Who does leisure better, Italy or America?
We tackle this question on Episode 543 Leisure Wars: Italy vs. the US. The answer is probably obvious, but you may be surprised to learn that Italians are emulating more and more the infamous American work ethic.
Is the Italian dolce far niente instinct enough to overcome the trend of over-productivity?
And what can Americans learn from Italians about how to slow down and enjoy life?
You can listen right here, or find the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Overcast, and elsewhere.
Related Episodes:
Episode 543 Leisure Time in Ancient Rome
Episode 501: How Often Do You Think about the Roman Empire?
Episode 132 S.P.Q.R. (with Mary Beard)
Here are 5 key points of the episode:
- Italians traditionally take August off for vacation, but this is changing as businesses stay open for tourists.
- Visiting Italy in August is not recommended due to heat and closures.
- Italian offices and companies closing for August can be frustrating for those trying to get work done.
- Beach towns become extremely crowded when all Italians vacation at the same time in August.
- The transcript contrasts Italian and American approaches to work-life balance, with Italians prioritizing longer vacations and Americans integrating work more into their lives.
Full Episode Transcript:
Katy
Hello. This is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany parks.
Katy
Tiffany in Rome. Katy in Seattle. Tiffany, an expat slash immigrant. What are you now? Expat, immigrant?
Tiffany
I don’t know.
Katy
Resident. Long time resident of Rome.
Tiffany
Citizen.
Katy
Citizen.
Tiffany
Confused. I don’t know. Let’s just call me an expat for now, just for the sake of brevity. But clearly it’s more than that by this point.
Katy
It’s all the things. Katy living in Seattle, having once lived abroad as an expat, now a repat, I suppose now and for life. Today we are picking up on last week’s topic where we discussed Roman leisure in basically historic old Rome. Today we’re going to be talking about modern day leisure from the point of view of Italy versus the United States. How do the Italians do leisure versus how do the people in the United States do leisure and seems a fitting topic for kind of midsummer, where we’re all supposed to be relaxing ever so slightly, at least. Tiffany, why don’t you kick us off with a way that people tend to relax when it comes to Italy at.
Tiffany
The end of the day?
Katy
Well, I mean, you introduced this topic last week, so you tell me, what.
Tiffany
Were you thinking of the first thing that came to mind? Washing just the summer vacation tradition in Italy, which is not across the board, but it’s a pretty good rule of thumb that nine out of ten Italians are going to take a significant amount of the month of August off. I think that number would have been higher 10, 20, 30 years ago. It would have been almost 100%. Maybe all the Italians who didn’t work in the tourism industry, they were all taking in the entire month of August off. And this has become a kind of a funny tweet. I think it’s a tweet that has been passed around and many people have posted some version of this, but I know I saw it a couple years ago and it was like, this is like the American you’d put your auto reply on when you’re on vacation. And it’s like, I will be out of the office for the next day and a half, but if you need, you know, having kidney surgery. But if you need me, you can text me and I will get back to you if it’s an emergency.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
And versus the Italian auto reply, which is, I’ll be gone for the next two months, I won’t be checking email. Bye.
Katy
Yeah, yeah.
Tiffany
They’re both an exaggeration, I hope. But the idea is, the idea is there and I think it’s. It’s a cliche. People have been talking about this for a long time. But it’s also pretty true that Italians are way better at closing down shop and just being like, okay, nothing is happening. Not like, okay, I’ll check my emails sporadically and maybe I’ll take a few calls if I really need to. And I mean, I’m sure there are people who have certain professions that require that, so I’m not saying there are no Italians who are doing that, but it’s not the norm.
Katy
Yeah. Now that we’ve been doing this show for ten years and a lot of people consider me an expert in Italy and especially Rome, I get this question a lot. I was just thinking this two days ago when somebody asked me the question again. I am often asked about traveling to Italy in August and I don’t know why. I guess it’s because that’s when Americans half time off and they’re thinking about what to do on their family vacation. And so I get this question. Should I go to Italy in August multiple times every single year. And my advice has always been kind of based on this stereotype that much of Italy is shut down during the month of August because people are on vacation. I always tell them, one, it’s too hot. Don’t go to Italy in August. And number two, things might not be open. And so maybe go somewhere else. Go anywhere else. Aim for Italy come September or July, if you don’t mind. When we’re going to Italy, which you should come. Why not? The cutoff is August 1, so get your registration in bittersweetlifepodcastmail.com. but that said, I mean, it is a stereotype. But it’s a stereotype for a reason, because, yeah, stuff like restaurants aren’t open, shops aren’t open. Things. People are gone.
