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Ancestry Trip Anxiety: My Emotions Before My Italy Trip
Waking up in the middle of the night, heart pounding. Staring off into the distance during the day. Is this early onset menopause? No! It’s trip anxiety, or in my case, ancestry trip anxiety.
My emotions before my ancestry trip to Italy is like being on a rollercoaster. Almost a year ago, I decided to book an Italian ancestry trip and we are leaving next week.
How am I dealing with my ancestry trip anxiety? For one, I am writing about it. Describing my emotions that have led up to this moment – the week before leaving on a trip of a lifetime – is one way for me to manage my anxiety and emotions.
If you are also planning an ancestry trip to Italy (or anywhere) and feeling emotional, read on – I’ve got some personal stories and tips on how to deal with ancestry trip anxiety that might be helpful for you.
✈️ #1 Tip: Get trip insurance and feel calm!
Why are ancestry trips so emotional?
I’ve been searching for my ancestors in Italy all my life. I’ve already written about it a few times on this blog. And, the other day when I was cleaning out my closet, I found an article I wrote in 1992 for a travel writing class called Finding My Roots In Italy.
So clearly this has been a life-long obsession for me.
Only in the last two years did I pinpoint where my great-grandparents came from. Knowing the exact village where your relatives came from is crucial for tracing your Italian family tree. I was ecstatic when I figured it out.
Not long after that I began to plan my trip to walk in the footsteps of my ancestors. That’s when I discovered something very interesting: most of my family members don’t care or are only mildly interested that I’m doing this.
Other Family Members Don’t Care
I am tracing my Italian family through my father’s line, so I can understand that my mother is not very interested and maybe even a little hurt, but I was surprised that my sister is not interested and neither are my cousins.
Why is it that one person in a family becomes so interested in Italian genealogy whereas other family members don’t care?
For me it is something that has interested me my whole life. I remember feeling so sad when my Italian grandfather died when I was a child. I barely knew him since he lived in San Diego and I lived in Wisconsin, but his death felt like a door slamming shut to my Italian past.
I did not come from an Italian-American family so it is weird that I felt so connected to my Italian heritage. It’s weird that I became obsessed with the Italian language the first time I heard it and decided to learn to speak Italian.
Learning Italian Fluently
From the moment I entered Italy for the first time and heard the Italian language, I knew I wanted to learn how to speak Italian fluently.
This happened when I was 18. Why was I so drawn to this language? Is it because I had an Italian last name and wished I had a big Italian family?
In any case, immersing myself in learning Italian at the age of 18 was the first time I was truly interested in something. I had finally found my path.
A few months later, I began college and started studying Italian. It became my major and then I went on to get a MA in Italian. But after graduate school, Italian was the bane of my existence.
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What do you do with a degree in Italian?
Studying and learning to speak Italian became my path and purpose for years. But after I graduated, I didn’t know what to do.
A degree in Italian is not practical. It will not open doors to employment. It is actually a curse because you become an expert in something that is not very useful even though it is so interesting.
And learning a language is hard to keep up when you don’t live in the country. One of the reasons I booked my ancestry trip for an entire month was so I could immerse myself in Italian again.
Luckily things have changed since I started learning Italian. These days you can actually learn Italian from afar. Check out what I have written about my new favorite tool for keeping up with Italian at home.
The fact that I speak Italian and love the Italian language is probably also why I am the only one in my family who really cares about our Italian ancestry.
To be fair, my daughters would love to speak Italian, but although the ancestry part is interesting, they are mainly excited for a month-long trip to Italy.
Is a month too long in Bergamo?
There I said it. This is probably the biggest question causing my ancestry trip anxiety. Yes, I will be experiencing and writing articles on things to do in Bergamo. But for a whole month? Really?
Renting an apartment for the month makes my trip more affordable but I’m worried I will feel claustrophobic stuck in a small apartment in the middle of Lombardy, far from beaches, with no pool for a month.
Picking Bergamo for my month-long ancestry trip makes sense. This is where the Forelli family originated. All my life I tried to figure out where the Forelli’s came from and when I finally was 99.9% sure I had found the town, I hired a genealogist to prove it.
She discovered the exact date and time when my great-great-grandfather was abandoned as a newborn baby wrapped in a thin tattered blanket on a cold November night at the Bergamo hospital. Wrapped in his blanket was a scrap of paper with his name, Luigi, written on it.
But his last name, Forelli, was made up and randomly given to him. So to trace the Forelli line, that is as far back as I can go. My story begins at the Bergamo hospital and that is why I picked Bergamo as my home base for a month.
The Bergamo Milan connection
I booked an apartment in Bergramo for a month. From there we will explore the entire province of Bergamo all the way up Schilpario, my great-grandmother’s village high up in the Alps.
To me this sounds amazing, but what if we are bored? What if we packed the wrong things? Last week I wrote all about packing for a month in Italy. But what if it doesn’t matter what you wear in an off the beaten path place like Bergamo and the surrounding countryside.
Are we going to be the best dressed tourists in all of the Bergamo province?
To calm myself down, I am keeping the Bergamo Milan connection front and center. Even if Bergamo is not the fashion capital of the world, Milan definitely is. They are so close, you can live in Bergamo and commute to Milan for your job.
This makes me feel better. If my daughters get bored, we will just jump on a train and 48 minutes later arrive in Milan. There is a train leaving Bergamo station every hour for Milan. The trip is 28 miles and costs $7.26.
