Italian village life is not for me
From the digital nomad dream to Rome’s chaos to a town of 5,000, this is what I've learned about myself, and life in Italy, along the way.
I normally have my coffee at home in the morning. It’s a simple ritual my brain knows and expects. So when the Nespresso machine didn’t work on Sunday, I nearly threw a fit. (I know, I know, I’m not using a Moka. I should get one, and then we could only blame user error.)
In the midst of my panic, I thought, “I don’t want to go out for coffee!”...even though the bar is less than a five-minute walk away. Most essentials are nearby in an Italian village, including a place where you can quickly grab a cappuccino or a spritz.
After several attempts, the Nespresso machine whirled and produced the desired effect, calming me enough to return to this essay and reflect.
Why does life feel so hard for me here?
As someone used to a nomadic lifestyle and who knows that I thrive in a city, I wasn’t prepared for what 2025 had in store: calling a small Italian village ‘home’.
I thought I would be spending most of this year as a city girl thriving in Milan, but instead, I’ve spent it living in a village just outside of Italy’s fashion capital.
A change of circumstances led us to this town, about a 30-minute drive or a 45-minute train ride away. To some, this may not sound far. But for me, it has been a huge adjustment after living in places like downtown San Diego, Mexico City, and Rome. Being on the outskirts, I don’t go to Milan nearly as often as I would like, and that’s the only place I meet the few friends I have here.
There were valid reasons for coming to this village, of course, such as family support, free childcare, and low living expenses. Compromises were made.
But this situation was supposed to be temporary…and temporary has gone on much longer than expected. I’m still here, not-so-silently protesting my circumstances.
Village life is not for me.
I’ve sampled a few different lifestyles while in Italy as an expat – the digital nomad, the city girl, and the reluctant village dweller – and have found that small-town living is the most unaligned of them all.
I feel like I don’t belong here.
The Digital Nomad: The Beginning
In the fall of 2020, I flew from where I was currently residing, Mexico City, to Palermo by way of Paris. It was the most nerve-racking flight path of my life, given the state of the world and all the confusion and misinformation around rules and restrictions.
It was also the most satisfying thing I had ever done.
I entered with my Italian passport, and everyone assumed I was meant to be there. I felt this way deep down, too.
A local Sicilian family picked me up from the airport (we originally connected in a Facebook group) and drove me to a beautiful villa in Mondello, just steps from the beach. This would become my sanctuary for six weeks while I traded my marketing skills for free housing and attempted to turn it into a cozy co-living space for digital nomads.
Curfews and restrictions popped back up and stayed in place through most of the fall and then the winter, which meant our co-living plans went on hold. Consequently, I had the entire three-bedroom home to myself(!!).
I settled into my routine: make my (Moka) coffee in the morning, take the bus to Palermo Monday through Friday for four hours of in-person Italian lessons, return home, run on the boardwalk in the afternoons, and host client sessions in the evenings. I also had big plans to finally start the book I had been putting off writing. Life was good.
When I decided to travel for Christmas, I managed to gather a group of nomadic friends to take my place and try out the space for a few weeks.
Little did I know I would never come back.
I took one suitcase with me and kept a suitcase’s worth of clothing behind when I left for “just a few weeks”, thinking I would return in January or February at the latest. This is a classic move of mine, and something I’ve done for years. It’s great for downsizing my possessions, but terrible for locating something in a pinch. (I’ve lost many articles of clothing and tinted lip balms this way. I’ve even somehow misplaced a Nespresso machine.)
Instead of returning to my life at the beach, I continued my nomadic streak, taking the train around Italy when hardly anyone else was doing so. The country wasn’t even open to Americans at the time.
I negotiated housing rates and enjoyed peaceful extended stays in Milan, Genoa, Turin, and Florence, before finally making my way down to Rome, where my suitcase and 99% of my belongings were shipped.
The City Girl: The Peak Experience
I can’t explain the love I felt (and still feel) for this city other than to say it just felt like I belonged there. Rome was my place from day one, and I never wanted to leave.
I explored different neighborhoods, each one with its own flavor. After a stint in Prati with roommates, I settled down in Trastevere in a studio apartment, alone, with a large terrace and a beautiful tree that was filled with green squawking parrots each day.
I quickly fell into my stride, building community (so easy to do), working at a yoga studio (English speaking), walking to my local market each day for fresh produce, running along the river, writing from cafes over a cappuccino, and taking virtual Italian lessons (even though I could have found in-person lessons there as well).
I loved how easy it was to find my footing, make connections, and ask for help when I needed it. Everything seemed possible in the city, even amidst the chaos.
