Anna: Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Magic Towns Italy podcast! I’m Anna.
Gill: And I’m Gill! And today we’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Shelby Canon from Michigan. She spent many years of her life as a nurse, but was kind of feeling restless and unsatisfied with her life. She eventually ended up in Italy.
Anna: I denne episode fortæller hun om visummet, lejlighedsjagten, som var ret hård, om at finde arbejde og om, hvordan det første år egentlig ser ud.
Gill: Så skal vi fortsætte med at lytte til hendes historie?
Anna: Ja.
Shelby: Jeg er 34 år gammel. Jeg flyttede til Firenze i november 2024. Jeg voksede op i en forstad til Detroit, Michigan.
Da jeg var i tyverne, flyttede jeg til Colorado, hvor jeg boede i otte år. Jeg har altid haft en idé om, at jeg skulle være sygeplejerske. Jeg var altid besat af tanken om at [00:01:00] rejse, og jeg føler, at jeg slæbte rundt på mit liv.
Og jeg tror, at hele denne Italien-ting startede, da jeg var 29. Det var efter COVID. Jeg tog til Sydøstasien Oh. I seks måneder. Jeg havde en drøm om en kæmpestor rygsækrejse, og for mig føltes det sindssygt at tage fri fra arbejde i seks måneder.
When you live in the US there’s this idea that there’s an upward trajectory of your career and you have to follow that, making more money, being rich.
And I took six months off, which actually turned into a year off of work. But that taught me that you don’t have to follow the career path that was set for you in your early twenties.
I was back at home in Michigan. And I got a job at a hospital that I thought that I was gonna love and I hated it. I was miserable. I decided to quit that job and go to Italy for three months on a solo trip. That trip changed everything and there’s a lot of reasons for that. Within the first month of that trip, I kind of decided that I was gonna move to Italy, and [00:02:00] me and my dog moved here in November of 2024.
Anna: Jeg føler, at den slags soloture får en til at indse en masse ting. Især når man tager til Sydøstasien, fordi man ser, hvor anderledes livet er der, hvor anderledes deres prioriteter er i forhold til vores.
Shelby: Og set fra et introspektivt synspunkt rystede det mig ud af min komfortzone, fordi jeg voksede op meget heldig, meget privilegeret, tror jeg. Jeg kom ud af den tur som en helt anden person.
Anna: Og turen til Italien bekræftede på en måde, hvad du sikkert tænkte efter det.
Shelby: Within the first two weeks of that solo trip in Italy, it was my 32nd birthday. And I feel like that date, there’s like a before Shelby, and then there’s an after Shelby.
Omkring den dag mødte jeg mennesker i mit liv på soulmate-niveau.
So that’s what made me initially start to think like, this is where I’m supposed to be. But in [00:03:00] reality when I was in Italy, when I was in Florence, it was the first time in my life that I felt that I was like, okay, this is, this is it. Thank you. This is where I’m supposed to be.
Anna: Og hvorfor lige Firenze af alle steder i Italien?
Shelby: One of my friends had been here before and she just told me, I think you would like Florence. I’ve always had an attraction to Italy. I don’t have any family from Italy. I’ve always liked Italian themed, like movies, documentaries.
Det føltes, som om jeg kom hjem, som om jeg havde været her før. Jeg følte mig super godt tilpas fra den første dag, jeg var her.
Og selvfølgelig er det en helt anden historie at flytte hertil, men det var bare den oplevelse, jeg havde på den rejse, der fik mig til at træffe den beslutning.
Anna: Jeg kan godt lide at tro, at der var en forbindelse i fortiden, du ved...
Shelby: Helt sikkert.
Jeg gennemgik sorg og hjertesorg, men jeg var også på dette smukke sted, og jeg mødte mennesker, og jeg lærte italiensk, fordi jeg meldte mig til sprogundervisning på den rejse bare for at møde mennesker, men så endte jeg faktisk med [00:04:00] at lære sproget meget hurtigt, og det var med til at træffe min beslutning om at flytte hertil.
Anna: Og hvordan var din forestilling om Italien? Du sagde, at du følte en forbindelse, men hvad har virkeligheden bekræftet eller fuldstændig knust?
