One of the reasons we left Italy was the Byzantine tax system. Here in the Netherlands, they've tried (and pretty much succeeded) to make paying taxes as easy as possible, and we do that online. The slogan of the Belastingdienst (Tax Authority) is "Leuker kunnen we het niet maken, wel makkelijker" (We can't make it more fun, but we can make it easier).
And as for the bikes, they steal them here too, but the police sometimes manages to find them. They have a Stolen Bicicles Register and, apparently, "48% of stolen bikes are recovered by law enforcement, only about 5% actually make it back to their original owners."
What happens to the other 43% of the recovered bikes? I wouldn't suspect the Dutch police of a resale racket.
Paying taxes in NL sounds way easier than IT. If I ever throw in the towel on IT, it will be due to financial frustration, and in that, I think I will be in very good company with the approximately 6.5 million Italians living outside of Italy.
Ironically, I have just been informed that the number of Italians living abroad now exceeds the numbers of foreign residents living in Italy.
For ease of taxes and life in general, I'd probably go with Estonia, Finland or Sweden.
No, nothing illegal, if anything, the police regularly recovers the stolen bikes from the resale racket. The unclaimed bikes are sold at public auctions, which allow students, and those who don't want to spend a fortune, to purchase a good bike at a fair price.
Scandinavia and the Baltic Countries would be high on my wish list too. Winters up there are long and dark, but you'd have a warm, cozy, tastefully decorated home to come back to. And then summer begins, and the lakes, the forests, the white nights...
Ten years is a pretty substantial milestone! And if my experience is any measure, you'll be celebrating 20 years in what feels like around 18 months!
A question: if you made a Venn Diagram that included a circle encompassing what you expected your life in Italy to be like a decade ago, and another with what it's actually like now, how much overlap would there be? A third? Half? A tenth?
I think there is a 90% match on my Venn Diagram for "living in Italy: expectations" versus "living in Italy: reality." Honestly the biggest pain points for me have been comfort in the Italian language (note that I do not cite fluency, as I feel my Italian is a solid C scrape, but there is an elusive comfort level that I miss and yearn for), and taxes/finances (just so time consuming and complicated and stomach-churning.) I'll draw you something and send a picture.
Wow, really 90%? I think you must have done much more homework before moving here.
I'd say mine over has only around a 25% or 30% overlap. I've adapted and I now feel more at home here than anywhere else, but I think I expected it to be like Latin America (where I lived previous to Italy) with a different accent and not as much a need to rough it.
I was caught off guard (in good ways and bad) by how hard it was to learn the language well, to make close friends, the impenetrability of the bureaucracy, how much knowing the right people mattered, dating life, poor infrastructure, teh quality of the food and wine at all levels, how you have to keep your guard up in most transactions, how important football is, the importance of family, how segregated groups of foreigners can be, low wages for locals, how much people like gossip, people and many restaurants having the TV on during meals, the love of dogs and children, coffee, regional differences, etc. etc. etc. That list literally took me three minutes to come up with.
Also unexpected: this is the second time in two weeks responding to one of your comments helped me come up with an idea for a newsletter post!
I will be awaiting that post! En bref, our 2016 move was eased by the fact that we'd already lived a year in Arezzo three years before we moved back, and in that year we got deep into childcare, doctors, pharmacies, and more. But Jason and I had each homebased in Europe many times prior to the 2016 move. As for my part, Italian bureaucracy has nothing on French bureaucracy, where they specialize in humiliation and dismissal (I completed my own carte de séjour process as student there in 1995 - a graceless DIY.) And the rather boisterous Italian culture and conversation, cucina e feste, chiesa e famiglia, are things I came to know first through Spanish, then in Spain, then in a lifetime of feeling most at home in and around the Mediterranean. Bref bref bref
Taxes. They're not nice. If you work for a company as employee let's say, you can do it on your own (my daughter does), bantering your Cassetto Fiscale. For freelancers it's more complicated.
Once upon a time, some 15 or 20 years ago, you could leave your bike unchained and your house door open, or you would find whatever you forgotten at the gym, (nobody would touch it). Unfortunately things changed. We all know who steal bikes. I lost 2.
I left Italy 20 years ago, after having lived there the first 40 years of my life, and I can tell you that bikes (and cars, and loads of other things) have always been stolen, always, I lost count how many my family has lost. Italy has not changed in that respect, it's always been like that.
It was not my experience. I have more than 30 years in Italy, I lived 13 in Veneto and in Maremma, more or less 8, and perceived this in the last years in Florence ( being a touristic city is much worst). Perhaps I was lucky.
One of the reasons we left Italy was the Byzantine tax system. Here in the Netherlands, they've tried (and pretty much succeeded) to make paying taxes as easy as possible, and we do that online. The slogan of the Belastingdienst (Tax Authority) is "Leuker kunnen we het niet maken, wel makkelijker" (We can't make it more fun, but we can make it easier).
And as for the bikes, they steal them here too, but the police sometimes manages to find them. They have a Stolen Bicicles Register and, apparently, "48% of stolen bikes are recovered by law enforcement, only about 5% actually make it back to their original owners."
What happens to the other 43% of the recovered bikes? I wouldn't suspect the Dutch police of a resale racket.