And my younger daughter’s name is, for the record, Milan. Not Florence or Sienna, but Milan. So there’s that.
Overtourism In Italy And Protests
Locals all over Europe, but especially in Spain and Italy, are spraying tourists with waterguns and marching in the streets telling tourists to go home.
As a tourist, this does not feel good. I’m feeling anxious and cautious.
Not to mention American politics is making it very uncomfortable to be a tourist anywhere in the world.
Anticipation for Genealogy Tour Day 1
If you’ve read this far, you can tell I’m prone to self-doubt and second guessing myself about packing, length of the trip, and choice of accommodations. And I’m worried about world events. But what are my emotions before the actual genealogical tour?
I’m worried it will be a let down. As I’ve mentioned a million times, I’ve been searching for my ancestors all my life and next week I will be visiting their towns and cemeteries for the first time.
Genealogy tour itinerary for day 1
- Visit the old Bergamo hospital to see traces of where Luigi began.
- Walk past the house in Bergamo where Luigi lived with his second foster family.
- Drive out to Casazza to visit the town where Luigi lived with his first foster family from age 0-8, and where he returned to live his life after leaving the foster care system at age 14. This is where he got married, started a family, and raised my great-grandfather Giuseppe.
- Visit church and cemetery
- Wander around in the nearby forest. Giuseppe was a woodcutter in the forest. I hope I can feel his presence. But what if I can’t? What if it rains or is muggy and suffocating?
The genealogist has said that so far the priest has been elusive. What if the church is closed? What if nothing turns up on this part of the tour? There’s only 3,000 people in the town. Will there be a nice place for lunch?
Emotions About Genealogy Tour Day 2
I’m very excited for this part of the tour. The drive itself going up from the picturesque town of Casazza through the Valle di Scalve to Schilpario sounds beautiful.
I’ve read about Schilpario in the books by Adriana Trigiani, like The Shoemaker’s Wife, so I have been able to imagine and visualize what life was like for my great-grandmother.
I’m happy that my great-grandmother was from an alpine village. I have always had a connection to the mountains and now I know why. Heidi was my favorite book as a child.
One of the reasons I planned this trip for the month of July was because I wanted to make sure it would be warm enough for me to visit the Alps. Growing up in Wisconsin, I am not fond of cold, harsh winters.
However, I have learned recently that climate change is making the Alps much warmer with less snow in the winters and more rainstorms in the summers.
I’m also excited for this part of the genealogy tour because I think there is a chance of meeting living relatives.
Itinerary for Genealogy tour day 2
- Drive from Bergamo through Val di Scalve to Schilpario
- Go to the mining museum (Museo Etnografico Minario) in Schilpario
- Have lunch
- Meet the priest
- Leave messages for living relatives on the gravestones
- Look for places Angela lived
The genealogist has confirmed the meeting with the priest in Schilpario. Maybe we will also meet the mayor?
Tips For Overcoming Ancestry Trip Anxiety
Trip anxiety is normal and part of traveling. (I haven’t even mentioned my anxiety about driving a rental car in Italy – but don’t worry I wrote about that too.)
Dealing with emotions about expectations for an ancestry trip adds another layer of stress. I’m basically using self-talk to calm myself down. Here my self-talk tips to deal with ancestry trip anxiety:
- Remember that even if your family and friends are not as excited about ancestry as you are, think about how thrilled your dead ancestors are that you are interested in them.
- When your ancestors were alive, blissfully living their lives, they were not thinking about you, but you are thinking about them. That’s cool.
- Buying new clothes for a trip is fun even if you end up being the best dressed tourist in a remote village in Italy. Plus you will for sure be going to fashionable areas on your Italy trip too.
🧳Look and feel good in Inexpensive Expensive European Linen
- A month is not too long in Italy even if you are not staying at a 5-star hotel with a swimming pool. It actually makes it affordable and you can still use pools at resorts during the day.
Pro Tip: Do a google search for “resort with day-use pass”.
- You don’t have to stay in your apartment all month long. That is what the rental car is for. Remember you will be driving around the countryside exploring everyday. On other days you’ll jump on the fantastic train system of Italy and visit iconic cultural spots.
- You are not just another tourist contributing to overtourism, rather you are doing roots tourism which is sustainable and immersive.
- Many Americans are scared to travel right now and think that everyone hates us. Unfortunately, there’s no self-talk I can think of to lessen anxiety on this one.
- Practice some Italian before you go. Being confident to speak some Italian will make the trip more fun and meaningful as someone with Italian ancestry. You don’t have to get a degree in it like I did, just watch Italian TV.
Use my checklist for packing. I was feeling overwhelmed until I made a list. Then I started having fun. You can make a copy of the packing list and make it your own.
Time For An Aperol Spritz
One more week to go. I have to savor my pre-ancestry trip anxiety. This is the last week of waiting to do something I’ve dreamed of all my life. I will never be in this emotional state again.
In two weeks, I will have done it. I will be sitting on my Bergamo apartment balcony with an aperol spritz reflecting on my emotions after my Italian genealogy tour and writing about it.
For now I look forward to this immersive travel experience and living in my Italian ancestral homeland for a month like a local. I feel as prepared as I ever will be.
If you want to feel less anxious and more prepared, get trip insurance and the packing list.
