Last weekend, a journalist asked me to put ‘my story’ on paper for her. Why am I living abroad, what am I doing here, and how did I get to this point in my life? I thought it wouldn’t take much to write it all down in a few sentences, but it turned out to be not that easy after all. Think about it: summarizing the past four years of your life. It ended up being a little story. This story. Because when I finished it, I decided that I would publish it as this week’s blog. Because in all honesty, finding the time to write new blogs has proved to be very difficult in the last month. Besides, I’ve met a lot of new people in the past year who don’t fully know my story yet. So why not share it one more time?
These past four years have been anything but boring…
I have been living in Italy for a few years now. Via Naples (2 months), and Rome (3 years) I ended up in Milan, a little bit over six months ago now. These past four years have been anything but boring… From following my heart to multiple lockdowns, and from taking part in two Eurovision Song Contests, to managing an Italian team, and hosting concerts in Italian.
Rome felt closer to home than Amsterdam had ever felt
In 2015, I left for Rome for an exchange year. At the time, I didn’t speak a word of Italian and didn’t know anyone there at all. Yet, the slight culture shock I had experienced when I moved from my hometown to Amsterdam at the age of 18, I didn’t feel at all this time. Rome felt closer to home (the generosity, how people interact, the pace of life, the indirect way of communication) than Amsterdam had ever felt. After that exchange year, I returned to the Netherlands, but Italy never truly left my thoughts.
It was in the fall of 2019, just a few months before the pandemic was going to change our lives…
After three years of working and career making in the Netherlands at a major financial institution, I took a pretty drastic decision. I quit everything and followed my heart’s call: first I left for Naples for a two-month language course, and then I took off to Rome to settle down ‘permanently’. I had no plan whatsoever: no job and no house, just a rented Airbnb room in a house shared with a guy named Alessandro for the first six weeks and a blog I started on which I started to write about my adventures every single week. That was in the fall of 2019, just a few months before the pandemic was going to change our lives…
While Laura Pausini and Mika rehearsed the part of the show in which the results were presented, we were sitting in the green room in front of the stage as stand-ins of the artists, acting euphoric every time ‘our country’ got those Douze Points
A few very dynamic years followed, in which more than once, a lockdown was the reason I found myself stuck in a country: there were times I could not return to the Netherlands for months on end, and other times where I was unable to return to Italy. I got to fulfil the Delegation Host role at the Eurovision Song Contest in Rotterdam, where I spent two very intensive weeks with Mäneskin, the Italian band that won. After their win, it was Turin’s turn to host the song contest in 2022. Again, I found myself at the heart of all the craziness: this time as a backstage and show assistant. While Laura Pausini and Mika rehearsed the part of the show in which the results were presented, we were sitting in the green room in front of the stage as stand-ins of the artists, acting euphoric every time ‘our country’ got those Douze Points.
By now, almost three years had passed since I had jumped into the deep end. There was something that didn’t feel quite right any more
Here in Turin, I reached a turning point in my Italian adventure, as if I was standing on a crossroad. By now, almost three years had passed since I had jumped into the deep end and I had embarked on my “Operation La Dolce Vita”, the name me and my cousin gave to this adventure right before my departure three years earlier. There was something that didn’t feel quite right any more: I had been living (off and on) in Italy for three years by now, and in my personal life in Rome, I now really only spoke Italian. But like most foreigners (mostly Dutch, British, American girls) who, fascinated by this country, had moved here, I hardly had anything to do with Italy in my (freelance) work activities. And that’s exactly what you’re told over and over again: already, there is not much work for the Italians themselves, let alone for you as a foreigner. And then there’s the language barrier.
Now that I was living here, I also wanted to live the true Italian experience in all areas of my life: the good, the bad and the ugly
“Well, let’s see about that,” I thought to myself in May 2022. After all, I had moved to Italy for a reason. Now that I was living here, I also wanted to live the true Italian experience in all areas of my life: the good, the bad and the ugly. At Eurovision in Turin, I had gotten to know the dynamic music world. I realized: this is an environment that makes me happy. But would I be able to do that in Italy? That I would then have to be prepared to exchange Rome for Milan became clear pretty quickly. And so, last summer, on a little square in Lecce, in the very south of Italy, I decided that Milan would become my new home. I decided “this year I will put up the Christmas tree in my own house in Milan”, an image and goal that never left my thoughts, like a new spot on the horizon.
My wish to now fully immerse myself in Italy, with all its different layers, shades and complicities, came true
From that moment on, everything suddenly seemed to fall into place. My wish to now fully immerse myself in Italy, with all its different layers, shades and complicities, came true: I got a job as the team lead of an all-Italian team that organises concerts all over Italy. Suddenly, I had to lead in Italian, manage artists in Italian, do feedback interviews in Italian, negotiate in Italian, arrange permits and other paperwork in the complicated Italian bureaucratic system (which, sadly, turned out to be no cliché…) and so on. And… next week I will travel to Puglia once again. This time to present shows. In Italian! And that not only feels very exciting, but also as if it has come full circle now.
My story is one of trying, failing, trying again, but especially never giving up
In all these years, the bond with my family and friends back home in the Netherlands is stronger than ever, something for which I feel not only very grateful, but also very proud. My story is one of trying, failing, trying again, but especially never giving up. A story of not being afraid and saying yes to the craziest adventures, which have taken me to so many unique places, and made me meet so many different people, one of the greatest treasures of this life. This marvelous, never predictable, but always exciting Italian life of mine.
P.S. Should the journalist pick my story for her column, I will let you know.