Paying taxes in NL sounds way easier than IT. If I ever throw in the towel on IT, it will be due to financial frustration, and in that, I think I will be in very good company with the approximately 6.5 million Italians living outside of Italy.
Ironically, I have just been informed that the number of Italians living abroad now exceeds the numbers of foreign residents living in Italy.
For ease of taxes and life in general, I'd probably go with Estonia, Finland or Sweden.
No, nothing illegal, if anything, the police regularly recovers the stolen bikes from the resale racket. The unclaimed bikes are sold at public auctions, which allow students, and those who don't want to spend a fortune, to purchase a good bike at a fair price.
Scandinavia and the Baltic Countries would be high on my wish list too. Winters up there are long and dark, but you'd have a warm, cozy, tastefully decorated home to come back to. And then summer begins, and the lakes, the forests, the white nights...
You don't have to sell me on the northern latitudes, but I married Sig. Italia ....
😂
"Nothing is certain except stolen bikes and taxes," Benjamin Franklin.
And this is true anywhere in the world!
Ten years is a pretty substantial milestone! And if my experience is any measure, you'll be celebrating 20 years in what feels like around 18 months!
A question: if you made a Venn Diagram that included a circle encompassing what you expected your life in Italy to be like a decade ago, and another with what it's actually like now, how much overlap would there be? A third? Half? A tenth?
I think there is a 90% match on my Venn Diagram for "living in Italy: expectations" versus "living in Italy: reality." Honestly the biggest pain points for me have been comfort in the Italian language (note that I do not cite fluency, as I feel my Italian is a solid C scrape, but there is an elusive comfort level that I miss and yearn for), and taxes/finances (just so time consuming and complicated and stomach-churning.) I'll draw you something and send a picture.
Wow, really 90%? I think you must have done much more homework before moving here.
I'd say mine over has only around a 25% or 30% overlap. I've adapted and I now feel more at home here than anywhere else, but I think I expected it to be like Latin America (where I lived previous to Italy) with a different accent and not as much a need to rough it.
I was caught off guard (in good ways and bad) by how hard it was to learn the language well, to make close friends, the impenetrability of the bureaucracy, how much knowing the right people mattered, dating life, poor infrastructure, teh quality of the food and wine at all levels, how you have to keep your guard up in most transactions, how important football is, the importance of family, how segregated groups of foreigners can be, low wages for locals, how much people like gossip, people and many restaurants having the TV on during meals, the love of dogs and children, coffee, regional differences, etc. etc. etc. That list literally took me three minutes to come up with.
Also unexpected: this is the second time in two weeks responding to one of your comments helped me come up with an idea for a newsletter post!
I will be awaiting that post! En bref, our 2016 move was eased by the fact that we'd already lived a year in Arezzo three years before we moved back, and in that year we got deep into childcare, doctors, pharmacies, and more. But Jason and I had each homebased in Europe many times prior to the 2016 move. As for my part, Italian bureaucracy has nothing on French bureaucracy, where they specialize in humiliation and dismissal (I completed my own carte de séjour process as student there in 1995 - a graceless DIY.) And the rather boisterous Italian culture and conversation, cucina e feste, chiesa e famiglia, are things I came to know first through Spanish, then in Spain, then in a lifetime of feeling most at home in and around the Mediterranean. Bref bref bref
Love the quotidian details about life in Italy.
I feel I now need to write a companion piece about "what I'd be doing as a tourist in this sweltering town"
Continued:
Ponder.
It’s been 62 years I have pushed those stout pedals.
With original gears made of Nottingham metal.
Before I succumb to senescence and sin,
I shall rally on Raleigh and go for a spin.
In my misspent youth, filled with juvenile folly,
My one true, constant friend was my red three-speed Raleigh.
A gift from Aunt Edna in June ‘64,
It was much like the Beatles, whom I so much adored,
It was groovy, and shiny and Brit to the core.
My Raleigh and I, always ready to roll,
Saw my hair be transformed from a crew cut to bowl.
My photos at 14 now cause me to cringe.
But I loved that I finally had bangs - English: “fringe”.
To update my red steed, I changed handlebar styles,
And I rode the new rams horns for many glad miles.
The new curving handles that looked so darn sweet,
Were a part of a poor lad’s low-budget deceit.
Butterfly bars were just fine on a trike,
But the rakish new bars had the look that we liked.
It appeared a new 10-speed had
now been acquired
And my counterfeit 10-speed was all I desired.
Our bikes made it easy to travel and wander,
It’s a source of remembrance I’m happy to
Taxes. They're not nice. If you work for a company as employee let's say, you can do it on your own (my daughter does), bantering your Cassetto Fiscale. For freelancers it's more complicated.
Once upon a time, some 15 or 20 years ago, you could leave your bike unchained and your house door open, or you would find whatever you forgotten at the gym, (nobody would touch it). Unfortunately things changed. We all know who steal bikes. I lost 2.
I left Italy 20 years ago, after having lived there the first 40 years of my life, and I can tell you that bikes (and cars, and loads of other things) have always been stolen, always, I lost count how many my family has lost. Italy has not changed in that respect, it's always been like that.
It was not my experience. I have more than 30 years in Italy, I lived 13 in Veneto and in Maremma, more or less 8, and perceived this in the last years in Florence ( being a touristic city is much worst). Perhaps I was lucky.