Una mese (One month)!

Peter writes: Four weeks in and things start to move ahead...

As we approach the end of our first month we are definitely adjusting to life Italian style. Perhaps the most notable feature of our first few weeks has been the weather, and not as one might expect! April 2008 in Tuscany was been the wettest/coldest for 50 years (a year ago it was already consistently 27C+), so somewhat bizarrely the one thing we have missed (friends aside of course) has been our fireplace!

Having said that, we did have our dear friend Sammy over for three nights last weekend and the weather was glorious. We introduced her to the new house, Italian castles of the area, the seaside at beautiful Lerici and many mad Italians. Together we met some of the owners of Ca' dei Lecci when we turned up at the house to find them lugging out strange ornaments etc! We had a wonderful afternoon with this delightful quartet (mother, father, daughter with boyfriend) and they introduced us to some of the neighbours, gave a crash course in viniculture and generally seemed happy that we were about to take over the house that their family have owned for over a hundred years!

Italian drivers still take some getting used to. The motorways (austostradas) are only two lanes and despite the fact that, much to J's horror, I drive pretty fast in the Jag, I still get overtaken by 80% of vehicles. Those at my mercy are either vast lorries, nonagenarians in 30 year old Fiats or numbers of conveyances with only three wheels. Average outside lane speed seems to be around 95mph, so quite a lot of diving in and out of lanes round the slow guys whilst trying not to annoy the Mercs 10ft off your bottom at 100mph! To be fair though, apart from holiday weekends the roads are really quite empty (though of course the motorways are not free).

We are meeting our Geometra next week (a sort of cross between and architect, surveyor and clerk of works which one needs to get all required permissions to make any alterations, even internal improvements) and will draw up a schedule of works against which to obtain quotes from a variety of contractors (builders, plumbers, electricians, plasterers etc.)

Our Italian is poor but improving and we now have a good vocabulary of words including tiles, central heating, plastering, quotes, discount etc, along with 'how much?!' 'you must be joking!' 'this seems broken' 'oh, just hit it with a big hammer' and so on...

First project though if (a) it ever dries out and (b) I can work out which of the 87 models of strimmer available on the market I need to buy, is to tackle the somewhat lush garden as the vineyard is slowly dissappearing out of view behind the elephant grass! Free board and lodging at the rental place for any visitors in the next few weeks who want a trip to Tuscany in exchange for 4 hours of strimming a day :o) Then again, I may have to shell out some euros to any passing Romanian to help just to get things under control!

Even though it has only been a few weeks, we are 'going native'. I have already abandoned tea in the mornings and now exist on real Italian coffee. Likewise, my Marmite consumption (from stocks I smuggled in under the spare wheel) is now so low it should last a year or so. Meanwhile, J is thorougly adoring eating strange looking vegetables and kissing everyone on both cheeks.

Overall, we are very happy, excited and at peace with our decision - a state of mind only enhanced when (a) the sun does come out and (b) when we think our language skills are improving.

I think this is about all for now as it is in danger of getting a bit dull! Keep reading, if you really are at all interested, and do post your comments. We will try to get a few piccies posted soon if we can work out how! Ciao tutti.

La tirzo settimana

Juliet writes: This week, POP servers, Puccini, piles of junk and poo…

Excited whoops of joy from Careggia… we are online! Our POP server is popping, we are able to bother you with emails once more and we even have spangly new Italian mobile phones with functioning SIM cards and E50 credit (enough for a 3-second sneeze to England). In conclusion, a small miracle. Typically, the phones look very pretty but have useless reception and are tricky to operate. So communication is (almost) back to normal…

There is, inevitably, a little story attached to Fabrizio, our wonderful internet man (mi dispiace Fabrizio - non posso fissare la fotografia perché il mio mac non è compatibile con il blog!)… to counteract his all-female household (wife, daughters, cats, dog), he spends his weekends snowboarding and jumping out of planes, and his weeks in search of similar adrenaline – up ladders, on roofs and hanging out of windows with satellite dishes. He is the best in the area for helping strange foreigners who need to write emails home requesting emergency marmite supplies. It took him nearly four hours today to hook us up and it only required one espresso, three plug sockets, E580 and 8 signatures. Amazing! He is a lovely, helpful and patient man with very good English and I have the feeling that we might just become firm friends.

What other news this week? Well, I achieved a life-long dream of mine by visiting Lucca, birthplace of my beloved Puccini. It was even more beautiful than I had imagined. Cobbled streets, higgledy-piggledy architecture, Roman amphitheatres, stunning palazzi, quirky shops, churches around every corner, the best ice-cream shop we have yet discovered and a vast and varied antique market littering the main streets and piazzas (which only occurs every third weekend of the month – perchance when we happened to be there). There is something very, very magical about Lucca – I can see why it was an inspiration to the greatest opera composer in history.

