So how did you meet your boyfriend/husband?

Waaay back when... It was the summer of '75. As was the custom back then, a year off school after graduating, and the backpack grand tour of Europe. A girl friend and I merrily packed our bags and headed off into the world. We travelled around Europe for about 4 months and ended up wanting to go to Sicily as we thought we would escape the rain in Northern Europe. We had Eurorail passes so headed South in search of adventure. We spoke no Italian, and in Calabria, at that time, not many people spoke English. We arrived at the train station in Villa San Giovanni full of anticipation. But..no cash money..We needed to change our travelers cheques. We wandered forlornly around the station trying to find the currency exchange. Suddenly, we heard a friendly "Hello, you speak english?". Our saviour!! We turned around to see two gorgeous Italian guys standing there! Life is good! People who speak English, can help us find the exchange, and are good looking too! Haha, turned out it was a pickup line, and that was the extent of English they knew! After no luck in finding the currency exchange, we decided to ditch the guys, (even though they were cute) and carry on to Sicily on our rail passes and get some cash over there. So we said goodbye, and got onto the ferry. We settled into our seats, and patiently waited for the ferry to leave. It was boarding trains and cars, so it was taking a while. In the meantime we were gathering quite an audience. Being two young, blonde "Ameriani" we were quite a diversion for the Sicilian men on board. One of them approached and offered "cafe?" . No thank you.. Don't drink coffee. HMMMM?? ok, "cigarette", No, sorry don't smoke. Hmmmm? ok, apertifo? no sorry, don't drink. But that didn't deter him. He sent a young boy to get some drinks, and the little guy arrived back with a tray of drinks. Now it really was time to tell the guy where to get off! We we tired, broke, and sick of being hit on! So we told him to just leave us alone. Well... he went off!!!! Started yelling and gesturing that he was going to chop us up and throw us into the ocean! (At least that is what we thought he was saying with the cutting/chopping motions and throwing). As the ferry hadn't left yet, we decided to get off and take the next one. Whew. Crisis averted. So we got off the ferry and went back into the station. Oh no! what if those two guys were still around? Ok, lets go to the bar across the street and get coffee. That way they won't see us! Haha, walk into the bar on go to order coffee. All of a sudden the door opens, and we hear "4 cafe per favore". It was a voice we had heard before! They found us! Well, it turned out that they weren't so bad after all. We stayed for 4 months and the language of love won out! I survived the dreaded Italian MIL (although she wasn't one yet), even though my Italian was almost non existant. I won the hearts of all the "parenti" even though I was young, and a straniera. In the end, I brought my Italian back to Canada with me. (What a souvenier!) We have been married almost 34 years, have 2 children, and 5 grandchildren. After not going back to Italy for 31 years we took a trip in 2006 and are hooked! We both love spending our winters, away from our "empty nest". Bella Italia! mi manca. Chi redvriammo (not too sure on spelling, need to work on it!)a presto. Ciao for now.... to be continued.

I came to Rome in 2000 to do some studying before doing a phd. I found a room to rent in Rei di Roma and joined the local gym. The instructor there was very into English and we became friends. She invited me to a party and also invited my now OH, who is half English. HE was the only person (other than my friend who was with her boyfriend) who I could easily talk to, and I mentioned in another post, he was interested in me for my cigerettes. Anyway we started hanging out; I had previously been hanging out with someone from the University and he was pressuring me into a relationship, and I am afraid he was quite revolting and far too pushy. I remember him saying 'What do u think of my physical aspect?' and I couldn't think of anything nice so I told him he had curly eye lashes! Then another time he told me his people didn't go to the gym, they had sex to keep fit!? Anyway he was very upset when I found someone else to go out with, he said 'so I missed my chance' adn I told him that he had never been in the running' and I took the book he just gave me (confessions of Zino I think it was, I really wanted it so I couldn't leave it behind hee hee) and I never saw him again! Meanwhile I hung out with my new male friend which changed into something more, mainly coz we always drank too much. Anyway it was a summer of mild decadance, until my Dad got ill so I had to rush back home. When I got back after a few weeks of feeling rough and realising that it wasn't coz I was upset about my Dad...Matteo was born 9 months later! The start of much trouble and a complete change of direction for me. ha ha!

Fantastic Story, Jo. Mine is quite boring!
I met my husband the last weekend of August in 1983. He was invited to a picnic at my cousin's house. He was there to meet another woman, she never showed up. I never did find out who she was!
We dated and decided to get married, which we did in April 1985. We have 2 daughters.
He came over from Sicily in 1974. His sister had married an Italian American in 1969 in Sicily. They returned to the US after the wedding. Frank and his parents came over in '74. They left after a year. He was 16 and mostly on his own.
Next month we are moving back to Sicily. He has wanted to leave the US for 20 years.

jojo's story is great! I was being born when you were travelling italy in '75! Italy must have been sooooooo old-fashioned back then!

I met my Italian when he was studying in Hawaii. I was studying too but went to some occasional parties... happened on a party full of Europeans!

A few yrs later we moved to Minnesota and then in 2001 we decided to try living in his hometown in Italy.

We got married in 2005 here in Italy.

