How small-town Italy takes you from overwhelm to bliss

When you escape the crowds in Italy and pick off-track destinations you get to slow down and finally just be.

Picture this. You’ve planned the perfect trip to Italy. 

You’ve dreamed of all the destinations for ages right down to the cute little trattoria in Trastevere with a checkered tablecloth and great reviews on Tripadvisor.  You’ve created the perfect tour, consulted the best travel blogs.

You’ve studied itineraries, daydreamed, prepared your Italian with early-morning sessions with your Italki tutors.

The day comes, you get on the plane and the minute you land, it all goes downhill. Not as in actually negative, you’re still in Italy but it’s not the intimate, soothing experience you’d imagined it would be. Quite the opposite. 

It’s a crowded, loud experience with lengthy loud lines of tourists stressed out by the heat and lack of organization. 

You're feeling out of your element. You’re connected to Italy in a profound way and you don’t want to feel like a tourist, let alone be treated like one for one minute. 

And let’s not get even started on how little you get to show off your carefully practiced Italian. All that congiuntivo trapassato going to waste! All those Anki flashcards for nothing. 

Everyone is speaking to you in English. Surely your Italian is better than that?

This feels like a huge misunderstanding. Maybe you shouldn’t have added Rome, Positano and Florence to your itinerary but the trip didn't feel right without these destinations.

Basta! 

Let’s stop this little viaggio da incubo right here. 

In today’s post, you’ll learn how visiting small-town Italy might just save your Italian holidays and your Italian learning efforts.

Before I begin though, I’ll remind you that if your dream is that of improving your Italian, I host Italian immersion Retreats in small-town Italy where you speak the language for five days while experiencing a different pace of life. 

You get to learn Italian dolcemente, softly, sweetly, just the way it’s supposed to be learned. You can get all the dates and brochures here on the waiting list. Now, back to the post.

Why include small towns in your visit.

They're usually quite a few near bigger destinations. Thanks to Italy's good train system, you can pretty much get anywhere. 

Going to a smaller town allows you to be close to a big town but with the benefits of the small one.

What are these benefits?

First of all, a slower pace of life. Not only, you get the perks of truly connecting with people who don’t speak English and will be happy to give you all the time in the world because they’re not busy-busy busy because il tempo è bello and they’re intent on enjoying it on the bench on the lungomare. 

Take Gaeta, which is where I host my retreats. It’s the quintessential southern town where life is slow and vecchietti spend time on benches and people chat at stores and help you buy your sfilatini( a kind of bread). 

When you ask for directions, they not only will help you out, in Italian of course because they probably don’t speak English, they’ll tell you some anecdote about the place and might even walk you there themselves and involve their families. 

When everyone around you is ready to stop everything they’re doing to give you their undivided attention, it’s really hard to think that you don’t have all the time in the world. 

Isn’t that a beautiful feeling? That feeling that you have all the time you need?

That’s the power of small places. Your clock starts shifting towards the clock of the town. 

What’s the clock of the town?

It revolves around the apparently small things in Italian life.

Meals, shops opening and closing, aperitivo time, la passeggiata serale, il bel tempo, I mean if it’s a beautiful day you’re going to try to get a glimpse of the sun with a quick coffee in the sun, right? The clock of the town includes the mercato settimanale and the pausa pranzo break. 

In small towns, life is slow and forces you to slow down as well and that’s  a good thing because you learn very quickly that you haven’t been listening to yourself in the longest time. 

Not only in Italian.  In any other language. 

But how can you expect to learn Italian if you don’t learn to be attuned to your needs more?

That’s what Italy is all about. 

🌻It’s about figuring out the perfect moment to find a break for that aperitivo or for that cup of coffee in the piazza. 

🌻It’s about knowing exactly how to dress for your passeggiata. 

🌻It’s about devoting energy and enthusiasm for your next meal. 

It’s about realizing that these apparently small things are luxuries that we can ALL treat ourselves to and they make every day extremely special and memorable. 

When you slow down in small towns, you can finally make friends and just be. In Italian.  

You’ll never feel like a tourist again.

All this can come a bit hard because we’re living in a world where we’re not encouraged to slow down and listen to our inner voice. Everything seems so hectic nowadays, doesn’t it? 

And yet, that’s all the more reason to claim back your space in the world by setting your own rhythm. 

Everyone is busy running and making noise.

Doing doing doing. 

In a noisy world, it can seem scary to just slow down and listen.

Let Italy guide you in this. Because Italy is about being.

Adjust your internal clock to Italy

• Going to the café for breakfast?
  
  Make it the same café every day. Grab the local newspaper and go through it. See if there are any regular people going in for breakfast. You’ll see that over days, people will begin to recognize you and say hi.

• Go to il mercato settimanale. 

You’ll see how Italians meet, chat, argue and get excited over their purchases, be it over a batch of carciofi or an amazing second-hand Dolce & Gabbana t-shirt they found at the second-hand bancarella. That’s an excellent place to connect too because il mercato settimanale is never only about buying, it’s -like all things Italian- about socializing.

• Go to the same fornaio/alimentari/fruttivendolo every day. Become a regular. Within days, the owner will begin giving you recommendations and maybe even setting aside your favorite produce. There’s no place Italians connect more than over food.

• Read the local newspaper. I’ll never say this enough. Ask the edicolante what the local newspaper is - if you can’t find it lying about at the local café- and skim through it. Local newspapers are great at giving you a sense of the pace of life of the town you’re in, what the conversations are about but also letting you know what the main events taking place are.

All of these ideas are perfect for you both if you’re an introvert or an extrovert because they allow you to slow down and pay attention to your surroundings and connect with the community as much or as little as you like.

When you’re making tiny but meaningful connections over daily routines with the local community, you’re using the language but you’re also infusing it with cultural nuances and letting people around you know that you’re there to be more than a tourist. 

That’s what will help you be treated as a member of the community, even if just temporarily. 

Show up, speak Italian, connect over food and niceties and the rest will come. 

Before you know it, you’ll be getting plenty of unsolicited advice on which is the perfect pomodoro for a bruschetta and where to buy the best bread. 

What you’ll learn in those moments, will serve you forever and you’ll never have to worry about forgetting. 

You’ll build memories that will last you a lifetime and even a few stories to tell when you get back home.