Yeah that makes sense. I feel like I am most productive if I touch email twice a day.
Also attacking the hardest thing that I have to do between 9am - 11am seems to work well. I have more energy to get it done. Maybe that has to do with waking up at 7, who knows.
Not not exactly an Expat, but I spent 6 months living in Rome as a student. This doesn't answer all of your questions but I hope it helps.
Pro's:
- Great culture, great food. Groceries fresh and reasonably priced.
- Coming from english, Italian is a relatively easy language to learn and people are happy to speak it with you.
- Pretty good infrastructure. Good train systems to move around the country. Rome has a good subway system.
- Lots of walking/biking in daily life keeps you in shape.
Con's:
- Anything ivolving the government is a beaurcratic nightmare. We applied for student permits in August and didn't get them till after we returned home in January. Never tried it but starting a business is probably a lot of paper work.
- Nothing in the city runs on a schedule Buses, People, any type of meetings. The saying that Mussolini did bad things, but he made the trains run on time definatly makes sense after living there.
- Cost of housing his high, though the outskirts of the city are cheaper.
All in all I loved my time there as an experience, but working there may be a challenge.
I'm an Italian living in Rome and I can confirm everything you've said.
> Never tried it but starting a business is probably a lot of > paper work.
It's not only a bureaucratic nightmare, it's also a losing proposition: we have probably the highest tax rate among the developed contries.
> working there may be a challenge
It's way more than a challenge, our economy went down the drain since 2008 and there's no sign of recovery. It's so bad that more than 250k Italians have moved to London since 2011 and it's gonna get worse. All in all, I wouldn't recommend an American to move here.
