How to survive at NYU Florence

Damariz Damken, 18, is a freshman at NYU Florence.

One of the first thoughts to cross the mind of everyone on NYU study abroad is the legal drinking age, which in European countries is 18.

This makes partying the number one weekend activity. And as fun as it may be, spending nights out in your new European city can sometimes turn sour.

The following are some tips to keep in mind in order to get the very best out of your own abroad experience.

Welcome to Florence.

Pickpocketing

Pickpocketing is an issue everyone planning on traveling should remember, and I cannot emphasize this enough — we NYU Florence students pretty much had this drilled into us during orientation week.

Mind you, spotting Americans wearing Vineyard Vines and caps among a crowd of locals is just as easy as reading it in capital letters tattooed on their foreheads, making them easy targets for expert gypsies and sly handed thieves.

Even keeping your personal items in your zippered purse may not always be enough. Stopping by to grab some gelato after a long day just to reach for your wallet and realize it’s no longer there is not a happy feeling.

This is more likely to happen to you than you think – just ask NYU Florence freshman, Jack Goodman.

Jack said: “I step out of a cab and feel my wallet in my back pocket.

“Then, two minutes later I think, ‘Hey, I should probably put my wallet in my front pocket so I don’t get pick pocketed.’

“And when I reached for my wallet it was gone. I was angry for letting myself become ‘that person’ only on the second day of being in Florence, especially because I know I’m not naïve.

“Yet, in the two minutes I became distracted, somebody sought the opportunity and stole all my shit, my cards, cash, and ID.

“I immediately had to call my dad crying in the middle of the night to cancel all my credit cards.

“Long story short, I spent my first week in Florence in and out of a slew of Italian government agencies and banks trying to sort out my financial situation.”

Keep your most important items on you at all times. I mean keep it in your front pocket, sock, bra, shoe, etc.

This may sound ridiculous and a bit awkward, but I would much rather take a couple of seconds reaching into my shoe to pay for my drink than spend hours on the phone with my bank the next day trying to cancel/order new credit cards.

A good rule to follow is to go out with as minimal number of items as possible: phone, some cash, your keys and you’re good.

Drinking abroad

Conveniently, going out with a limited amount of cash is also a good tactic to ensure you moderate the number of drinks you buy, especially if you want to save up for traveling during the weekends and breaks.

For many of us at NYU Florence, it was too easy to buy cheap drinks for everyone the first couple of nights, but we soon found exporting our concept of American college party culture to Europe wasn’t so wise.

Once as I walked with a big group of my friends talking and laughing loudly after going bar hopping, I caught several Italians giving us dirty glances and muttering “Americani brutti” (Ugly Americans) among themselves.

In Italy, the drinking culture is much more casual, exposing teens to alcohol at a young age. There’s even a “quiet hours” law that asks all people living in or visiting Florence be respectful and keep quiet between the hours of 11.00pm and 7.00am.

This doesn’t stop us from going out on the weekends, but for us Americans used to 24-7 service, the culture shock never felt more real until we saw a closed McDonald’s at 2.00am because locals need their good Italian rest every night.

And bartenders and bouncers won’t do anything but laugh when they see a group of foreign students tripping over themselves as long as they keep buying drinks.

Bar and club promoters are well aware of the American college student stereotype, and often target incoming Americans by bombarding them with tempting promotions like “all you can drink beer in an hour for 10 euro”. These offers sound like great and super cheap party opportunities, but this can be dangerous if walking out in the city late at night.

A fellow NYU Florence student told me her most recent experience going out with her friends.

She said: “So my two friends and I were walking from the club toward Piazza San Marco to get a taxi back to campus.

“As we walked together, talking, laughing and Snapchatting ourselves, we saw a group of Italian men walking by some 50/100 feet behind us.

“We were getting pretty loud and when my friend decided to run in front of us and moon them, they started calling to us in Italian.

“We got pretty scared and really uncomfortable so we started to walk faster but they were persistent.

“We didn’t want anything to do with these guys, but they saw that we’d been drinking and continued to approach us.

“These guys were big too, and I just wanted to get back home as soon as possible, so I just turned around, shoved the guy and started screaming at them in Italian to leave us alone.

“They were like ‘What? Stupid Americans!’ or whatever they said in Italian. So they walked away and I basically saved the day.”

Moral of the story, no one wants to find him/herself totally frightened because you drunkenly did something you weren’t supposed to. Florence is nowhere near dangerous but it’s always important to be cautious.

Adapting to city life

From personal experience, I recommend always knowing how you’re going to get back home ahead of time either via taxi, bus or metro, and knowing the daily public transport schedule.

Walking in Florence is the norm but trying to get back home when you don’t really know the language and have no real clue where you are is not as fun as it sounds.

It’s also much easier to get a hold of a taxi when calling from a hotel or a restaurant that’s further away from a bar district. Taxi drivers actively exercise their right to deny a ride if they don’t feel like taking home a group of students who may or may not throw up when placed in a moving vehicle.

It’s also much more convenient to go out in tighter-knit groups.

I find going out to local casual bars or looking for the best late night pizzeria much more fun than actually spending hours at an American-targeted dance club.

Bars and clubs are only a fraction of the Florentine nightlife spectrum, and though I definitely recommend for others to explore to their heart’s desire, they don’t fulfil the complete experience that living in one of the most historic cities in Italy has to offer.

Walking past the Duomo, relaxing by the Ponte Vecchio, eating a good Margherita pizza, stopping for some gelato, or finding a hidden live music venue are only some of the casual activities abroad students love.

Florence is no sleepless New York City, but it sure does its share of welcoming you to the “adult world”.

This is our own European version of home.