Interviews

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Jeff Scurran

Jeff Scurran is new in town and is here on a mission. As the new coach of Guelfi Firenze, Florence's American football team (www.guelfifirenze.it), he has travelled across the Atlantic from Tucson, Arizona, to get the team ready for the start of an exciting new season. The

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Tomas Simcha Jelinek

Tomas Simcha Jelinek has many stories to tell. He has been living in Tuscany for the past 30 years, both in Florence and in the Chianti hamlet of Lamole, and he is currently the manager of Ruth's kosher and vegetarian restaurant (www.kosheruth.com), next to Florence's Synagogue

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Elia Nichols

Elia Nichols grew up wanting to be an actress and one day live in Florence. And this is precisely what she set out to do. Today, after five years of living in the city, this very determined young woman is not only an accomplished actress, but she also created an

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Alessandro Soltrani

Alessandro Soltrani smiles a lot, and he has a lot to smile about as the owner of one of the most popular bars in Florence, Enoteca Sant'Ambrogio Caffè, situated in the Santa Croce district. Born and raised in Iran, he first came to Italy as a student back

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Keith Sheldrake

We all know the fairytale scenario of a young female foreigner being swept off her feet by a romantic Italian and moving to Florence to live happily ever after. After all, it's not easy for an Italian man to start a new life away from Italy, and it's

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David Broomfield

On March 21, the British Embassy in Rome announced that the British Consulate in Florence, after a presence in the city lasting over half a millennium, will close. Effective on December 31, 2011, British consular services for Northern Italy, including Florence, will be available through the British Consulate General in

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Elaine Ruffolo

When Elaine Ruffolo was an undergraduate studying baroque art in Rome for two weeks, she took a train to Florence for a visit. She had such a strong sense of ...

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Petra Casini

Petra Casini had always dreamed of making her own path in life, one that would not involve her family business of stone cutting. She spent her entire life surrounded by stones: she was born and raised in Idar-Oberstein, the capital of Germany's gemstone industry, and comes from a

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Rieko Hayashi

Rieko Hayashi had always dreamed of living abroad, which is why she studied English and European culture at university. While most of her classmates traveled the world before starting their careers, Rieko went straight to work. During her vacations, she traveled to more than 20 countries, and was eventually inspired

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Daniel Graves

Daniel Graves had the makings of an artist since the age of three, when he began drawing. But it wasn't until he was 15 and saw Rembrandt's self-portrait at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, that he decided to become a realist painter. He was

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Mother Mary Taylor

Mother Mary Taylor had always been attracted to religious life, but didn’t make the decision to become a nun until she came to Florence.   Originally from Columbus, Ohio, Mary ...

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Nicky Swallow

  A musician at heart becomes a travel writer    A few years after Nicky Swallow was born in London, her family moved to Belfast, Northern Ireland. She grew up there, ...

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June Bellamy

    June Bellamy was born in Burma to a Burmese princess and an Australian pioneer. Burma (now known as Myanmar) was occupied by the Japanese during the war, and ...

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Mestre Boca Nua

Mestre Boca Nua, whose real name is Cosme Soares de Oliveira, was destined to become a mestre (master) of capoeira, the Afro-Brazilian art form that combines music, dance and martial art, and whose origins go back to the sixteenth century when African slaves, after arriving in Brazil, combined the

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Kristin Lanese

After growing up in a small suburban city outside of Cleveland, Ohio, Kristin Lanese decided to move to the West coast to attend the University of Southern California (USC) with the hopes of becoming a teacher. Before even graduating, she was teaching English at language schools and after-school programs.

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Margarita Martinez

Margarita Martinez was born in Sydney, Australia and grew up in a surf town south of Melbourne. While other children were out at the beach, Margarita was practicing the piano. Because both of her parents were professional musicians-her Australian mother a pianist and her Spanish father an organist-everyone

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Bettina Schindler

Bettina Schindler, who was born and raised in Austria by a German mother and a Swiss father, was told that the results of a school aptitude test indicated that she would make a good art restorer. While most of her classmates did not follow the test's advice, Bettina did.

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David Joseph Yacus

When David Joseph Yacus was 12 years old, he was introduced to the trombone at his grammar school in Nantucket, Massachusetts. Even though he was initially attracted to the saxophone, ...

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Natasha Garland

Florence is home to many expats: those who have longed to live here, those who have found love and moved here, and those who have come to Florence and felt immediately at home here. Many people arrive here at a point in their lives when they seek to redefine themselves:

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Rea Stavropoulos

Florence is home to many expats: those who have longed to live here, those who have found love and moved here, and those who have come to Florence and felt immediately at home here. Many people arrive here at a point in their lives when they seek to redefine themselves:

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An interview with Bill Viola

Born in New York in 1951, Bill Viola is widely recognized as one of the world’s leading visual artists. Over the last 35 years, he has created video tapes, architectural ...

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Trine West

In 1991, when Trine West was just 18, she left her hometown of Horsens, Denmark, to travel around Europe for a year. Her plan was to visit cities in the neighboring countries and get a taste of what the world has to offer. Her first destination was Florence, where she

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Matt Reinecke

Little did Matt Reinecke know when he met Cristina in Trafalgar Square in London while sitting under Nelson's Column, that he would one day live in Italy. After they met, they spent only two days together in London before Matt returned to California and Cristina went home to Prato,

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Eun Young Park (Rei)

Originally from South Korea, Eun Young Park (Rei), lived in Japan and England for many years before ending up in Florence. When she was 10 years old, her father moved the family to Tokyo for five years. She was enrolled in Japanese schools and had to learn Japanese quickly in

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