(Editor’s note: Annamaria Borelli is an American woman with Italian roots who left her New Jersey home for the dream of Italy 10 years ago. She recently moved to Bari, Puglia, where she works as an English teacher when she isn’t blogging or singing opera and jazz. She offers advice to anyone moving to Italy, […]
It’s December and you’re trying to find a way to cheer up the traveler in your family whose body this year has formed a permanent indentation in their Barcalounger. He or she hasn’t left town, let alone hopped a plane, since last winter. Christmas is the time for optimism. The new year is around the […]
Winter is arriving. It’s getting dark earlier but it doesn’t really matter because there’s no place to go anyway. Any crowded room could be a petri dish, and you don’t want to become a statistic. You Americans, your traditional Thanksgiving feast will be Cornish game hens with your spouse. Talk to the rest of the […]
When you live in Rome, you’re surrounded by 3,000 years of history. Benito Mussolini built much of my neighborhood. I live two miles from the Forum and Colosseum. I’m eight miles from ancient aqueducts that were built in the 3rd century B.C. Remnants of the most powerful civilization in history are all around me. The […]
One disease will be gone soon. What about Covid-19? Seriously, folks … its effects on travel have been devastating. According to Elizabeth Becker, author of “Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism,” the tourism industry worldwide already has lost $8 trillion. Restrictions are everywhere. From the United States, where the pandemic is reaching new […]
During this pandemic, every little tweak in my health makes me wonder. Is this morning fatigue the first sign of Covid-19? No. People with Covid can barely walk to the bathroom and need a three-hour nap to recover. Is that lightheadedness a Covid fever? Nope. My temperature at the gym never went over 36.6 (97.9). […]
I saw my old friend, Tom Leitner, last week. I don’t have many American friends here in Rome but he and I have bonded more these last four years. From afar we’ve watched our old country go up in flames like the forest fires on our beloved West Coast. Then we watched Donald Trump blame […]
The emails started arriving about two nanoseconds after the worst human being in the history of the American presidency greeted his bleating cult on that victory stage four years ago. Then came Facebook pleas as he put immigrant children in cages and defended the Alt Right. Now as Covid-19 continues ravishing American lives and racial […]
The world has turned off the neon lights on Italy. The glow has become a fog that clouds our future. Italy’s model strategy in flattening the Covid-19 curve lasted all of about three months. I no longer chortle about the World Health Organization pointing to my adopted country as Example A of fighting the virus. […]
I was a sports writer in the U.S. for 40 years and sometimes football imitates life — like my life now. It’s October, less than three months remain in the year and the world is no better off than it was when the pandemic began. I’m facing 3rd-and-long from near my own end zone. It’s […]
TIVOLI, Italy — Sometimes Rome gets to me, kind of like too much fine wine. Yes, the most beautiful city in the world gets old in more than just age. A Roman outside my window leans on his horn for five minutes until the guy who double parked next to him comes out and moves […]
We American expats overseas don’t get our voices heard very often beyond family and friends back home. Our opinions get filtered by the roar of separating oceans and the relative anonymity of social media. But with the most important presidential election in, at least, my 64 years only 40 days away, our voices should be […]
