Citizens of the World: A Stoic Podcast for Curious Travelers - How to Move to Rome for a Few Months

Episode Date: January 22, 2022

In 2008, I quit my job and moved to Rome. There was no AirBnB or Instagram. My apartment didn't even have internet! In this episode, I'm sharing a diary of sorts from my time back then. I'm also sharing what I'd do now if I moved to Italy. You'll learn about how to find an apartment in Rome, why language schools aren't the best place to actually learn a language, plus loads of travel tips. Enjoy!sarahmikutel.comHello! I'm your host, Sarah Mikutel. But the real question is, who are you? Where are you now and where do you want to be? Can I help you get there?Visit sarahmikutel.com to learn how we can work together to help you achieve more peace, happiness, and positive transformation in your life.Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free Conversation Cheat Sheet with simple formulas you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you’re in a meeting or just talking with friends.Download it at sarahmikutel.com/blanknomore and start feeling more confident in your conversations today.

Welcome to Live Without Borders, a travel and wellness show for expats, the expat curious, and globally minded citizens of the world. We are the travelers, the culturally curious, the experiences and not things kind of people. And we know that freedom is about more than getting on a plane. It's about becoming the most heroic versions of ourselves, which is why on this podcast you will hear insider travel secrets, inspiring expat stories, and advice on how to live abroad. but you will also hear episodes that will help give you the clarity, focus, and skills you need to create a life that will set your soul on fire. I am your host, Sarah Micatel, a certified clarity coach trained in the Enneagram, and I first moved abroad on my own at age 18, and I have been permanently enjoying life in Europe since 2010. If you are ready to make some big moves in your life

and want my help moving from someday to seize the day, visit live without borderspodcast.com. What is it like to pack up everything and head to another country? I thought it could be fun for us to ask my younger self. So I have packed up and moved abroad several times on my own or like with friends. And the first time was when I moved to England when I was 18 and worked at a hotel up in the Lake District. The time after that, I was working on my graduate thesis, which was a novel because I went to get my MFA in creative writing. So I decided to do that in Sienna. And then the third time was in 2008, and I decided that I wanted to spend some time in Rome. Now, England and when I was in Sienna, I have only been a casual journaler, sadly. So a lot of my thoughts are lost a time. I might have some journals from those eras back in my parents' house floating around somewhere. But what I've written evidence for is the time that I spent in Rome in 2008. And this week I went back and was reading some of the entries, having a nice trip down memory lane.

And I thought it would be fun to share those with you, but also could be quite useful for you. And it's just amazing to me how, for most of human history, not much changed. And then got like the last 10 years or more than 10 years at this point, like 2008 from now, so much has changed. And so I will share what's changed so I could help you if you decide to spend some time in Italy or another country. Now, during this trip in 2008, I left kind of without a plan. I was just going to head over there for five weeks, do a language course. in Rome and just enjoy. And somehow I forgot, like briefly forgot that I had quit my job to do this. And I know I've talked about that on a previous episode. You can go back and listen to that drama with my friend Jim in the Czechoslovakia episode to hear more about that. But today I was looking through emails from this time period. And I was like, oh, yes, I did quit everything and move abroad. So that's just giving you a little backstory of these blog entries.

that I'm going to be sharing with you. But yeah, the original plan, I was going to move, I was living in New York City, was going to move to Rome for like five weeks and then just see where life took me. It was probably going to go back to New York. That was the plan. All right. So I'm going to share my story. And then modern Sarah, contemporary Sarah, I might chime in with some updates on what the situation is now in Rome, which I mean renting a place and like so many things are different today. There was no Instagram back then. There was no Airbnb. The internet wasn't widely available. It was a completely different time. A lot about travel is much easier today. So here we go. Sometimes I take my mellowness too far. I just got back from a manicure when I should be on my way to the airport. And now I'm blocking for heaven's sake. And I spent this morning jogging through the park and then inexplicably went grocery shopping, help yourselves to the food roommates. At some point I decided that packing a bag of some sort would be a good idea. So I accomplished that. Oh, and yesterday I sublet my room. So the key and money exchange went down a somewhat shady deal at a doctor's office. My replacement