Shelby: Um, confirmed. There’s a much slower pace of life here. Absolutely. I love that there’s a big focus on like slowing down and making connections and like longer meal times and the work life balance. There’s not this obsessive idea of climbing the career ladder here, which I know can also be a downside because that also means that a lot of things don’t get done, you know?
Anna: Ja.
Shelby: Like I can’t deny that I still have a very American mindset when it comes to something bureaucratic and official. And I feel like a lot of my content is me struggling with, having to navigate this like: ” well, I don’t know. I’m not the person to ask”. But that also can be a very [00:05:00] endearing thing about Italy is just like, it’s gonna work out fine, it’s gonna be fine.
I have to admit that there’s been a transition of trying to leave my old American beliefs behind and trying to adjust and assimilate to this culture.
Anna: Kulturen med at give slip.
Shelby: The culture of letting go, it’s out of my control. It’s gonna be fine. It’s not that serious. Calm down.
Anna: So you said that you didn’t speak any Italian before moving.
Shelby: When I came on my solo trip I did not speak any Italian. I knew like some very basic sentences from Duolingo. I think the first sentence that I learned was: ” I ragazzi bevono l’acqua”.
Anna: Oh my God. Which is basically the equivalent of “the pen is on the table” for us.
Shelby: Virkelig?
Anna: Ja.
Shelby: That’s, it’s just super, like, basic. And I took very, very little Duolingo. And then I came to Italy. I thought I knew how to order a coffee, but I did not know how to order a coffee.
Jeg var selvfølgelig nødt til at bruge min Google translate til at navigere fra togstationen til min Airbnb, og da jeg tog italiensk [00:06:00] undervisning. Det fik mig virkelig til at lære meget hurtigt, og jeg var i stand til at danne små bitte sætninger til butiksejeren, og jeg var så stolt af mig selv.
I was like, oh my God, I’m speaking another language. I would study and I did flashcards all the time. About eight weeks into taking Italian classes, I met my current boyfriend who I live with now. And he didn’t speak any English at all.
Jeg var ligesom på Tinder her i Italien.
And I met him. I knew that he didn’t speak any English and I was like, what’s the worst that can happen? Whatever. And so he picks me up on his Vespa and we go to Piazza Michelangelo for our first date. It was the first time that I really had conversation with someone who does not speak English. It wasn’t like: “Hey, where’s the bathroom? Can I order this pasta?” “What’s this? It was actually like, so what do you like to do in your free time?” It was super crazy, but for some reason we’re still [00:07:00] together, so..
Anna: Så nu taler I italiensk sammen?
Shelby: Jeg taler italiensk hele dagen, stort set hver dag.
Anna: That’s amazing. So you’re lucky ’cause you’re forced to, to learn
Shelby: Tvunget,
Anna: Ja,
Shelby: basically. I can’t believe that he stuck it out with me because it was probably so frustrating talking to me because I didn’t, you know, he is Moroccan, so he’s also a foreigner to Italy, so he has helped me with, everything like the transition of moving here, like the emotional part of it, the language bureaucratic stuff. He understands that side of it. So it’s been really helpful and I feel like him and I both have our own language together because he is a foreigner to Italy.
Anna: Og apropos bureaukrati, hvilket visum søgte du om? Var det kompliceret eller...?
Shelby: Så efter min solotur var jeg hjemme, og jeg søgte efter den hurtigste måde at flytte til Italien på som amerikaner. Og det, jeg blev ved med at se, og som [00:08:00] stemte overens med min tidligere erfaring på min italienske sprogskole, var at få et studievisum.
Jeg smed en masse penge, meldte mig til et helt års sprogundervisning, søgte om studievisum med alt papirarbejdet.
That part was very smooth. My embassy in Detroit approved me very quickly, and then it was like, oh my God, I’m moving to Italy. Okay. And then I moved my dog here. That was a whole process. You have to take your dog to a vet. They have to make sure the vaccines are in order.
De skal underskrive alt det her papirarbejde. Man skal have en kasse, og man skal bestille en flybillet. Jeg lavede en masse research om fly. Det var en lang proces. Men så kom jeg endelig hertil med det visum, og teknisk set studerer jeg stadig min permesso di soggiorno.
