The Bittersweet Life

Italy is in lockdown (again), but this time it feels very different. The rules are mostly the same, but the mood on the street is completely changed. The restaurants and many of the shops may be closed, movement may be restricted, but the citizens are rejecting the call not to socialize, and (so far) the authorities have chosen to ignore it.

Aurelio also stops by to chat about why he's fine with Italy's Lockdown 3.0.

**This episode was sponsored by Lingoda—the #1 trusted European language school with very affordable prices. The small online classes, available 24/7, are taught by native-speaking teachers with proven methods and expert-designed curriculums. Participate in a learning sprint to get up to 100% cash back! Use our code BITTERSWEET to get a discount on your deposit. Click here to find out more.

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ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more.

TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on the desktop version of our website.) The show needs your support to continue.

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

So, you've decided you want to move abroad but... where do you start? It's not an easy subject to tackle, so today we've asked an expert. On this week's episode, we sit down with expert expat Jessica Drucker, author of How to Move Abroad and Why it's the Best Thing You'll Do. She's also the host of the Adventure Calls podcast.

We get into the nitty-gritty of how to go about achieving your expat dreams, covering topics such as why you should move abroad, how to budget for your move, how to get your documents in order, how to learn any language, and how to make yourself at home once you get there.

This conversation will help you think through your goal to live abroad, offering practical tips that will turn the idea from simply a dream into a concrete plan for the near future.

**This episode was sponsored by Lingoda—the #1 trusted European language school with very affordable prices. The small online classes, available 24/7, are taught by native-speaking teachers with proven methods and expert-designed curriculums. Participate in a learning sprint to get up to 100% cash back! Use our code BITTERSWEET to get a discount on your deposit. Click here to find out more.

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ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more.

TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on the desktop version of our website.) The show needs your support to continue.

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

Today we celebrate seven years of The Bittersweet Life! To mark this milestone, on this mini-episode we ask each other seven questions, each one inspired by the legendary seven hills of Rome! Listen in and you may just learn something new about us!

**This episode was sponsored by Lingoda—the #1 trusted European language school with very affordable prices. The small online classes, available 24/7, are taught by native-speaking teachers with proven methods and expert-designed curriculums. Participate in a learning sprint to get up to 100% cash back! Use our code BITTERSWEET to get a discount on your deposit. Click here to find out more.

--------------------------------------

ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more.

TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on the desktop version of our website.) The show needs your support to continue.

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

For much of the pandemic, Italy has been keeping their numbers (relatively) under control, and the United States, on the other hand, has seen their numbers climb and climb without an end in sight.

But now the shoe is on the other foot, so it would seem. The vaccination roll-out in the US is actually ahead of schedule, and things are slowly, finally, beginning to turn around, meanwhile most of Italy is back in full lockdown as of today.

We chat about how the situation in Italy is getting worse, while the situation in the US is getting better, as well as why that might be.

**This episode was sponsored by Lingoda—the #1 trusted European language school with very affordable prices. The small online classes, available 24/7, are taught by native-speaking teachers with proven methods and expert-designed curriculums. Participate in a learning sprint to get up to 100% cash back! Use our code BITTERSWEET to get a discount on your deposit. Click here to find out more.

--------------------------------------

ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more.

TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on the desktop version of our website.) The show needs your support to continue.

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

Tiffany looks back on the week that it all changed in Italy—one year ago right now. Did any of us think, a year later, that restrictions, yellow, orange, and red zones, masks and all the rest of it, would still be a part of our lives one year later?

She muses on what was going through our heads at that unprecedented time, what, if anything, we have learned since then, and the ways in which have we've been forever changed. She even listens back to the very first episode we taped about the pandemic, before it was even a pandemic, and when coronavirus was still a new word for most of us.

**This episode was sponsored by Clyde Hill Publishing—partner and publisher for founders, innovators, thinkers, and tinkerers. Check out their upcoming release, I Had No Idea You Were Black, by Ronald Crutcher. Pre-order your copy here.

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ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more.

TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on the desktop version of our website.) The show needs your support to continue.

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

Walking through the halls of a museum like the Uffizi Gallery in Florence—when we're not in the middle of a pandemic, that is—is generally about as artistic an experience as rush hour at Grand Central Station. Florence, a relatively small city, is overwhelmed by the number of tourists who visit it (in a normal year) and almost all of those tourists visit the Uffizi Gallery.

The director of the Gallery is already thinking ahead to when mass tourism inevitably returns to Florence, and he's come up with a brilliant and original idea to prevent the museum (one of the most important in the world) from being overrun with visitors, leading to a less-than-ideal experience for everyone.

Listen to the episode to hear about his daring new idea.

The article mentioned in this episode can be found here.

**This episode was sponsored by Clyde Hill Publishing—partner and publisher for founders, innovators, thinkers, and tinkerers. Check out their upcoming release, I Had No Idea You Were Black, by Ronald Crutcher. Pre-order your copy here.

--------------------------------------

ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more.

TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on the desktop version of our website.) The show needs your support to continue.

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

Katy gets into the nitty-gritty of feedback from her own point of view, digging into her own past as a senior radio producer. Today's mini-episode features part of the conversation that was cut from Monday's full-length episode, an interview with Dr. Therese Huston, author of Let's Talk: Make Effective Feedback Your Superpower. Katy looks back at her former job and wonders: did I give good feedback? Did I give enough feedback at all?

If you haven't listened to Monday's episode, The Art of Feedback (with Therese Huston) yet, make sure you listen to that first.

**This episode was sponsored by Clyde Hill Publishing—partner and publisher for founders, innovators, thinkers, and tinkerers. Check out their upcoming release, I Had No Idea You Were Black, by Ronald Crutcher. Pre-order your copy here.

--------------------------------------

ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more.

TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on the desktop version of our website.) The show needs your support to continue.

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

How can effective feedback change your life? Today, we sit down with Dr. Theresa Huston, author of the new book Let's Talk: Make Effective Feedback Your Superpower, a "game-changing model for giving effective feedback to peers, employees, or even your boss—without offending or demotivating." In it, she explains how to tell someone that they're not meeting expectations without crushing their spirit, a skill which, when delivered skillfully, can turn average performers into the hardest workers and stars into superstars.

Dr. Therese Huston received her MS and PhD in cognitive psychology from Carnegie Mellon University and is currently completing a post graduate program at the University of Oxford. She's is also the author of Teaching What You Don't Know and How Women Decide.

Find Therese Huston on Twitter or at her website.

**This episode was sponsored by Clyde Hill Publishing—partner and publisher for founders, innovators, thinkers, and tinkerers. Check out their upcoming release, I Had No Idea You Were Black, by Ronald Crutcher. Pre-order your copy here.

--------------------------------------

ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more.

TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on the desktop version of our website.) The show needs your support to continue.

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

Oscar Wilde called it the "holiest place in Rome" and Percy Shelley said it would make someone apt to fall in love with death to think of being buried in so sweet a place...and not soon later he was buried there at only 29.

But the most famous resident of Rome's Non-Catholic Cemetery is of course John Keats, who was interred there exactly 200 years ago today. Inspired by Katy's essay on his death and the death of her friend Susan, Tiffany visits the cemetery in her mind (it's still closed at present). Listen to the end to find out how to be buried there (it's still possible!)

Find Katy's essay on the death of John Keats in Catapult literary magazine.

Find out more about how to be buried in the Non-Catholic Cemetery in Rome.

Don't miss Episode 357: Literary Travel, that was partly inspired by Keat's grave and the Keats-Shelley Museum in Rome.

Hear Tiffany talk about memorizing poetry on Bittersweet Moment #55: Memorizing Poetry.

**This episode was sponsored by Clyde Hill Publishing—partner and publisher for founders, innovators, thinkers, and tinkerers. Check out their upcoming release, I Had No Idea You Were Black, by Ronald Crutcher. Pre-order your copy here.

--------------------------------------

ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more.

TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on our website.) The show needs your support to continue.

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!

Reading books can inspire you to travel, and travel can inspire you to read books. It's what we call a delicious cycle.

Today we talk about the books (and other types of art) that have inspired not only particular trips, but the things that we have sought out when on that trip, or even things we have made a point to see in our own cities.

But this inspiration goes both ways, and sometimes the things we see when traveling inspire us to read more about them, whether in fiction or non-fiction. Listen in to our conversation about travel-inspired reading and our reading-inspired travel.

**This episode was sponsored by Clyde Hill Publishing—partner and publisher for founders, innovators, thinkers, and tinkerers. Check out their upcoming release, I Had No Idea You Were Black, by Ronald Crutcher. Pre-order your copy here.

--------------------------------------

ADVERTISE WITH US: Reach expats, future expats, and travelers all over the world. Send us an email to get the conversation started.

BECOME A PATRON: Pledge your monthly support of The Bittersweet Life and receive awesome prizes in return for your generosity! Visit our Patreon site to find out more.

TIP YOUR PODCASTER: Say thanks with a one-time donation to the podcast hosts you know and love. Click here to send financial support via PayPal. (You can also find a Donate button on the desktop version of our website.) The show needs your support to continue.

SUBSCRIBE: Subscribe to the podcast to make sure you never miss an episode. Click here to find us on a variety of podcast apps.

WRITE A REVIEW: Leave us a rating and a written review on iTunes so more listeners can find us.

JOIN THE CONVERSATION: If you have a question or a topic you want us to address, send us an email here. You can also connect to us through Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Tag #thebittersweetlife with your expat story for a chance to be featured!

NEW TO THE SHOW? Don't be afraid to start with Episode 1: OUTSET

BOOK: Want to read Tiffany's book, Midnight in the Piazza? Learn more here or order on Amazon.

TOUR ROME: If you're traveling to Rome, don't miss the chance to tour the city with Tiffany as your guide!