Have you ever thought about living abroad and finding out how life works elsewhere?
Italy is a wonderful country, and I’m the first to be in love with its stunning landscapes, its seas and its beautiful monuments. Yet when you are passionate about travel, or looking for an adventure out of the ordinary, it is natural to want to live abroad for a longer or shorter period.
I know, living abroad can seem a difficult and frightening choice, but it has some very interesting consequences and it will be an experience you can never forget.
How do I know?
Simple: at 18 I had already decided to spend at least a month abroad, and later I had the chance to live in Paris for two years. Finally, after three years back in Italy, I decided to return to live in France, first in the small city of Caen and now in the beautiful French capital.
Would you like to know more?
In this post I’ll tell you about my experience as an expat, the reasons that pushed me to live abroad and why I recommend it to all my friends.
Let’s go!
1 – Living abroad will make you more flexible
Living abroad will make you more flexible and more adaptable to every kind of situation, simply because you will have to adjust to something different from what you are used to. You will step out of your comfort zone and therefore, inevitably, you will grow.
From the language to the food, from the missing bidet to the way people dress… at first everything will seem different, but you will adapt.
Human beings adapt to any situation and you will discover that you can change habits and find a routine again. You will go beyond your limits and look for ways to bend situations to your needs. You will learn, you will progress and you will become stronger and more aware of your own abilities.
2 – Living abroad will test you
Living abroad will test you every single day, especially at the beginning. Perhaps over silly things that in Italy we consider trivial, like when you fancy making a pizza and discover that fresh yeast is nowhere to be found.
Like the courage to answer the phone knowing you will understand little or nothing of what you are told. Like the terror of filling in documents in your host country, reading and rereading endlessly to be sure of what you are about to sign.
And these three things happened to me in the last week alone.
There are days when I wonder what possessed me to leave Italy and live in France, then I carry on and realise that actually I’m fine with it. I’m happier, I feel more alive.
You will have to hold on, rely only on your own strength and, when it feels like you can’t cope, keep going anyway. You will feel alone, because perhaps you won’t know anyone, you will feel unwell and not know who to call, you will cry and there will be no friend to go to for a chat. And you will be forced to look for a solution, to go beyond your limits. To meet new people.
Oh yes, in the end you will find the yeast for the pizza too… but not before trailing round at least a dozen supermarkets.
Persistence wins.
3 – You will meet new people and new ways of living
The people you cross paths with while travelling will seem to come from another universe, but the friends you meet during an experience abroad will become your “family” in that place. You will discover stories and pasts both like and unlike your own. You will listen and you will tell. You will organise carbonara evenings to teach them the real recipe, and then evenings of your new friend’s home cooking.
You will hear your country spoken of well and badly and, if you have met intelligent people, you will enjoy demolishing the prejudices you hold about each other, or confirming them and laughing about it. You will exchange experiences, thoughts and memories, and build new ones together.
Stepping out of your comfort zone is this too: meeting people with different pasts, different habits, different ideas and, sometimes, making them your own.
4 – You will learn new languages
Living abroad means dealing with a language that isn’t yours, every day. However well you may have studied it, you will never catch all the double meanings, expressions and jokes other people throw at you.
Yes, at first it will be frustrating, but it will help you improve, to learn new words and new expressions.
Want a piece of advice?
Make a fool of yourself, it is part of the experience. Even that will make you stronger and more aware. Throw yourself in, it is the only way to learn.
Sometimes you will feel like a child, unable to express yourself properly, but it will change forever the way you deal with foreigners trying to speak your language. If you are laughed at, you will learn not to laugh at others for their accent and to have respect and awareness of the effort speaking a language that isn’t yours demands.
If this language business scares you, let me tell you about our experience in Paris!
When we decided to leave, I already spoke French well because I had studied it at school and worked on it afterwards. Andrea, on the other hand, didn’t speak a word of French and even his English was shaky.
When he told me he would come with me I was terrified!
We arrived in Paris on 1 July 2013 and, by September, not only did he speak the language well enough to make himself understood, he had also found a job and won a scholarship for a master’s at a private school. I don’t know how he managed it; his ability to learn quickly amazes me every day! A few weeks of intensive classes gave him the keys to communicate: of course French is close to Italian, but languages can be learned, so don’t set limits or make excuses if you feel like leaving!
That’s it: living abroad will put you in front of challenges of this kind and will bring out not only your character but above all your determination to make it.
But there’s more.
They say that speaking several languages means living several lives, and I can assure you that is exactly right! Speaking a different language will open you up to new concepts, because there are words that can’t be translated into other languages, just as there are in dialects.
As a Roman I can tell you that a “daje” can be positive or ironic, an encouragement or a threat. Daje can’t really be translated even into standard Italian, let alone other words in other languages, expressions from different cultures!
5 – Living abroad will open your mind
All great travellers know it: travel opens the mind. It helps you understand, accept and appreciate what is different from you. It makes you more tolerant, more open to novelty, more enterprising.
Living abroad is exactly this.
You will learn a huge amount about local life, customs, festivals, typical dishes… a store of traditions to compare with the ones you are used to. They will enrich you and open your mind.
You will learn that there are other ways of living, you will meet different people with different cultural baggage. You will taste new things and throw yourself into new experiences. You will realise that the prejudices you hold about the culture hosting you are almost never true. And you will find yourself laughing. You will lose your fixed points and build new ones.
