Instantly Italy

Italian language, culture and travel tips

Italian Sayings That Come From American Movies and TV Series

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture! You will also get full access to Your Italian Toolbox, a library of Italian learning materials.

You probably already know that foreign movies are dubbed, here in Italy.  

This is a horrible habit and one of the reasons why Italians have such a low command of English but we can’t help it. That’s how it has always been, how it is and probably it’s a tradition that will never change. I am sure the future will bring significant changes in Italian society but movies will always be dubbed.

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10 Things I Hate About Italy and Italians

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture! You will also get full access to Your Italian Toolbox, a library of Italian learning materials.

I can’t say how many times I hear the sentence “I love Italy and Italians so much!”. 

My job gives me the amazing opportunity of chatting with people from all over the world and since I teach Italian, most of those people – ok, all of them – are in love with my country.

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Expats in Italy: An Interview With Tiffany Parks, A Writer Living in Rome, About Life in The City and Raising A Kid in Italy

It’s time to chat with an expat again and I am over the moon with joy!

I have been interviewing expats for a while now – you can find all interviews linked at the bottom of this post – but I never get tired of doing it. I love it because I am a very curious person and I want to know everything about other people’s lives but also because every interview, even if my questions are more or less similar, is an opportunity to learn more about my culture and reflect about it. 

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How Italians Celebrate Carnival: Three Traditional and Unique Festivals in Italy

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture! You will also get full access to Your Italian Toolbox, a library of Italian learning materials.

Carnival is a quintessential Italian festivity and there are a lot of festivals everywhere in the country at this time of the year.

Around mid-February, depending on when Carnival falls each year, every town – even the smallest one – celebrates Carnival. The most common way of doing it is having a parade with floats, music, and people wearing masks. People parade along the streets and then meet in the main city square for some frittelle (fritters) and drinks.

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Can a city be described by some objects? 15 items (plus one) that represent Genoa

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture! You will also get full access to Your Italian Toolbox, a library of Italian learning materials.

If you have been following me for a while, you may know how much I love Genoa and how hard I try to describe the city – and my region in general – from an authentic point of view. 

You may remember my most recent post about the city, where I gave you a list of reasons not to miss it when you come to Italy, the one about a food tour to discover its delicacies, or another one about the oldest confectionery shop in Italy, which is in Genoa.

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Do You Want To Be Happier? Live Life Like An Italian, Then!

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture! You will also get full access to Your Italian Toolbox, a library of Italian learning materials.

The title of the post is intentionally exaggerated but I am sure that adopting some little Italian lifestyle habits can make your life if not happier definitely more relaxed.

No matter how I complain about Italian culture and lifestyle – we Italians always do it, every day – there are some traits of our culture that I really like and that I think can make life better, so I thought I might share them with you.

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Are You In Italy At Christmas? Here’s How You Can Spend Christmas Day Like Italians Do

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture! You will also get full access to Your Italian Toolbox, a library of Italian learning materials.

Being abroad for the Christmas holidays can be a weird experience.

If Christmas is not your thing, you are in heaven because you can avoid the traditional celebrations and the parties you don’t care about, without even needing an excuse. But if you like Christmas, you may feel a bit out of place.

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Ferrania: A Now Forgotten Company That Has Made Italian History

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture! You will also get full access to Your Italian Toolbox, a library of Italian learning materials.

For a while in my life, I have been part of Italian history without fully realizing it.

Speaking of work, I have lived two very different lives. Before doing what I currently do, which is running this website and working freelance as a translator, I have worked for some years in the corporate world.

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10 International Movies That Make You Want To Book A Ticket To Italy Right Away

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture! You will also get full access to Your Italian Toolbox, a library of Italian learning materials.

Movies sometimes play a fun trick: they make you fall in love with a place, a town, a country.

Sometimes the trick is so powerful that you start dreaming about visiting such place – or even moving there – and you feel that you absolutely HAVE to go there, sooner or later.

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How To Order Coffee In Italy (Without Sounding Too Much Like A Tourist)

If you want to Be Italian For A Weekend, you can join the Vespa ride and get a three-day email crash course about Italian culture! You will also get full access to Your Italian Toolbox, a library of Italian learning materials.

You might have read posts about coffee in Italy possibly about a thousand times before. 

But probably it is worth writing one more post about the topic because I still hear too many people ordering “un espresso” when asking for coffee, here in Italy. So let’s take some time to recap a few basic guidelines you need to follow if you want to order coffee in Italy.

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