handed me a watt of 20s in the waiting room and I slipped her the keys. I found her online, so that means she's totally safe. All right, I'm going to go get takeout and then I'm really going to the airport. October 18, 2008. I have arrived and without a hitch. And you are going to hate me when I say this, but I bought my round-trip ticket to Rome for $399, add tax and fuel surcharge, and it came to $509, but still, that bargain is pretty insane. Due to the cheap price, my unfamiliarity with the airline, which was Eurofly, and the fact that my e-ticket took two weeks to be emailed to me and was essentially a word document with nothing but my name on it, I didn't have high hopes for this flight. Quite frankly, I wasn't even expecting seats. I thought they might squish us among freight or force us

into indentured servitude or something. But it was a normal plane, and they served dinner and breakfast and even showed sex in the city. They also played Alvin and the Chipmunks, so minus points for that. And the flight took off fairly unschedule, and my flight attendant is a part-time model, I'm guessing. My only complaint was my seat neighbor snored so loud. He shook our seats, but I put earplugs in under my headphones to try to block him out. There wasn't a ton of leg room, though that didn't bother me. And they'd only release one suitcase every five minutes in the bag claim, but aside from that, I definitely recommend Eurofly. It's based out of Milan and popular with Italians from what I can see. When I exited the airport, a brand new black Mercedes was

waiting for me in the parking lot. No joke. While part of me thought this was a very nice ride, the other part thought, damn at school, a simple taxi would have sufficed. I probably could have paid an extra week's rent for what the school spent on this car to pick me up. But I didn't waste time sweating it. Outside, it was 80 degrees, and Lou Reed's perfect day came on the radio as my driver took me to my apartment. All right, modern Sarah chiming in here. So I believe Eurofly has collapsed as an airline. And also, $509 isn't like a spectacular once-in-a-lifetime deal anymore for a plane flight. So if you, like, have followed, like Scott's two flights or something like that, you'll see that. You can get these deals quite often. But back in 2000,

and earlier airfare was really high. It was typical to spend like $800 to $1,000 for a trip from New York to Europe. And so, hooray, we're still in the golden age of travel, which is amazing. Also, I'm a more confident traveler these days. So back then, I had paid the language school that I was going to have a car bring me from the airport to where I was living. I believe that's what I did. But yeah, that's quite expensive. If you've got the money to throw around or a few people involved, then, hey, why not? But if you're flying into Fumachino Airport, it's very easy to just take the train from the airport right into the center of Rome. You will be getting off in the Termini area. And from there, you can just take a bus to wherever you need to go or you could take a taxi from there.

Uber is not really a thing in Rome, at least not when I was there last, which was before COVID. And I didn't have a smartphone back then. So what we would normally do is just buy a cell phone. Like I would just buy a cell phone in Italy that I would just like use for a little while. And you can do get like a very cheap plan so that you can like text your friends. But these days, most people have smartphones. And so you can either try to get an international plan through your provider at home or just swap out your SIM card when you get to your local country. But having like Google Maps and all of that is really nice. There's a lot of issues I guess with smart phones these days and like our addiction to certain apps and stuff. But certain things when it

comes to travel is just wonderful. When I arrived in Sienna five or so years ago, my roommate then was nowhere to be found. I didn't have keys. So I sat in my suitcase and watched kids play soccer on the Stone Street until Maria returned home from her shopping spree to let me in. This time around, my landlady Oriana, a native of Rome, was waiting for me when I arrived, and she showed me around the neighborhood and helped me purchase a weekly travel pass, FYI, travelers. The 16-euro pass is good for buses, trams, and the metro. So, Modern Sarah, I don't know if it's 16 euros anymore, but if you plan on doing public transportation, then getting a weekly pass is probably a good idea. You might see local people getting on and not like not stamping a pass and you might think, oh, maybe I don't have to do this, but you do because they will have officers do periodic checks and come on the bus. And if you don't have a valid pass for public transportation, then you are going to get a big fine. So just avoid that headache and to purchase it in advance. At one point, Oriana complimented me on my

