What I think about the USA after a month in Italy 🇮🇹

this is America land of Freedom opportunity and mass consumption and this is Italy land of pasta pizza and the Lost Art of the siesta you're probably thinking by the title of this video that I don't like America anymore and I want to move to Italy but I actually love my life in the U.S however there are things about American culture that don't seem to be serving us well what do they know about a rich fulfilling contented life that we don't oh [Music] the first impression I had was just the unmistakable slower pace of life you guys people literally close down for two hours in the middle of a perfectly good work day to eat and rest [Music] okay so I think this is the perfect example of this so for me as an American in my mind if you're going somewhere for a month you should try to see as much of that place as you can possibly see literally do as much as you can do even on vacation and I think this has become pervasive for us in our culture the Endless Options whether it's brands at the grocery store or extra hours of work you can take on we're just steeped in a culture that wants to cram it all in [Music] There She Goes so ironically at the beginning of our trip we all got the flu and it was terrible but thank goodness I'm just so glad that we stayed longer in two places rather than hopping around to five or six I actually got to know people in this town and experience the everyday culture rather than just seeing as much of Italy as I could see thank you in America were told as children I think with loving intentions to work hard and hustle off the field and start thinking about what we want to be when we grow up and with that comes this undercurrent of more is better mentality whether that's career opportunities or brands of pasta sauce to pick from or coffee shops or menu items we really want to have all the opportunities in the world available to us to pick from but the older I get the less it seems that do anything I want have everything I want and be the best whether that's of your high school class or your career field not that it's wrong it just doesn't really have anything to do with a rich contented life but this life is Rich and its food is famous as are its people for not being in a rush so we're in liguria and liguria is right between Tuscany and France okay maybe not into the water but the fact that it's closed hey Mama I just ate right here and then I saw the inside the part of the Gloria that borders the sea is the Italian Riviera ligurian food is known for being low-cost but high value locals call it intelligent food foodborne of necessity but made delicious with skill pesto Focaccia and grapes that make sweet sparkly white wine were born here and they're very proud when you talk to any Italian there's no describing slow Italian life without first understanding the land and the food which leads me to my first lesson learned from slow life in Italy and that is that limited options might be a good thing I could probably make a whole video about this because I've been thinking a lot about it but the decision fatigue that comes when there are just so many choices all the time there's just this constant restlessness both of the markets in this town are one tiny room and I visited some supermarkets in Italy that were much larger but even then the choices were so much more limited than what I'm used to in America in this town were walking distance and I had to go every day because that's all I could carry up and down these steep streets you're just saying how we can't imagine if we didn't have this thing okay thank you to me excuse me for the incline to get out and to walk and be in the Sun and talk to people and pick up food and I'm not an expert but this feels like a limitation that I might welcome back home walking places more and only buying what I could comfortably carry more often [Music] next thing that I was reminded of in Italy about slow life is removing optional technology Italians are very proud of the traditional old school ways that they make things in our convenience culture you'd think that we'd have so much more time in America that we wouldn't even know what to do with ourselves but I mean we all know the opposite's true the more time that we gain by convenience the more we cram into our already overfilled lives [Music] we're finally leaving the cinquitetta are there supposed to be five and we've been in Motorola for 13 days but here we go we're feeling better when we first got here as Americans even for me it was hard to get used to everything being closed from one to three [Music] thank you how fast did you run the Spanish word Siesta is a time-honored tradition of Italian culture and it actually dates back to the Roman Empire I was researching this for this video and it seems that Romans stopped to rest on the sixth hour which was about one because they divided their time into 12 hour increments which I think is really interesting but maybe there is something we're missing in our modern Progressive age we go go and never stop even on vacation we don't rest on Sundays anymore other than Chick-fil-A there are literally no stopping points just pre-decided in our culture and maybe we need to bring that back in thank you for what I'm used to people here live in small houses and drive very very small cars they use things and reuse things they make use of old things or they do without probably because it's pretty impossible to get anything up here and maybe that is a simple overlooked cure for our over consumption just adding some friction to make it easier to live without then to satisfy your every desire and I mean these little apartment homes nestled on the Cliffs of land and sea working hard in their Gardens Meandering into work coming home for a siesta having an espresso with a friend maybe these people have taught me that is plenty [Music] foreign

Channel: Madisun Gray

Views: 817,777

Keywords: italy, travel, travel italy, cinque terre, cinque terre italy, travel with kids, travel with toddlers, family travel, slow living, slow living lifestyle, slow living with kids, slow living with toddlers, slow travel, manarola italy, travel vlog, simple life, the simple things, italian, madisun gray, italian lifestyle, blue zones, longevity, dolce far niente, expat, slow living tips, lessons from italy, what I think about the USA, month in italy, slow life, siesta, rest

Id: wOJUa7qiAJw

Length: 8min 46sec (526 seconds)

Published: Wed May 24 2023