Tag Archives: living abroad

The Allure of Possession

30 Friday Nov 2012

Posted by in General, Learnings

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I’ve been spending a lot of time lately thinking about why it is that ownership is such a compelling concept. Not only with respect to our general human love of acquisition and possession, but more specifically concerning houses. Certainly if you have any grasp of math and are at all rational, you’d realize that owning a vacation home is often not a brilliant idea, financially.

Let’s do a little quick math on Godzillavilla. A rough figure of total investment for the done thing: € 250,000. That sum was, until recently, around 50% bigger when converted to the currency we earn in (Canadian dollars), but let’s not even think about that right now. Let’s just assume that we would visit every year for 25 years, which is about how many I might still be agile enough to cope with the stairs – that’s a cost per year of about €10,000.  If we were there a minimum of 5 weeks a year, that could look fairly reasonable.

However, then we add taxes, maintenance, someone caring for the place when we’re not there, and emergency repairs due to acts of God or nature. Ah, you say, but if you rent it out all those things are covered and more. Yes, if you manage to rent it enough. Which will in turn create more maintenance, and the cost of a property manager to meet, greet and clean up after your guests.

Why rent this...

Why rent this…

You see where I’m going with this. Home ownership is expensive and relentless. You can make the numbers add up, and lots of people do. Then I look at people who are renting, year-round, lovely homes in areas similar to ours, for less than €4,000 a year. We used to do this ourselves, when we lived in Milan. We had a place in the hills around Levanto for €3,600 and one in Courmayeur for slightly more. We co-rented a country villa in Chianti for about the same.

When you could OWN this?

When you could OWN this?

So why on earth did we go and buy our own place – a ruin that that wasn’t even habitable?

It’s a darned good question, hence my lengthy contemplation of it. My conclusions about my motivations are not entirely flattering but neither are they entirely foolish, and I’ll bet they’re pretty common. I say ‘my’ because I don’t think I should speak for the rest of the family on this one, but I think I know what things drove me, personally.

One aspect had to do with transformation. I absolutely adore taking the latent beauty in a house or landscape and turning it into all it can be. As a family we’d done this for years, in fantasy form, with all kinds of abandoned houses in our travels around Italy. A ruined house of soft, old stone, a vine scrambling up the wall, the setting gorgeous, the view spectacular…it’s an absolute shame that such a thing is crumbling to pieces. I want to restore them all to their true beauty. I might have satisfied that need by becoming a contractor and doing it for other people, but in Italy as a foreigner that wasn’t really an option. And it wouldn’t satisfy reason number two –

Which had to do with nesting. When we bought the villa, we were renting in Milan. We’d been away from Canada for almost eight years, we’d sold our farm there, we’d lived in Milan for a bit, then the US, then back in Milan. Our rented house in Milan was lovely, even luxurious. Was I a spoiled brat for still wanting one that was our own, special place, regardless of where we might be earning our living? I wanted a place that made me sigh with the satisfied sense of truly being home, the moment it hove into sight. And that brings me to –

The biggest reason: the allure of possession. The (as it turns out, unfounded) belief that ownership bestows security – you will always have it, you can use it whenever you want, no-one can take it from you. The delicious idea that once you have restored its breathtaking beauty, it will be yours to have and to hold from this day forward. That you will forever have the opportunity to turn down its lane and heave that sigh, to walk through the door and greet its ghosts, to sit under the cherry tree and soak in the serenity of its valley.

I think it was a pretty good reason, actually. Even if it didn’t turn out to be true in our case. Even if it doesn’t make any sense. The dream of it still has great allure.

Because of feeling I get from this.

Because of the feeling I get from this.

Your Most Important Renovation Asset

01 Thursday Nov 2012

Posted by in Community, General

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One of the questions I get a lot is whether I had a terrible time trying to work with Italian workers and bureaucracy on the villa project. While this may disappoint people looking for a more juicy post, the answer is no. Why? We went local, and we had a great geometra.

The geometra is, in my opinion, the single most important decision you can make on an Italian reno project. Good ones know their way around the myriad regulations and filings, they know which contractors are good at what, which suppliers have the best windows, plasters, rafters, etc., who has the time to really devote to your project and who will try to charge you too much. They run the show on you behalf.

Fees are usually a fixed percentage of construction. This is, of course, something you want to work out ahead of time. But it’s money so well spent, it’s the last thing you want to haggle over.

Majordomo Nadia, project Queen

So how do you find a good one? As I mentioned before, it’s not through your real estate agent. We spent some time in our local community, asking around at bars and our new neighbours, and they directed us to Studio Ginocchio and the capable Nadia Silvano. The fact that she was part of the local fabric was as important as her professional skills, because when you start on a project like this, you begin to build a web of contacts and interdependencies that are just like a spider’s web: strong and delicate at the same time. No-one wanted to let Nadia down, and by extension no-one would let us down, either.

Not that we delegated completely and then disappeared. That was another important aspect of being able to get things done reliably. If you don’t make an effort to be present as much as possible, to be part of the community when you’re there, to care about who’s just had a baby and whose mother has just died, then no-one will care about the progress of your house in turn. But the number of times someone from whom I needed help asked me who the geometra was, and the way they always made an effort to give me what I needed when I said it was Nadia, convinced me of the importance of her role.

Advice: Find the geometra everyone loves. Love him/her in turn, treat them with respect (this should go without saying, but you’d be amazed), appreciate their knowledge, listen to them. They are your most important renovation asset!

