Escape to Isolatos: Notes on Curated Remoteness

There is a recognizable Italian vacation subculture: the summer Greek island escape whose value increases slightly when the island is less obvious, the route is more complicated, and the story requires a flowchart involving an airport, taxis, ferries, and perhaps a night in Piraeus. This post is about a contradiction that exists during that vacation. 

The desired vacation we are talking about here is presented as an escape from ordinary life. Yet it unfolds during the most synchronized moment of the Italian calendar, clustered around Ferragosto and the August shutdown. It is an escape performed almost collectively. Offices close, cities partially empty, and people disperse toward beaches, mountains, and islands on roughly the same timetable. 

Enjoying sunset on the island of Isolatos.

The recurring conversation

It begins like this: someone mentions where they’re going in August. The name is Greek, melodic, and not immediately placeable. People pull out their phones to see where the place is. The more remote or unknown, the better.

These conversations start in late spring and early summer, hiding months of careful planning. Inevitably, the details include the number of people in the village and the best tavernas in the chosen remote spot. To be clear: the fewer the better for both.

The central idea isn’t simply escapism but a curated remoteness: getting away, but in a culturally legible way that can be planned, narrated, and appreciated by others who understand the code. The logistical difficulty of the Greek vacation doesn’t undermine the escape. It authenticates it. This is a small fraction of Italians, but something we have noticed, likely tied to the socioeconomic circles we circulate in.

We confess to falling prey at times to this desire too. We want curated remoteness, but also authentic experience and connection to people and places — even if the connection is just with someone changing the sheets or serving us moussaka.

To further point the finger back at ourselves: we recently spent upwards of six hours planning a possible Greek-island getaway, all the while thinking about remoteness. (We won’t tell you which island...because we don’t want y’all to be there.)

A direct flight to a large island is useful. But a flight to Athens, a transfer to Piraeus, a ferry, and then perhaps another ferry to a smaller island can feel more like an achievement. You have not merely booked a beach holiday. You have discovered a place. The route becomes part of the story told before departure and again after returning.

There is also a mild form of distinction involved in all this. Mykonos is too obvious. Santorini is beautiful but compromised by the fact that everyone has heard of it. The ideal island is recognizable to the initiated but unfamiliar to at least some people around the dinner table. Its obscurity is a feature and the island name itself becomes a credential.

At dinner

As we were writing this, we went for dinner up on the Bergamo walls. Every summer, temporary venues pop up on the old city walls serving simple dishes with great views. At dinner, the 50+ group lamented modern travel: Too much is known; there are too many images of what to expect and what to do. They waxed fondly of times with just paper maps and hope to see something.

This is the same group who often talks about what we have called curated remoteness. Maybe the search is a reaction to modern travel, a need to recreate what it used to be like.

Some numbers

Ferragosto is a public holiday on August 15. The long August shutdown is a strong workplace and social convention that varies by industry, employer, and family situation, but nonetheless is powerful in Italy. ISTAT data show August as the central month of Italian summer tourism: in the third quarter of 2025, 39.3 percent of tourist nights in Italy fell in August, more than in July or September, and domestic tourists accounted for 53.3 percent of August stays. Those figures concern tourism within Italy, not Italian departures for Greece, but they support the broader idea of a synchronized vacation calendar.

According to the Bank of Greece, Greece received about 40.7 million inbound travelers in 2024. Just over 2.0 million came from Italy, an increase of 10 percent over 2023. That puts Italians at roughly 5 percent of all inbound travelers. In that year, Italian visitors generated about €1.23 billion in receipts, or roughly 5.7 percent of Greece’s total tourism receipts. Italy trails larger markets such as Germany and the United Kingdom, but it is plainly one of Greece’s important source markets.

The Italian data tell a similar story from the other direction. Banca d’Italia counted about 1.6 million Italian trips to Greece in 2024. Greece ranked sixth among foreign destinations by Italian spending, after Spain, the United States, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Italians spent about €1.37 billion there. Greece accounted for 2.6 percent of Italian outbound trips but 4.2 percent of outbound spending.

Greece is not merely an archipelago awaiting Italians in linen shirts looking for a slice of remoteness. Some visitors take package holidays to Rhodes, Crete, or Corfu. Some arrive on cruise ships and spend a few hours in Santorini or Mykonos. Some visit Athens, Thessaloniki, or the mainland. Some are Greeks returning to islands they have visited for years. The search for the slightly obscure island reached by a sequence of conveyances is real, but it belongs to a segment of travelers rather than everyone.

Italians are not the dominant visitors to Greece, but they are not a negligible group either.

Homegrown

We suspect the idea of curated remoteness is much larger than Italy. It applies to countries with a certain wealth and vacation mentality. But perhaps the desire is more accentuated here because Italy has so many beaches, islands, and summer spots. In 2017 post Abbronzatissima: Notes on the Allure of the Suntan in Italy, we wrote that Italy is surrounded by so much sea, it must compel Italians to seek it out ritualistically every summer, a ritual bordering on obligation.

But Italy’s homegrown abundance of sea and the crowded nature of the experience (Italians and people from elsewhere) make some Italians – our sample – more targeted in their search for remoteness. And that search leads them to Greece. Greece has more islands and more coastline than Italy, especially in the "island-dense, fragmented coastline" sense that matters for the Greek-island vacation idea. Uncharted frontier and new cultivated remoteness.

To be fair, the Italian "system" is set up such that vacation time is highly prescribed: August. Maybe the forced synchronization leads some Italians to look farther afield so as not to end up on a beach with other Italians.

We, on the other hand, have the flexibility to take vacations in different parts of the year. Italians are often perplexed when we tell them we are staying put for July and August, enjoying our adopted city, and not the sea or the mountains. We’ll take a vacation in the fall.

In the 2024 post Why do we travel?, we mused about why we travel at all. In our case, over the years the "why" has changed. Perhaps the observations in this post are just a passing phase for the group of friends we hang with.