We've been together 12 yrs and we fight all the time. We are both hot-headed and stubborn.

But we trust each other so we are still together and I am still in Italy.

That's the short version.

There all such lovely stories

I met my italian over the internet we were friends at first for a long time but once he found out i had split up from my ex-boyfriend he waited 2 months before asking me out heehee

We ended up flying back and fourth from London to Roma for months seeing eachother, i even spent a christmas with him. Then he said why dont you just moved in with me here in Roma as all this travling back and fourth is silly! So i moved to Roma and that was 1 year and 7 months ago.

Unfortunately i dont have a MIL as his parents are both dead so even though i hear horror stories about other peoples MIL's i am still envious that you have them!

ClareRoma wrote:Unfortunately i dont have a MIL as his parents are both dead so even though i hear horror stories about other peoples MIL's i am still envious that you have them!

I personally have been lucky my MIL is not bad at all, and a great asset to my baby's childhood. But there are horror stories! I have friends here who wish they didn't have the MIL they have!

Who knows what you are missing out on??? It's a mystery whether they would have made your life better or worse...

but it is definately a bonus to have relatives here, a ready made network in case of energency(and homesickness)...I have great parents-in-law and my sister in law is one of my best friends.I am SOOOOOOOO lucky. But of course they are all quite mad!!

I met my husband on a motorcycle ride which was arranged by his best friend. My friend, Silvana, and I were waiting for these guys to show up, wondering how it was going to go since we are neither one of us expert motorcycle riders. The next thing we know, a line of a few pretty loud motorcycles show up in front of the palazzo. One has my husband's best friend and his wife. The others were all single guys...but none of them my future husband. Instead, I spent all day riding on the back of this other guy's motorcycle and, at a certain point, we met up with Giulio, my now-husband. Honestly, I was totally over Italian guys at this point, thinking most of them a complete waste of time, so I didn't even really give much thought to any of these guys. I went on my merry way and did the rest of my trip in Italy for a couple of weeks, then came back to Torino for a few days before I split to go back to the U.S. The night before I was flying home, we all got together again for dinner, this group of motorcycle riders plus some of my non-motorcycle-riding friends. Giulio showed up and was carrying a box of instant bonet with him (a Piedmontese dessert like chocolate flan or pudding). He told me, oh, I remembered that you really liked this dessert from when we had lunch a couple of weeks ago, so I thought I would send you home with this small souvenir. Well, that got my attention because I thought it was pretty sensitive and nice. Again, though, I was over the whole Italian guy thing and I was leaving the next day so we said arrivederci and I went home. After I got home, he got in touch with me through his friend who had set up the motorcycle ride and the rest, as they say, is history.

coooooooooooool story

LOL

I was a burned out NYC corporate lawyer and had 3 weeks off between jobs. I decided to travel to visit my friend in Dublin and also spend some time travelling in Italy since that would be nice and relaxing. My Swedish dad often travelled to Rome so I asked him for an accomodation recommendation. He recommended a B&B 'run by Swedes' which he'd read about in the Swedish papers (turns out that the co-owner is half Swedish and happenned to know the journalist who wrote up their B&B). Swedish B&B told me that they had a room but were fully booked the first night so I'd have to stay at their friend's place. Anyway my now husband was the friend who owns that other B&B. He's not Italian but has lived here in Rome for 20 years+. It was funny as when I met him I just had the feeling that he was a really nice guy (and cute too! )

At the time, I was seeing a guy back in NY who was much better on paper (successful investment banker, my age and also from Sydney) but I had to dump him when I got back.

I love all the stories here!

Better on paper is always worse in person, don't you think??

I love all these love stories! It's so nice when the impossible is possible!

I met my husband on a cruise ship. I know this will sound really cheesy because I was a lounge singer and he was a navigational officer, but it's all true!

He used to come into my bar night after night until he finally asked me for a drink, then dinner etc. I actually fell in love with him within the 1st month but he was transferred to another ship and after hearing all the horror stories about Italian men I broke it off (no contact at all) only for us to re-unite 2 years later just on a fluke - his ship was docked beside mine in Cozumel Mexico and a friend of mine mentioned that he was on board the other ship...I emailed him because I never could shake off my love for him, we agreed to meet for coffee the following week and the instant I saw him I knew it was game over for me! (tall blue eyed man in a striking white sailor uniform, haha) and the rest was a very long, happy, journey to the altar : )

awwwwwwwwwwwwwww thats a lovely story!!!

cruise ship ! what a lovely story! and you have an awesome blog.. very funny , specially the MIL stories! I can relate! Ive been trying to get "mamma" to get nonni's old clothes out of our room for quite some time! im losing the battle methinks!

keep the stories going!

Ggnitaly84 wrote:cruise ship ! what a lovely story! and you have an awesome blog.. very funny , specially the MIL stories! I can relate! Ive been trying to get "mamma" to get nonni's old clothes out of our room for quite some time! im losing the battle methinks!

keep the stories going!