English, which I thought was a little bit weird, but I brushed it off as a miscommunication. We'd been speaking half in Italian, half in English. And it turns out that the school told her I was German. So is this what it's come to? Has our status in the world fallen so low that Americans must now masquerade as Germans? But Oriana was okay with it. And when she discovered my secret, I just laid on the old Yankee charm. I kept commenting on the cleanliness of the trams. But Oriana kept saying, no, no, they're not clean. We were having this conversation in Italian and I later realized that I was saying that the trams were really dirty and Oriana was saying that they were not. Anyway, Oriana is a little doll, but I'm not living with her. I have two

roommates, one Spanish and one Ukrainian. I really like the place and Oriana said that she would come back to check in on things on Monday. I wanted to give her a hug goodbye when she left, but I held back. She was expecting a German after all. I know I'm supposed to meet Italians to practice my language skills, but my new best friend is a German girl named Julia, who speaks perfect English. I was totally kidding before when I generalized Germans, by the way. She and I have bonded over lunch and buying cell phones together, and we feel equally lost in class. I forgot how hard I had studied on my own the last time I was here. The first day of classes were okay, not as structured as I'd hoped, but it was only the beginning. I lost my travel past already, but other than that,

things are great. Last night I was dancing around my room, wine and hand, and mushroom ravioli on the stove. It was a nice way to unwind after an afternoon of sightseeing. I must have taken the wrong tram tonight because I ended up in a strange place and had to transfer a number of times before I made it home. I was exhausted and hungry when I finally made it in the door and was snacking on raw mushroom ravioli when I noticed a note from Oriana. She came by while I was riding the rails like a hobo. and left me an ice cube tray and a nice wine bottle opener. Two things that I had told my roommate, Alina, that I wish I had. Can you believe it? I was so sorry that I had missed her visit. My phone lost its charge, so I couldn't even call. Though the phone did mortify me by going off in class.

A phone was ringing, ringing, and I'm looking around to see whose it is. Then I realized everybody's looking at me. I had only purchased it 10 minutes earlier and no one had the number except the mobile company that tected me an ad. Alina, my Ukrainian roommate whom I adore, was home when I arrived. She has two grown kids who still live in the Ukraine, and she decided that she wanted to try something new, and so she moved to Italy. How awesome is that? My first night here, she opened a bottle of wine for me back when I only had a spindly little corkscrew. I knew her Eastern European strength would help me out, and she didn't prove me wrong. I then drank half a bottle of wine and slept for 12 hours. I have made attempts to seem normal, though, and often talk about my mom, so Alina thinks

that I am sweet as apple pie. Modern Sarah here, I just want to point out that I was still horribly jet-lagged at this point in case you're wondering, what's going on with this girl? The other night at dinner, I commented on how the thought of returning to an office makes me absolutely sick. My friends agreed and urged me not to think about it. I told them that perhaps I'll just stay in Italy and work as a barista. For some reason, they all thought barista meant stripper, So that was an interesting mistake to fix. The other evening, I was walking down a street of Tristevere to meet some friends for a peritivo. A woman near me puts up an umbrella, then somebody else lifts up his hood.

Something is wrong, I thought. It's not raining. Then it hit me. Literally, bird poo all over my neck. I learned that there are tons of birds in that area, and they flood the skies and the trees. Julia heard that they should have flown south by now, but the warm weather has driven them mad, and they don't know what to do. So more and more, they keep flocking to the area and staying and pooing. Modern Sarah here. Because of climate change, things are quite confusing in Italy. The weather has seems to have changed a lot and is a lot more unpredictable, like in many places of the world. When I was here this time, October was really gorgeous, but then at one point, like the weather just turned and it was raining so much.

and it's still an issue in Italy with birds flying around. I'm not sure if they're pooing as much as they were in that specific area, but you do see seagulls flying around at night, like a lot more in the city than in the past. The animals are just confused and their habitants are being encroached upon. And so you'll just see these birds flying in the night sky. And it's, actually quite beautiful sometimes if you, if the lights are just catching them, they look like they're stars dancing around. From top to bottom, art covers the gallery of Borghese, a palace-turned art gallery. Mosaics line the floors, paintings work their way up the ceilings, even the insides of the fireplaces are embellished. There are many nudes, but the collector in the 1600s was a cardinal, so he could do whatever he wanted. My favorite sculptor on display is Bernini. He was a Baroque artist, meaning that his work expresses emotion and reality. The humans and gods that he creates don't serenely sit on hilltops. David, carved in marble, visibly struggles to defeat Goliath,

and Apollo is surprised when Daphne turns into a tree to escape him. Bernini transformed slabs of marble into goddesses with flowing ringlets and into old men with sagging skin. The way that he captures the pressing of the flesh, the biting of lips, anguish, terror, surprise, gratitude is stunning. There's a statue of Napoleon's sister in the museum. She married into the Borghese family, which made Napoleon happy because he wanted the Borghese art collection, and he ended up with many of its pieces. The statue of Pauline reclines like a tranquil goddess and holds an apple, a symbol that she is the fairest of them all. She's nude, which caused a minor scandal in the 1800s. Her response, so what? There was a fire so I wasn't cold.

