So you have your papers in order, your plane ticket in hand and you’re gung-ho to make the jump across the ocean and start a life over here. Not so fast! I received two emails this week both asking the same question: “Is there anything from the US I should bring that I can’t find over there?”

Why yes, yes there are.

Below is a short list of what you should bring when moving over here. This is, of course, after you’ve gotten your visa, passport and documents in order. From your bank to international calls, this list will save you a ton of time and money and, to be honest, I wish someone had written this when I moved over.

Finances

First of all, you need to get your finances in order. Nearly all large US banks will nickel and dime you to death with international ATM fees and even Visa/Master Card will charge you an extra 1% on all of your international purchases. As you’re already going to be experiencing a 30% devaluation of your savings just by stepping on Italian soil, it’s important spend as little as possible in useless fees.

You have three options:

1. Capital One – If you would like to stay with a major bank, their Money Market Account works just like an interest-earning savings account with an ATM card. You can withdrawal $500 per day and there are no ATM fees, credit card fees and they’ll even eat the 1% Visa/Master Card surcharge on international purchases. I’ve been with them for over a year now and my only complaints are trivial and un-important. All other major US banks from Bank of America to Wells Fargo currently have international ATM fees, Capital One being the only holdout.
2. Small Credit Unions – Some expats have reported good experiences with small credit unions not charging exorbitant fees like the large banks do. It is worth checking out if Capital One is not your cup of tea.
3. EverBank.com – This is an internet bank that is FDIC insured and offers a variety of foreign currency accounts, savings accounts and normal checking accounts. I have no personal experience with them, however their offerings are very attractive and the introductory interest rate on their money market accounts are currently higher than Capital One’s.

Phone

Most likely you’ll want to keep in touch with your family and friends you left in your dust back in the US. Unless, of course, you owe them money. Thanks to the internet, the “Oh I really wanted to call you, but gosh, you know how expensive it is!” excuse no longer flies.

The least expensive reliable option available is Skype. For about $8 a month, you can have a US telephone number in an area code that you choose and unlimited US and Canada calling. You no longer even need your computer turned on thanks to products like the Ipevo SO-20 Wi-Fi Phone. When you sign up for DSL here, choose the option for a wireless router and your phone will work just like a normal cordless phone anywhere in your home.

People in the US will be able to call your US phone number to reach you and you can call them without spending a fortune on international long distance. Call quality is sketchy at times, but hanging up and redialing usually resolves most problems. Skype’s long distance rates are pretty competitive too, especially when calling other parts of Europe.

Food & Spices

Ok some of this might get confiscated in the airport if they find it, but I’ve never had any problems. You’ll be able to find spices such as cinnamon, brown sugar and chili powder but they are nothing like what we use in the US. (Is brown sugar considered a spice?) The cinnamon has a more muted flavor, the brown sugar is actually cane sugar, the chili powder is chili powder but not good for using in Mexican food (in my opinion, anyway) and vanilla extract is only a mythical substance here. Oregano, basil and other staples of Italian food should be bought HERE! If you like to make snickerdoodle during the holidays, a little American cinnamon is a must.

Electronics

My mantra is: If you can plug it in, leave it in the US. The only exceptions are items that you can’t easily or cheaply find here and the Skype phone above. Actually you might be able to find that here, but I haven’t seen it.

The only big exception to the rule would be a computer keyboard if you plan on purchasing a computer here. The Italian keyboard layout is much different than the English layout and if you don’t want to relearn how to type, bring along a cheap $10 keyboard from Wal-Mart to get you by. It will plug into Italian computers without a problem. You might also want to bring along an English version of Windows if your Italian is still a little sketchy.

The only other plug-in electronics you should bring are those that support up to 220V. That way all you’ll need is a plug adapter and not a big inefficient power inverter that will hit you on your electric bill.

To know if your electronics support 220V, look on the label for the word “Input” followed by something similar to, “110-240V.” That means that it will accept between 110 and 240 volts. If it just says, “Input: 110V” it’s only good for the US. Here’s an image of the power brick from my laptop as an example:

A few plug adapters will come in handy over the years. (Note: These don’t change the voltage, just the style of plug so that you can plug your 220V compatible electronics directly to the walls here.) Obviously bring along a power inverter as well, but only for occasional use. They’re extremely inefficient and create a lot of heat and you’d be better served to just repurchase your electronics here.

