When is the best time of life to move abroad? (specifically from England to Italy?)

(Other countries and combinations are also available)

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When is the best time for a move from England to Italy?

Let me quickly refer to Visas and languages and then if you are sitting comfortably I will begin…

Visa

There is no longer an automatic right for UK citizens to live and work in the EU. With migration an issue for most European countries I think it is fair to assume that visa criteria is going to tighten unless you are bringing skills or investment to the table.

As a novice overview basically you can get to Italy if you are married/ or the co-dependant minor or an Italian or EU citizen resident in Italy under EU family reunification laws. Or there are various Visa specific to Italy of which I know three;

Student visa, Nomadic Visa, or Elective Residency visa. All have differing criteria and tax implications. Otherwise Schengen Shuffling allows you to stay 90/180 days. If you overstay you risk Euro 5-10k fine and being banned from Italy for 1-5 years.

It is best to take specialist advice adapted to your specific circumstances.

Languages

You can survive Italy in English in cities and tourist areas. Most Italians are delighted to be able to practice their English.

But to live and integrate in Italy you need Italian. If you don’t speak Italian you are rendered deaf and dumb. That means at your loneliest you won’t be able to break the ice with a little witty repartee. Apps are helpful.

But one thing I am NOT going to say is you need an aptitude for languages. If you speak one language you can speak another. Communication is hard wired between humans, language is a small part of that. Shed the idea that you are no good at languages- it will hinder you.

Are you ever too young to dream of escape to Italy?

No, you are never too young. Nurture, protect those foetal fragile dreams.

You can actively do things that will help. Learn Italian one word at a time, make Italian contacts, watch Italian films. I had to do it with a well-thumbed dry copy of ‘Italian Made Simple’ but these days there are a myriad of apps to get you started.

Straight out of school?

I know many a lass who went on a holiday to Italy, fell in love with the country / one of its inhabitants and lived happily ever after. They became Italian mothers, professional and/or housewives. They speak fluently to the extent that their English is a bit weird now.

Make no mistake, they are not tame pet females. They are the Veni, Vedi, Vici women- they came (alone), they saw (were seen and whistled at), they conquered (hearts, culture and language.) I have nothing but admiration for those ballsy enough to up sticks and head off- most in the 80’s, before internet or mobile phones could assuage homesickness. And always it is the lone adventurers who have the best stories to tell as glass of wine is refilled and the heat fades at dusk. One was with a travelling circus, her job to keep the boa constrictor warm on her lap as they travelled from place to place. Another won a one way air ticket from Australia to Italy in a work raffle. These were the days before HR was invented and employers were far more shall we say…inventive.

It’s not all rosy happy endings. I know of ferocious divorces, infidelity, domestic violence. One where the wife found herself running an olive oil/wine importers only to find that it metamorphised into a mafia operation where drugs were being imported inside frozen fish. So it can be a dream. It can also be a nightmare.

Every single girl I know who this did was a leggy attractive blond, one who was the physical embodiment of a gravity defying Barbie doll. I’m not saying you have to fit this picture, but it helps, as well as a sense of humour, resilience and determination. I don’t know a single man that did it but that doesn’t mean they haven’t or couldn’t.

In my view this is the best time to head off as

Your parents are likely to be in good health

Your parents may be supportive and encouraging as you strike out into the world.

Your parents aren’t thinking about grandchildren yet.

You are footloose and fancy free with the world as your oyster, if it doesn’t work out, who cares, you can go home, it’s all good experience.

You are healthy, young, vibrant giving you the advantage that your brain will absorb the language fast, you have the energy to combat obstacles and you are catnip to those looking for a relationship.

You have a lifetime ahead to build a home and family around you.

For school leavers the openings for work are few and far between. But seasonable vocational work is possible, the perennial English teacher option or Au Pairing. I went the Au Pair route.

I had a miserable time as an Au Pair with an aristocratic Milanese family but I had an unforgettable summer in Sardinia as an English teacher. Take risks, jump at any opportunity to go to Italy. If it is horrible, come back, lick your wounds, learn, try again or adjust what you want.