Or maybe we are overthinking this: all this analysis is for naught and an Italian taking a vacation on a remote Greek island simply wants to get away from it all, Italy and their co-nationals. And that’s all.  

Happy summer vacation!  

Above Genoa: A Short Hike Over A Vertical City

We spent four days in Genoa in mid-March. The main post is here: Genoa Weekend. One highlight of the visit was a short hike that stitched together two of Genoa’s hillside transport lines—the Granarola and the Righi funiculars—to give one of the best views of the city.

   

Left: View from top of Granarola Funicular station in Genoa, Italy.
Center left: The Granarola Funicular car, bottom station.
Center right: The Righi Funicular arrives in the top station.

Right: Tracks for this hike between Granarola and Righi top stations.

Overview

Length: ~5.6 km
Duration: ~1.5 hours (top of funicular to top of funicular)
Elevation gain: ~221 m
Location: Genoa, Italy

Notes

On a gray Sunday morning,  we took the Granarolo funicular up into the hills above the city. The original idea was simple: ride up, wander a bit, and then take the same funicular back down.

Instead, we ended up walking along hillside roads and trails across the ridge until we reached the Righi funicular, which we used to descend back toward the center. Most of the walking time was spent on the percorso ginnico (gymnastic course) as labeled on maps. It’s approximately an isoline that leads to the Righi top station.

The walk itself isn’t dramatic in the Alpine sense. There are houses, gardens, small streets, and patches of trail. But the perspective is what makes it memorable.

At one moment you feel like you are in a quiet hillside village. Then you turn a corner, and the entire city appears below you—the port, the old center, and the Ligurian Sea beyond.

Genoa looks almost like a relief map from above.

After descending on the Righi funicular, we returned to the center for lunch, coffee, and something sweet before catching the train home.

It was a fitting end to a trip that combined wandering streets, riding strange elevators, and briefly escaping the city by walking above it all.
 

  

Left: Granarola Funicular top station, Genoa Italy.
Center: Gardens above Genoa center.

Right: The Righi Funicular descending into the city.

   

Left and center left: Percorso Ginnico in Parco delle Mura above Genoa.

Center right: A trail above Genoa.

Right: Salita di Granarola.

  

Left: In the hills above Genoa, a polveriera (gun powder storage).

Center: Trail Genoa in Parco delle Mura

Right: View northwest toward Santuario di Nostra Signora della Guardia.

Studying for the Patente and Learning the Language of Road Signs

Road Signs as a Language ~ The Vienna Moment ~ Sign History Timeline 

~ Why Italy’s Road Signs Feel So Chatty ~ Words vs. Pictures: Europe and the United States

~ How Many Signs Are We Talking About? ~ Reading the Street Differently

 

Studying for an Italian driver's license (patente) has introduced us to an unexpected new language: the language of road signs. What once looked like visual clutter—triangles, circles, arrows, and the occasional startled deer—turns out to be a carefully structured system with grammar, vocabulary, and very precise meanings. The deeper we go into the study materials, the more we realize that Europe’s road signs aren’t random at all. They are part of an international visual language born from a 1968 treaty in Vienna, designed so that a driver from Milan, Munich, or Marseille could read the road the same way.

Once you start noticing this, every signpost becomes a small lesson in translation.

Recently, we’ve been walking up in Bergamo’s Città Alta with a slightly different goal than most visitors. Tourists arrive looking for churches, frescoes, and views over the Lombard plain. We arrive hunting for road signs. A narrow street might reveal a perfect little stack: a red circle announcing a restriction, followed by two or three smaller plates explaining who the rule applies to and when. While others are admiring Romanesque façades, we find ourselves studying metal rectangles attached to poles and quietly trying to decode their syntax.

Road Signs as a Language

Like any language, road signs in Italy have a kind of grammar. Once you start studying them, patterns emerge.

• Shapes signal the type of statement. Triangles warn about hazards ahead. Circles regulate behavior—either prohibiting or requiring something. Rectangles generally provide information.
• Colors provide tone. Red usually signals prohibition or danger. Blue often indicates required actions or services. Yellow typically marks temporary situations such as construction.
• Supplemental plates—those small rectangles stacked underneath the main sign—act like modifiers in a sentence. They add conditions: times, exceptions, vehicle types, or directions.

Seen this way, a typical Italian signpost starts to look less like clutter and more like a sentence diagram. The main sign delivers the core message, and the smaller plates underneath modify the meaning. What once felt chaotic starts to feel almost grammatical.

Seen another way, many Italian signposts resemble a little piece of syntax. A pole becomes a vertical sentence:

Main clause (the primary sign) + modifier (time restriction) + modifier (vehicle type) + exception (residents, deliveries, etc.)

You begin to read them the way you might parse a sentence in a grammar exercise: first the main statement, then the qualifiers. That chaotic stack of metal plates begins to feel surprisingly structured.

And that realization leads to a bigger question: where did this visual language come from?

The Vienna Moment: 1968 and the Birth of the Modern Road Signs

The system most of Europe uses today traces back to the 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals. The goal of the convention was simple: make road signs understandable across borders. By the 1960s, car travel had exploded and European drivers were regularly crossing national boundaries. A French driver entering Italy or Austria might encounter completely different signage systems, often relying on text in unfamiliar languages.

The Vienna Convention attempted to solve this by standardizing the basic grammar of road signs. Shapes, colors, and symbols were assigned consistent meanings so that a driver could understand a sign even without reading a word. A red circle generally indicates prohibition. A red triangle warns of danger ahead. Blue signs indicate obligations or services. The idea was to shift road communication away from language and toward universally recognizable symbols.

Today most European countries follow this system, including Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and many others. Once you start noticing it, you realize the remarkable effect of the convention: a driver can move across thousands of kilometers and still understand the road’s visual language.

