This week, we chat with expat, author, and vlogger Dana Newman, an American living in Germany with a book out next week! Dana moved to Europe back in 2008, first to Prague, then later to Munich, where she married a German and still lives today. On her YouTube channel, Wanted Adventure , she talks about her experiences living abroad in general and living in Germany in particular, including the culture, the food, the traditions, and, of course, mastering the German language. (The infamously diffic...
Dec 10, 2018•41 min•Season 6Ep. 235
It’s December and Advent is upon us! With this unofficial kick-off of Christmastime, we discuss the different ways Italians and Americans prepare for the holiday season. And how have Italians ceded some of their native traditions to the global consumerism that has taken over the American Christmas experience? We also debate contentious topics such as: when is it too early to put up your Christmas decorations? How much of our own holiday preferences are based on the traditions we were taught in c...
Dec 03, 2018•32 min•Season 6Ep. 234
A powerful, unscrupulous man whose two greatest vices are greed and lust. He’s close to his family...perhaps too close (particularly his daughter). He has many children by different women, but the three he loves most are two sons and a daughter...a beautiful blond-haired daughter. He holds a position of great power, although the machinations he employed to get it are mired in scandal. Bribery was most certainly involved—and perhaps even blackmail. He is resented by those around him who feel he d...
Nov 26, 2018•42 min•Season 6Ep. 233
It’s almost Thanksgiving, and if you’re anything like us, you’re partly dreading sitting down at that big, diverse table because you know the person sitting beside you—while you may love them to bits—has political views that are the polar opposite of yours. You can’t pick your family, am I right? And even worse, you can’t force them to think like you do, no matter how hard you try! Instead of ruining a wonderful holiday and a seriously tasty meal with unpleasant conversation, we suggest six topi...
Nov 18, 2018•36 min•Season 6Ep. 232
This week we are joined by archaeologist and longtime Bittersweet Life listener Christy Schirmer. In her mid-30s, Christy decided to quit her job and pursue a PhD in Classics, something she had always dreamed about doing. Fast-forward a few years and she now comes to Italy (a country she loves) to work once a year on archaeological digs. What’s she looking for in the dirt? And how did she decide to take the risk of leaving her old life behind? Christy chats with Katy about the reality of being a...
Nov 12, 2018•29 min•Season 6Ep. 231
On this week's episode, Katy and Tiffany reminisce about their first experiences leaving home—when they went away to college at age eighteen. Why was Katy’s experience so bad and Tiffany’s so awesome? Was it really only luck? How do you cope with debilitating homesickness? And does having a boyfriend make a big difference? What makes one homebody want to stay close to home, and another want to go as far away as possible? We discuss all this and more on our latest episode, EIGHTEEN. Today’s take-...
Nov 05, 2018•35 min•Season 6Ep. 230
This week, in honor of Halloween, we feature the stories of listeners and friends, whether they be recountings of run-ins with ghosts they themselves have experienced, or just downright scary stuff that's happened to them. So get comfortable, pour yourself a piping cup of tea, curl up under your favorite blanket, turn the lights down...and enjoy! Bonus interview with a four-year-old who loves horror films. Yeah, you don't want to miss that. Plus: how to use every day foods you probably have in y...
Oct 29, 2018•46 min•Season 6Ep. 229
Join us for a whimsical (and not so whimsical) conversation about ghosts—do you believe in them? Have you ever encountered one? Are you the type of person who automatically looks for “rational explanations” when spooky things occur? Or are you open to believing something paranormal is afoot? Where’s the line between open-minded and gullible? We also talk about the famous ghosts that supposedly haunt Rome, including Beatrice Cenci. Tiffany tells her tragic story. Also, the Colosseum—a place that ...
Oct 22, 2018•39 min•Season 6Ep. 228
This week, Katy interviews debut author Laura Smith, and the two discuss the definition of wanderlust, why some people spend their lives perennially longing for new experiences, and how you can challenge the status quo for your own life. They also examine the dark side of wanderlust—does a yearning for "other" mean you are unsatisfied with your life? When does travel become escape? When you are constantly running away, what happens to the people you leave behind? In her debut work, The Art of Va...
Oct 15, 2018•33 min•Season 6Ep. 227
There's nothing like a complete political meltdown in your home country to make you feel utterly alone in your adopted one. Tiffany opens up about her feelings of isolation in the wake of the Kavanaugh debacle raging across the pond. When you are consumed for weeks on end with a political story that no one in your day-to-day life understands, it's easy to feel cut off. Sometimes all you want to do is walk into your office and commiserate with your colleagues about the latest insane thing that ha...
