A retiree moves five thousand dollars from an American bank to a Spanish account to cover the first months of a new life abroad. The wire goes through, and a few days later the money lands, except it is not five thousand dollars’ worth of euros. It is closer to forty-eight hundred. Somewhere between the …
Italian dinner happens at 8:30 or 9:00pm. American nutrition advice has spent decades insisting that eating late causes weight gain, that the body stores evening calories as fat, that the kitchen should close by 7:00pm. The Italians eat late and maintain lower obesity rates than Americans who eat early. This apparent paradox confuses Americans who …
For most of the twentieth century, sleeping in the afternoon was something a certain kind of American filed under the very old, the very young, and the frankly lazy. Then, in 2007, a large study out of Greece handed the afternoon nap a cardiology defense, and the people who had been quietly napping all along …
For a single retiree, €1,200 a month, around $1,400, does not sound like much. In most of the United States it would barely cover rent, and in the fashionable corners of Spain, the Costa del Sol or central Madrid, it would leave you counting carefully. But Spain is a large and unevenly priced country, and …
The focaccia Genovese is the one the world knows, the dimpled, golden, olive-oil-soaked flatbread from Liguria that fills bakery windows from Genoa to Brooklyn. It deserves its fame. But it is not the only focaccia worth learning, and eight hundred kilometers to the south, the city of Bari makes a version that stands entirely on …
For a growing number of American retirees, the reason for leaving is not the weather or the food or the romance of Europe. It is the healthcare. After a working life spent fearing medical bills, and facing retirement with Medicare premiums, supplement plans, deductibles and the ever-present dread of a catastrophic diagnosis, many older Americans …
Two people need to get from Paris to Lyon on the same morning. The tourist books a flight, because a flight is what you book when two cities feel far apart and an hour in the air sounds faster than anything on the ground. The local books the train without a second thought. On this …
You have walked all morning through the Roman heat, and the Spanish Steps rise in front of you, a hundred and thirty-odd travertine steps sweeping up toward a church, sun-warmed and inviting. So you do the natural thing and sit down to rest. Within moments a police officer with a whistle is heading your way, …
The car is reserved, the confirmation is printed, and the family is standing at the rental counter in Florence with the luggage and a plan for Tuscany. Then the agent asks for the International Driving Permit, the American does not have one, and the whole plan stalls at the desk while everyone works out what …
The paperwork to fly a dog from the United States to Europe is not complicated, and it is not especially expensive. Three documents and roughly $450 in vet and endorsement fees cover it, and a healthy adult dog from the United States faces no quarantine and no blood test on arrival. On paper it is …
A Spanish family meal does not end when the food does. The plates are cleared, or half cleared, and everyone stays. The talk keeps going, coffee appears, maybe a small glass of something, and an hour later the same people are still at the same table, in no hurry to be anywhere else. A lunch …
A woman in her early sixties stands at her apartment door in Lucca. She has been here for 26 months. She is going home to Pittsburgh. She is not unusual. Most American women over 58 who move to Italy do this. The return is rarely about Italy. It is about specific structural factors that the …