Anna: Okay.
Shelby: After a year and a half I’m still trying to figure out my long-term plan, and I guess I’ll be [00:09:00] very clear. I don’t have it figured out yet.
Anna: I didn’t want to ask you about that because I know that it’s a really, like, you can feel the anxiety of that question, so I didn’t want to, to ask. I’m a huge fan of just figuring out things while you’re doing them, so.
Shelby: I think it’s going to work out. I still believe in my decision 100%. And that’s what’s keeping me going is my intuition is telling me that it’s fine. We’re still here.
I think anyone who’s ever considering moving to Italy, I think the biggest piece of advice or the thing that I would say is that you have to be willing to accept whatever opportunities come to you. For example, I, I never in my life thought that I would be a preschool teacher, which I am now. If you would’ve told me that three years ago, I would’ve called you crazy. There’s no way. But that’s what opportunity came to me and I had to [00:10:00] take it, you know?
Anna: Helt sikkert.
Shelby: So it’s having flexibility and just letting the universe like give you what is supposed to happen in the street, the path that’s given to you, I guess.
And I spent a year, my first year here, I wasn’t working. I couldn’t find a job I really struggled with, because, you know, if you’ve seen, I don’t know if you’ve seen like my Instagram, my themes of my videos, but the main thing that I struggled with was how delayed my permesso was.
Anna: Mm-hmm.
Shelby: This year of like not working in Italy and just staying at home and saving as much money as physically possible has taught me so much about the things that I’m actually interested in. Like I love reading. I love writing. I love making clothes apparently.
Anna: Yeah. And another common theme that I saw in your videos is finding an apartment in Florence that you said that was, oh, that wasn’t that easy. How was the process?
Shelby: So yeah, it’s still a struggle. When I first moved to [00:11:00] Italy in the beginning, I needed, for my visa application, I needed a place to stay. And so I reached out to the last Airbnb that I had stayed in, in Florence for a month. I reached out to that family and I asked if I could rent that apartment, which is this one.
If I could rent that apartment for my visa application, so for just for a couple months just to have something and then when I’m here, I would figure it out. Didn’t know how difficult that actually was to do.
So I’m still here in that same apartment I am. I’m not paying Airbnb prices, but I’m still paying more than what’s normal in this area. So that’s a huge downside. My boyfriend and I started to get serious about looking for apartments in the summer or like the late summer, and we contacted probably over a hundred, 200 people online.
I contacted like hundreds of people on those apps and [00:12:00] very few people got back to me. I’ve spoken Italian to ’em, but I feel like they heard my accent and their first question was like, where are you from?
Anna: Mm.
Shelby: And they’re like, oh, I’m American. And they’re like, oh, where’s your boyfriend from? And I said, oh, he’s Moroccan. I had two people, I’m not kidding. Two landlords hang up on me. And I thought that like the phone just, just the phone just disconnected. So I tried to call back a couple times and no one answered. That happened to me twice.
Anna: My God. I’m sorry for these people.
Shelby: It was so difficult. It was, you know, why are you here in Italy? How long are you planning to stay? Well, when are you gonna move back to the us? Like, how much money do you have? What, well, what are you doing for work? What kind of contract do you have? Oh, I don’t know if we can do that. I, so it’s been, and my boyfriend works at a really great job here, and so I think just they think that I’m very transient and I’m trying to explain to them like, that’s not the case. I’m here. I think having a lawyer at the beginning of all this would’ve helped me a lot.
Men informationen om residenza er ikke særlig [00:13:00] klar online om reglerne for, hvad, hvorfor du har brug for residenza? Hvordan kan man få det?
Anna: Mm-hmm.
Shelby: But after that really intense search where we got ghosted by landlords all the time, we got turned down by so many apartments. we finally just said, we need to take a break. I can’t do this anymore. So we took a few months off and right now we’re slowly getting back into the apartment hunt.
Nu hvor jeg har et lille job, nu hvor hans job er mere stabilt, har jeg ligesom certificerede dokumenter fra min mor som garant. Så ønsk os held og lykke!
Anna: Absolutely. Basically, finding an apartment is like, having to do lots of job interviews every time it’s the same feeling.