P and I can’t wait to take you all there, especially as 2008 is a year-long festival in celebration of the centenary of Il Maestro’s birth which involves various daily concerts and performances. (Watch this space for the book I hope to write about his life, love and works… after tending to husband, friends, vegetables and chickens)

Then there are the ongoing negotiations for the furniture in Ca’ dei Lecci, made more complicated (would we expect anything less?) by the fact that six people currently own the house so each has to be consulted about everything. Much of the content comprises pretty shocking ’70s tat, but there are a few beautiful pieces dotted about (oh yes, and yesterday saw two bottles of wine opened in celebration of The Return of the Doorbell), plus more practical things like beds – of which we only possess one, in storage, in England, until at least September. So, we are attempting to hone our haggling skills to masterful levels. However, being polite (and clueless) English folk, ultimately, we will pay too much and be left to clear the house of at least 30 skipfuls of junk (made trickier by the fact that they don’t have skips in Italy!). Anyway, it will be worth it in the end… honest. Oh, and does anyone want a kitten? A very cute tiny one? One of the stray cats living in the cantinas has given birth and I haven’t got the heart to ask the owners to take them away. (Peter is eternally patient with my animal-loving escapades – well, at least for now).

As to the subject of poo, there are two things to report (if your eyes are still open and your stomach hasn’t turned yet): Firstly our own neurotic feline has managed to have her first ‘toilet visit’ outside. This may seem like a small victory and a rather silly thing to write, but you have to understand that we have had no TV, internet or phone, so this has been our evening entertainment (along with star-gazing, car spotting, owl impressions and the highly amusing hunt-for-the-bat game) So, it’s a huge event for us, especially P who has patiently taken her outside every night and thrown her under a hedge in the hope of encouraging her to uncross her paws.

Second poo news, Il Professori’s bees were let loose today and there is now bee plop everywhere (P politely calls it ‘pollen droppings’ but I know better!). So I will be out later with my marigolds and determination, scrubbing the garden furniture, no doubt to the bewilderment of the neighbours. Oh joy.

Can you tell I am enjoying every minute of this adventure?!

My dear friend Sam arrives this weekend for a visit, coinciding with ‘Liberation Day’, actually a three-day festa (‘festival’ - one of billions of in Italy which are generally a great excuse to meet people, eat gorgeous food and wander the streets cradling glasses of vino rosso, possibly dressed up in medieval costumes or sporting a bow and arrow). So if I survive, I promise to report back next week.

In the meantime, Happy St George’s Day all :o)

Ciao per ora.

Grande baci,

J and P

XXXX

La secondi settimana

Juliet writes: This week, a 53-hour lecture on form filling, Italian style…

Yesterday, I managed to open a bank account. “Not very impressive”, I hear you mutter. Ah, but this is Eeetaly. It requires – as a bare minimum – one and a half hours in the clerk’s office, 3 staff to stand over the desk inhaling deeply, shaking heads, waving pieces of paper in the air, discussing the concept as if you were an alien from planet Zog, 17 forms, 53 signatures, several scribblings on post-it notes, manic rifling through the Italian-English dictionary and of course lots and lots of stamping (twice on each page, to be precise). At least, when the first form was filled in, signed, stamped, stamped again, printed and photocopied, the clerk offered me a celebratory cigarette. How civilised, especially considering the fact that smoking indoors has been illegal in Italy for over two years!

After I had signed my life away (well, 50 euros anyway) I walked out into the sunshine, quite exhausted and in need of a stiff drink. It was only midday, but what the hell? Talking of drink, last night Peter and I readily imbibed a carton of vino da tavola from Conad supermarket at the vast cost of 1 euro. It wasn’t vintage Brunello, but it was definitely quaffable. At that price, my future blogs might be a bit fuzzy :o)

Anyway, back to those forms. There were three more to overcome yesterday: firstly, as P had discovered that topping up our UK phones involves a 2-hour conversation with a call centre in India, we needed to buy Italian mobiles (we also discovered that an 8-minute phone call to my mum on Peter’s UK mobile cost nearly £20!). Secondly, there was the Conad SIM card to put in our spangly new phones. And finally, the supermarket loyalty card. The first was relatively painless (although it did entail two ladies scrabbling under a desk for 20 minutes trying to find the box for my phone). The second involved a very long, loud, confusing, 100mph Italian rant from the customer service woman from Conad who insisted on filling out the form for me, which included studying the Indian visa stamp in my passport in great detail, 2 bottles of tippex and spelling Juliet with a Y. As for the last form, we are yet to know whether we have been successful as we were allowed to take them home to fill in, but again, they involve several pages requiring personal info and many signatures. I have probably declared that I am a goat living in Marrakech and like spinach and flamenco dancing. Does anyone know the Italian word for Nurofen?

