EPTAugust can be a very tough time to arrive. Ferragosto is the traditional summer holiday where many stores and services shut down and huge swaths of the population go on vacation. In northern Italy it's less extreme and you might not even notice anything until 15 August, which is the big holiday. Try to get invited to someone's celebration. Italians are typically very friendly. Take advantage of the hospitality and make some friends quickly : ) It is not uncommon for someone to invite you over to their home within 1 or 2 meetings.
Italian is a pretty easy language to learn. It's about the same level of difficulty as Spanish (maybe even easier) and they use a lot of cognates, words that sound like words in your native language. If you work at it you could get to a basic level of communication before you leave in August.
Edit: sorry, I totally forgot that the state that Trieste is in doesn't necessarily use standard Italian as the first language. Most/all people will speak a dialect or non-Italian language. Many would have knowledge of standard Italian and they aren't too far removed (it would be intelligible to me, but for a beginner it would be difficult).
Other travel destinations...Austria is not far away and is very beautiful.
