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MOVING TO ITALY

INTERVIEW: ‘Americans live to work, Italians know how to balance’

After gathering a huge online following and writing a book about her life in Italy, TikTok star Kacie Rose Burns tells The Local how the country drew her in and what she’s learned along the way.

Published: 21 February 2024 16:11 CET
Updated: 24 February 2024 07:38 CET
Photo of Kacie Rose Burns
Photo: Kacie Rose Burns

Moving to Italy from the States was a no-brainer for Florence-based social media star Kacie Rose Burns. In 2018, aged 24, she dared to book a solo trip to the peninsula and has not looked back since.

“I was a dancer in New York and it was so demanding,” says Kacie, who is now a viral TikTokker with a million followers.

“I lived in a tough city, with a tough career and I was hustling for everything. It was all too grey for me.

“Growing up I had a strong urge to travel to Italy. I don’t know why, I’m only two percent Italian, but I just did.”

Kacie’s initial 10-day solo trip started in Florence, where she met her partner, Dario Nencetti. The pair hit it off immediately and there was an instant attraction that outlasted her 10-day visit: the two were long-distance for a year afterwards. Dario then moved to New York for a year after their long-distance period. Then Covid-19 struck.

“Basically my whole industry shut down during that period and I came to the conclusion I was no longer happy doing dance anymore,” Kacie shares. “Plus Dario’s visa was up.

“And I thought, yeah, let’s give Italy a six-month trial period, and here we are three years later. It sucks you in like that and I know so many people who have had the same experience as me.”

Photo: Kacie Rose Burns

The first six months of Kacie’s time in Italy were not easy. She defines it as one of the hardest periods in her life, due to the many differences in the everyday. 

“The biggest shocks are always the first shocks,” she says. “One of them is that I went to a pharmacy to get Dario a birthday card. I asked the pharmacist where I could get a card and granola bar and she looked at me like I had three heads and said “this is a pharmacy”.

“I had no idea where to get a card from because in the States you get lots from the pharmacy. It is the little things from your country and culture that you wouldn’t think about twice, but it’s the little things that are the biggest culture shock.”

The language barrier was another struggle. Although Kacie practised her Italian, she was not prepared for the country’s many different dialects. She recalls a time when she and Dario were in their apartment and he asked her for a Coca-Cola from the fridge.

“In Tuscan dialect, the letter c is removed,” she continues, before chuckling: “I thought he was calling me a rude name.”

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As the months went on, Kacie felt her mindset changing to fit in with a slower pace of life, which she initially said made it harder for her to settle more so than any pharmacy or language barrier could have done.

“Besides the food, I have to say the thing I hated the most at the start is now the thing I love the most about Italy,” she says. “Italians are more embracing of life, they take hold of it. It is not to be taken for granted.

Kacie exploring ruins in Italy. Photo: Kacie Rose Burns

“Americans live to work and I used to thrive off chaos. Italians do way less so. They know how to balance. Having a full life means incorporating rest and coming from a culture that demonises rest, it was hard to grasp at first but now it’s my favourite thing.”

She sums up the lust-for-life attitude she finds more apparent in Italy than in her home country through something her Neapolitan friend said to her. 

“One day they turned to me and said ‘Kacie, we live next to a volcano that destroyed a city. We have to live life always’ and it just stuck,” she adds.

Shortly after in 2022, Kacie set up her own tour company, which she says is “the most rewarding” thing she has ever done.

“I can see the beauty through their eyes and it is so special,” she says. “We live in a gorgeous country and we are a little spoiled. It’s not bad at all.”

Kacie Rose Burns on Instagram

She details her trials and tribulations and the differences between the two countries she calls home in her upcoming book, You Deserve Good Gelato. 

“It’s been a long time coming and I’m so excited,” she says. “More often than not we are more capable than we think we are and it’s a message I wish I had known when I was younger. 

“If one person reads this and feels empowered I would be so happy. There are embarrassing mistakes, sad moments, cringey failures and happy moments. Failing is how we learn how to do life. I’ve failed a lot and it’s ok and normal.”

