Does culture influence emotions? Many cross-cultural researchers all over the world have been trying to give an answer to this question. We learn how to express emotions by watching people from our culture(s). But other people may experience and show emotions in a slightly different way we are unaware of. Hence, when we interact with new cultures, we might not always read their emotions correctly. Let's see how this is...

Once your dream of living in Italy comes true, after all the bureaucracy is sorted out and taken care of you might ask yourself how do you make friends with Italians? Many expats forums and groups mention that it is very difficult, especially if you don't speak the language. While I can't stress enough how language is the key to really understanding Italy, you can have good friends even while...

In many Eastern European countries, if you come to somebody's house and they offer you a cup of tea, it is considered impolite to accept immediately. You have to decline a couple of times, saying you don't want to bother the host, then eventually continue declining but with less emphasis, which means that you actually want a cup of tea. For a German who asks one time and expects to...

Do you have a dream country you want to move to? You have traveled there several times, you have figured out the paperwork, you already found a place to stay. You move there full of hopes and expectations. What can go wrong? The culture shock. It may take a few weeks or a year, it may feel like homesickness or develop into a depression. It depends on many variables but...

This is the second part of this post about being a happy expat in Italy. You can find the first part here.   6. Don’t be a guest   Even if you don’t want to spend the rest of your life in Italy, act as if you came here to stay. Our brain fatigues too much when we struggle to make a decision so convince it this is home.  ...

Your lifetime dream is to move to Italy and you are opting for the capital? Here are some things you should know before moving to Rome. Cost of life, cleaning, strikes and "sampietrini" cobbles are part of the Roman routine. To make them easier to remember, a Roman hill was associated with each one of them. 1. Cost of life in Rome – Caelian hill Milan and Rome are the...

Last week I was on a plane from Chisinau to Rome. A lady from Southern Italy said Eastern-European women were beautiful, but they never seemed to smile. They looked as if they had an icicle inside. This is a recurrent observation of westerners traveling east. It happens because our culture influences our way of smiling.   Why is smile culture-related? Smiling is one of the basic acts of non-verbal communication....