Of course, not every country signed on. The United States, for example, relies on its own standard, the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD), which historically favors text-based instructions like "No Left Turn" or "Wrong Way." That difference becomes obvious when you compare American signs to their European counterparts—one reads like a sentence, the other like a pictogram.

For someone studying for the Italian license (patente), this historical footnote becomes surprisingly practical. What you are really learning is not just Italy’s road rules, but a shared visual vocabulary that stretches across much of Europe.

Sign History Timeline

1909 — First international road sign agreement

The Paris Convention on Road Traffic introduces the first attempt to standardize road signs internationally. Only a small set of four warning signs are agreed upon (such as bumps, curves, railroad crossings, and intersections), but it establishes the idea that drivers should be able to recognize signs across borders.

1935 — United States standardizes road signs

The first edition of the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) is published in the United States, creating a national standard for traffic signs, signals, and road markings.

1949 — Early international attempt

The Geneva Convention on Road Signs and Signals attempts to harmonize signage internationally, but adoption is uneven and many countries continue using different systems.

1968 — The Vienna Convention

The Vienna Convention on Road Signs and Signals establishes the modern symbol-based system used across most of Europe. Shapes, colors, and pictograms are standardized so drivers can understand signs regardless of language.

Today, thanks to these efforts, much of Europe shares a common visual vocabulary for the road. A driver can cross borders—from Italy to Austria to Germany—and still read the road almost instinctively.

The Vienna Convention defines the grammar of European road signs, but each country still speaks the language with its own accent. Italy’s ZTL signs, driveway permits (passo carrabile), and local traffic zones are good examples of how national systems layer their own rules onto the shared visual vocabulary.

Why Italy’s Road Signs Feel So Chatty

If the Vienna Convention established the grammar of modern road signs, Italy sometimes feels like the place where that grammar gets… enthusiastically used. Spend time walking or driving through an Italian town and you quickly encounter the phenomenon of the sign stack: a pole with several plates layered underneath the main sign.

A typical example might look like this:

• No entry
• Except residents
• Except deliveries
• Between certain hours
• For vehicles under a specific weight

Each additional plate modifies the rule above it. By the time you reach the bottom of the stack, the sign has effectively become a small paragraph of traffic law.

This density is not accidental. Italy’s urban landscape is unusually layered. Many streets in historic centers were laid out centuries before cars existed. Modern traffic rules—parking zones, delivery windows, pedestrian protections, resident permits, and tourist access—have all been added onto streets that were originally designed for horses, carts, and pedestrians. The result is a regulatory palimpsest where each generation adds another plate to the signpost.

What initially looks like bureaucratic overcommunication is often simply the city explaining how to make a medieval street work in the 21st century.

Words vs. Pictures: Europe and the United States

Another thing you notice once you start studying road signs is how different the European system feels compared to the American one.

In Europe, thanks largely to the Vienna Convention, the system leans heavily on pictograms. A driver sees symbols—arrows, bicycles, falling rocks, deer—and interprets them visually. The goal is immediate recognition regardless of language.

The United States took a different path. American signage developed under the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) and historically relied more on written instructions. Signs often spell things out directly: "No Left Turn," "Wrong Way," or "Do Not Enter."

Both systems work, but they communicate differently. American signs read like short sentences. European signs behave more like icons in a visual language.

For someone studying for the Italian patente, this difference becomes clear very quickly. The challenge isn’t memorizing phrases. It’s learning to read a symbolic vocabulary—and once you do, you begin to see the road itself as a kind of text written in shapes, colors, and stacked modifiers.

How Many Signs Are We Talking About?

All of this raises an obvious question: does Italy actually have more road signs than other countries, or does it simply feel that way?

Precise numbers are difficult to find because traffic authorities usually track signs as infrastructure assets rather than reporting them per kilometer of road. Still, transportation studies and municipal inventories give a rough sense of scale.

On urban roads in Europe, you might expect somewhere between 10 and 20 signs per kilometer, depending on the complexity of the street network. Countries such as France and Germany tend to fall within that range. The United States is often somewhat lower, partly because its road networks are newer, wider, and less layered with restrictions.

Italy—especially in historic cities—often pushes toward the upper end of the spectrum. Narrow medieval streets, pedestrian zones, resident parking rules, delivery windows, and vehicle restrictions all require additional signage. Each exception or condition usually appears as another plate attached beneath the main sign.

The result is not necessarily more rules than elsewhere, but rather more visible explanations of those rules. A single intersection in a historic Italian center might display a full stack of signs describing who can enter, when, and under what conditions.

Once you start studying for the patente, these stacks stop looking like bureaucratic noise and start looking like something else entirely: a dense but readable grammar of how the street is supposed to work.

Reading the Street Differently

Studying for the patente has changed how we look at Italian streets. What once felt like visual overload, with poles crowded with signs and small metal plates, now feels oddly reassuring. The system isn’t haphazard. There is logic behind it, and even a bit of European diplomacy.

Those circles, triangles, and pictograms are part of a shared agreement stretching across the continent. The same visual language that guides a driver through Bergamo or Bologna can also guide that driver through Innsbruck or Lyon. It’s a quiet form of European integration, embedded not in speeches or treaties we read about in the news, but in the everyday choreography of traffic.

And the density of signs that once felt excessive starts to look different as well. Each additional plate is a clue about the place you’re in: a narrow street protecting pedestrians, a delivery window negotiated with local shopkeepers, a resident permit that reflects the rhythms of neighborhood life. What looks at first like clutter is often simply the visible record of a city balancing many interests at once.

In that sense, a crowded Italian signpost is a small historical document. It reflects layers of time—medieval streets, modern cars, tourism, and local life—all negotiated through a few shapes, colors, and carefully stacked rules.

Once you begin to read them that way, the signs no longer feel chatty or chaotic. They feel expressive—and, strangely enough, a little elegant.