I also loved how easy it was to disappear and find solitude. To wander the streets like a tourist, taking artsy sunset photos and shameless selfies. To cry in public without worrying about it getting back to someone. To get lost in a sea of thousands of people and in the fantasy of running into my future husband on the streets. (Don’t judge me.)
It felt like a dream, creating this life for myself, and Rome is always at the back of my mind as a backup plan if I ever want to return.
The Villager: Present Day
After experiencing life in Rome as my baseline, and then returning to Italy a couple of years later with my daughter and attempting to adjust to small-town life, finding my flow has felt nearly impossible.
The difference between living in an overcrowded city and a village of 5,000-6,000 people is stark. (I’ve also stayed in a mountain village with fewer than 500 people, and my daughter has probably met every single little kid that lives there.)
Put me in the middle of a crowded city and watch me thrive. Put me in the middle of a quaint village with a local bar, local church, local playground, and local hair salon (that I regret trying), and watch me turn into a total introvert.
Funny, right?
There are plenty of benefits to living in a smaller community, of course. The lifestyle appears enticing on Instagram with beautiful women tending to their chickens, and in movies like Under the Tuscan Sun, where renovating a home in the small town of Cortona (population ~20,000) seems like a good idea for a divorced, struggling American writer (ahem), and everyone knows everyone’s business. (I have a friend in a (different) Italian village who has chickens, so this description is pretty accurate.)
Perhaps I’ve had a challenging time focusing on the positives this year because I don’t have anyone special here to share these wholesome experiences with, close friends included. (Or maybe I’m not someone who is meant to raise chickens.)
I feel like an outsider.
In a village filled with plenty of other immigrants, it feels silly to declare myself as such. I’m not the only person who wasn’t born and raised here, but for a big part of the village, that is exactly what it feels like.
People were born in this village.
Raised in this village.
Have extended families in this village.
Bury loved ones in the cemetery in this village.
Grow old in this village.
Pass away in this village.
The circle of life happens here every single day, and I am on the outside, looking in, even though I am right here in it.
I will never be one of the local locals, speaking in dialect at the bar and chatting with wild hand gestures on the narrow streets. This fact (and the language barrier) has kept me from living in my fullest expression. I feel like I’m living in a life that isn’t really mine.
It hasn’t made me want to build community, and community is one of my lifelines. I’ve mainly been relying on virtual connections.
It is also what has fueled a cycle of nonstop traveling this year, me trying to escape whenever I can.
To be clear, no one has been rude or unkind. When Luna and I go out for walks, everyone is obsessed with her. Whenever we go to the bar for coffee together, she receives nothing short of affection and smiles.
And yet, I feel a constant pull to be elsewhere.
Maybe I’m afraid of being seen, of being noticed. I moved around a lot and grew up trying to fit in and make new friends. I quite enjoyed taking up space (ask my mother or my kindergarten teacher), and now it depends on my mood. Sometimes I just want to blend in. Other times, I just want to speak English with another native English speaker, which is the exact equivalent of finding a needle in a haystack.
Here’s the kicker, and perhaps the biggest truth of them all: I am navigating a lot. I’m not only trying to figure out where I belong, I’m also deciding where I want to raise my daughter, and how to manage a complex coparenting situation. I’m basically trying to upend my entire life, and it is exhausting and overwhelming at times.
I’m sure some of the discomfort I feel here isn’t just from the village itself, but from my overall circumstances, which I am actively working to change. (Thank God for good friends, the Marco Polo app, and virtual therapy.)
Choosing to live abroad is exactly that: a choice.
Living outside of my comfort zone is also a choice.
It’s more than the singular act of going skydiving (been there) or the terror of going on a blind date that your Mexican naturopath sets you up on with her narcissistic brother (done that).
Living abroad will always require a certain level of discomfort, and I think that’s part of what I love/hate about it.
It’s why I chose to study Spanish in college and Italian in my 30s.
It’s why I flew to Quito alone on a one-way ticket.
It’s why I eventually felt suffocated in my picture-perfect life in California by the beach and chose to leave everything I knew and understood behind.
The level of discomfort I have felt time and time again is how I know I will be ok when I eventually take the leap, from living within the constructs of this tiny village, to a life that feels like mine.
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Beautiful, Asia. I enjoyed getting to know more of your story. Appreciate your honesty and yes, it is a lot going on for you and yes, Italian village life isn’t for you, and yes, it won’t always be like this. I know because I’ve told myself the same, in seasons of my life that didn’t fit. Keep writing and sharing and keeping it real 😀
I feel a lot of this! I was in a small Catalan village for a while, but mine was a small Catalan village with world-class climbing, and a community of international climbers who had either made their home there or were constantly cycling through. Absent a built-in community, it would have been incredibly alienating.