June has come and gone. Much to report this month but haven’t yet landed the prize. The Compromesso had us finishing the purchase by end of June, but more surprises and delays will push it out to next visit in September…we hope. Lots of folks have now joined the blog, working hard to make it more interesting as we head down this road. As you read this months post please take a moment to comment, we love the engagement.

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Retirement

Its official. Both George and I had last days in office this month. Closing out remaining items as we reached end of June. Lots of emotions caught us both by surprise.

While Mark had a very long offramp from work, having announced his date early in the year, George was only a couple years in with his company, so he didn’t feel comfortable announcing so early. When he did finally announce 8 weeks before the date, he was leading his team in the most important project during his time with the company, and the go-live was planned for June 10th (1st phase), and July 1st (2nd phase). Needless to say, we were each experiencing very different work lives during the final phase leading up to the date.

We were so focused on the Last Day, then it was here and we had to reconcile all the unexpected feelings. In our list of things to get done, this is one of the largest. Reaching a point in your life where work/career is no longer a part of your day? It’s still hard for us to imagine. I think it will slowly sink in over time. First obvious change, while on our trip back to Italy, reading work email is not on our list for the day. So we work on trying to break the habit and remove the shackle. It will be interesting to see how each of us does with this change.

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Farewell Celebrations

Many celebrations were had leading up to last day. We are both so grateful to those who joined to celebrate and have expressed their support and enthusiasm for our adventure.

I’ve always been a big proponent of verbalizing your goals and aspirations, I believe by saying it out loud into the universe you commit to yourself and to those you shared with. Yes, there is always the possibility that if you don’t make the goal, you have done it spectacularly in a public way. We try not to focus on failure or downside, but you can believe we think about it.

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Travel to Italy

We headed back to Italy for what was to be the finale of the purchase. Did not go as planned, more about that later. We are gone from 6/23 – 7/17. Typical routine…difficult to sleep on the way over, very tired arrival night, Oxana meets us at Food Village to hand over keys, we hit the local grocery store for morning basics, try to stay up as late as possible. Crashing into bed. Waking up excited for the days adventures. This trip of 3 weeks is the longest yet in Italy and staying at the house. Each time we visit the property has transformed in some way. The shift between winter and summer is amazing to witness. The first few days a little chilly for the pool, but the heat is coming. We also begin our trek to Orvieto to hit our favorite restaurants.

One of the items we brought from home was a drone. We wanted some pictures of the property and there is a spot near the stables in the bush that we want to see closer. When we were here a few months back I had a couple hours to play with it and it wound up on the roof. I had to break out the latter, climb and drag it down. This time, no rush to playing with it. While out the wind picks up and it literally attacks me. I have some abrasions on my arm I’m now nursing. Luckily captured a small video before the attack.

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Morning routine

Make coffee, warm cornetto, take walk.

“Moka Pot” is a classic traditional way of making coffee at home. Typically too strong for us, we add water and milk to bring down the intensity. We can only get 4 cups from one brew, so will need to come up with a better solution when guests arrive.

Cornetto is the Italian croissant in Central and Southern Italy. We typically add butter, jam and my favorite Nutella.

The morning walk is by far one of my favorite routines. The season changes make for a new landscape on each visit. This time of year things begin to dry out and green gives way to yellows of summer. Of course as soon as you say that it rains.

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Amazon delivery

During our last visit we lost a bag. We had intentionally brought a 3rd to bring over some things we needed like American TP and a Drone to take some pictures of the property. Anyhow, we did finally get the bag the day of our departure. Not sure if it was a language issue or delivery problem due to the house being down a white road “Strada Bianca”, or BOTH. So this trip we wanted to test if we could get a delivery at a rural address, so I ordered from Amazon. They took the order and seemed to capture the address, as it shows on the delivery map. A couple days later a message on Amazon reads an issue with address. I called Amazon to make sure they had correct address, confirmed. In fact Amazon said they had the address correct now and assured me this was all resolved. I called UPS America, they said I must call UPS Italy. I called the Italian UPS number but it was a call tree all in Italian, with no English option. Later same day, UPS reported they were sending the item back to Amazon as undeliverable. So lesson, seems using online ordering to rural address is unlikely. Will now try mail service inside Orvieto and we’ll just need to pick things up there. I’m sure that will be a whole other experience.

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Property Purchase

As we shared earlier, the goal was to visit at the end of June to complete the purchase. In order to do so, the demolition of the pig stables must be completed. In order to start demolition, we must receive an ordinance from the comune. Month of May had seen some significant movement, but it wasn’t enough to make up for all the delays. We received word from Diana our agent. Here’s a great sample of the communications we receive.

