by In Trieste
The multicultural community of our city, called Expats in Trieste, turns 5 years this December, 2021.
“It has been quite a ride”, says the co-founder Maria Kochetkova. “We started the expat group as a joke, sort of. When I moved here five years ago, I didn’t know anyone so I opened our Facebook group which later turned into a helpful, engaging, multicultural community that now counts more than 2000 members from around the globe. And we also have an Instagram account where I share with everyone my musings about Trieste.”
“For the past two years we’ve been working on turning our expat group, with the help of our region, into a start up,” ads Francesco Stumpo, co-creator of the group. “We have been a so-called bridge between the world and Trieste for five years now and soon we’ll be the official reference for all foreigners coming to live in Trieste. We’ll offer services of getting settled, finding housing, language courses – basically everything we’ve been doing for the past five years, but this time it we’ll be official. We of course have a team of specialists, who will help expats out with things we can’t, like immigration questions.”
Who are expats living in Trieste? We interviewed some of the Expats in Trieste community members.
I am a California native, and I moved to Trieste in January 2015 after seven years in New York City and Washington, D.C., for a job that combined my interests in science and international relations. I now work in communications for the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World, based at ICTP in Miramare. Though the job was what originally brought me to Italy, I quickly fell in love with Trieste and the neighboring region, being an enthusiast of the outdoors and particularly the mountains. Now seven years later, I still love discovering new places – especially through the lens of my camera – and revisiting favorite ones with my fiancé, whom I met in Trieste in 2018. When not traveling or outdoors, I love to drink an aperitivo with friends, refine my sewing skills, or cuddle with my cat, Tommasina.
Born in the north of Portugal, in a small village, with the peculiar name Jou, the passion for science and technology has always been my life’s guideline. First as a physics and chemistry teacher and then as an engineer. I am mechanical engineer in one of the world’s largest projects for the production of clean energy – International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor – ITER, which brought me to Italy, first to Grado and then inevitably Trieste. Trieste instantly felt like home as it is similar to Lisbon. Especially the morphology of the city surrounded by hills with a water mirror in front of the main square. This familiarity is very important to fight the saudade. Saudade is a key emotion word for Portuguese speakers. Though akin to nostalgia or longing, the term has no direct equivalent in English. The Expats group appears as a natural embrace between foreigners and the city, in a perfect harmony of knowing how to welcome and integrate everyone who arrives.
I am from Riga, Latvia, a small and beautiful country by the Baltic Sea. I work as a nurse at Cattinara hospital and I came to Trieste for the first time in 2017 to have a postgraduate traineeship at the hospital. My aim was to stay for 5 months and then return back home. I guess Trieste and FVG region stole my heart away. It has been five years and I am still here. I made a courageous choice and decided to take the risks and start a new adventure here in Trieste. Now I work at the same hospital where I had my internship, I like my job and I am happy and proud to be a part of a great team. My favorite things in Trieste? I adore every sunny day with the Bora. A creamy cappuccino sitting outside somewhere downtown and watching local Triestini passing by. And of course the sea! Life by the sea is amazing and every sunset in Trieste is a masterpiece!
I am a researcher at the Elettra Sincrotrone, Trieste and a structural biologist by training with a keen interest in science. I am from India and my meanderings in the world of science brought me to this beautiful city of knowledge, Trieste, which in addition to its literary and cultural tradition, also boasts the virtue of being the European city with the maximum density of researchers. Apart from science, my interests include reading, photography, travel, hiking and motorcycles. I like meeting new people, making new friends and I have been fortunate to find the Expats in Trieste group which provides an opportunity to meet people from various backgrounds, nationalities and from different cultures.
I landed in Trieste about seven years ago, but it feels like just five months have passed! I was born in Varese (Italy) to an Austrian father and an Irish-American mom. I left very young to study in the UK and after finishing school I followed my dream of living in Africa. Tanzania was my home for twenty five wonderful years and I still miss it daily. I had my own diving center, then I ran boutique hotels at a private island and eventually I opened my own guest house. We had to leave Tanzania for different reasons, one of them was that I wanted to give my daughters a better and safer future, and good education. Single mom to Maya (15) and Skye (20) we have made Trieste our home, for now (sometimes I think I would love to end up in a warmer place). When we arrived in Trieste we had to go through what every expat goes through- the whole bureaucracy nightmare. But having dealt with all that daily in Africa I found it quite simple here (I imagine some of you will laugh at this). That’s how my relocation agency started, making people happy is a fantastic job! Less than one year go I also started a new company: Biohempathy.com. We sell online and have just opened our first store in Milano. We are expanding to Greece this month and soon more countries. Trieste is a great place to live with my girls even though winter and myself don’t get on very well: cold rain and bora aren’t my thing! I am barefoot and shorts kind of person. I love hiking, skiing, scuba diving and everything that’s is adventurous and outdoor. I look forward to meeting more of you and making new friends. Being a single mom, I don’t get out much and I need to start doing it more!
I met my wife in the mountains of North Wales, volunteering on re-opening an old narrow gauge steam train route from a slate quarry to a sea port. I was (and still am) a chartered surveyor, photogrammetrist, route engineer, expert witness, geographer, and economist. I spent a year working in Nigeria, and a few months in Iran. I have visited 53 countries in the world, and 24 states in the USA.We escaped from England in my early 30s. They said “Go West, young man, and seek your fortune”. And so I did, to San Francisco, California. I worked there for many years, all over the state, Sierras and Rocky Mountains, doing feasibility studies for siting power plants, dams, and major electric, gas, and oil lines. I was caught in the massive 1989 earthquake and feel fortunate to still be alive.In 2016 we escaped from the USA and found ourselves on a beach in Sicily. From Sicily, we made our way towards Slovenia and the Julian Alps. We had to go through Trieste and spend just one night there to break our journey. One night turned into 3 weeks, then 3 more weeks after exploring Slovenia. We bought an apartment in Trieste in autumn of 2016…and the rest is history! After brief visits back to California in 2016 & 2017, I now stay here all year, and my wife lives here for about 4 to 5 months. I’ve been a long time photo-journalist and a contributing editor to several magazines (hobby, not day job). Apart from drinking sufficient quantities of coffee and lesser amounts of wine every day, and writing travel/photo blogs and Facebook rants, I do volunteer consulting work and teaching English to non-native speakers. I am very happy to have made many good friends from many nationalities in this magical city. No escaping anymore, I hope!
Ashley Caneva was born and raised in Jacksonville, Florida, but developed a love for other cultures when she was very young and began traveling when she was 12. She studied Literature and History in college and was contemplating getting a Master’s degree in Shipwreck Archeology when she met her husband while on a trip to Peru. After working in early childhood classrooms, coordinating clinical trials, and running her own transcription business, she decided to combine her passions and created Little Explorers Big World, an online resource dedicated to cultivating a love and appreciation for world cultures in young children. Ashley is mother to two vivacious boys, a recent breast cancer survivor, an amateur genealogist, and is thrilled to live in a place where she can sink her teeth into her passion for history.
I was born in Florida, but spent most of my childhood in Spain and Japan. At 18, I hopped back over to the US where I attended college and later spent rewarding years performing analysis and writing about national security topics. Within the last two years, my wife and I completely shifted gears, decided to move our family to Italy, and now create content to help instill a love of cultural diversity in young children. A recent Italian-American dual citizen, I’m thrilled to be in the region my great-grandfather called home. I love learning about the unique cultural, culinary, and historical nuances that make Trieste the magical city it is!