A Field Guide to Italian Hotel Noises

Notes from a Noise‑Sensitive Traveler in the Dolomites


 

Left: The Gasthaus Sonzalaut (fictional) has lots of sounds in store for you! Right: Two hollow bricks (laterizi forati) broadcasting noise.

There is a particular kind of promise you hear at hotel check‑in across Italy, a promise delivered with the serene confidence of someone who has never once been woken by a midnight flush. "Tranquillità assoluta," they say, sliding the keycard across the counter. "Very quiet. No parties. No traffic. You'll sleep wonderfully."

And you want to believe them. You really do. Especially after a long day of alpine switchbacks, legs humming, lungs full of pine‑scented air, and the kind of wholesome exhaustion that should lead directly to deep, restorative sleep.

But then you enter the room, admire the carved wood trim, the tasteful textiles, the view of the Dolomites glowing pink in the evening light and you forget, briefly, that Italian buildings have a secret. A structural paradox. A national acoustic personality.

These buildings look like fortresses, but they sound like megaphones.

This guide is for those of us who hear everything — the noise‑adverse, the sensitive, the ones who can identify a toilet flush by floor and approximate pipe diameter. It is a taxonomy of the creatures that inhabit the interior soundscape of even the nicest Italian hotels, especially those built with the ubiquitous laterizi forati — hollow clay bricks prized for thermal efficiency and seismic friendliness, but acoustically about as private as a confession shouted into a rain gutter.

A recent stay in Arabba, Italy for a ski vacation confirmed our field notes and pushed us to publish to other noise naturalists. We stayed in room 202.

Let's begin.

1. The Alpine Flush (Toiletus alpinis)

Signature call: A sudden, cascading roar that begins faintly and ends intimately.

The Alpine Flush is the first species you will encounter, often within minutes of settling into your room. It travels vertically through the building's plumbing shafts, which are typically lined with hollow bricks that behave like resonant chambers. The result is a sound that begins three floors above you and ends as if someone has emptied a bucket directly into your pillow.

For the noise‑sensitive listener, the Alpine Flush is a reminder that your sleep is not your own. It belongs to the collective. It belongs to the group hours.

2. The Stairwell Stomper (Homo escalante)

Signature call: A rhythmic thudding, punctuated by boot squeaks and occasional sighs of exertion.

Concrete stairwells in Italian hotels are built with admirable structural integrity and absolutely no acoustic dampening. They function as vertical amphitheaters, broadcasting every footstep with the clarity of a percussion solo.

The Stomper is most active in the early morning, often around 6:45, when the first wave of hikers or skiers descends for breakfast. Sensitive listeners will note the Doppler effect as the sound approaches, peaks, and recedes — a sonic topography as predictable as sunrise.

3. The Cupboard Slammer (Armadius impetuosi)

Signature call: A sharp, resonant WHAM that reverberates through shared walls.

Cupboards in Italian hotels are often built into the wall — a charming design choice that unfortunately turns them into acoustic transmitters. When your neighbor closes their wardrobe, the sound travels through the laterizi forati with the enthusiasm of a cymbal crash.

For the noise‑adverse, the Cupboard Slammer is a test of the nervous system. You may find yourself bracing for the next impact, like a seismologist anticipating aftershocks. So relaxing, right?

4. The Corridor Conversationalist (Vocalis corridori)

Signature call: Whispered dialogue that somehow registers at full volume.

Corridors in Alpine hotels are often echo‑friendly. The Conversationalist moves slowly, narrating their life in what they believe is a whisper. Sensitive listeners know better. These whispers bounce, multiply, and slip under your door like curious spirits.

This species is particularly dangerous because it often appears during the sacred window between 10 PM and 11 PM — the hour when the building's internal noise is supposed to be winding down. Their presence signals that group hours have not yet begun.

5. The Chair Drag (Scrapius mobilis)

Signature call: A prolonged scraping howl, reminiscent of a distressed sea creature.

Tile floors and other hard surfaces (easy to clean!) are a staple of Italian hospitality, especially in the mountains. Felt pads are not. The result is a sound that begins next to, above you, or below you and travels through the concrete structure with surprising fidelity.

For the noise‑sensitive traveler, the Chair Drag is a reminder that every moment of your stay is a sonic event about to happen. You will hear every repositioned chair, every enthusiastic scoot, every child who decides to push their seat back with the full force of their body weight.

6. The Group Hours Phenomenon (Circadian communalis)

Signature call: Blessed silence, but only when everyone else has surrendered to sleep.

This is the most mysterious and powerful force in the Italian hotel ecosystem. It is not a creature but a collective behavior. When the last cupboard slams, the final flush echoes, and the final corridor whisper fades, the building enters a state of temporary peace. Maybe, just maybe between 11 pm and 6 am if you are lucky.

Sensitive listeners experience this as a kind of truce — a fragile, communal agreement that lasts until the first early riser breaks it with a decisive stomp.

7. The Rifugio Chorus (Snorus communalis)

Signature call: A polyphonic blend of snoring, zippering, rustling, and headlamp clicks.

In a rifugio (very high in the mountains as in you had to walk there), noise is expected. It is part of the social contract. You sleep in a room with twenty strangers, and you accept that you will hear every breath, every rustle, every midnight bathroom trip.

For the noise‑sensitive traveler, the irony is sharp: the rifugio, with all its communal chaos, feels more honest than the luxury hotel. At least it doesn't pretend.

8. The Heavy‑Footed Wanderer (Pedestris plumbeus)

Signature call: A slow, ponderous thudding that suggests the presence of ankle weights, lead‑lined slippers, or a personal gravitational field.

Certainly the most anger, scorn and lost hours are dedicated to this: a creature with particular kind of footstep that defies physics. You hear it from your room — a rhythmic, seismic thump that seems impossible for a human body to produce. You imagine a linebacker. A mountaineer wearing crampons indoors. A person who has replaced their tibias with rebar.

