Actual photo of my "office supply" of espresso capsules.
Happy Friday! I'm making good on my "New Post Fridays" promise and thought it might be fun to do a quick little list of things that I now do every day that I never did before moving to Italy. Let me know if you can relate or have something else to add to the list!
- Have a sweet breakfast. Cake and Italian “croissants” (brioche) for breakfast? Che schifo! (How gross!). But habits change and now I don’t mind a lovely, flaky brioche with my morning coffee…see next point.
- Drink 3-4 espressos in a day. I used to drink drip coffee or the dreaded calorie-laden flavoured latte. Now whenever I have a lull in the day I hop, skip, and jump on over to our office espresso machine!
- Not use turn indicators on my car. I was a by-the-book driver in Canada, now I don’t bother with indicators because literally 90% of Italians don’t either. I’m not endorsing this in anyway but the bizarre thing is Italian drivers are so much more intuitive and usually “know” what your next move is. There’s a lot of eye-contact communication that happens with driving too. Like pedestrians don’t dare cross unless you literally lock eyes with them, even if you’ve been slowing down since a block away!
- Drink an aperitivo wine before the wine with my meal. I wouldn’t have thought to say drink one kind of wine, usually a white, prior to my meal for the purpose of ‘getting the digestive system ready’ but it’s now my daily pre-dinner ritual.
- Talk with neighbors. In Italy, you’re forced into a relationship with your neighbors because you are obligated to exchange a few minutes of conversation with them every time you see each other outside, but a few minutes in Italy can easily become a half-hour, especially if your neighbors are retired. And they don’t keep things surface-level either, nope! You get to hear all about the surgeries they’ve had and where and eventually you’ll know their entire life story from childhood.
- Buy bread. I have to buy fresh bread every day here. That’s just what you do. There needs to be fresh bread on the dinner table at all times otherwise someone might die.
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