An Italian musician has written and released a collection of songs detailing his experience of swapping his homeland for the wind and grey of Scotland’s north-east.

Having studied in Rome and learned rudimentary English on a three-month scholarship in London, Giorgio Stammati moved from Gianola, a coastal town around an hour north of Naples, to Aberdeen.

The singer-songwriter released an album of songs named after the city’s George Street – the anglicised version of his own name – with best friend Emanuele Gaetano Forte making a series of videos to accompany the music.

Mr Stammati says: “George Street is one of the most important streets in Aberdeen, and it literally takes me to the town: it’s close to the bus and train, all the places you can go to Aberdeen or escape from Aberdeen.

“It’s literally and also metaphorically the connection between me and the rest of the world. Even when I go to work I have to go down to George Street, which is a very strange street.

“At the beginning it’s very posh, then you go up and it gets a bit dodgy, a bit dark, a bit dirty. You can find a lot of different shades of Aberdeen.”

In the series Mr Stammati recounts his move to Aberdeen and the various jobs he’s held since making the move to Scotland.

The Herald:

In episode one he calls the pizza in an Italian restaurant in which he worked as a kitchen porter “disgraceful”, with the same going for the coffee in a café he was employed by. Cheddar is dismissed as “s***” while Emanuele asks what kind of life it is not being able to get real mozzarella.

Mr Stammati tells The Herald: “To be honest in the beginning it was difficult, I knew people here so I was welcomed but I didn’t speak English.

“Even if you kind of speak the language it’s not your language and it’s really hard at the beginning, your social life is very limited.

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“And of course for work as well you have to start all over again from the beginning because you have to start with jobs that don’t require any particular language skills.”

The obvious question, with all due respect to the Granite City, is why someone would swap the Tyrrhenian coast for the windswept shores of Aberdeen.

It’s one which friends back home struggle with in the series, with one speculating it’s because “there’s a particular light” when the sun is low in the sky in early Autumn which annoys Giorgio, so he moved somewhere it would always be grey.

The Herald:

Youth emigration is a familiar story in Italy, particularly in the south. In 2020, almost 65,000 young people between 18 and 39 emigrated.

The film attempts to explain the phenomenon through the prism of one story, described by its protagonist as “nothing special”, but emblematic of a wider phenomenon.

Emanuele, cutting between shots of Gianola and Aberdeen notes that his friend left a “damp and desolate place” for a “damp and desolate place where there’s no sunshine”, and that maintaining that connection to the sea may have been important.

Mr Stammati agrees: “Absolutely, yes.

“It’s lovely, I really like it. It’s very, very helpful. Sometimes the sea can look a bit similar – apart from the cold!

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“The atmosphere is different but the sea is something in common which really helps.”

Emanuele’s quest to understand why his best friend moved halfway across Europe takes the pair to some strange places.

An email request to Giorgio for how to spell Catherine leads to the discovery of the village of Catrine, a village of 2,000 people in East Ayrshire.

With Emanuele having decided to visit Scotland the pair resolve to make the trip south, exactly a year after that email. Surprisingly, nothing happens. Baffled locals ask why they’re there and an attempted visit to a flower shop is stopped in its tracks because the establishment in question is closed.

As time passes though, the filmmaker begins to understand his friend’s move.

Mr Stammati says: “Obviously Emanuele wanted to provoke me but as the episodes went on he began to get the point.

“Also thanks to this film, a lot of my friends have understood how beautiful Scotland is – maybe apart from Catrine!

“I love Scotland in general, I love Aberdeen. I’m in love with Aberdeenshire, I still want to explore a bit more because I haven’t had the chance to go up to Skye or the north of Scotland.

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“I don’t know if you have the same idea in Scotland, but to me at least Aberdeen looks a little bit different to the rest of Scotland – aesthetically it’s very different and it’s like a little bubble.

“To be honest, especially now it’s been a very strange year where a lot of things have changed in Aberdeen for me.

“I changed job, I broke up with my girlfriend, so I have to figure out what to do now.

“Going back to Italy is a possibility, but I’m still not sure to be honest because I’m not brave enough to leave Scotland, I know how much I’d miss it.”

And has his opinion changed on Scottish food?

Mr Stammati laughs: “I love mac & cheese. There’s a bakery here in Aberdeen that makes a great macaroni pie, which is so, so good.

“I also got used to British coffee. I don’t mind the flat white, the Americano and your own version of cappuccino.”