This book has been a year in the making and a few chapters explore adjusting to new countries. When asked what advice she would give Americans looking to make the leap to Italy, she swiftly responds: “Prepare yourselves for Italian bureaucracy.”

READ ALSO: 15 must-have apps to make your life in Italy easier in 2024

“You need time and patience,” she adds. “The biggest piece of advice is it’s not always going to be easy but it will be worth it. My first six months were tough as I had to adjust so much and I was lucky to have a support network in place.

“I have so much respect for people who have no support network in place and moved here alone. That takes guts.

“I guess be prepared for the first six months but know it’ll get easier.”

You Deserve Good Gelato is available to preorder on Amazon and comes out worldwide on May 28th.

Member comments

  1. I’ve followed Kacie almost from the beginning of her journey and it’s been amazing seeing her thrive. Wishing her the best of luck with the book.

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POLITICS

Can foreign residents in Italy vote in the European elections?

The year 2024 is a bumper one for elections, among them the European elections in June. Italy is of course a member of the EU - so can foreign residents vote in the elections that will almost certainly affect their daily lives?

Published: 3 May 2024 15:25 CEST
Can foreign residents in Italy vote in the European elections?

Across Europe, people will go to the polls in early June to select their representatives in the European Parliament, with 76 seats up for grabs in Italy. 

Although European elections usually see a much lower turnout than national elections, they are still seen as important by Italian politicians.

Giorgia Meloni will stand as a candidate this year, hoping use her personal popularity to give her Brothers of Italy party a boost and build on her success in Italy to “send the left into opposition” at the European level too.

When to vote

Across Italy, polling takes place on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th June 2024.

Polling stations will be set up in the same places as for national and local elections – usually town halls, leisure centres and other public buildings.

You have to vote at the polling station for the municipality in which you are registered as a resident, which should be indicated on your electoral card.

Polling stations open at 8am and mostly close at 6pm, although some stay open later.

Unlike in presidential or local elections, there is only a single round of voting in European elections.

Who can vote? 

Italian citizens – including dual nationals – can vote in European elections, even if they don’t live in Italy. As is common for Italian domestic elections, polling booths will be set up in Italian consulates around the world to allow Italians living overseas to vote.

Non-Italian citizens who are living in Italy can only vote if they have citizenship of an EU country. So for example Irish citizens living in Italy can vote in European elections but Americans, Canadians, Australians, etc. cannot.

Brits in Italy used to be able to vote before Brexit, but now cannot – even if they have the post-Brexit carta di soggiorno.

If you have previously voted in an election in Italy – either local or European – you should still be on the electoral roll.

If not, in order to vote you need to send an application more than 90 days before the election date.

How does the election work?

The system for European elections differs from most countries’ domestic polls. MEPs are elected once every five years.

Each country is given an allocation of MEPs roughly based on population size. At present there are 705 MEPs: Germany – the country in the bloc with the largest population – has the most while the smallest number belong to Malta with just six.

Italy, like most of its EU neighbours, elects its MEPs through direct proportional representation via the ‘list’ system, so that parties gain the number of MEPs equivalent to their share of the overall vote.

So, for example, if Meloni’s party won 50 percent of the vote they would get 38 out of the total of 76 Italian seats.

Exactly who gets to be an MEP is decided in advance by the parties who publish their candidate lists in priority order. So let’s say that Meloni’s party does get that 50 percent of the vote – then the people named from 1 to 38 on their list get to be MEPs, and the people lower down on the list do not, unless a candidate (for example, Meloni) declines the seat and passes it on to the next person on the list.

In the run up to the election, the parties decide on who will be their lead candidates and these people will almost certainly be elected (though Meloni would almost definitely not take up her seat as an MEP, as this would mean resigning from office in Italy).

The further down the list a name appears, the less likely that person is to be heading to parliament.

Once in parliament, parties usually seek to maximise their influence by joining one of the ‘blocks’ made up of parties from neighbouring countries that broadly share their interests and values eg centre-left, far-right, green.

The parliament alternates between Strasbourg and Brussels. 

Find out more about voting in the European elections from Italy on the European Parliament’s website or the Italian interior ministry’s website.

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