Tiffany
It’s.
Katy
It’s a different kind of moment.
Tiffany
I have seen a huge shift since I moved here in 2004. So that’s 20 years ago. So clearly, big shifts do happen over 20 years. But my first, to be honest, the very first year I lived in Rome, I I was gone for all of August, too. I went to my mom’s. My sister was getting married, and I spent the whole month of August in the states. But the year after that, if I’m not mistaken, I spent at least a couple of weeks of August in Rome. And it was like ghost town, like tumbleweed, like walking through Trastevere, was not everything is closed. There’s going to be, like, little corner pizzerias that are open. There’s going to be coffee bars that are open, but maybe a third or less than what would ordinarily be open. The kind of local restaurants that all the local people go to, meaning all the good restaurants, they’re closed. You know, uh, most of the shops are closed. Supermarkets are not closed. But, you know, the, the cute little guy who makes purses or whatever, that’s all going to be closed. So, I mean, it was much more dramatic, like I said 20 years ago. Now, um, in outskirts, you’ll see more of that, but if you’re in the center of Rome, more things are likely to be open again. Not everything is going to be open. And you’ll see a lot of. A lot of restaurants now do like two weeks, maybe three. But it’s not as common to see, like, okay, we’re close from the first to the 31 August. Like, that is I will be honest, that’s not as common. Some restaurants do stay open now because they feel like if I’m open for, you know, at least one week in August, I’m going to get a lot of business because there’s so many other restaurants are closed. So things shift. It’s not like it was in the fifties or even the first decade of the two thousands. It feels different. The big cities feel different. And I’m sure that this is triply, quadruply true for smaller towns. Villages are probably ghost towns. Small touristy cities are going to have a little bit more. But what you have in Italy is like, you have all of the quote unquote, like, summer vacation places, like the city of Rimini or Viareggio or any city on the Amalfi coast or in the Italian Riviera. Like, they’re just like, triply busy, you know, so all of the business goes there if you’re in Sicily, if you’re in Sardinia. So it’s kind of like you lose either way you go. If you come to Italy and you go to the summer vacation hotspots, it’s going to be overcrowded. Right. Everything’s going to be literally twice as expensive as it would have been in the first half of July or June. And if you go to the big cities, Rome, Florence, Venice, there’s not going to be locals there. There’ll be tourists there some, but you’re not going to see a lot of real life, which I think is a big shame if you’re missing out on the real cultural interactions.
Katy
What do you attribute that shift to? Because it can’t just be because there’s more tourists now, because there have been tourists over the entire 20 years that wanted to go to Rome and Italy in August. So what is happening culturally where people aren’t taking as much time off anymore? Do you have any idea?
Tiffany
I think it’s a mental shift of, like, Italy catching up with catching up in quotation marks because it’s not necessarily a positive change for them. But I think a lot of it is just Italians sort of like waking up and being like, hey, I’m losing out on a lot of money. If we stay open in August, we’re going to get all that tourist cash because all the other restaurants on this street are closed. I see in Italians in general, this is really speaking generally, but over that course of 20 years, I do see more of a sense of hustling. You’re never going to get the amount of hustling over here that you’ve got in the states. It’s not a hustle culture, but it’s a little bit more than it used to be. It can be frustrating if you’re coming from the states, because you’re like, I don’t understand. I’m trying to give you money. Why don’t you want to take it? And it’s kind of wonderful that there are cultures in the world who are like, you know what? Like, I’d rather have my peace and quiet or whatever it is that they want. My extra long vacation. You know, I’d rather have that than have your money. Thank you very much. Like, for example, like, I like to collect little espresso cups from the different cafes in Rome. And there’s this one that I really liked, and I really wanted it, and I was just trying to convince the bar owner to sell me one. And I’m like, I’m not asking you to give this to me free. Like, can you just sell it to me? Like, how much would you. And he wouldn’t sell it to me because he had, like, a limited number of them and he knew what a pain in the butt it was to order more. And so he’s like, no, I’m sorry, I can’t sell you and be like, I’m going to pay. For a moment there, there was this, like, struggle of, like, we couldn’t understand each other. Like, I couldn’t understand as an American why he wouldn’t sell me something. You can sell it to me for twice what you paid for it, you know? But it was, like, not worth it to him.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
So that’s, I think, an Italian thing that is probably slowly shifting, but it’s definitely more of an Italian thing than an American thing, which is, like, the effort that it’s gonna cost me to do this is not worth the money you’re gonna give me.