But no. It is always a perfectly ordinary guest, walking with the density of a neutron star.

The Heavy‑Footed Wanderer is most active during the liminal hours: the moment you lie down, the moment you begin to drift, the moment you think, finally, the building is quiet. That is when the thudding begins. Back and forth. Back and forth. A migration pattern known only to them.

Sensitive listeners experience this as a kind of existential riddle. How many times must one cross a hotel room in a single evening? Is it good for their bones? Are they pacing? Practicing? Searching for something? Or is this simply their natural gait? A personal geology expressed through movement?

The tragedy is that the building amplifies every step. Concrete slabs transmit impact noise with the enthusiasm of a drumhead. Each footfall becomes a small tectonic event, a reminder that you are living inside someone else's choreography.

For the noise‑adverse traveler, the Heavy‑Footed Wanderer could be be perceived as oblivious but certainly not as malicious. They are simply unaware that their footsteps are being broadcast live into your consciousness. But awareness does not soften the impact. You lie there, counting the steps, mapping the room, imagining the path they are tracing. You create a private cartography of someone else's restlessness.

9. The Architectural Paradox (Structura paradossa)

Signature call: Silence outside, cacophony inside.

Italian hotels, especially in the Alps, are built with materials that prioritize warmth, speed of construction, and seismic safety. Chief among them are (likely) laterizi forati, hollow clay bricks prized for their thermal insulation and structural flexibility. But acoustically, they behave like perforated drums. Concrete frames amplify impact noise, and the brick cavities carry sound with startling clarity.

The word laterizi comes from Latin latericius, meaning "made of bricks," and forati means "perforated." These bricks are everywhere in Italy, from Milanese apartment blocks to alpine lodgings. They're warm, practical, and structurally sound. But for the noise-sensitive traveler, they're a paradox: a wall that keeps out the cold but lets in the neighbor's midnight pacing.

We've noticed that Italians are sensitive to cold, so perhaps warmth matters more than silence in construction? Or a whole generation of Italians have grown up with these as "normal" sounds of a hotel?

For the noise‑adverse traveler, this paradox becomes a kind of existential riddle: How can a building look so solid and sound so porous?

A laterizio forato - happily passing along sound.

Closing Notes for the Sensitive Listener

If you are noise‑adverse, traveling in Italy requires a certain philosophical flexibility. You learn to accept that silence is not a given but a communal achievement. You learn that "quiet" means "no external noise," not "no internal noise." You learn that the architecture is warm, charming, and deeply human but that humanity is loud.

But you also learn to laugh about it. To observe the acoustic fauna with the curiosity of a naturalist and the resignation of someone who knows they will be awake at 6:45 when the first boots hit the stairs. And in the end, perhaps that is the true Travelmarx lesson: Noise is part of the story, and the sensitive listener hears the whole thing.

And yes, don't forget your best noise-cancelling headphones.

We've written about noise on and off in the years – I guess you can say we are noise cranks – and this won't be the last time we are writing on noise. Some past posts:

• The Noise on the Walls: Urban Static
• You Know It When You Hear It
• Noise and Nuisance; Bronzino to Babbage
• Schopenhauer, On Noise

Living the Dream (Beta)

 

Living the Dream™ app inputs (left) and output (right). The app can never be built.

A friend said to us once, "You two are living the dream!" when she found out we were going to live in Italy. It was meant kindly, and we took it that way. Still, the phrase gave us pause. Whose dream exactly? And what did we do to enable this consciously or unconsciously? 

It’s a curious statement, because it tells us as much about the person who says it as it does about our lives here. Their imagined Italy streams in (olive trees, late-afternoon glow, maybe a nonna with an apron and wooden spoon), while our actual Italy bustles around us: conversations, waiting in line at the post office, a walk to a Sunday dinner at a trattoria, and the day-to-day texture that never shows up on postcards.

None of this is bad. It’s just more complicated than the dream phrase suggests. And so, to understand this dreamy projection, we imagined building an app.

The App

We would call it Living the Dream™. The idea is that you open the app and dial in your ideal life in Italy as if tuning an old stereo: financial comfort, preferred location, weather, community, and expectations. A few simple questions, press “Generate Dream”, and eccola!

But what comes out of the app may surprise you.

Dream Inputs

Financial Situation
Settings:

• Comfortable enough to buy an aperitivo once a week.
• Rent is manageable.
• Own a crumbling-yet-charming palazzo.
• Able to renovate a medieval tower.

Impact: 3%. Turns out money helps, but only to a certain point.

Locale Selector
Settings:

• Hilltop village (but not the one with 1-euro houses).
• Periphery of a city with bars on lower windows.
• Urban palazzo with questionable plumbing.
• Near a strong Wi-Fi signal.
• Anywhere but where I am now.

Impact: 7%. After three weeks, any place reveals its traffic, noise, or neighbor who drills at 7 a.m.


Bureaucracy Tolerance
Settings:

• Scared of paper cuts.
• Forms induce hives.
• You queue with impatience.
• Zen monk of the queue.

Impact: highly erratic. Occasionally transcendental.


Community & Belonging
Settings:

• You know where the grocery store is.
• You know the name and birthday of the barista in the café you frequent.
• People beep and wave at you when you are walking on the street.
• You are invited to family functions.
• You find yourself showing up to funerals with hesitation.

Impact: 22%. A fact we’ve rediscovered many times and is often underestimated.


Expectations Knob
Settings:

• Instagram Dream
• Aspirational Mood Board
• Average Tuesday Realism

Impact: Unknown. Expectations are a setting that never stays put.


Weather Sentiment
Settings:

• You need to wear sunglasses every day.
• You want winter only long enough to justify a new coat.
• You function best with moody, overcast skies.
• You prefer weather that is not actively trying to prove a point.

Impact: 5%. Meteorology resists optimization. The weather doesn’t care about your settings.


