Living in Italy Changed Me: What I Noticed Coming Back to California After 4 Years
- Amby Mathur
- Jul 13
- 5 min read
By Ambika Mathur | Travel with Amby
I just got back from my first trip to California in 8 months, and honestly, I wasn't ready for how much living in Italy has changed me. This isn't a "California bad, Italy good" post. It's more complicated than that, and if you're an American in Italy already, or you're seriously considering moving to Italy yourself, I think you need to hear the complicated version.
Four years of expat life in Italy rewired something in me. I didn't notice it happening in real time. It took landing back in California, walking through my old grocery store, driving on my old freeways, to realize just how different my baseline has become. Living in Naples Italy specifically, with its density, chaos, and history, means my nervous system adjusted to a completely different rhythm than the one I grew up with.
Here's everything reverse culture shock taught me on this trip, and why the California vs Italy comparison hit so much harder than I expected.
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Table of Contents
The Architecture Thing Nobody Warns You About
The first thing that hit me, before I even said a word to anyone, was the architecture. After 4 years in Naples, where every single walk means passing something with 500, 800, 2000 years of history stacked on top of itself, California feels almost bland. The nature and coastline is beautiful, but the buildings lack personality. Clean lines, new construction, strip malls that all kind of blend together.
In Naples you can't walk to get coffee without your eyes catching on a crumbling palazzo, a hidden courtyard, a church wedged between two apartment buildings that's been there since before America existed. Your eyes are always working. In California, my eyes had nothing to chew on. It was the first sign that something in me had shifted, and it set the tone for everything else on this trip.
This is one of those Italy vs America differences that nobody really prepares you for. You don't miss the history until you're standing somewhere that doesn't have any.
Grocery Store Culture Shock after Living in Italy Is Real
Nobody prepares you for this one either. I walked into a Whole Foods and just stood there overwhelmed. The sheer size, the wall of options, the convenience of it all.
Then Costco nearly broke me completely- what do you mean I can buy halloween decorations, a sauna, camping gear, a surfboard, socks, and a rack of ribs in the same place?
Living in Naples Italy means grocery shopping looks completely different. Smaller portions, higher quality, less packaging, less "convenience" framing. In Italy, food isn't marketed to you as healthy, it just generally is, because of how it's grown, sold, and eaten close to where you live.
Coming back to California, I kept noticing how much processed food gets dressed up in health language, how many labels are shouting about wellness at you from every shelf.
But my body and brain had fully adjusted to the Italian way after years of expat life in Italy, and the American grocery store hit me like sensory overload. I stood in the tea aisle for a solid two minutes just trying to remember how to make a decision.
I do have to say though, I was very excited to go home with my Magic Spoon cereal and my favorite organic ceremony grade matcha powder, two things that are very difficult to come by in Italy.
Driving Like a Human Being Again
This one made me laugh out loud in my Avis rental. Driving in Naples is a full contact sport. Scooters coming from every direction, lanes that are more of a suggestion, parking that requires actual bravery and a willingness to negotiate with strangers using only your bumper. So when I got behind the wheel in California and experienced actual lanes, actual space, actual rules being followed, I felt strangely relaxed. Almost suspicious of how easy it was.
There's more physical space in America generally, less density, more room to breathe on the road. After 4 years of Naples traffic, American driving felt like a vacation within the vacation. I kept waiting for someone to cut me off and nobody did. It was almost unsettling.
Why Strangers Saying Hi Freaked Me Out
This is the one that got me the most, and I genuinely didn't expect it. Californians chat with strangers. Not just a quick ,"hi," no. We have real, long, conversations. In grocery stores, at the beach, at pilates, at the park... it's really normal to strike up a conversation with someone you've never met before, and no one will look at you strangely. In Southern Italy, people are generally warm and kind, and they're really wonderful once they open up to you. However, it's not as common for strangers to just randomly strike up a conversation, Italians are more reserved by nature. (Unless you have a cut dog or baby, then all walls come down.)
Fitness Culture vs. Actually Healthy Living
America has this massive workout culture. Gyms everywhere, fitness influencers, activewear as a personality trait, entire industries built around optimizing your body. And also, real extremes on both ends of the health spectrum, more visibly than I remembered.
Italy has very minimal gym culture in comparison. But somehow people are, on average, healthier. Not because they're working out, but because of lifestyle. Walking everywhere, real food, smaller portions, slower meals, less snacking, less stress around food in general.
It's not about discipline, it's just built into daily life without anyone having to think about it. Coming back to California, the contrast between the two systems was impossible to ignore, and it made me appreciate how much of health is actually just environment.
So... Would I Move Back to the United States?
Honest answer: No, not at this moment. Naples is home now. But this trip cracked something open in me that surprised me. Leaving California made me appreciate it in a way I never did when I actually lived there. I love California. I also can't fully belong to it anymore, not the way I used to, and that's a strange thing to sit with.
That's the part nobody tells you about long term expat life in Italy. It's not that you stop loving where you're from. It's that you end up loving two places you can't fully live in at the same time. Living in Italy didn't make me hate America. It just ruined the version of me that never noticed how different things could be, how many small daily choices are actually cultural choices in disguise.
If you're an American in Italy already, or you're weighing moving to Italy yourself, this is the part of the story people don't post about. The homesickness runs in both directions once you've truly built a life somewhere else.
I'd love to know: if you've experienced reverse culture shock after living abroad, did coming home ever hit you like this?
Un bacio,
Amby
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