which I think is so brilliant. The Gallery of Borgesi is my favorite museum in Rome. You need to book an appointment ahead of time if you want to get in and definitely do the audio guide because it just gives you such great information about the art you're seeing and it's very engaging. And then take some time to walk in the park outside. Whenever I'm in Italy, I take a tour with Enjoy Rome. I can't praise this company enough for 20-something euro

cheaper for students, you're given a three-hour tour with a professional guide. We spent time at the Pantheon, Coliseum, Palatine Hill, and more. Afterward, I spent extra time at my favorite place, the forum, wants the center of the world. I can't imagine what this area must have looked like in the time of Caesar, with marble and bronze and color everywhere. After Rome fell and emperors turned into popes, leaders destroyed most of the forum because it symbolized Rome's pagan past. Plus, popes wanted building materials for their own temples. So for centuries, the forum was forgotten. Floods raised the ground level, buildings were buried, and the area literally went to pasture with farm animals being the only inhabitants. Eventually, the church gained enough power that it wasn't threatened by paganism. Rome regained its pride about the past, and excavations began. Modern Sarah here, I haven't taken a tour with Enjoy Rome for many years, so I can no longer vouch for this company because it's been too long, but from what I recall, they did a pre- decent job. And if you've listened to this show before, you know, I love a good walking tour. I think it's the best way to get your bearings when you get into a new city. So that's what I say. The first thing that you should do is take a walking tour that's a few hours long, just so you can like see the groundwork, hear some history, and then get an idea of what you want to go back and see. There's something so sweet about the way that a children call out, Ciao to people on the street. They sound like happy kittens purring hello or goodbye. And speaking of cats,

I love the ones who wander around the remains of the Roman temples at Largo, Argentina. This is a cat sanctuary that I pass on my way to school. I thought I heard a legend that the cats are the descendants of Caesar's pets, but now I can't find any mention of that story. Largo Argentina is an area that's in the very heart of Rome. So if you do find yourself there, there's a massive bookstore that you should check out. They've got a section for foreigners and a bunch of resources if you want to learn Italian and a cafe upstairs. It's called Feltronelli. Okay, enough messing around. I am going to improve my Italian if it kills me. I'm staying in Rome an extra month, taking private lessons next week, and I am looking for a new apartment so that I can live with

an Italian person and be in a more interesting area. As for my flight, it's a good thing that my last one was so cheap because it was not refundable. So I had to purchase a new one. Modern Sarah here. So going to school in a new country to learn the language is such a great way to meet people. I met so many good friends when I was in Rome this time in 2000. And eight, we became like a tight-knit crew very quickly hung out all of the time. We didn't speak any Italian though, because when you meet new people, you want to hear their story, right? You want to. to go in depth as much as you can. And so, yeah, we didn't really, our Italian did not improve with each other, but it was still a very rich experience that I'm glad that I did, but I felt like

I needed extra support. So that's why I decided to start meeting with a tutor. And also, when I lived in Sienna a few years prior, I lived with an Italian woman. And that was very, very helpful for me to learn the language to be sort of forced to speak it because it was so painfully awkward living with her when we couldn't communicate. So there was like a lot of miming. Then we like sort of fell into certain rituals that we did together and it was it was really helpful and ended up being quite nice and maybe I'll share more of that story another time because she was quite a trip. But yeah, so language schools are really fun for socialization and getting to know the local area, if they offer field trips or something like that, I don't think schools are that best of actually teaching you the language if you participate in social life and stuff like that. But at the time when I was in Rome back then, it was not that easy to find an apartment. I'm not even sure how I went about looking. I must have just been looking at signs and internet cafes. Because this was a different world. I mean, it wasn't that long ago, but the internet was not that accessible. I had to go to either an internet cafe.