Katy
But it’s interesting, though, because when everybody was shutting down and taking the month of August off and going to the coasts, going to the beaches, I remember seeing pictures from when I was living over there about ten something years ago now, the beach towns which I had visited during the off season looked miserable. People, like, packed in on these chairs all along the beach. Hundreds and hundreds of people all taking their vacation at once. And it is sort of like this weird thing where, yeah, respect my leisure time, but why are we all doing it at exactly the same time? Because then it just completely overruns these little towns. Drives all the prices.
Tiffany
I know.
Katy
So in a way, if they were staggering it, like, say, Americans do from June to August, then it would be a more pleasant experience.
Tiffany
There is way more staggering going on now than there used to be. But here’s the problem. A lot of businesses, a lot of like, for example, one of my colleagues, she’s a lawyer. Okay. And they’re not like, okay, Jane, you know, you can have your vacation the first two weeks of June, and John, you can have yours the second two weeks of June, and Judy, the first two weeks of July. It’s not like that. The law company closes for the entire month of August, so you don’t have a choice of when you’re going to take your vacation. Or maybe they close the middle two weeks of August. They’re going to close in August. They’re not going to close in July. The magazine ware that I have worked for for years, they close for two or three weeks in August. So it’s not just like, okay, this one person is on vacation right now, and we’re going to all sort of COVID them until they get back, and then they’ll cover for us. No, they just close. Restaurants just close. And that’s usually because many, many restaurants are run by the, by the owners. And so the owners are kind of, well, like, well, if I’m not here to take care of the restaurant, I can’t trust it to my employees. They’re not gonna be able to handle it. So I’ve got to be here.
Katy
It is interesting because if the entire law firm is closed for the month of August, who cares what your out of office reply is? I mean, nobody’s there.
Tiffany
Yeah. So nobody’s there.
Katy
It’s like, well, just hold your horses. You know, you got to get a divorce. You’re waiting till September. Sorry.
Tiffany
You know, well, that’s the thing about life in Italy in August, which is so frustrating when you don’t take your holidays in August, because my husband happens to have a job in which he sometimes gets August, but, you know, only about, maybe half the time. And I say gets August. It’s not necessarily a good thing. Like, it’s a good in the sense that it lines up with my holidays, you know, but it’s bad in the sense that, you know, then we’re stuck taking holidays the same time everyone else is.
Katy
Right.
Tiffany
So it’s kind of like a double edged sword. But often we’re not taking holidays in August, and I’m trying to get stuff done, and it’s like you just can’t. It’s so frustrating to get to be in the city, and there are some wonderful things about being in the city in August and when we were, before we had our rally, oh, when we were living in the center and he still had his scooter. We used to really love August in Rome, and we’d take the scooter all over town and the streets would be empty and we weren’t in areas maybe that tourists would generally go. We’d go up to the Gianicolo Hill or we’d go down little alleyways and find the random restaurant that’s open. And we loved it. But now that I’m like, okay, I actually have to work, I’m trying to get in touch with such and such a person, but their whole office is closed for the whole month. It’s maddening.
Katy
Yeah. Although in a way, it kind of almost forces you to slow down. It’s sort of. But I know that maddening because as a person from the radio where you have to be doing stuff every single day. And like, once I’ve told you before that when I used to do live radio that week between Christmas and New Year’s over here in the US, where nobody was in the office, everybody was taking the whole time off, and yet I still had to do 2 hours of a live program every single day.
Tiffany
Oh, my God.
Katy
We were just grasping at straws trying to find people who could be on the show. You know, it was, is just calling and calling and calling and being like, what about this idea? And then finding like, oh, we can’t do that idea. I can’t find any person who can talk about that idea. So what else?
Tiffany
What else we got?
Katy
Oh, my gosh.
Tiffany
Note to self, if you want. This is a brilliant tip for anyone trying to get more coverage of whatever the project they’re working on. Like, get in touch with your local radio station the week between Christmas and New Year’s if you want to be.
Katy
It’s not, quote your stuff. Yeah. Be like, I am here and ready to go. Yeah, that’s not a bad tip. Maybe we should follow that tip.
Tiffany
Yeah.
Visit Rome in October 2024
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Katy
Well, before we run out of time, though, I mean, now that you’ve been over there for 20 years, I’m trying to think, like, how different is the approach to leisure in the United States to Italy? I mean, yeah, we kind of are a little bit always on, but, and we also tend to not have like massive, generally speaking anyway, massive time of time off. You know, unless you have been in a company for a long time, you accrue vacation. So over the years you get longer and longer time off. But you know, you start with the two weeks that you know is so well known here in the United States.