Hidden Setting: Presence

Invisible to the user. Adjusted by sleep, good walks, friendships, and noticing small joys.

Impact: Consistently the greatest.

The Unexpected Output

After dialing your settings and pressing “Generate Dream”, you might anticipate a score of feasibility for your dream, the name of a town to start your dream, or something to get you going. But instead, the app – stubbornly or wisely – pauses for a moment and gives it output.

If you are not living in Italy: the output is the moment that convinced you the dream was worth pursuing in the first place. A small, ordinary scene that didn’t look like much at the time, but lodged itself somewhere deeper and quietly refused to let go. A reminder.

If you are already living in Italy: the output is something like this: "You were living the dream last Sunday at 1:14 p.m.”

No score. No city recommendation. Just a moment.

The app has decided that the dream is not settings. It’s an instance. A flash. Something lived but rarely labeled. A moment lived whether you are. A moment that is one of many on your path to achieving the dream.

Whose Dream Is It, Really?

When someone says, "You’re living the dream," we hear it differently now. It’s not about perfection or escape. It’s about the very human instinct to imagine that somewhere else—or someone else—has cracked the code.

But our fictional app insists otherwise: There is no code to crack. Your dream isn’t built from optimized parameters. It’s assembled from moments you noticed. It's created in real time, without settings, and often without realizing you have created it until much later.

And that friend who first told us we were living the dream? We hear her differently now. She’s someone who has gone after and realized many of her own dreams—raising a family, buying houses with potential and turning them into beautiful homes, even moving to Palm Springs for a while before returning to Seattle. Maybe her words weren’t a projection at all, but encouragement from someone who recognizes a familiar arc in someone else’s story.

At the same time, Italians sometimes look at us with disbelief. Why would you choose to live here they ask. Their dreams often point westward, toward the United States; ours pointed eastward, toward Italy. It’s a reminder that dreams are always relative, shaped by circumstances, culture, history, and whatever context we happen to be standing in.

An app could never truly measure or output a dream. Our app won’t ever have an official release version.

Asking for Advice About Italy: A Few Thoughts

A concierge for your Italy requests.

Every year, we receive a few emails asking for advice about traveling in Italy. The pattern goes like this: “We’re coming to Italy. Any ideas?” Sometimes there’s a little more detail—dates, a city or two—but often, that’s about it. We usually respond because we love Italy and want to share what we’ve learned. And yes, sometimes we get wonderful thank-yous and even follow-up stories. Those make our day. Other times, the response is…silence. That’s okay, but it makes us reflect on what works and what doesn’t when giving advice.

This post is a reflection on what it means to ask for advice—and give it—in a way that feels good for both sides.

Living in Italy ≠ Free Travel Concierge

Just because we live here doesn’t mean we’re a free resource for planning your trip. We’re not a travel agency. We’re not paid consultants. We’re friends (or acquaintances) who happen to know Italy well. When we respond, it’s because we care, but that doesn’t mean the process is effortless.

Do Your Homework First

Before you reach out, spend some time thinking about what you want. Italy is not one thing—it’s many things: art cities, mountains, beaches, food regions, islands, wine country. A vague “any ideas?” is impossible to answer well. Ask yourself: what kind of experience do you want? 

• Food-focused? Art and history? Nature? Relaxation?
• How much time do you have? Two weeks? Five days?
• Any constraints? Mobility issues? Budget? Season?
• What have you loved in past trips? That helps us suggest similar places.

The more specific you are, the better the advice you’ll get. 😊

Italy Is Not a Monolith

Many requests come wrapped in romantic notions of Italy, notions often shaped by movies, Instagram, or an American lens. Rolling Tuscan hills, sun-drenched piazzas, and leisurely lunches are real, but they’re not everywhere. Northern Italy is different from Southern Italy. Cities differ from countryside. Gray industrial corridors exist alongside green vineyards. We often feel the need to gently adjust expectations without shattering someone’s dream. That balancing act, being truthful yet tactful, takes time and care.

The Art of Responding

We’ve learned something about ourselves too. Sometimes our replies are too much. Too detailed. Too many options. We want to be helpful, but the result can feel overwhelming. It’s like handing someone a 10-course menu when they just wanted a snack. Maybe that’s why some people never reply? Point taken. There’s an art to responding that’s measured, and we’re still learning it.

Also, to be learned: ask questions back if the request is not specific enough. Simple enough, right?

Say Thank You

This seems obvious, but… say thank you if you receive advice. Even if you don’t use the suggestions. Even if your plans change. A simple acknowledgment goes a long way.

Why This Matters

When we write back, we’re not just listing tourist sites. We’re thinking about logistics, distances, timing, and what might make your trip special. We’re pulling from years of experience, mistakes, and discoveries. It’s personal. So, when the response disappears into the void, we feel deflated.

In a previous post Visitors to Bergamo – The Things We Wish They Would Notice, we wrote about what we wish visitors to Bergamo would notice in the moment. This post deals with the before part: what we wish people would notice when asking for advice before arriving. It’s not about being perfect; it’s about being considerate.

So, if you’re planning a trip and want advice:

• Do some homework first.
• Be specific.
• Respect the time someone spends helping you.
• Understand that Italy is diverse and your dream may need adjusting.
• And please at least acknowledge you received the info, if not a thank you.

We love sharing Italy. We just want the exchange to feel like a conversation, not a transaction.

Transplants: Notes on Aging and Living Abroad

Overview ~ Accent ~ Cultural cues ~ Looked at and overlooked ~

Né pesce né pollame ~ Places act like time ~ In closing - for now

We’re coming up on ten years in Italy—a decade of new words, new rituals, and new ways of being. In that time, we’ve learned how to navigate the health care system, decode the mysteries of Italian bureaucracy, and even order a coffee without causing a scene.