Shelby: This last one that we toured asked me and my boyfriend how long we’ve been together, do we plan on getting married?
De går i dybden med tingene.
Det kræver bare en masse mental energi at skrive så mange introduktionsbeskeder.
And I do [00:14:00] believe that everything works out the way it’s supposed to. So I think taking a slowing down and taking a break. That’s how I got my job. I was getting turned down. I wasn’t getting interviews, and then very suddenly after a long break, I just got a job as a preschool teacher. It’s one of the massive lessons that I’m forced to be taught right now. Living in Italy is just like, slow down Shelby. It’s gonna work out. I just wish that wasn’t, that lesson wasn’t so expensive.
Anna: Og hvordan er leveomkostningerne i Firenze?
Shelby: I think it’s more than, if you were outside of Florence, you know? Yeah. I think grocery wise, on average together, me and my boyfriend, we spend like 50 to 70 euros per week. Public transportation, you know, I think it’s the same across Italy. But I think apartment wise, I think on average you would, for a apartment of that, we want something that has one or two bedrooms in it would be 900 to 1400 a month.
I think [00:15:00] that’s pretty standard. And I know Rome isn’t much better.
Anna: No, definitely. Even finding an apartment was a nightmare. I spent hours, hours refreshing. You know, the page from my laptop for I don’t know how many days and then I found like one, which is okay.
Shelby: Man er nødt til at være fleksibel og tage, hvad man kan få.
Anna: Helt sikkert.
Shelby: It’s another thing that I’ve had to adjust because, now looking at my American self, I was so picky about the stupidest stuff, you know, like what my apartment had to look like, what kind of, what kind of material was on the cabinets and like what the kitchen looked like.
It’s just, it’s the massive lesson of like learning how to be flexible with our non flexible American brains.
Anna: Og har din livsstil ændret sig meget, siden du flyttede?
Shelby: Yes. ‘Cause I don’t spend money on frivolous dumb [00:16:00] things that you’re taught that you need, in the US there’s over, over consumerism. I mean, if you go to any of the major supermarkets or super stores.
It’d be really interesting for an Italian to go into Costco, which is one of our huge super superstore in in the Us where you buy wholesale, so you buy an orange juice that’s this big for less money.
It’s, it’s so different, but I’m, I like it more not doing that.
It’s a very special occasion when we go out to eat at a restaurant now. It’s very different and I think that has a lot to do with, my current status.
I’m only allowed to work 20 hours per week with a study permesso. Anyway, so. Now that I am working and I’m getting a little bit of money, I’m still trying to just spend as little money as possible, huge lifestyle difference than when I was in the us for sure.
Anna: Så hvis du kunne sende en besked tilbage til [00:17:00] dit tidligere jeg lige før flytningen, hvad ville du så sige?
Shelby: Wow. I wanna just say like, there’s a completely different life waiting for you. You just have to trust everything that’s about to happen to you in the next three months. There’s gonna be a lot of things that suck, but a lot of things that are amazing. Just trust it. And just your intuition is everything.
If I could talk to 2020 Shelby, and if I were to say, “Hey, by the way, in 2024, in 2025, you’re gonna live in Italy, you’re gonna speak Italian every day, and you’re gonna have a boyfriend that you’re in love with that doesn’t speak English, and you’re gonna be working as a preschool teacher, like I would’ve been like, how? In five years it’s gonna be my life? What?”
Anna: Yeah. In five years you’ve completely changed it. That’s crazy, and beautiful at the same time. Thank you so much, Shelby.
Gill: Wow, sikke en historie. Hun var så modig. Hun tog af sted med sin egen [00:18:00] rygsæk og sine drømme, og hun efterlod alt.
Anna: Det er der ikke mange, der ville gøre, tror jeg.
På trods af alle ulemperne besluttede hun, at det var det rigtige sted for hende.
Gill: Og vi ønsker hende, du ved, la dolce vita.
Anna: La dolce vita, ja. Så, ja. Hvis du vil læse hele interviewet, kan du besøge vores hjemmeside.
Gill: Hav en god weekend, alle sammen.
Anna: Hav en god weekend.
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