Well - turns out, you need a lot more than that to move to Italy and create a retirement homestead! But of course many people do, but why? Obviously there is a sort of absolute allure about the rolling hills of well-spaced rows and diagonals of olive trees, oak forests, ancient stone retaining walls peeking out of any hillside no matter how remote, castles on random hilltops, sheep and cows, tiny ancient villages of people sweeping their patios with twig brooms, 90 cent espresso, truffles, wild boar stew, all that.
But try buying a deserted stone farm house and turning it into your dream home in a country where nothing, NOTHING works the way it is supposed to, including people! Things are totally illogical, bureaucracies are ludicrous, businesses all close for most of the afternoon, and don't open til 10 a.m. Trains and buses can be cancelled without any public notice at all, the post office can't find addresses, mail just doesn't come. It goes on and on. Some may find this charming. But it appears from our Yankee practicality point of view to be a nightmare! We're trying to figure out if all these people from Holland and England and the U.S. and Australia have any idea what they are in for when they buy these places, or if the weather and scenery really could actually make it worth it!
Anyway, right now in this Workaway stay we are experiencing Italy by looking over the shoulder of one Dutch expat who is making her way through all of this. Six months into it she has a pretty good start, but she was once the Director of Facilities for the City of Amsterdam, has run a museum, owned an art gallery, and managed her own B & B. She is also very single-minded, stubborn, sufficiently wealthy, and completely independent. Plus she has a good handle on Italian language, acquired in the last couple years. These tools seem to make her able to keep moving forward, but she is usually dealing with something exasperating enough to justify ulcers. Before we are through here with the olive grove and hanging paintings and lamps and mirrors, we hope to meet some more of these intrepid settlers and find out what gets them through the Umbrian mud puddles!
Working in the very irregular, just recently recovered olive grove. A totally different experience from the previous, 30-year-old grove in Tuscany.
The Hoeh and two other Workawayers with a small part of the brush they moved in one day.
Adje our host flipping a crêpe. She is an INCREDIBLE cook.
Stone shed here.
Orvieto on our day off.
Funicular up to the town.
This gargantuan cathedral was built in this tiny town because someone noted that some communion bread started bleeding in resonse to some priest voicing his doubts.
Funicular back down. Then we got on the train, which, when we arrived back at our station, would not let us off! The doors of two consecutive cars were not working. Train officials were outside the door observing, but helpless. It simply started back up and kept going, so we had to go to the next town! Perfect example of Italy.
Our first trip to the olive press here! 380 kilos.
Yield: 45 liters!
Employee lunchroom at the olive press. Note wine, olive oil, fire in fireplace.
"Our" olive oil. Followed by pasta with truffles....
So here we are in sort of art gallery, eating gourmet food, drinking local wine with dinner every evening, cursing the changeable weather and the ubiquitous mud, but sleeping in the most comfortable beds ever. As Drew Barton's father would say, Could be worser!
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