And yet, disorientation still finds us. We are not quite Italian, but slowly less American. Not quite fluent in Italian yet sometimes reaching for English words we’ve forgotten. We live in the in‑between, and we love it. That middle ground keeps us curious, keeps us younger, and helps us approach situations with fresh eyes.

Over the years, we’ve realized that living abroad has more than a few parallels with getting older. Both involve a slow shedding of certainty, a recalibration of identity, and a humbling encounter with the limits of your own understanding. Both ask you to be patient with yourself, to laugh when you miss the joke, and to keep showing up even when you’re not sure how.

This post is about those parallels—how moving abroad and getting older mirror each other. But before we begin, we want to acknowledge that our story is one of privilege. We chose Italy, supported by passports, savings, and the safety of knowing we could always return. For many, migration is not a choice but a necessity—an act of survival rather than curiosity. Our reflections are not meant to equate the two, but simply to share what we’ve learned from our own, far easier journey.

Accent

We like to imagine our American accent has softened over the years, but the truth is, it hasn’t. It clings to us, unmistakable, a kind of passport we carry in our very voices. It marks us as outsiders, though not always in a bad way. Aging does something similar: your voice shifts, thins, or weakens, and suddenly people treat you differently, as if volume or clarity were the same as comprehension. In both cases—living abroad or growing older—others may slow their speech, raise their voices, or simplify their words, assuming you can’t quite keep up.

Then there are the gaps. In Italian, we often know exactly what we want to say, but the word slips away at the crucial moment. What comes instead is a pause, a gesture, a workaround. It’s not so different from the lapses of memory that come with age: the name on the tip of your tongue, the phrase that refuses to surface.

At first, we bristled when our “Ciao” was met with a cheerful “Hi.” How could they know, so quickly, that we weren’t Italian? It felt like failure, as if our accent betrayed us before we’d even begun. But over time, we reframed it. Those exchanges became opportunities to help others practice their English, and we discovered that once conversations moved beyond pleasantries, they almost always circled back to Italian. What once felt like a wall became a doorway.

Cultural cues

In Italy, we sometimes miss the joke. Humor is slippery as it depends on shared history, on references you don’t yet have. In a new culture, the punchline can sail past you just as an older person might miss a cultural reference in their own language. Each missed cue becomes a small research project, a chance to learn the context and catch it next time.

We were reminded of this long before moving abroad. On a Christmas road trip from Seattle to San Francisco in 2012, we stopped at a Dutch Bros drive‑thru. The barista asked something perfectly ordinary, but her phrasing and expressions threw us. After a few confused “huhs,” we finally understood. For a moment, we felt like strangers in our own country. From that day, we joked that you could feel foreign anywhere, even at home.

Italy has only deepened that lesson. We’ve had to learn the choreography of greetings, the etiquette of queues, the subtle rules about when to address someone formally and when not to. Aging brings a similar recalibration. The rules you grew up with—about gender, technology, etiquette—shift beneath your feet. You adapt, or you don’t. Either way, you notice. In both cases, you find yourself in new terrain, learning how to belong all over again.

Looked at and overlooked

In a past blog post The Expat Life – Thoughts and Suggestions for Better Terminology, we suggested “transplant” as a better word than expat. No one has taken us up on it yet, but the metaphor still feels right. Living abroad is like a long hike: you've transplanted yourself somewhere else, you’re exploring, awed by what you find, and constantly aware of the terrain beneath your feet.

On that hike, we are sometimes hyper‑visible and sometimes invisible. Hyper‑visible because we’re easy to spot—our pace (always too fast), our clothes, our names, the subtle cues that mark us as not‑quite‑Italian. Cars beep at us on the street, and we turn to each other asking, “Who was that?” They recognize us, but we don’t recognize them. Around here, anonymity is rare; stepping outside almost guarantees at least two encounters before reaching the corner. It can be inconvenient when you’re in a rush, but mostly it’s a joy.

And then there are the moments of invisibility. A driver asks for directions, but as soon as we answer, our accent betrays us and our advice is dismissed. In conversations with new acquaintances, we’re asked the usual questions—why Bergamo, what brought us here—but once the talk turns to politics, sports, or scandals, the thread slips away. Sometimes we jump in to prove we can follow along; other times we let the pleasantries stand. Either way, the message can feel like you don’t quite belong in the deeper layers of the conversation.

Aging carries the same duality. You’re either fussed over or ignored, depending on the moment. You’re visible when people project assumptions onto you, invisible when they assume you have nothing to add.

And like aging, living abroad often requires asking for help with things that once seemed simple—forms, instructions, even the right word at the right time. The lesson in both cases is humility. You learn to ask. You learn to receive. And in that exchange, you discover a different kind of strength.

Né pesce né pollame

Neither fish nor fowl, we live with one foot planted in each world. There’s no neat percentage that can measure how Italian or how American we feel. Identity shifts like the weather—on some days we lean into our Americanness, on others we find ourselves moving, speaking, even thinking in ways that feel distinctly Italian.

This in‑between space, far from being a liability, has become an advantage. It forces us to stay flexible, to notice, to adapt.

Sometimes that means starting over with things we thought we’d already mastered—earning a driver’s license again, building a credit history from scratch, learning the rules of a new system. There’s a strange grace in being a beginner twice in one lifetime.

Other times, the parallels are so close to our American life that only small adjustments are needed—a tweak in etiquette, a shift in timing, a new rhythm to familiar routines.

And then there are the discoveries: foods that surprise us, rituals that anchor us, pleasures that remind us why we came. These are the gifts of transplanting yourself to another place. But they are also the gifts of aging—of realizing that change, whether chosen or inevitable, keeps reshaping you long after you thought you were fully formed.

Places act like time

In her 2025 essay “Sky Full of Forests,” part of the collection No Straight Road Takes You There: Essays for Uneven Terrain, Rebecca Solnit reflects on the upheaval brought by climate change. She writes: “We are leaving behind our old familiar world whose stability we can remember as a great kindness and entering into a rough new set of circumstances. Like refugees leaving a place, we are leaving a time. What should we carry with us?”