Entertainment

Bring some of your favorite movies, TV shows and/or books with you. Not the whole collection, but those that you can slip into to pass through those homesick moments. My dirty little collection includes M*A*S*H, the John Cusack ’80s catalog, Lord of the Rings and Casablanca. Books in English are pretty easy to find in the large book stores where they’ll usually have a shelf of the more popular books, so don’t think you have to bring an entire library over.

As some of you may know, DVDs are region encoded meaning that US discs won’t work in Italian players — or so they want you think. Most DVD players have an unlock code that you punch into the remote control and magically (as if the ability was there all along) your player will become compatible with discs from anywhere in the world! Philips players usually are the easiest to unlock. (If you’re worried, it’s not illegal to unlock your DVD player.)

If you’re a magazine reader and looking at getting your subscription here, many of the popular magazines are now available in PDF format that you can purchase directly from their websites (or procure in devious and dastardly internety ways). As long as you don’t mind reading the lastest edition of Cosmo on the crapper with a notebook on your lap, this could save you a ton of cash. The new Kindle e-reader with the larger screen is a great option as well, but unfortunately it’s only in black and white.

That’s all that comes to mind right now, but I will update this post if anything else pops into my head.

After reading the Pope’s 10 Driving Commandments and John Kelso’s followup, I’ve taken it a step further and have written my own 10 Commandments of Living in Italy.

1. Thou shalt not stand in lines but instead amass thy selves in reckless mobs.
2. Thou shalt honketh thine horn in abundance against any transgression — real or imagined.
3. Thou shalt attend Sunday mass 10 minutes after it begins and depart 10 minutes before it hath completed.
4. Thou shalt argue about soccer, politics, and religion at great lengths — and always in that order.
5. Thou shalt refer to any food not Italian as unsuitable for human consumption. The lone exception shall be McDonalds.
6. Thou shalt shout at politicians being interviewed on TV during the nightly news. Flinging thine arms in the air will get thine point across better.
7. Thou shalt not use the air conditioning in thy car under any circumstances for it is unnatural evil.
8. Thou shalt use food-related terms to describe real life objects. “As white as panna,” “as long as a salame,” and “as foul as Gorgonzola” are all acceptable combinations.
9. Thou shalt park thine cars in patterns that, from the heavens above, resemble ants scurrying for a crumb of pie.
10. Thou shalt describe women by the size of their breasts through a cupping motion of thine hands and a pursing of thine lips. The size of thy smile should be proportional to the distance of thine hands from thy chest.

In Italian, you’re given a whole slew of ways to make your tall tales sound all the more interesting and believable. Attach these handy dandy suffixes to your favorite noun and really express how you feel.

Itty Bitty Teeny Weenie Things

This is the toughest of the three sections because there are four different suffixes you can use with no rules as to which suffix goes with which word. On the other hand, some words will work with any of the below suffixes. The choice of which one to use is simply based on what sounds right and even after two years of living here, I still get strange looks from Simona when I guess wrong. Here are the four suffixes to describe something smaller than normal and some examples of how to use them:

For example, to describe a small book:

1. First you take the root word libro and drop the last vowel: Libro
2. Then choose the correct prefix above, in this case “etto,” and slap it onto the end of the word: Libretto

That’s all it takes. The word libro is a good example because you can probably figure out which suffix works best just by sounding each one out:

• Librino
• Librello
• Libruccio

Libretto is the only one that sounds right.

Note: Simona just told me that “librello” is the only one that is absolutely wrong. The other two can be used, but “libretto” sounds the best.

Other examples:

• Can’t pay your bills with your monthly stipendio from work? That’s because they’re paying you a stipendino!

• Is your car so small that people think you work for a circus? You’re not driving a macchina, you’re driving a macchinetta!