As far as the rest of our week was concerned, we had our first UK guests over the weekend in the form of Chris and Anya, who managed to make do despite the dreadful weather (yes, I was firmly put in my place for being smug about the sunshine in my last entry… we had nothing but incessant rain and dramatic storms for 5 days which promptly stopped when our guests left... sorry Mr and Mrs V!). We have discovered a great little video shop so can hopefully get to grips with the basics of the language by watching films in English with Italian subtitles (or vice versa). Thanks to the patient tutelage of Gina B, we have learnt how to use an espresso maker and are now utterly addicted. We are also pursing quotes for works on our house with a couple of builders and managed to contact some friends of friends who live in this area and have recently restored a 17th century house. Next week we are hoping to bribe them with something a lot better than our E1 vino in exchange for vital information on reliable plumbers (do they exist anywhere in the world?), antique lighting shops, hunky carpenters etc.

Still no doorbell. Still no glass replacement for Peter’s car (which involves a trip to Genoa). But one can only fill in so many forms…

Weed continues to be mildly traumatised. She insists that the best place to be is under our bedclothes, although she has ventured out a little in the sunshine of the last two days… only to dash back in when she hears a distant car, another cat, a leaf etc. We are indulging her clinginess for now, although we have been sleep deprived as a result (she spends the nights balancing on top of one or other of us or licking our toes - yuk).

On a positive note, there has been progress with the dreaded internet. We have now been informed (having been told for two weeks that it was impossible) that it is actually possible to have internet up here in the mountains. Fabrizio, our wonderful parachuting, snowboarding satellite man who mercifully speaks great English, came this evening and spent over an hour trying to find the best reception for us; which meant going up ladders, scrabbling about in the loft, leaning precariously out of windows and doing the spilts in the garden (although I think the latter was mainly so as not to ruin his silver shoes that are a compulsory constituent of every Italian wardrobe). The result of his gymnastics is that we will have wifi internet from next week… hoorah, huzzah and tiddly-pom! It will be so lovely to be in touch with you all properly again. We have missed everyone in Blighty and fill our evenings wondering how you are and what you are up to (in between drinking and trying to find the tape measure).

A little plug: please do sign up to Skype for free phone calls/video calls/instant messaging to us and any other person in the world (on Skype) – it takes 5 minutes ( HYPERLINK "http://www.skype.com" www.skype.com - our user names are obvious: peter staveley and juliet staveley – let us know yours once you register. To ‘speak’ properly (rather than type), you will need a headset: available from many shops/Ebay for very little money, or, in the case of many modern PCs/Macs, use your integrated in/out speakers for free. You can also buy/use your webcam so you can blow raspberries at us, or just choose non-video mode).

So we look forward to our third week, when hopefully the cat will be calmer, the sun will continue to shine, we will have our beloved Google once more and be granted permission by the current owners of Ca’ dei Lecci to tackle the terribly overgrown garden (we can’t touch the inside of the house until it’s officially ours, but we should be allowed carte blanche with the sheds propped up by twigs and prayers, 4-foot high grass and weeds seeping out of every orifice.)

But for now, I rest on the patio, surrounded by blue skies, green hills and snow-capped mountains, listening to a quiet concerto of bird song, the gentle buzz of our landlord’s bees, the breeze rippling through bay and pine trees, a woodpecker in the distance, the half hourly chimes of the old village church bells and otherwise a beautiful peace. I could get very used to this…

Ciao per ora.

Grande baci,

Sig. Pietro e Sig.ra Yuliet

XXXX

La prima settimana (The first week)

Juliet writes (warning, very long and rambling): Well, dear friends, it has certainly been an eventful seven days, a week of ‘firsts’, keys, cheese, baffling bed linen sizes and a bit of a baptism of fire into Italian culture.

Firstly, there was the re-visit to our beloved Casa dei Lecci. As soon as we had unpacked, bought a few goodies and reassured Weed the cat (who has taken to hiding under the duvet during the day and bouncing on us at night), we drove 35 minutes along the now-familiar windy roads. We were so excited to be back… walking around ‘the estate’ (ok, a very overgrown field) in the glorious Spring sunshine, admiring the views and savouring the peace. It felt as if we had come home. Our elation took a bit of a knock when P observed that one major original feature – the beautiful campanello (doorbell featured in our slideshow about ten times) – was missing… mortificato! The rest of the afternoon was spent explaining this in faltering Italian to the gorgeous Fabio (our estate agent that all my single friends may fight over), who assured us that this was typical in Italy, and promptly involved himself in some very colourful phone calls to the owners, one of whom rather sheepishly confessed to the crime and has now agreed to put it back. Watch this space. It also took us half an hour to work out what Fabio was talking about when he kept referring to “the cheese of the house”. Had we overlooked the small print on the plans? Were we now owners of a buffalo mozzarella farm, along with the vines and olives? Thankfully not… we realised, with some amusement, that he meant the ‘keys’ (the letter K does not exist in the Italian alphabet and thus they find it very difficult to pronounce).