That image—refugees in time—struck us. It captures the disorientation of change that arrives uninvited. You don’t move, but the world around you does. The familiar dissolves, and you find yourself in a new reality without ever packing a bag.

But there’s another kind of shift: when you do move, when you leave your natal country and step into unfamiliar terrain. In that case, you’re not just swept along by change, you initiate it. You choose to disrupt the stability, to trade the known for the unknown.

Both paths lead to transformation. One is passive, the other active. But each raises the same question: what do we carry with us into the new time?

To understand how change shapes us, perhaps we need a metaphor like Einstein’s Twin Paradox. Imagine two twins: Bob and Joe. Bob moves to Italy; Joe stays in their hometown. In physics, the paradox explores time dilation. But here, let’s consider something more personal and let's call it experience dilation: the idea that place, like time, can stretch or compress the way identity evolves.

So, does Bob experience more, less, or the same as Joe, assuming all else is equal? That’s the catch—everything else is never equal. The answer depends entirely on the individuals, their circumstances, and the unpredictable variables of life.

And then there’s the vanity question: does Bob age faster, worn by the stress of adapting to a new culture? Or does he age more slowly, rejuvenated by adventure, lifestyle, the Mediterranean air? Is the living abroad a wrinkle-maker or a wrinkle-smoother?

We ask because we’ve been wondering about our own aging—especially in comparison to friends who never left the country. Has the move helped us age better? We’d like to think so. But without a version of us who stayed behind, there’s no control group to measure against.

At the next reunion, will we look radiant, glowing from a life lived boldly abroad—as one friend calls it, “living the dream”? Or will we show the wear and tear of navigating Italy’s bureaucracies, cultural shifts, and daily challenges? Only time—and perhaps a few candid photos—will tell.

In closing - for now

As we think about how moving abroad has shaped us, we’re also aware that our journey is just one version of migration. As we mentioned in the introduction, others carry heavier burdens, forced to leave homes behind under far harsher conditions. Their courage reframes our own small disorientations. If anything, our experience has taught us to practice humility—for what we don’t yet understand, for what others endure, and for the truth that moving, whether by choice or necessity, reshapes us all.

And so, as we look ahead, we wonder less about whether we are “aging well” and more about whether we are aging openly. Living abroad has taught us that the measure of a life is not in how seamlessly you fit in, but in how willing you are to keep learning, keep laughing, and keep asking for directions when you’re lost.

Perhaps that is the real gift of both transplanting yourself and aging: the chance to be beginners again, to carry humility like a passport, and to discover that belonging is not a fixed destination but a practice renewed each day.

Valtellina Week Hike 5: Alpe Val Poschiavina

Overview ~ Notes ~ Flora ~ Photos

 

 

Top left: Terzo Laghetto di Campagneda - reflections of Mount Disgrazia, clouds and sky.

Top right: The northwest flanks of Pizzo Scalino.

Bottom left: Lakes below Passo di Campagneda.

Bottom right: Tracks for Alpe Val Poschiavina Hike. We went clockwise.

Overview

Length: 19.5 km
Duration: 6.5 hours 
Elevation gain: 665 m
Location: Italy, Lombardy, Valtellina

Notes

In this post, we are on hike 5 of our Valtellina hiking week. Like hike 4, we started and ended at Rifugio Zoia where we were staying for 3 nights. From the rifugio, we walked the 1.5 km to the Alpe Gera Dam, climbed up the dam, and then instead of going on the west side of the basin/lake to get to Rifugio Bignami as in hike 4, we stayed on the east side of the lake to reach Val Alpe Poschiavina.

This hike brings you to the Swiss border at Pass da Cancian. We kept seeing stone markers and finally it dawned on us we were on the border between Italy and Switzerland.

At the Pass da Cancian there is a good view of the Altipiano of Fellaria to the north and a view east into the Poschiavo valley. Just a few days earlier, we were climbing up the Poschiava valley in the Bernina Express.

Continuing from Pass da Cancian to Passo di Campagneda, you arrive at the high point of the hike at 2636 m. From this point on, Monte Disgrazia is always in the distance to the west.

Just below Passo di Campagneda, we met Alice. We spent the previous night together at Zoia but we did not talk to her because she arrived late and bedraggled. She started out from Rifugio Zoia in one direction and us in the other, and we met in the middle. Alice is from Switzerland (Bern canton) and was hiking from Maloja Switzerland to Poschiavo Switzerland, passing through Italy. She was by herself and fully equipped but minus a cell phone. What an inspiration at 80 years old!

Flora

[Asteraceae] Tussilago farfara

[Campanulaceae] Phyteuma sp.


[Caryophyllaceae] Silene acaulis


[Gentianaceae] Gentiana sp.


[Orobanchaceae] Bartsia alpina


[Primulaceae] Primula latifolia


[Primulaceae] Soldanella alpina


[Ranunculaceae] Pulsatilla sp.


[Rosaceae] Dryas octopetala


[Rosaceae] Potentilla sp.


[Thymelaceae] Daphne striata


[Violaceae] Viola biflora

Photos

   

Left: The wooden arch at Passo di Campagneda.

Center left: A marker on the Swiss Italian border near Pass da Cancian.

Center right: A piece of serpentine near Passo di Campagneda.
Right: Santuario Madonna della Pace, Prabello.

  
Left: Look at the reflections on Terzo Laghetto di Campagneda - reflections of Mount Disgrazia, clouds and sky.

Center: Looking north over Alpe Val Poschiavina.

Right: Entering into Alpe Val Poschiavina - with Alpe Gera Dam behind us.

  

Left: Heading toward the Alpe Prabello and Rifugio Cristina

Center: View from Rifugio Cristina, Alpe Prabello.

Right: Houses near Rifugio Ca Runcasch.