also invite people like my clients or people who just reach
00:38:38.380out to me for a consultation I say come for a couple months come for a month you know try it
00:38:43.220out if you can for example if you're a digital nomad or if you're if you you know if you're
00:38:47.580single a lot of um I think it's an easy it's not easy for anyone right now I have to say something
00:38:53.520And Joe, we touched on it at the beginning, but there has been an increase in requests.
00:38:57.740So speaking of Italian bureaucracy, I know that they're way behind.
00:39:02.820They're way behind in processing citizenship requests, possibly also behind, depending on the conflict, in requests from, you know, people who want to move here.0.99
00:39:12.220Like a lot of retirees, a lot of people.
00:39:14.940It's very Italy is an easy country to live in if you have an American pension.
00:39:18.940And so those are sort of important realities. But anyway, I just think it's important to underscore that I think we're at a tipping point. I have to be honest with you, I really think we're at a tipping point just in terms of movement.0.59
00:39:38.620And I think we're going to see more people requesting, for example, seeing if they have, you know, citizenship eligibility, seeing if they can make a move to Italy, even just, as I said, you know, for an experimental period of time and, you know, try it out because it's not, the bureaucracy is really bad.
00:39:56.260And there are things that are really hard here. But as I said, I think that the the portrayal of Italy and life here has been so misrepresented as just all picture perfect and nothing is.
00:40:12.060And, you know, your problems, of course, always follow you. And then there, you know, there's bureaucracy and all sorts of things.
00:40:17.180And I'm not even talking about politics right now. And so I think right now it's just we have to keep sort of moving with the situation, you know, keep our eyes on it, keep talking about it.
00:40:28.940Yeah, and just do what we can to be, as I said, either very mindful and grateful travelers, but also just really get the information before we move to a place or before we visit a place, just so that we're better, that we're more understanding of the people who live there.
00:40:51.720Tell everyone where they can find you and learn more about you and learn more about how to ask you questions about all of these things.
00:40:57.040well thank you joe so i have um a website which is askfosca.com and that's also my handle on
00:41:04.620instagram facebook etc ask fosca and i also have a podcast 15 with fosca which actually
00:41:11.160the purpose of which is actually to do this so to increase people's awareness about what's going on
00:41:17.380in italy right now so that they can be better travelers and just people in general i would say
00:41:23.200You know, just going through the world with very open eyes and just an understanding and respect for what they're going to be seeing and doing.