Tiffany
And don’t you have to work for a whole year just to get that two weeks?
Katy
I think it depends on who you work for. Yeah, I think that varies. People get signing bonuses, you know, at certain companies or certain companies are government agencies, and they have certain rules about how much time people get off at, you know, things like that.
Tiffany
So, yeah, here we get, I think if you were to add up all the vacation time, it’s closer to, I want to say it’s closer to six weeks than four. It’s a lot here. It’s a lot. If you take, you know, a lot of people don’t take it all at the same time. You know, they might take two, two and a half, three weeks in the summer, and they might take a week around Christmas time and then a weekend here and there. But it’s very generous. I’m wondering because, you know, I haven’t lived in the United States for so long, and I haven’t worked in the United States for so long. What is it like after work at home? Like, I mean, and I don’t really mean necessarily someone like yourself who is self employed, who works from home, who’s kind of always on, but like the typical person who has a nine to five job, like your husband, for example, is he checking his work emails in the afternoon? Like, you get, you get. The stereotype is that Americans are always checking their work emails and they’re always available.
Katy
Yeah.
Tiffany
And so I don’t, maybe that’s not true.
Katy
I can’t compare it to him because he just took over a new position. And so, yeah, he’s pretty much working all the time right now. But I don’t know. I think that that’s a gray area. I think it does leech in to a lot of people’s lives later on. But I’m sure it also has to do with your feeling of the level of responsibility and how much you actually care about your job. You know, I would imagine that if I, you’re in a job. Back when I was a temp, for instance, and I was working day in, day out, it wasn’t like I ever cared to look once I was off, you know, they could have been trying to reach me and I’d be like, I don’t know, you know, until I’m there the next morning, forget it. But I didn’t care about that job. So I think it has somewhat to do with your investment in what it is that you’re doing.
Tiffany
I mean, and it definitely matters the type of job you have for.
Katy
Yeah. And I mean, so much of American identity is wrapped up in what you do for a living. You know, what, who you are and what you do for a living is a part of your character. It’s a part of who you are in most places in the United States, I think in New Orleans, maybe, not everywhere else, that’s going to be an ice breaking question. What do you do for a living? And if I say, oh, you know, I work for a radio station, we could be on that at an afternoon barbecue for the next 45 minutes, you know, and then I’d be like, well, what do you do? And then know, I work as a CPA. I don’t know. And then you’d be like, oh, we judge each other based on what it is that we do, and it’s very much a part of our character. And so I think it’s just so much more wrapped up in our identity than I think. So, yeah, it is for you. And maybe that means that we work more. It makes us feel relevant and, like, vital in the world in some ways. I think that maybe Italians don’t feel one thing. You hear a lot from people who have nine to five jobs or kind of freelance, creative jobs, like mine is. You’ll often hear people say, oh, man, I wish I had a job as a barista. You know, I wish I had a job working in a bar. You know, I miss those days. You always hear that because what did it mean? One, it was a very active job, and so many of us are kind of stuck at a computer all the time. But I mean, secondly, it was like, what was its main defining characteristic? When it was over, it was over. You finish your shift working at the coffee shop. What is there to carry on? Nothing. You know, you just walk out and go do stuff. And you don’t carry around the coffee shop with you in your head. You deal with it the next morning. So I think there is a lot of lament about, oh, those were the days when I had that job, that job that didn’t follow me around for the rest of time. And I think there’s also that because it’s so much of our identity, you know, if you’re a 20 something and you’re like, what do you do? I work in a bar. Everyone’s like, oh, cool, you know, I mean, they’re not expecting you to do much yet. So you’re like, oh, yeah, which bar? I’ll come visit you. So, and then, you know, at some point, you wake up around, like, late twenties, early thirties, and you’re like, oh, man, I got to do something with my life. You know, I can’t just, like, work at this dumb tavern forever. I think a lot of people, like, go out to restaurants and bars and places like that, parks after work, you know, to try to let it loose. And I live in the Pacific Northwest, so outdoor activities are very much something people try to wrap into their day to day lives. So you’ll find a lot of people who, before they go to work or after they go to work, they might go paddle boarding or kayaking or biking or running or, you know, they’re gonna. Yeah, do these things that, on the water or, you know, paddle board to where they can get a margarita after work with some of their friends, you know? So I do think that people are able to shut it off, but it is more wrapped up in who we are. I think we judge each other based on what we do more.
Tiffany
It’s funny that you mention that, because remember when I was having that end of year dinner that we talked about on a bonus episode?
