My name is Andrew Smith. I moved to Turin Italy in 1998 together with my wife Maria. Maria is of Italian origin and wanted to return to Italy and I was enough to be transferred by the company I worked for at the time to their Turin office.


What challenges did you face during the move?

It was a bit of a culture shock at first, working in Italy was nothing like being on holiday in Italy. The first six months were mostly a real struggle to settle in and there were many days when I thought about throwing in the towel. I am glad I didn't though but to be honest it probably took me two years before I began to really feel at home.   more ...

I am Sarah, married to Tony. We have a daughter (Axa Elisabeth, born 2005) and a son (Raj Dominique, born 2007). We are originally from San Diego. I home-school our children and my husband does marketing for an Italian company.

We first moved to Italy in 2008. Tony is of Italian descent, and I've always wanted to live abroad, so Italy was the natural choice. We spent seven months living in two different towns in Piedmont (Saluzzo and Chiusa di Pesio) and trying to convince them to recognize Tony's Italian citizenship jure sanguinis (by descent). His citizenship was finally recognized just as the business we were still running in Southern California failed during the Economic Downturn of 2008. We spent a year back in the United States tying up loose ends, and finally made it back to Italy in April of 2010. After a couple of months in Florence, we decided that what we really love is the beautiful North of Italy.   more ...

I am Stef (male, 50 years of age, only just), married to Nico (male, almost 60), both born in The Netherlands and a couple since 1985 (prehistoric times).

We moved to Italy in 2008 after staying at Pavia for half a year, for reasons of study (medieval history).

In these 6 months we found our dream villa in the unknown Oltrepo Pavese region, south of Pavia, which was perfectly suited for our plan: starting a B&B vacation rental business.   more ...

We are Carol & Tony Evans, both British and come from Hull in northern England and we have been married for 28 years. We have two Chinese Chow Chows. Tony has a son to his first marriage that lives in France with his partner and two children. Before leaving England, Carol was a doctor’s receptionist and Tony worked for a City Leaning Centre as a receptionist/administrator and evening IT tutor.

Since the early 1980’s we had always wanted to move and live abroad. At that time, we chose northern France as a destination but due to a dramatic change in the interest rates, we decided to leave it for a year or so. However, it was 20 odd years before we finally made the move to leave England.   more ...