Does your closet smell like moth balls too? I feel your pain. I just got back from 2.5 weeks in the US, so far I cannot see any major renovations here, but I am a bit jet lagged so tomorrow could be full of surprises.

you have no idea! Mamma decided to rearrange my closets and shelves to "save space" so now I can't find anything and she likes everything hidden ( like no pictures on walls so its hard to "express" myself here.. but I always try to be respectful. I have asked that our bedroom be our "santuary" as in only we go inside but nope I don't think that will ever be a reality as long as we're here.. i have an endless supply of hankerchiefs... why.. i dont know they just take up my bedside table which i longingly which i could put other stuff... ehhh cosi!

G i thought you were going to move? what happened there???

we are haha .. just looking to buy a house and its taking longer than expected but the visa issues last year really railoaded the housing effort and there was a period during visa "fun" that I wasn't sure italy was the place I really wanted to be . So 2010 resolution? FIND A HOUSE... so we are making appointments and looking in the papers.. its all kinda scary but since I have worked in the housing market , i at least kinda know what to look for .. but florence is reallllly expensive.. mamma mia! i told tommaso that we could have a 4 bedroom house with a pool in texas for what we would pay here hahha but its "il bel paese" so speriamo di trovare qualcosa

Great story!

Um, regarding nonna/nonno's clothes.... Let's see, a couple of months ago I finally succeeded in clearing out the room my husband and I use. It was full of ONLY things that belonged to his parents, one of whom died 12 years ago. Now, I know this is because his mom didn't want to throw out the husband's things, but it all seems a little excessive to me. Besides, why didn't my husband have any of his OWN clothes in this room if he was the only one using it? I just don't get it sometimes....

I came to work with horses, not knowing anybody or any italian at all.. really. I knew that si was yes and no was no and that was it.
My first week at work, I found out that I was the only female working there and that there was a construction crew out working on my boss's house. Nobody spoke much english at all and those that said that they did speak english, did not. However I was offered on average 3 coffees a day =) lol. One thing that I tried to teach everybody was KEY.. I tried to explain that key was just have of 'chiave' but nobody got it.
Well at the end of the first week, I noticed one of the workers was kinda cute, but I did not think anything of it, partly because I did NOT want to start seeing anybody due to a really bad story that had ended a few months before. Well it turns out that this guy noticed me as well and would spy on me as he was working on the house (he could look out the windows and see most of the stable) and he would drag one of his coworkers down all the time to use the bathroom, wash his hands, make a phone call, get coffee and whatever other excuse he could come up with. Finally his coworkers got tired of this as he had dragged them down to get coffee but needed my boss who had the key to the coffee machine but he was too afraid to ask me where my boss was. Finally he asked me 'where is the man with the key?' I was so amazed and happy that I found someone who spoke english! real, actual english! lol
Anyways, after a couple of tries at getting me to pay any attention to him, he asked me out and the rest is history

cooooooool story!

I love this thread and all these stories!

I moved to Ireland in 2005 after university. I'd done a scholastic program there during high school, and had gone back every opportunity after that, it's my favorite place in the world.

I was working for a small engineering firm, with a lot of diversity in the nationalities of our employees. We had people from Malta, Argentina, Poland, Italy, Ireland (obviously), and me, the Yank. I was the only female in the firm.

As the 2006 World Cup approached, we had a pool in the office. Each person put their cash in the pot, and randomly drew two national teams- a first tier team, and a second teir team.

I drew Italy and Tunisia.

One of the Italians in our office (I'll call him "R") drew the USA and France. R begged and pleaded to trade USA for Italy with me, even offered to buy it off me, but I didn't budge (though of course I was routing for my national team!).

When the match schedule came out, it turned out the first match for our teams was against each other (USA v. Italy). R and I decided to watch it together.

I met R at a packed pub in town the day of the match. He'd brought along his flatmate, "G". I was caught completely off guard. I thought the flatmate was gorgeous, and had a really sweet demeanour, but... he didn't speak English! All he said the entire night was "Hi, I'm G", and "me too" (his "answer" for everything!).

The match was a draw, 1-1.

After the match we ended up in a few other places. In one club R abandoned us on the dance floor. So we kind of ended up dancing together, and G got the impression I was hitting on him (but I wasn't, really!), so he tried to kiss me. I wasn't totally (ok, not at all) against kissing this hot guy, but R had told me previously that he was "training" G to be a stereotypical Italian male... he'd called it the "perv in training" program . Anyhow, I wanted nothing to do with that, so I dodged G's attempts, told him I was going to miss the late bus, and hightailed it out of there.

I got to be better and better friends with R, and we continued watching World Cup matches together. G was always around, and we did flirt... and more... but we couldn't really talk.

Anyhow, a few months later, it was like a wall came down. All the years of school English suddenly clicked for G, and we became inseperable (in eachother's pockets my flatmate said). He followed me back to the states when I left Ireland (a choice I wish I hadn't made), and I followed him to Italy that autumn.

I had such a string of good luck- Italy won the tournament, so I got €200 off my colleagues, and met the love of my life. Our wedding bands are engraved with the date and results of that match, ITA 1-1 USA... because we both feel like we "scored" evenly that day.

P.S. As for R and his Italian "perv in training" programme: G and I will be standing up for he and his fiance's wedding in June .

AW! I love that story!!

great stuff!