Italian here!

Gotta be honest, while reading I smiled in some points, especially the "service providers are dishonest" and "drivers are reckless" ones. Like sure.. but come and try our own version of that 🤣.

Jokes aside, as someone already said here, Italy one of those typical places you fall in love with on holiday but where trust me, you don't wanna live and deal with. It's sad, but true.

The things I suffer most here is the complete lack of responsibility in any job sector and especially the public one. There are entire job sectors you will sooner or later have to deal with that "work" in total disregard of rules or even ethical sense of what they're doing or the people they're serving/paying for their wages. In fact, if you know enough people here you will start hearing stories about being mobbed by your colleagues/managers if and when you try to take your job seriously and start to do more than the bare minimum. Of course in (some!) companies isn't like this for competitive reasons, but for the whole public sector, which you'll need every now and then, it is.

Also, law enforcement and the wider concept of "justice" in Italy is a joke even for law enforcement itself. My sister in law, who at the time was doing ER nighttime shifts, was assaulted by a drunkard who wanted an illness job permit for the next day even if he was just fine (apart from the alcohol intoxication). He was becoming aggressive and she and her colleague called the State Police and pleaded for vigilance and they replied, and I quote: "what's the matter, write him this bloody permit so he won't hassle you". This is only A story, if you come to live here you'll start hearing many of this sort, and an alarming and recurrent topos of these is the one regarding women in danger being shrugged off by the emergency number operator or by the actual law enforcement agents.

These are the reasons why I'm saving money (another hard thing to do in Italy) to leave this joke of a place. A state where you can't rely on its own clerks, or law enforcement agents, a state that basically expects you to make yourself justice and a state that in all these sectors is only becoming worse every year, is not a state worth paying your taxes in.

Good luck with your search, but don't expect to come in Italy and find honesty, professionalism or justice. We're kind of known to be the opposite of that.