Then there was our christening into Tuscan supermarket shopping (at Conad in Aulla – the largest town in the area, sadly bombed by the allies during WWII so rather ugly). We were in heaven walking up and down the aisles, recognising most of the items on display, enquiring about those we didn’t and fondling the beautiful fresh fruit and veg to the bemusement of the locals. Peter had me in hysterics when he leant over conspiratorially and whispered ‘I think James Blunt is following us’, as we had heard his songs on the radio for about the fifth time that day (the only up-to-date music we have heard so far). We were even able to converse with a lovely assistant (Ricardo – turns out he is a wine expert and made many excited gestures and noises when he spotted the Brunello di Montalcino in our basket). This first dip into Italian life would have gone smoothly if it hadn’t been for the fact that P, in his infinite wisdom, locked the car keys (and house keys) in the boot of his beloved Jag. On a Saturday. At siesta time. No meccanico in the whole of Italy would have been available. And anyway, we didn’t know enough technical Italian words to save ourselves from being burnt alive in the midday sun. As luck would have it, there was one other English speaking person in the busy car park, the delightful Fiona (and her rather bemused daughter Carenza). We managed to find a wrench in the boot of her car and I wont begin to describe the look on P’s face as he had to smash a window to enable me to climb in and release the boot lock. Mamma mia!

Things did pick up when we met some of our lovely neighbours at the rental place in Careggia. We spent about half an hour admiring vegetable gardens, while they came to look at the plants I had bought for our little patio garden, and then swapped their fresh parsley with our sweetcorn seeds. They are so warm and welcoming, despite our obvious ignorance of the language. Maybe in six months time, we will all understand each other.. but until then, we are forging friendships through gestures and herbs :o)

One final event of note occurred last night, when we stopped by at the farmhouse of our flamboyant landlord – the affable and slightly mad Pier Luigi (who we have nicknamed Il Professori in honour of the fact that he was a teacher). He now spends his time keeping bees, managing an agritourismo and running around town in a Piaggio with his enormous, friendly and smelly Alsatian ‘Nero’ (Black) in the back. Organised by his almost English-speaking nephew earlier that day, we were due to just pop by at 7pm, pick up the key to the laundry room, drop off our rent money and maybe have a quick aperitif. Three hours, four courses and six drinks of homemade wine later, we were buried in the Italian dictionary, gesturing wildly and laughing so much, that Black got quite disturbed. Il Professori is indeed an excellent teacher and we learnt quite a bit that night – in language, etiquette, life and of course cooking. Including the old secret recipe of a delicious minestrone that “mamma used to make” (although we did pass on a panettone that came in a case large enough for a two week skiing trip). That is Italian hospitality for you: he made us feel like royalty rather than tenants. We hope to return the favour shortly and I am already plotting menus… oh the pressure of being able to match such a capable chef!

For the first time since we arrived, the weather is foggy today, so I am holed up at the house with a bad tummy (too much of Il Professori’s cooking?!), typing this in advance with Weed on my knee and awaiting hubby’s return from getting keys cut in La Spezia (a major exercise). But, that’s all I’ll bore you with for now. I wont even start on the subject of ‘How to get Internet up a Mountain in Italy: Lessons 1-57’ as I’ll be here all day. So I will just sign off by saying please bear with us if we are in absentia for a few days until we can get to the nearest internet café and in the meantime, please, please post your comments on this blog, send us your news via email/text/phone and even write us a snail mail letter. We miss you all dearly and hope to see you in the sunshine soon. (I understand from my mum that there has been 2+ inches of snow in Blighty – ah, smug, smug tanned us!)

Grande baci (Italian kisses) to you all.

Ciao per ora.
XXXX

What is Italian for Nous Sommes Arrivez?!

J writes: Friday 4th April, afternoon, Aulla town centre.

At last - after 1,000 miles, one overnight stop, some very dodgy road signs, some even dodgier drivers and one slightly panicking cat, we are here in the sunshine of Bella Italia!

All three of us are settling in to the rental place very nicely. (This basically means that we have got loo roll, cat food and wine - have we forgotten anything?)

Even found this internet cafe - hoorah! Will add a proper post soon, but just wanted to let you all know that we are, indeed, alive and doing well.

In the meantime, all emails to our hotmail/entanet addresses welcomed... to let us know that you are still alive.

Love and grande baci to you all.
Juls and P xxx