if I could find one, or there was one cafe and Trisaday that I really liked that offered free Wi-Fi if you ate something there. And that was quite new and unique at the time. There was no Airbnb. So yeah, it wasn't easy to find a place. And where I was, the school originally put me, like they found my accommodation. When you go through the school, it might be less hassle, but it's usually more expensive if the school is finding you accommodation than if you find it yourself. And they put me in an area where there wasn't that much going on and I had to take a tram to get into school and I just wanted to be closer into the center, closer to where the action was and easier to meet up with my friends. If I had to find a place to live now, I would either start off

in an Airbnb just to get my bearings or I would check out an expat group on. Facebook or one of the other or a housing forum and I will provide a link of different resources where you can find housing like accommodation in Rome specifically or in Italy in general. I didn't have those resources at the time as I said like the internet in general was not widely spread in a lot of places back then but now it's quite easy. So if you're thinking about going abroad and doing a language program or starting somewhere, I would I would find the accommodation yourself rather than depending on the school because you'll have more flexibility and more view of the kind of thing that you want.

Finding a new place in Rome proved more difficult than I thought it would. Craigslist isn't not as popular here. Saturday I'm moving to another apartment, but unfortunately not with Italians. I'll be with other foreign students though and I think that we will at least have the internet. I had to have some bad news though or else you guys would hate me. I've enjoyed my one-on-one lessons this week. Today's subject was cooking, but we got off topic while discussing the importance of sharing meals with other people. My teacher told me about his family, including his grandmother, who was a famous actress in silent movies. She made good money, but then her crooked brother-in-law stole it all and ran off with the ballerina. And then the ballerina

stole the money and ran off with another man. Eventually my teacher's family received word that the crooked brother-in-law ended up in a mental hospital in Switzerland. And yes, This discussion was in Italian. I'm living with a Colombian prostitute, according to the other girls in my new and likely temporary apartment. And not only is she a prostitute, but she's completely crazy and faked a heart attack the other day. My other apartment might have lacked the internet, but at least it wasn't a den of sin. So after packing all my things today, paying for a cab and a few nights in this place, I think it might be worth it to return to my old place.

Oriana said she would put off the apartment renovations and let me stay. But let's get back to the cab that I took for a second. Other friends have had the director of our school arranged cabs for them when they were going to the airport or moving. I made the mistake of asking the secretaries for help, who offered none, aside from a number for a taxi. So this morning I had to call and schedule a cab for myself. I was really panicked about this, but it worked out fine. I have never been so proud of my life. I'm pleased to announce that I'm no longer living in a whorehouse.

Color me old fashioned, but that situation was a bit much. I'm now back at my old place, and I love it. The grass is always greener, as they say. Some friends and I recently visited Tivoli, a town just outside Rome, to tour Villa Adriana, the summer retreat of Emperor Hadrian, who ruled from 117 to 138 AD. Hadrian was obsessed with all things Greek, and he studied Greek literature, culture, philosophers. He was the first emperor to wear a beard, which was a Greek fashion, and he filled his summer residence where he escaped the heat and overcrowding of Rome with all. libraries and theaters and art. And if you travel around the world, you will likely see different monuments that Hadrian has erected. And even in England, we've got Hadrian's wall. When I was in Greece,

we saw different ruins of things that he had created. Oh, and hi, this is Modern Sarah popping back, popping into this blog reading. But Hadrian is also the adopted grandfather father of Marcus Aurelius, who is my favorite stoic philosopher. He was the emperor of Rome, who you've heard me talk about. I didn't know that much about Hadrian when I was writing this post way back when I thought Hadrian was this wonderfully cultured guy and he was considered one of the five great emperes, although he also had a horrible temper apparently. And so, yeah, he liked to spend money on culture and art and thought that was important, but I'm not sure that he had the best character. All right, back to the blog post. Hadrian, like other Romans, followed the Greek believe that one needs a healthy body as well as a healthy mind. His retreat included a giant porticoed courtyard, a copy of a structure in Athens, with columns that surrounded a pool. There, people strolled to digest their food and discuss what they'd read in the library. Hadrian believed in strengthening a society from within, rather than conquering other lands. For this reason, his reign was relatively peaceful, and he improved the infrastructure.