Katy
Yes. If you missed that, find us at patreon.com/thebittersweetlifepodcast
Tiffany
But what came into my head that night, besides all of the chaos that was going around? I was sitting next to a couple of moms that I don’t talk to that much. And I kept having the urge, even though I haven’t lived in the states for 20 years, but I am American. I kept having the urge. And part of it was just like, I need to make conversation with these women, and I have no idea what to say. And I’m the type of person who, like, I feel awkward if I’m sitting next to somebody and we’re not talking. And it kept being like, let me ask you what you do, but I know that’s rude. I can’t do that.
Katy
It’s rude.
Tiffany
It’s kind of rude. Yeah, I think it’s a kind of. And, I mean, the funny thing is, when I was in high school, I think it was during my french class, we were talking. You know how when you’re in a language class, you talk also about, like, cultural norms? And. And I remember the french teacher saying, it is rude in France to ask people what they do. And I was like, come on, that can’t be right. That’s just ridiculous. Maybe that was true, like, in the fifties, but here I am in 2024 in Italy, and I’m like, I think it’s rude. Something is stopping me from doing it. It could come up in conversation, and then we could talk about it. But to just be like, so what do you do? Even the words like, que cosa fai? Like that means, what are you doing? Like, if I said to you, que cosa fai? you’d think, oh, I’m.
Katy
At a dinner party.
Tiffany
Yeah. I mean, like, whoa, what? Do I have something on my face? Did I. What? What am I, what do you mean, what am I doing? So you could say, Cosa fai nella vita? What do you do in life? Even that, though, it’s like, it’s kind of off putting.
Katy
But there aren’t people kind of proud of what they do in life.
Tiffany
Of course there are people that are proud of what they do, but I feel, and I mean, maybe this is just me project. I don’t know. I don’t know if this is true, but I feel like a lot of, a lot of people in Italy, I mean, this has got to be true everywhere in the world. It’s not just Italy. I don’t know. I don’t know. I feel stupid saying this, but I feel like a lot of people, at least that I come into contact with have very humble jobs because in Italy, different from America, you know, like you said, in America, it’s like by the time you’re in your late twenties or early thirties, you’re like, whoa, I got to get a better job in Italy. There really isn’t that expectation. The expectation in Italy is more like, you have a job. Oh, my God, good for you. It’s like just having a job is an accomplishment.
Katy
Yeah. You know what else is interesting? When you’re someone like, where you have multiple jobs, which of course, I think about a lot, and I have several friends that have multiple, wear multiple hats over the course of the day. I certainly do. You certainly do. It’s interesting when you are at a party, been at several hobnobbing type of parties lately, it is interesting to see which things people latch onto. If they say, well, what do you do? And you go, oh, well, I do several things. I’m a writer and I’m a podcast consultant, and I’m a fill in host for NPR. And they’ll be like, oh, which station? Nothing has piqued their interest up to this point. Oh, which station? Then you say, oh, well, you know, it’s this very famous station in Seattle. And then people will go, oh, well, I do listen to that all the time. Can I ask you, do you mind if I ask you what your last name is? And of course, at one point in my life, this was my identity, like, before I moved to Rome, this was like central to who I was. My name, me being on the radio, it was so well known to almost everybody I encountered. Now it’s less well known because I’m just a fill in host, but now I’m just a fill in host, so it’s no longer totally central to my identity. So then I’m like, oh, yeah, what’s your last name? Katy. Katy Sewall. Katy Sewall’s my name. Oh, yeah, I totally heard you. It’s not like, it’s not a compliment, but you’re also just like, yeah, but I’m so much more than that. I’m doing so many other things. So it is kind of funny, too, how asking somebody about their job can either be expansive or kind of pigeonholing, depending on how they feel about it at any given time. So, I mean, I think in a way, Italians are wise to search for bigger topics of conversation, and we would probably be wise to do that as well. But I don’t know if that’s going to actually change here in the United States. I don’t know if we’ll ever lead with. So which trails have you been hiking lately? Or, you know, I don’t know. I don’t know what you lead with when you don’t lead with this job.
TiffanyÂ
But, yeah, I think that is what I turned to, actually, now that I’m thinking back to that dinner, it was, where are you going on vacation?
Katy
Leisure. So we lead with work to bring it full circle here at the end. You lead with leisure, we lead with work. And boy, is that something telling right there. Interesting. All right, well, wow. With that great conclusion, we should just leave it there. Let’s go take some time off. But we will leave it there. And until next time, this is The Bittersweet Life. I’m Katy Sewall.
Tiffany
I’m Tiffany Parks.
Katy
Join us again. Bye.
