An American in Florence

Elizabeth Heglar | Lifestyles Editor

UNC Wilmington offers more than 500 study abroad programs in over 50 different countries. With a number of amazing resources located in our very own study abroad offices, it’s no wonder that international travel is a destination for so many of our students. 

As my junior year at UNCW came to a close, it seemed the best time for me to look into taking advantage of these programs. This is how I eventually came to take part in a three-week study abroad program in Florence, Italy.

Italian culture had always interested me: the sunshine, the closeness of family units and the delicious food. There were many parts of Italian culture that differed from America in ways I had never considered before.

These cultural differences ranged from large to small. Italians, unlike Americans, often live with their families into their 30’s due to the expenses that come with buying houses in Italy. Considering that most Americans move out before they hit the age of 20, this was a stark difference between our cultures.

Another interesting difference, and perhaps one less blatant, is the way Italians eat dinner. Rather than going out and grabbing a quick 45-minute meal, or perhaps a steaming cookout tray to grub on in their room, Italians make dinner something of an event. A social event, to be exact.

Well before the sun goes down, they begin with a glass of wine and good conversation. If they are out at a decent restaurant, they order an appetizer and spend upwards of an hour sitting and chatting before ordering their entrée. As an avid conversationalist, also known as someone who talks too much, this was great for me.

Upon ordering the entrée there is typically another glass of wine as well, eventually onto dessert and then perhaps a nice dessert wine to finish the meal off. This process takes typical Italians anywhere between two and five hours. It often took this particular American about three.

I myself experienced this when I attended a six-course dinner at a student-run restaurant through the school I was attending there, the Florence University of the Arts. The restaurant was called Ganzo, and it gave foreign students a chance to experience real Italian cuisine at a consistent price.

The dinner began at 8 in the evening and went until roughly midnight. Four hours later, my dining companions and I left stuffed and happy as ever. Although I couldn’t eat a meal that lengthy every night, the Italians are definitely doing something right here. There is something very pleasing about sitting around and having a good meal with great conversation. 

While staying up until midnight is considered late here for many working adults, in Italy that is an average time to begin your walk home, perhaps stopping to get some gelato along the way. After our dinner we did just that.

Aside from their eating habits, one of the most satisfying cultural differences was the way Italians drink. I’ve always observed college drinking habits here in the USA as an oddity, never really understanding the desire to get “shwasted.” Unlike American college students, many of whom consume copious amounts of alcohol until passing out, puking, or “blacking out,” Italian college students drink more responsibly.

Where drinking an entire bottle of wine to oneself over a short span of time might be considered typical in America, in Italy that would be frowned upon. Due to their lower drinking age of 18, many students have grown up drinking casually with their families at dinner instead of suddenly jumping into drinking in their first year of college.

This means that nights out while abroad in Italy can easily consist of fun conversation sitting at an outside café with locals, or could be a drunken blur hanging out with the three American friends you made on your trip. Overall, the choice would be yours to make.

A friend I’d made on the trip would often accompany me to go out to a café near our apartment in Florence and sit outside, having a nice glass of wine and chatting over an appetizer. Over the span of a few hours we would meet a plethora of new people, foreign and local. Across the street there was an Americanized bar, which made our location prime for people watching.

Around 11 o’clock you could count on seeing the first drunken American stumble outside the bar too tipsy from one too many drinks. Give it another fifteen minutes, and then you’d see the next. All this time we sat at our café, drank wine with locals, and ended up happy in our beds. No puking, no sick stomachs, no lost memories. This is the kind of drinking I prefer for myself.

This summer I got the opportunity to study for three weeks in Florence, Italy. Through my program provider I got the opportunity to choose a class on Italian wine culture. This class explored much of the history of not only Florence, but the entirety of Italy, while also introducing students to the winemaking process and its cultural significance for Italy’s people. This was an opportunity I was so lucky to have, and will remain thankful for.

This class in particular taught me much about the wine process, wine consumption, and wine tasting. One of the best things I learned while abroad however, came from simply watching the culture around me.

One of the best lessons I learned was this: don’t drink like an American; drink like an Italian.