When Life Says Con Calma

It wasn’t courage. It was hunger for a life I hadn’t met yet.

And so, after the first excitement, the new life in the new city showed its other face very fast.
Options were simple — make it, or go back home. No plan B, no safety net, nothing in between.

I don’t know if it’s luck or a curse, but I have that typical Bosnian head — when it decides something, it goes through the wall if needed.
And that’s exactly what happened.

A new start

After the initial enthusiasm, the positive shock and disbelief, reality hit me — hard.
I needed to find an apartment.
Location, size, decoration — all that didn’t matter anymore once I learned how renting works in a “well-organized country.”

I’ve been renting since university, but this was a different country, with different rules.

In Italy, you go through an agency. You send an application, payslip, work contract, ID, you pay one month in advance, two more as a guarantee, plus agency costs.
Minimum amount I needed to have: three thousand euros.

Back home, I used to pay less than 100 euros monthly. No contracts, no guarantees. Money on the table, keys in the hand, and amen.

But of course, that wasn’t the end.
Since I had just started working in the company where I still work today, and I had just moved from a “third-world country,” landlords were not exactly relaxed. They asked for extra documents.

In the end, I somehow found my little sweet apartment.
We signed a one-year contract, even if in Italy it’s usually 3-4-3.
The landlady probably wanted to be sure I’d pay everything on time.

Moving in and facing it

So, after six long months, I finally moved in. Fifth floor, no elevator.
I could finally breathe a bit easier.

At that time, work was getting intense. I worked as if the whole world depended on it.
When I wasn’t working, I was learning Italian.

Having huge expectations from myself, I was pushing beyond every limit.
Ego was, of course, involved. I wanted to prove how much I knew, could, and wanted.
All of that led to daily frustration.

Because yes — I could, and I wanted — but I didn’t know Italian.
A simple document took me half an hour to read, and I’d understand maybe three words.

It’s one thing to order pizza and an aperitivo in Italian, and a whole other thing to work in it.

My Italian colleagues were different: calm and friendly.
In their world, there was always place for con calma — slowly, no rush.

And instead of learning from them, I got irritated. I wanted everything now.
“Later” didn’t exist in my vocabulary. Thanks to that — and to my poor Italian — I collected a full album of misunderstandings and, after almost three years, zero Italian friends.

Alone in Trieste

Except for a few times when my friends or my mom came to visit me, I was really, really alone.
I walked through the streets of Trieste — completely by myself.

Summer was easier.
I went to Barcola, the city beach. I remember bringing a book every day for a week — Gabriel García Márquez Foglie di… something, I don’t even remember, because I never passed page three.
I was mentally drained, and the book was in Italian.

Winters were… exhausting.
In Italy, we work from 9 to 6, with one hour for lunch — because, of course, con calma.
When you finish, it’s already dark outside, and the Triestine bora wind shows all its power.

After work, I’d go home, play records, have a glass of wine, or watch Netflix.
On weekends, I watched groups of friends drinking wine and laughing together — just like in summer, only now with red noses and pale faces.

I’d go to supermarkets and buy things I didn’t need, just to exchange a few words with the cashier. At one point I thought, maybe I should start learning German too — so I did.
Once a week, for about a year and a half. I passed A1 at Goethe Institute.
Then it became too much. Too heavy to keep the rhythm.

Con calma

It took me a while to understand that order, work, and discipline bring results — but take away connection.
Italy taught me patience, and the quiet value of slow rhythm.
Things that no school or diploma can ever teach you.

As life irony would have it, years later I married an Italian.
What once annoyed me now brings me peace.

That same phrase — con calma — now protects my life.
Because success isn’t always about moving fast — and it’s definitely not about shortcuts.

Success is a late afternoon, a glass of wine,
and the calm certainty that you don’t have to prove anything to anyone.

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