Despite my understanding that we had the Ordinance (To demolish) – and in fact I do have a copy stating Ordinance, it turns out this was just the warning of the actual Ordinance which was supposed to arrive the following day. It did not and it turns out that the comune, without informing anyone, required a signature from Scott on a registered letter that they sent to the house. Naturally there was nobody at the house ( Scott the owner lives in New York) so the document will have gone back to the Post Office without being signed and the Post Office will not hand it over to anyone but Scott.  The Comune know that the owner lives in America, the architect has talked to them twice today to see why they needed to send another document to the owner and we are awaiting to hear if they will be able to start the demolition without this document being signed. Just when we thought things had improved in the Comune!

Mind you, this is our agent born in Ireland, but she’s clearly settled into Italian way of life. So we will not be signing on June 30th as planned. It’s possible that the demolition will get underway while we are in Italy, but its very unlikely it will finish while we are there. So we will sign when we return in September. Che palle! (What a pain!!). The compromesso required completion by June 30th, so we also had to work with attorney, notary, agent and sellers to all agree to move the date out to September 30th. Fortunately everyone has agreed we can do this via email, so it has now been done.

One of the great benefits for this house is that we get to stay here when we visit. Sort of Airbnb style. So it’s a bit of a test drive. It’s only made us love it more. On this visit we notice some plumbing noises and report to the property manager. She’s very responsive and sends over Sergio who seems to be the man who can handle anything. Previous visit he came to the rescue to handle a bee hive that had sprung up on the side of the house. We called them bees but honestly 747s might describe them better. Anyhow he comes right over, scopes the deal. Explains the plan in full Italian…what did he just say? He goes outside, we hear some banging and then he yells out to try it. Magic, we are back in order. See photo of what he pulled from septic trap.

6/30 update: The ordinance approving demolition finally came thru while we were at the house. It’s our hope they get started with demolition July 2nd, even though we will be at the house it will be great to see some actual physical work underway.

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Immigration

As we’ve shared, we are planning to take advantage of the Investor Visa in Italy. Once completed, it will give us privileges and freedoms to live, work, travel without any limits. It requires renewal at 2 and 5 years and will require we invest a large sum in an Italian company. Assuming this company is doing well, we get our money back at 5 years. We are working with an Immigration lawyer and their resources. It’s a slow process and we are in the early steps. FBI background checks, paper work, visit to the Italian Consulate etc. We recently visited the US post office to be finger printed. They use this large plastic box with a pad on it where you press your fingers until it reads them, they then use those pictures to perform your background check. George after many attempts, couldn’t get it to read all his prints. He finally gave up and went the old school route which may add some time. Mine was difficult, but they were able to capture them. Anyhow, we need to get a state background check now. You’d think that the FBI version would suffice. You’d be disappointed.

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Taxes

I may have covered before that taxes for Americans living in Italy can be complex. The Tax rate for Italy is quite high, so being smart about how we approach things will be key to saving money. The US and Italy have a tax agreement so you can only be taxed by one or the other. We got a referral from our immigration attorney to an Italian tax attorney. We have a call scheduled with them the week of July 1st to assess our options. Should be interesting.

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Highlight Italy

This month we came across an article from Naples, in which the Mafia apparently took over a local hospital. They used it for all manner of bad behavior, the least of which was using the ambulance to deliver cocaine. I couldn’t do it justice, you just need to Read Article. Naples is about 200 miles south of us, farther south than Rome. People often ask us why we chose central Italy, our answer is always the same. Northern Italy is too expensive and influenced by other countries. Southern Italy, too rough and wild. Central Italy? The best of both worlds. Naples has a bad image it may not deserve. Here is another article that tries to debunk the bad press. Read Article.

The Sagra or local festivals in Italy happen throughout the year, but are more common during the warmer seasons. They are sometimes religious, but also can be focused on food or a particular product of the community. We understand they are local celebrations in different regions and meant to have locals and tourists. We will try out one on this trip.

As every day is a learning experience, I spent some time trying to understand Italy’s regional geopolitical makeup. Click here for more detail: Read Article

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Schedule

We are back in the US mid July into September. It’s our hope to put our house on the market and sell in August. George’s car lease ended and he turned it in. I’m hoping to sell my car via private party as well. So we’ll need to rent something when in town. We’ll also need to find temp housing after return in early October. So much will rely on construction and sale completion. Fingers crossed.

I think that’s it for June.