Post graduate?

It should be the easiest time to go -in theory, except that it is now a whole load more difficult.

You have student debts to be repaid. You have spent at least 3 years, likely significantly more, becoming half way qualified in a field that should, fingers crossed, economy/politics permitting allow you to earn an honest crust.

It is possible that your skills are transferable- medicine, dentistry but you are still going to need to jack up your language skills. Or, you could find yourself having to retrain, for example a UK qualified lawyer can advise on international law but would have to requalify to advise on Italian legal matters. This significantly reduces work opportunities.

Now that you are qualified doctor/dentist/vet/architect/lawyer/teacher used to independent living au pairing now feels a definite step down.

I hate to say it but you are, for the time being, trapped. It’s salt mines time.

What you can do without leaving the UK to advance your dreams is;

1. Use your commute/spare time for language classes. If you have a spare room get an Italian au pair. You don’t need children. With an Italian au pair under the roof you get exposure to Italian, a contact in Italy and with any luck free cookery lessons.

2. Set up a side hustle that will gradually build income so you have a chance of qualifying for the Digital Nomad Visa.

3. Gain the Post Qualified Experience that might give you the edge as an attractive employee

4. Build funds. Hollow laugh. Get out of rental, buy a house so when you go abroad you can rent it keeping a toe hold in the UK and giving you, hopefully, a back up passive income.

Your thirties?

Now the move gets harder.

• You now have a career

• You have a house that you have spent a fortune doing up and buying Ikea furniture

• You have friends and neighbours that you will miss

• You have a significant other who is also striving at their career

• Your parents are hoping for wedding bells

• Your parents are starting to look older

• The idea of having a family of your own doesn’t seem as preposterous- where should that family take root?

For me, I could have worked in Singapore, Dubai, Sao Paulo etc. But I was repeatedly told Italy? – no. I wasn’t Italian, I didn’t speak Italian, I wasn’t a qualified Italian lawyer. I did everything I could to get a job. I would have taken a job as a janitor if it meant I could live in Italy. In the end, I tossed coins into the Trevi fountain wishing for a job in English in my field. Within 6 months I had been offered my dream job in Rome.

At which point I had a crisis of confidence. It is important to define your dreams because when opportunity knocks you have to rely on them to dig deep to find the courage to follow them, come what may.

Your existing employers will tell you that you are making a mistake, that it is irreversible and your will regret it. You are at the height of your career prospects, just shy of partner level. The employers want you while you are still young, but knowledgeable, cheap compared to a partner and capable of long hours if you haven’t a family yet. Your friends won’t want you to leave. Your parents are now retired.

I sat in a carpark holding the job offer, undecided. The wind screen wipers swished rain from side to side. I was torn. Then ‘Everyone is talkin’ at me’ came on.

Everybody’s talking at me
I don’t hear a word they’re saying
Only the echoes of my mind

People stopping, staring
I can’t see their faces
Only the shadows of their eyes

I’m going where the sun keeps shining
Through the pouring rain
Going where the weather suits my clothes

Banking off of the northeast winds
Sailing on a summer breeze
And skipping over the ocean like a stone

By the time I started the ignition my mind was made up.

Luckily I was newly young(ish), freshly heartbroken and therefore free.

If however you are in a relationship, you face an uphill battle uprooting your other half unless this is a shared dream. So always make sure you share the same dream with life partners. That has to be a first date question- what dreams are you pursuing, where are you trying to get to?

So, a decade of bliss in Rome followed. Okay, there was homesickness and drama but it exceeded every expectation with bells on. I thought I would never leave. The danger was that in my newly named ‘extended late twenties’ it was party city, and really I should have been thinking about settling down and having a family but I was having way too much fun.

It is a tragedy that many young professional women in Rome lose the chance to have kiddies almost without noticing it. It is so sad that some of the best, most dynamic of my friends then, were too late to fill the cradle. So if you are doing a move in your thirties keep an eye on the big picture.

