OP here, I'll add my experience living in Catania, a city in the south of Italy: - Almost everyone over 35 doesn't know English at all, and even younger folks

OP here, I'll add my experience living in Catania, a city in the south of Italy: - Almost everyone over 35 doesn't know English at all, and even younger folks are pretty lacking in this regard. - Bureaucracy is definitely a mess. Even if sometimes there's a website for something it's the sort of website optimized for IE6, if you know what I mean. - I can't speak for all Italians of course, but I don't think most of the people I've interacted with are particularly interested in tech. A friend of mine recently decided to learn programming and people reacted to it as if he decided to stay unemployed for life or something. - The situation regarding startups of course varies from city to city, we actually have a startup incubator in my city, they claim something like a 90% success rate of their startups... Also I'm not aware of any even remotely big tech company that started here. - Catania is definitely at the forefront of something, perhaps organized crime, but not technology. - Public transportation is ok-ish. - Public healthcare is not perfect but still way better than what you'll find in the USA for instance. - Renting prices are pretty low. Overall I don't think it's worth living here, the missed opportunities greatly overcome the low rents and the good weather.