Forget Audrey Hepburn what in Roman holiday she sighed “Rome!” when asked about her favorite city in Europe: “I will keep the memories in my heart as long as I live.” It was 1953, the golden age of jets: travel, especially abroad, to what would soon be called Sweet lifehad experience a few wealthy educated (actually “jet set”) and Hepburn, who fell in love with Gregory Peck in Rome, was a princess. Also forget the waltz written by Johann Wolfgang Goethe after his I am traveling to Italy between 1813 and 1817: “Do you know the land of lemon blossoms?”. Many singers of the beautiful country of the summer that is beginning to end, especially those who come from all over the English Channel and from abroad, are on TikTok.
There was a celebrity crowd there, from actress Olivia Wilde on holiday in Puglia to gorged taralli for the camera (for the tabloids, she was going to send a “pizzino” to her ex-boyfriend Harry Styles, also in Italy, wanted to see her); Sofia Vergara, Harry Styles, Heidi Klum, Keanu Reeves. Otherwise, the horde of English-speaking “content creators” who arrived in Italy aboard budgetary crowded. Looking for the luxury of series like White Lotus, which takes place in Sicily; instead, I find cobbled streets, trolley bus wheels ripped off, crowds on ferries and couriers, broken air conditioners, famous thunderstorms: but wasn’t it always sunny?
A celebrity of the genre is Denver’s Lexi Jordan: an influencer who complained in July that the Amalfi Coast was going viral. “It’s not that it’s ugly,” he admitted on TikTok (@millennialex). “But let’s face it, getting there is literally exhausting work.” Indeed, in order to achieve undefined place on the coast where perhaps she thought she could get there on foot from the airport, the poor woman had to cross to Naples, from there by train to Sorrento, then an hour’s drive, then a ferry “under the sun” and finally 160 steps of a romantic staircase that one had to face with suitcases in hand (hotels with a porter are expensive). The video has been viewed one million four hundred thousand times. Twelve thousand comments: “Have you ever read the manual?”
And hashtag #amalfioast triggers thousands of mostly disappointing videos on TikTok, and the mantra is “Positano is overrated”: overrated. The case of “400 people for the delay of the ferry” (“digital nomad” @Travelingwithcody). Turbid water in the Fiordo di Furore instead of the promised crystal clear waters (@diogopinela, Brazilian, and the post precedes the accident in which the American publisher died right in the fjord). One details her traveler’s diarrhea. Another rattles data: every day spent in Positano, he spent 500 euros, stood in line for 90 minutes, shared the pearl of the Amalfi Coast with 51,000 other tourists. “Too many people”: typical cry of a self-critical tourist, formulated by those who believed that Positano in the summer is just his idea. A common disappointment is that the “Sweet Life” cliché is wrong (what are those garbage bags on the street?).
Passed on the shore tooand Catherine Zeta-Jones dressed like this vogue.uk – as Amalita Amalfi Sex in the big cityi.e. a mixture of Cher, Sophia Loren in her bathrobes and the characters of the first Almodovar; after all, for a holiday in Italy or France, it seems that a costume designer is needed if most of the videos are tagged with a hashtag #eurosummer contain packing instructions. Seals are considered correct: English embroidery and lace, 15 cm earrings, floral print dresses, straw bags, nothing below the kneealmost nothing that an Italian could even put to death.
Eurosummer“summer in Europe” is one of the most used buzzwords between Americans and Australians this summer, and it doesn’t matter if it refers to A continent with 44 countries, from the Faroe Islands to Cyprus, and not at the festival. indie. As in the days of boarders Mona Lisa smile, even today it is elegant to say that you are traveling “in Europe”; who could only afford a “Euro-estate” budgetary traveled for two weeks between Copenhagen and Stromboli with crowded trolleybuses, also being the protagonists of English-language training programs. The rule is: “Don’t take it”, in the historical centers of porphyry, there are no taxis and you walk a lot.
Another culture shock: pickpockets. Former board member of the Northern League of Venice, Monica Poli, 57, gained her international fame by screaming in the streets and in vaporettos. “Attention, pickpocket!”: Watch out, pickpocket! He recognizes the smart girls and shoots them on video, showing them to those present. “Attention, pickpocket” has now become a worldwide catchphrase, which is also used to comment on fouls in the NBA.
“Advice from American influencers to those who come to Italy has become ubiquitous in a few months. And often these are masterpieces of idiocy,” he laughs. Georgia Fumo, popular comedian on Instagram (175,000 followers) who came up with the image of Emily Explains Europe, a foreign influencer who reiterates, “without even coming up with too much,” the most frequent culture shocks among tiktokers#eurosummer. First of all, the lack of air conditioning. “Today I’m going to show you how to freshen up a room in Europe. I know it will sound like communism, Emily philosophizes, but all the buildings here have windows. Window. They open them.”
Such@kacieroseAmerican living in Italy and which in TikTok acts as a “cultural intermediary” for compatriots who want to come, in fact, lists “cultural shocks” to which she is not yet accustomed, and all that remains before the air conditioner is “this habit of walking everywhere”, they call it walkTO”.
“Every time I come up with a joke, the audience tells me that it was really someone who said it: the embankment, the windows,” Fumo laughs. “These influencers come to us, they flood the cities, they don’t know anything about it, they don’t hope to find local customs and think that you just have to pay to get everything. However, they raise all prices. And they make Italy inaccessible to its inhabitants.”
Even common sense is not the limit if the etiquette for American tourists in Europe published in recent days Financial Times there is the first item “Shoe”. Even flip-flops are good, explains author Jo Ellison, and she’s not exaggerating: some go barefoot.. The second point: “Stop filming everything.” Fourth: “No one wants to see your ass”, so enough miniskirts and shorts which, moreover, are prohibited in many churches. On TikTok, Marty explains that those who walk around town in bikinis are at risk. fine for “public indecency”. Evidence; but living together if you are nearby is difficult.
And it’s crowded: 69 million travelers are expected to travel across Italy from May to September, each averaging five nights (Demoskopika); and if four out of ten Italians don’t go on vacation because of inflation (Federalbergs), it’s clear that the horde is coming from abroad.
Where to find them? TikTok is full of micro guides of “three to five things to do in Italy” and they are always the same: artisan ice cream (Vivoli from Florence is very popular), Cinque Terre tour (no, you can’t go there in one day from Rome,” Casey Rose clarifies in the tone of a public servant), gondola ride in Venice. The most original visit the Colosseum, with the originality being to book it to avoid the queues. Even reporter Ceylan Yeginsu, del The newspaper “New York Times, that is, not a naive tiktoker, allowed herself to be guided by artificial intelligence, an experiment of a tourist portal, on a tour of Milan. How was it? Sending it to the Duomo required a complicated algorithm. then eat one salami pizza in the restaurant behind the Duomo (“delicious”), and then to Navigli. Pure vanguard.