• Is “it” really as tiny as they say? Then you don’t just have a piccolo pisello, you have a pisellino piccolissimo!

Ginormous Things

This one’s easier because I know of only one suffix to describe something larger than normal.

You can probably figure this one out pretty easily. Using the word libro again, you can describe a large tome by calling it a librone. Not every noun sounds right with this suffix, but here are some other examples:

• Giant mosquitoes, or zanzare, would be called zanzarone!

• Butt too big for those pants? That’s no culo, it’s a culone!

• If you walk out of a bar, you’re an ubriaco. If you crawl out of the bar, you’re an ubriacone!

Horrible, Dastardly Things

Like -one above, this one’s a cinch because there’s only one basic suffix. Adding this to just about any noun will turn it from something good into something bad, but as above, it all depends on come suona, or how it sounds.

Unlike the above examples, I don’t think I’d ever call a bad book a libraccio, so it doesn’t work for everything.

• A bad word, parola, would be a parolaccia!

• A gatto that wakes you up at 5am every morning because he wants to play after meowing for no reason all god damned night would be called a gattaccio!

Conclusione

By now you should have a good handle on how to embellish your tales in Italian. Now go out into the world and use your new exaggerating abilities to make even the most dull of trips to the grocery store sound like the adventure of a lifetime.

Tomorrow’s post: My trip to the storaccio!

“Riuscire“ and “potere“ are two words that I continue to mix up in conversation and none of my Italian books effectively explain the difference. Both verbs basically mean “to be able to do something”, but the usage is very different.

For example:

Riuscire
“Non riesco a venire da te questa sera.” – I can’t come to your house this evening.

Potere
“Non posso venire da te questa sera.” – I can’t come to your house this evening.

They appear to say the same thing, but there is significant difference in their meanings. Riesco, more or less, means that you are or are not physically able to do something. If you’re too tired or injured or there’s some other physical reason that you can’t do something, you’d usually use riuscire.

On the other hand, posso is used to mean that you do or don’t have permission to do something. For instance, if you have other plans or have to watch your kids or your mother won’t let you go out for the evening, you’d use potere.

A “slang” alternative to Riuscire

I had a hell of a time learning to pronouce “riesco” smoothly in a sentence without having to stop and pronounce each syllable. What I learned later on is that

riuscire = farcela or fare ce la

Now, what the hell does that mean? Basically, if you want to say that you are or are not able to do something in a phrase where you’d use riuscire, you can use one of the phrases:

“Ce la faccio” – I can do it
“Ce la fai” – You can do it
“Ce la fa” – He/She/It can do it
“Ce la facciamo” – We can do it
“Ce la fate” – You all can do it
“Ce la fanno” -They can do it

By conjugating fare and adding “ce la“ before it, you express the same sentiment as using riuscire, but in a much easier to pronounce form.

So instead of:
“Non riesco a venire da te questa sera.”

You can simply say:
“Non ce la faccio a venire da te questa sera.”

As a native English speaker, learning to roll my Rs while speaking Italian is still an ongoing battle. Some days they’ll roll out better than a native and some days my tongue simply goes on strike. One of the toughest combinations of words that I’ve encountered is the dreadded N-R tag team. For instance:

“Non ridere!” – “Don’t laugh!”

“Non riesco” – “I’m not able”
Note: “Riesco” is the 1st Person singular present tense of “riuscire”

If you try saying that phrase while rolling the “r”, you’ll probably find it to be more difficult than it looks. Luckily, there are a few tips to help us out.

1. Speak sloooowly – You’ll be surprised at how much more understandable you are when you speak slowly, especially over the N-R words. This would seem obvious to most, but apparently I only think slow and didn’t realize how much it would help until recently.
2. Drop the “N” – If you listen to native Italians speak phrases like those above, they don’t say “Non riesco.” They say, “Noriesco”. When you drop that second “N” the phrase becomes a piece of cake.
3. Roll your tongue when it’s not in use – I find myself in front of my computer, working as normal, and rolling my tongue like a drummer at a circus waiting for the clown to get shot out of the cannon. While you may get odd looks from those around you, after a short while your Rs will come out much more naturally.