It will frighten you at first, but then you will understand that it is part of life, part of the experience, and that it is wonderful, because we are made to change, not to stay identical to ourselves forever. Going to live abroad is sometimes a leap in the dark: you know what you are leaving but not what you will find.
And that is precisely the beauty of it!
The beauty is in what you will find. The beauty is when you go back to where you came from and cook your old friends a dish they have never tasted, explaining the differences and how you learned to make it. You will carry what you learn with you always, inside.
6 – You will realise that the idea of “home” is very relative
What is it that you call “home”?
What is “home” for you?
When I was 17 I believed that wherever I went, home for me would always be Italy. I don’t think that any more. When I travel I call home the place where I sleep. If I say “let’s go home” it can mean “let’s go back to the hotel, the campsite, the camper van, the flat”.
Home is where I sleep.
Home is where the people I love are.
So for me home is Rome, it is Berlin, it is Caen, it is Umbria, it is Paris and it is Cologne.
In all these places I left pieces of my heart, pieces of my heart live there, and so they are “home”. When I think about it, I feel I have a home in many places.
Sometimes it is a little frustrating, sometimes it is simply lovely.
The importance of going abroad while you are young
I understood the importance of an experience abroad at 16, when a classmate of mine spent six months in New Zealand. When she came back she spoke excellent English and she was… changed. For the better, I mean.
She told me what she had done out there, what she had seen, the experiences she had lived. For my 18th birthday I asked my parents to let me spend a month in Paris studying French.
Well, that month changed my life.
For a teenager, living abroad can be the single most formative thing there is. I learned more in that month in Paris at 18 than in months and months of books.
Not only did I perfect my French, I also met people from every corner of the world who let me improve my English, and I visited monuments, museums and places that probably convinced me, the following year, to enrol in art history.
What I recommend is to leave while you are young, even very young, and without friends to speak Italian with. I’m not a mother yet, but I’m convinced that when I have a child I will let them go on every experience abroad they want. Do a school year abroad, do the Erasmus at university, do a year of study or work elsewhere: it will be hard, it will be difficult, but it will then be one of the best choices you have ever made and it will help you for the rest of your life.
My friend who went to New Zealand at school now speaks four languages, graduated in Denmark, lives in Berlin and has travelled the world. She adapts to any situation, has friends scattered everywhere and is one of the most incredible people I know.
How it actually works: school year, Erasmus and more
During my own school career I never had the chance to spend a full school year abroad, but I was lucky enough to take part in a cultural exchange, and it was one of the finest experiences of my life. I met one of my best friends, with whom I have travelled half of Europe and who, years later, is still part of my life.
But how do you actually organise this experience?
There are three main routes, depending on your age.
At secondary school, the year or term abroad. In Italy this is a recognised option: individual student mobility is governed by ministerial note 843 of 10 April 2013, which treats periods of study abroad as an integral part of the school curriculum. In practice you don’t lose the year: on your return it is the class council that assesses what you did, decides on any top-up work and awards the credit. As a rule people go during the fourth year. Organisation almost always goes through exchange bodies: the best known in Italy is Intercultura (the non-profit association that is part of the AFS network), but there are various operators, including commercial ones. Compare more than one, always ask what the price includes, and talk to your school before signing up, because it is the school that has to take you back.
At university, the Erasmus. This is by far the simplest and cheapest route: Erasmus+ provides a monthly grant, recognition of exams through credits and no additional fees at the host university. If you have the chance to do it, just do it.
Afterwards, work or volunteering. There are Erasmus+ traineeships for recent graduates, the European Solidarity Corps for volunteering, and the working holiday visas Italy has with a number of non-European countries. And of course there is the road I took: leaving to study or work, and staying.
One practical recommendation, learned the hard way: whichever route you choose, the paperwork is the most tedious part and has to be tackled before you leave, not after. Documents, health cover, a local tax number, a bank account, registering with your consulate if the move is a long one. It isn’t romantic, but it is what makes the difference between a good first few months and a first few months spent at service counters.
Why go abroad
Everyone has their own reasons and they are all valid. Perhaps for a change of air, to test yourself, or simply to look for better living conditions. Perhaps for love or out of curiosity, perhaps just because you feel like trying something new.
All reasons are good ones and the experience of living abroad will certainly be formative.
In other words it will change you, one way or another. Travel already changes us because it shows us things, concepts, flavours and objects we didn’t know. If we are intelligent people we will understand something, we will be enriched and we will carry that store of experience with us.
For me it was enough to go and live in France, a culture extremely close to the Italian one, to understand and change a great many things in my life.
My experience abroad
Living abroad isn’t all roses. There are positive aspects and negative ones. A great deal of bureaucracy to face, the complications of an international move, of building a new life.
I lived in Paris for two years for my studies and then went back to Italy. Returning wasn’t in my plans, but for family reasons that is how it went. As soon as I could I left again to live six months in Caen and then I decided to go back to Paris.
Now I don’t know where my work will take me but, wherever it is, I’m fine with it. I think living abroad is one of the most formative and useful experiences for me. If I had been brave enough I would have left much earlier, back at school.
And you, what is holding you back from leaving?
Two of the cities where that feeling stayed with me most are Sydney and Amsterdam: in both I tried to look around like a local, not like a tourist.