It turned out however that that was not to be my fate and in my late 30s I had two babes in arms. My partner/husband wanted to advance his career. That meant following him to a posting. If you think about the worst country in the world that anyone would ever want to be posted to, yeah, it was there.

So I sacrificed the Rome I loved into my DNA , that I had sought for a decade and more, because I had to ask myself where home was. Was Rome home or the back drop? Was home bricks and mortar or where those you love heart’s beat. For me it is where the hearts I love beat. So, newly married, I gave up my job and left beloved Rome, the Italy I had fought for decades to be with, but with the consolation and expectation that we would return in a couple of years.

It turned out however that exile would be final. Within months he had got a tapir nosed Canadian pregnant and abandoned us. I was suddenly returned to the UK, unemployed, an unemployable single mother of two. My dream of Rome was shredded and there was absolutely no way back.

I don’t think it could have been any other way- if I had stayed I would have blamed myself for the breakdown of our marriage.

But there is a warning there. I always thought the pronouns in a family were ‘we’ and what is good for ‘us’ and if that required sacrifice on my behalf so be it. Turned out my husband’s pronouns were ‘I, me, and mine’ Don’t give up your dreams for someone who does not share your pronouns.

Single mum in your forties?

A single unemployed mum with babes in arms has no chance of living and working in England let alone Italy. Also if you can’t afford a grocery shop, the flight to Italy might as well cost the same as a flight to the moon. Plus having endured two international moves, and enduring the awfulness of our situation I couldn’t move the kiddies again. I was mute with grief and betrayal, with life a nightmare, there was no space for dreams, just day to day, meal to meal survival.

I got Italian lodgers so at least we could still be exposed to the language, in case we could somehow get back.

Blended family Fresh start?

I met the lovely Hugo, who quickly embraced dreams of Italy and bought a fabulous villa in Tuscany. So, could we go back? We thought we could.

I knew that my parents wanted to be part of the kiddies lives and it would be hard to take them away but we put the deposit on a rental, and at international school (in Rome, where the best school was). If we moved that summer then it would not interrupt their schooling, because that is something else to be aware of- you can’t mess around with the kiddies futures by interrupting their exam years.

But we underestimated the absolute refusal of our teenage kids. You cannot move teenagers without breaking their hearts. Their friends are everything, their lovers the centre of the universe. In the end we couldn’t do it. Forcing them does not take away their pain and made the cost of the move too destructive for our newly blended family.

So- beware moving when the kiddies. When their ages are in single figures you might succeed, thereafter once exams and friendships/romances loom you cannot move them without inflicting huge damage on the family.

We stayed. We started Schengen shuffling back and forth to Italy.

Fifties then?

The kiddies are almost out of education. They are settling into permanent relationships. My father is dead. My mother ravaged by dementia.

Now it is all about tax. Italian taxes are steep, UK taxes getting worse. It’s a tightrope being skinned for the taxes we had thought would last us through our retirement years. I do not qualify for the Digital Nomad Visa as I don’t earn from my writing, I do not qualify for the 7% retirement visa as we are not retired yet and anyway Tuscany is not 7% land.

And so we Schengen Shuffle. 90 days out of every 180 we are in Italy.

Looking ahead to our Sixties?

When our kiddies have settled, and little ones are on the way? We can’t be abroad and miss those moment with the grandkiddies. We have wrestled with solution after solution but for now it seems we will be Schengen Shufflers at least for a few years yet.

And beyond?

Who knows where we will be when we are old farts with wonky legs and dicky hearts. I won’t want to be spending my life in airports shuttling back and forth.

I can’t help thinking you will find us in Italy, floating around the pool with floppy hats, a glass with fruit and an umbrella in it, planning bike rides with a tribe of grand kiddies.

So when should you go?

You can always go. But life, for me at least, is about the people you love and the people you miss. Following your dreams is rarely without cost and collateral damage but the earlier you go the earlier you can establish a life in that other country, and the fewer people that will be missing.

Are you thinking of making the move? Have you made it? When do you think is the best time to go?

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