Oct 08, 2018•38 min•Season 6Ep. 226
You’ve doubtless heard the phrase, “Not all who wander are lost.” This week, Katy and Tiffany theorize that many who wander are, indeed, lost. Why is it that so many expats come from troubled homes or have difficult pasts? While we haven’t made a scientific study, in our time living abroad, we’ve noticed that expats and travel addicts seem to boast a much higher than average amount of family dysfunction and general malaise than the those who spend their lives close to home. In this week’s episod...
Oct 01, 2018•27 min•Season 6Ep. 225
On the first episode of season six, Katy and Tiffany take a trip north (at least in their memories) to the Dolomite mountains in the Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige. It’s a part of the country that is well-loved by Italians from all over the peninsula, but not particularly known by people outside the country. The sounds of munching goats, clanging cow bells, and haunting chants—snippets of recordings that Katy captured on her two trips to the Dolomites—enliven the conversation that is part...
Sep 24, 2018•37 min•Season 6Ep. 224
In this introspective episode, Katy says goodbye to Rome the night before she flies back to the States. And as she contemplates the end of another chapter, her thoughts turn to John Keats. Why John Keats, you ask? At the start of her time in Rome, Katy visited the Non-Catholic Cemetery and the grave of the Young English Poet. On her last day, she happened to find herself standing in front of the museum dedicated to him and his contemporary Percy Shelley. She decided to go in. On their final epis...
Sep 17, 2018•23 min•Season 5Ep. 223
Are we the masters of our own fate, or merely unwitting pawns in a larger scheme, the irresistible pull of destiny guiding all of our so-called decisions? Or is the reality somewhere in the middle? In their second live show, recorded at The Beehive Hotel & Hostel , Katy and Tiffany explore their own beliefs on this vast and bewildering topic, and what it means for their own lives and the paths they have chosen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SP...
Sep 10, 2018•41 min•Season 5Ep. 222
In honor of Labor Day, Katy and Tiffany take the week off from their labor of love, The Bittersweet Life podcast. But in this special, super-short episode we ask for your feedback for three upcoming episodes. Listen to the episode to hear our questions so you can be featured on the show! Email your stories (typed or voice messages work) to bittersweetlife@mail.com . ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SPONSOR THE SHOW: Reach expats, future expats, and t...
Sep 03, 2018•9 min•Season 5Ep. 221
As Katy nears the end of her time in Rome (this time), Tiffany can’t help but ask, will you stay? Or, more precisely, would you stay? Would you stay in Rome IF all the conditions allowed it: work visa, gainful employment, apartment? Her answer might surprise you. And it opens a discussion: how do you know when it’s time to go home, when it’s time to stay put, when it’s time to move on, when it’s time to hit the road in search of a new adventure? How much do age and career play into it? Does ther...
Aug 27, 2018•34 min•Season 5Ep. 220
Moving abroad isn’t just for twenty-somethings. Our guest this week proves just that. Jackie was a successful lawyer in her early 40s and living in Chicago when she realized she wasn’t content feeding her wanderlust with short, occasional trips to Europe—she had to move there. And when she finally decided to take the plunge, she didn’t do it by halves. No leave of absence from her job—she quit. No storage unit for her clothes and furniture—she sold the lot of it. She was fully committed, with no...
Aug 20, 2018•27 min•Season 5Ep. 219
A postcard captures a moment in time—a literal snapshot of a place. But according to Katy, people make the best postcards. If you visit a place often enough, every time you go back, you’ll inevitably find faces you’ve seen before. Locals whom you’ve noticed many times—and who have perhaps noticed you—although you may know nothing about them. May have never even spoken… and yet they are every bit a landmark of your experience of the city as an Eiffel Tower or a Colosseum. Maybe it’s the cashier a...
Aug 13, 2018•20 min•Season 5Ep. 218
Want to raise a bilingual child? Whether you are an expat or not, in a mixed-culture relationship or not, it is possible to raise your child in two (or more) languages, and the benefits you will pass on to your child are significant. But how do you go about it? Today Katy sits down with British mum Kristie Prada, author and creator of the blog Mamma Prada . She and her Italian husband live in the UK and are serious about raising their children to speak both languages flawlessly. In her effort to...
Aug 06, 2018•33 min•Season 5Ep. 217
We often talk about expat life in big cities like Rome. But what’s it like to be a foreigner in a small village where everyone knows everyone? On this week’s episode {ORVIETO}, we catch up with two Americans living in the tiny central Italian town of Orvieto—two expats whom we interviewed for the first time back in 2014. Toni De Bella (Episode 34: Venture) moved to Orvieto in 2012 alone after raising her son. Linda Martinez (Episode 33: Parents) is the owner of The Beehive Hostel in Rome; she’s ...
