Italy: Have you ever felt stupid as a tourist?

In a country where coffee is drunk strong and standing up, Kacie Rose Burns has found a place to linger. The 31-year-old enters a roof terrace on Via Roma, just a few meters away from the famous Florence Cathedral. Stylishly dressed people are sitting here at their laptops, some are making phone calls in English, and every now and then they are sipping their chai lattes. The menu at this hip café includes granola, vegan burgers and miso salmon.

Kacie in Florence is like the real-life version of “Emily in Paris.” The Netflix series is about a young American woman. She moves to Europe, immediately falls in love with a charming chef, stumbles from one faux pas to the next – both ecstatic and overwhelmed by the new culture – and shares it on social media. In the fifth season, which is scheduled to air in 2026, Emily even moves from France to Italy.

As the star When Burns makes this comparison during a conversation in Florence, he has to laugh. “I really hope that the series does justice to Italian culture,” she says. “It’s very easy to cross the line into disrespect.” She should know: short videos about cultural differences are her business.

Burns is followed by 1.1 million people on Tiktok and 600,000 on Instagram. She founded a company that offers group tours through Italy. Her first book entitled “You Deserve Good Gelato” was also published in fall 2024. It is a mixture of anecdotal story and self-help guide and became a New York Times bestseller.

Your recipe for success? She shrugs her shoulders. “I think people are tired of social media presenting only perfect people,” she says. “And I can’t serve with perfection anyway.”

Burns is not afraid to admit her own ignorance. In her sketches, she recreates situations that overwhelmed her in her everyday Italian life: Unlike in the USA, birthday cards are not sold in a “Farmacia” – after all, it is a pharmacy and not a drugstore. Alcohol is allowed to be drunk in public, bottled water is not free in restaurants and many establishments close in August for a summer break.

Burns isn’t the type of influencer who starts her videos with the familiar and annoying “Oh my God, guys, you won’t believe what just happened to me,” as is common on Instagram and Tiktok. The basic tone of her videos is one of affection: “Oh, good to know.”

Some of the insights it conveys may seem under-complex to observers here: Italy is one of the main holiday destinations for Germans. The short flight requires little adventurous spirit, especially since Italian cities are geared towards tourism and have an infrastructure that Deutsche Bahn could learn something from.

Why it still took Burns courage to go on a solo trip to Italy in autumn 2018 becomes clear when she reports on everyday life in the USA. “Many Americans don’t have a passport at all because traveling is simply not an option for them,” she says. “Many people barely manage to cover the costs of medical treatment or the education of their children. There are no paid vacation days. Those who live in rural Nebraska are also four hours away from the nearest regional airport.”

She herself grew up between lakes and cherry trees in the US state of Michigan. At 17, she moved to New York to become a professional dancer. “In Italy I’m constantly asked: How could you leave New York? But life there is hard. I worked around the clock to support myself.” Burns rushed from one audition to the next, also working as a nanny, receptionist and saleswoman. “Professional dance can be toxic,” she says today. “There’s a lot of rejection and a lot of things that are out of one’s control.”

Burns decided to take back that control. After a few glasses of wine and a few tears shed, she booked a flight online: a solo trip to Italy. Her first evening in Florence took her to a jazz club. I’ll only stay for one song, she decided. Then her eyes fell on a man at the other end of the bar. He too was there alone; a friend had stood him up. I’ll only stay for one song, he decided. “He was wearing ripped jeans, a white T-shirt and a leather jacket. I thought, ‘This is the epitome of Italian,'” Burns says, looking at the engagement ring on her finger.

She and Dario, who works as a chef in Florence, began a conversation that lasted until four in the morning. They also spent the following days together, until a tearful farewell on the train platform. But the contact remained: Dario visited her in New York and found a job in an Italian restaurant there. With his visa expiring, Burns decided to follow him to Italy – initially on a probationary basis. In the airport waiting area, she edited the story of their relationship into a video, shared it online and switched her phone to airplane mode. By the time the couple landed in Florence, it had gone viral.

Four years have passed since then. Burns has now expanded her content: In addition to the humorous examination of cultural differences, she gives travel tips. What is the difference between trattoria and osteria? (Trattoria = local home cooking, Osteria = tavern with menu). What’s for breakfast in Sicily? (Granita with brioche, i.e. sorbet with pastries). And which city should you definitely visit on a road trip on the island? (Syracuse). In the videos, holidaymakers in Italy ask questions or share their own experiences.

After moving to Florence, Burns depended on her boyfriend’s help for every form and doctor’s visit. “It bothered me more than it bothered him because I saw asking for help as a form of weakness.” Communicating with each other wasn’t always easy either: “In Michigan it’s very common to respond with ‘Yeah’ when someone says ‘Thank you’.” That should mean: Nothing to be grateful for. “But at some point Dario asked why I was constantly so annoyed with him.” In these moments you have to put your own ego aside and ask yourself: What do you mean by that? What do I want to express? Is this misunderstanding culturally based?

“I feel like Italian men communicate their feelings and emotions much more clearly than Americans,” says Burns. “They have no false pride, they don’t play games.” Marriage also has a different weight. “I know a lot of Italian couples who have a child or a house together after ten years, but are not married. In the USA, on the other hand, people rush to the altar – some couples get married after a year of dating.”

The fact that Dario and she took their time getting engaged caused speculation among followers. Harmless comments compared to the insults Burns receives for her thin lips or her American heritage. In her book, she describes how she looked up from her phone screen one evening and asked Dario: Could it be that you are right? Am I stupid and insensitive?

More and more often, friendly curiosity is punished with malice on social media. “It has become a trend to make fun of tourists,” observes the influencer. One of the most common comments on her videos is: You know Google is free? “But when it comes to travel, you can’t know what you don’t know,” says Burns. “There are things that you have to experience first hand – that’s where their beauty lies. Otherwise you could stay at home.”

Does Burns regret trading in the American Dream for La Dolce Vita? When she waits in line at the post office for hours, she says she misses American efficiency. “But I don’t think the American dream is still achievable today. The concept is outdated.” The Italians are not even aware of the dolce vita way of life. “It’s just inherent in their everyday lives: they cultivate personal happiness. Here, relationships have a higher value than material things.”

Kacie wants to awaken a desire to travel in her predominantly American followers – and convey that there is no one right way to live. “Understanding cultural differences is a useful tool: it allows us to develop empathy or even sympathy for other people,” she says, hoping to build bridges. Especially to her homeland, whose population of 300 million people is itself so divided that a sweet life seems far away.