of many areas of the Roman Empire. Hadrian Summer Villa eventually fell into ruin after it was plundered by barbarians, the church, and others for building materials. So some marble remains small pieces and they survived because they weren't big enough to be of use to people for construction purposes. It took hundreds of slaves 16 or 17 years to construct Villa Adriana, a place UNESCO calls a masterpiece that uniquely brings together the highest expressions of the material cultures of the ancient Mediterranean world and inspired the architects of the Renaissance and the Baroque period and profoundly influenced 19th and 20th century architects and designers. And today it's a UNESCO World Heritage site. A lot of the marble from Villa Adriana ended up

at Villa Desti, the other place my friends and I visited in Tivoli and In the 1500s, Cardinal Destay, so that's D-A-Postrophe E-S-T-E, transformed a convent into an elaborate palace for himself. And today, the hundreds of fountains in the garden still operate without man-made help. It's gravity and good old-fashioned engineering, very old, that keeps them flowing. And you can see them both in the day trip from Rome. The sun is finally shining again, so I am skipping conversation class to walk. around outside. For weeks, we had nothing but rain, and I'd show up to class so soaked, but I had to bring extra socks to change in two. Okay, I did that once, and then all the other times

I forgot, but it has been seriously wet here, with storms so severe I thought our windows would smash in. Venice is underwater. Well, I finally have an Italian friend, which is good for a number of reasons, including her invitation to visit her parents' house in Calabria this summer. Catherine and I have only hung out a few times, but she's helped my Italian a lot. Last weekend, she and her brother and I and our friend Kelly, we visited the catacombs of San Colisto, which is on the periphery of Rome. About 500,000 people are buried in this multi-layered labyrinth. The oldest graves are on the top, and they get progressively newer, the deeper you go. There's still a lot of art at the lower levels, but the barbarians destroyed a lot of what is now accessible to the public. The catacombs, there were a few dozen were the sole burying place for Christians until the 300s. When Constantine became the first Christian emperor and allowed Christian burials to take place within Rome's walls, the non-Christian Romans cremated their dead. People continued to be buried in the catacombs until the barbarians invaded them a few hundred years later, because they were considered to be sacred and the early

Christian martyrs. In total, the catacomb tunnels stretch about 375 miles. There's a myth that the early Christians hid out in the catacombs to escape persecution, but our guide said that there's no evidence of this. The Romans knew of the catacombs, but they didn't go to them because they respected the burial places of other religions. They might have killed you if they found out you were Christian, but at least you could rest in peace. At the catacombs of San Callisto, I learned where the Jesus fish comes from. The first letters of Jesus Christ, son of God's savior spell fish in Greek, which was the official. language of the church until 400, according to my guide, although my teacher disputes this.

After our catacombs visit, I had lunch with Katerina and her brother and sister, who cooked up a delicious meal from Calabria. It was so fun to hang out and have lunch with them, and I miss them already. So there you have it, a little slice of life of what my life was like in 2008, Rome. It was there October, November, December, and then I headed back to New York City for a few years. I didn't know then that I was eligible for Italian citizenship. I discovered that in 2010, and that's when I headed back to Italy to Reggio Amelia and applied to be an Italian citizen thanks to my Sicilian ancestry. And if you know my story, you know that I've been over here in Europe ever since, ever since 2010 when I got my passport. And it expired during. COVID and so that's part of my project now is to get that renewed. But this trip that I did in 2008 was definitely a stepping stone to my Italian life and connecting more to my Italian roots. And I hope that you got something valuable out of this. And if you're considering moving abroad

for a little bit as a taster before something bigger or even just to do something, you know, on a smaller scale, like a sabbatical or something from work, it's probably easier than you think it is. If you have questions about what it's like to pack up everything and spend a month or two in another country or longer, then feel free to get in touch. I'd love to hear what your plans are. That's all for now. Go ahead and follow the show or hit subscribe so you can hear more episodes like this. And if you would like my help taking bold action on your own dreams, like living abroad, changing careers and other life transitions, visit live without borderspodcast.com. Thanks for listening and have a beautiful week wherever you are.

Do you ever go blank or start rambling when someone puts you on the spot? I created a free conversation sheet sheet with simple formulas that you can use so you can respond with clarity, whether you're in a meeting or just talking with friends. Download it at sarahmicatel.com slash blank no more.