Jul 30, 2018•24 min•Season 5Ep. 216
After the wild week in the news in the US, Katy and Tiffany take a brief break from their recent Rome-based episodes to discuss the events surrounding the now infamous Helsinki Summit. In the course of their commiserations, they wonder what is harder: having to live through the chaos as it unfolds in your own back yard, or living a world away in an expat bubble and not having anyone to talk to about it. What’s worse: inundation or isolation? Which leads to another observation: when you live so l...
Jul 23, 2018•37 min•Season 5Ep. 215
Have you ever walked into someone’s house in Japan with your shoes on and had a room full of people laugh at you? (Katy has.) Have you ever traipsed into a room in an Italian home that has been freshly mopped and been given the evil eye by the lady of the house? (Tiffany has.) Part of living in a foreign culture is learning (often the hard way) that some things that are totally acceptable back home are, at best, a faux pas in your adopted country, and, at worst, a humiliating gaff. Picking up on...
Jul 16, 2018•23 min•Season 5Ep. 214
The best thing about marrying an Italian? You’re automatically part of a big Italian family. The worst thing about marrying an Italian? You’re automatically part of a big Italian family. If you’re a regular listener to the show, you’ve heard Tiffany talk about (and sometimes complain about) her Italian in-laws for years—especially during those long months when she and her husband lived with them when in between apartments. This week, Tiffany’s mother-in-law, Luisa and father-in-law, Rocco, join ...
Jul 09, 2018•28 min•Season 5Ep. 213
Issues of race and diversity are on everyone’s lips and minds in the United States right now. But people in Italy are just starting to have these conversations. In a country where, until quite recently, everyone had a similar racial make-up, perhaps it simply wasn’t necessary until now. In an interview with our former intern, first generation Salvadoran American Estrella Gomez, we probe the issues facing an expat of color in a place that is just now getting used to its status as a country that p...
Jul 02, 2018•25 min•Season 5Ep. 212
What happens when you say “no” to your destiny…only to discover that it brings you more joy than you could have imagined? This week, Katy interviews Antonio Sersale, son of one of the four founding siblings of the legendary Le Sirenuse Hotel in Postiano on the Amalfi Coast. From a young age, Antonio was groomed to take over the family business of running the hotel, but he resisted for many years, convinced that the life of a hotelier wasn’t for him. Then, one day he changed his mind. During a re...
Jun 25, 2018•27 min•Season 5Ep. 211
After a transformative trip to India during college, Michael Maren realized that in order to feel fully alive, he had to go back overseas. He joined the Peace Corps after graduating and a series of chance events led him to Kenya, where he stayed for the next five years, teaching English, Physics, and Swahili at a local secondary school, and he later worked as an aid worker in both Kenya and Somalia. After returning to the States for graduate school, Maren eventually became a war correspondent. F...
Jun 18, 2018•39 min•Season 5Ep. 210
This week, we hit the streets of Rome with our recording equipment to search for ancient artifacts or “ spoglie ” hidden in plain sight. Rome has been inhabited without interruption for over three thousand of years. A past like that cannot but leave its mark on a city. And if you keep your eyes open, the vestiges of Rome’s ancient past can be found around almost every corner. From the fluted Corinthian columns walled into the sides of nondescript buildings to the piazza that follows the shape of...
Jun 11, 2018•30 min•Season 5Ep. 209
Rome is crumbling...just as it has been for centuries. But what does it say about us adopted Romans that we choose to live in a city's whose glory days are all in the past? Why do so many of us, who can't even use the excuse that this is our native land, choose to live here, often at considerable financial and professional inconvenience, despite how little it has to offer us? Why do we leave in frustration only to return again and again, as if it were "more familiar, more intimately our home, th...
Jun 04, 2018•26 min•Season 5Ep. 208
Katy interviews Samuel Webster, versatile artist, Australian expat in a small town in Italy, and host of Fool’s Paradise podcast. They discuss what it means to be an “artist.” Does adopting that title make you pretentious, or is it just an honest representation of your craft? What about if you practice numerous arts? Webster identifies as a writer, a photographer, a poet, a podcaster, and much more. But does practicing one art form take away from the others? If you qualify yourself as a photogra...
May 28, 2018•44 min•Season 5Ep. 207
What does Rome sound like in the rain? Tiffany and Katy take a walk through the soggy streets of Rome, from Trastevere to Campo de' Fiori, capturing the sounds that you might not notice: raindrops falling in a puddle, water rushing through an underground drain, birds chirping as they seek shelter from the storm. As a seasoned radio producer, Katy hears sounds other people don't notice. Tiffany is just learning to. Join them on an aural discovery of Rome in the rain. Plus: they attempt to answer ...
May 21, 2018•38 min•Season 5Ep. 206