Crazy Cantamaggio

14 Monday May 2012

Posted by in Community, Culture

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I’m happy to report that some things turn out to be every bit as good as we hope. I’ve waited years to be in Scurtabo for the first of May to celebrate Cantamaggio, a tradition that dates back, according to my sources, ‘since forever’.

Finding it was a challenge. The conversation went something like this:

I’d like to go to the Cantamaggio celebrations. Do you know if they’ll be on today?

Yes, certainly they will be.

Do you know when?

They started this morning.

How long will they sing?

All day. But not right now. (it was close to noon)

Later, then?

Yes.

Do you know where?

(gesture) All around.

Will they be at Scurtabo this afternoon?

Yes.

So if I go up there now and wait, they’ll show up?

Yes. But why would you go up now? They won’t be there.

One of the singers.

It was about then the penny dropped and I realized the event was like Mummering – you can’t possibly predict when or where, you can only put yourself in their general path and keep asking and waiting. The whole valley celebrates, with several bands of roving troubadours moving from house to house – and bar to bar – throughout the day to sing traditional songs, play the accordion and spoons, dance with whoever is willing, and generally have a rollicking time of it.

A super fancy tour bus for the band – yes, they pile in the back.

They did indeed arrive at the bar in Scurtabo, much later in the afternoon. It was pouring rain so everyone was packed inside. A large, covered truck drove up and out piled a dozen men in varying states of wobbliness. They’d already been going since 9:00 in the morning, drinking and singing, so they were in fine form.Spumanti was passed around, the accordionist started up, and the classic first of May song was belted out by the whole crowd. There’s a part about a donkey where everyone is supposed to jump up and down; my friend Marcia and I were instructed in this crucial bit and hauled into the throng to hop along. That was just the beginning.

One of the ‘band’ members played the spoons – really well. He solemnly swore to me that his instruments had been given to him by the Conservatory in Piacenza…

It’s not Italian without an accordion.

Willing, if not quite able, to try a whirl on the dance floor.

Somehow space was made for dancing, we were crazy enough to say yes to various wild-eyed singers looking for a partner, and they were uncaring enough not to be fazed by our total ignorance of the dance steps. We proved beyond a doubt that while Canadians may be good sports, they’re no match for Italians –even tipsy ones – on the dance floor.

So much fun. I’ve left out the more embarrassing photos, and the ones I have are poor due to the light, but I think you can get the idea!

Italian Time

14 Saturday Jan 2012

Posted by in Culture

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This is my apocryphal story about learning to be content in Italy. I know some of you will gasp and wonder how one could not be content, but ask any expat and they’ll give you a long list, especially when it comes to the concept of time.

My life-changing event took place, rather mundanely, at my local dry cleaner when we were living in Milan. I had brought in my clothes; browns and blacks. The lovely lady who owns the place told me to come back for them on Thursday, which I did.

But when I returned, my clothes weren’t ready. I felt the quick spark of righteous indignation that flares in many Anglo Saxons when services don’t meet the agreed schedule. Decades of living in a society that worships efficiency does that to you. Predictably, my anger started to rise as I stood before the empty counter.

Then I realized – dare I use the word epiphany? – that I didn’t actually need those clothes that day. I had other things I could wear. The reason my clothes hadn’t been cleaned was because Italians don’t mix colours at the dry cleaner’s, they have too much respect for clothing. There hadn’t been enough dark things at the cleaner’s that week to warrant a load. It was a sensible, economical decision. My clothes would get cleaned (perfectly, lovingly, and thriftily) when it was practical.

Wow. I suddenly understood that all I had to do to be happy in Italy was remember that time is fluid, our needs are never absolute, and exigencies are a part of daily life.

And that I have other stuff to wear. How liberating.

Make like the patient land and chill out

The Value of Community

28 Monday Nov 2011

Posted by in Community

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It always feels good to be back. Godzilla had fared better than the apartment in terms of infestations – just the usual squirrel poop we’ve come to expect, since the place is wide open.

What I like best about returning, apart from seeing the house and getting all pumped up about it again, is the welcome we get from the community. We aren’t there as much as we used to be and we’re obviously peripheral to the tight-knit local group, but everyone notices when we return, even for a couple of days, and greets us.

The local grocer

There aren’t very many people in our little hamlet and a lot of them seem to be related. The family who runs the local bar and restaurant (Albergo Picetti)) is a good example. The father sold us part of our land. One of the sisters is married to our contractor. The other sister is our neighbor, whose husband helped us get rid of the junk in the Clean Team episode. They just moved in Monday to a new house that took them six years to build. We used to joke that it was a race to see who got their house ready first, but their six years now looks miraculously fast compared to us. Seeing that they’d actually moved in, we stopped by to admire their new digs, their new baby, and have a coffee.

Our apartment overlooks the bar, so when we hang out our windows we can shout greetings back and forth to the people coming in and out, in typically noisy Italian fashion. That’s how people know you’re there, when you stand around in your window. I’m not always completely certain who they all are, but they know us as the Canadians who have inexplicably developed a fondness for their remote corner of the world. Even the old men who have been playing cards at the bar for decades mutter their recognition, sometimes smile, and make a space for us to have our beer.

I love this sense of familiarity and community, however peripheral we may be. The cheese man at the grocery store greets us with the informal ciao now, a sign of acceptance in the formality of Italian society. He shook my hand when we were leaving and asked when we’d be coming back; he knows we always do.