If you are about to visit a foreign country for the first time, it is important to know some things about the culture of the place before. It’ll take some time to explore it, but it will keep you out of confusing situations.
For example, there tends to be strikes on the railways in Italy. It might be a problem if you buy a ticket on this particular day. Although, if you paid to book tickets in advance, you should be careful and take a look at a website which has information about the strikes.
In addition to that, there is a quirk where restaurants open only in particular hours. I think it could upset you, once you'd be hungry facing the restaurant's doors closed.
It was just a couple examples. There are a lot of details that you should know before your journey. Therefore, if you’ll spend time in order to prepare yourself for it, the odds of something unpleasant happening are way smaller.