I've been playing the piano since I was 9 years old. And some time ago I also did some private teaching. Hence the idea to do a bit of that on the side also in Italy. Although I have to say that I didn't really believe in this because after all Italy is the country where classical music was sort of invented. I was convinced that there would be abundant music academies around which could offer every kind of education in a much cheaper way. But that was without counting on Christine, of course...
We visited a shop where they specialised in all kinds of wooden floors because that's what we'd like to have on the first floor and in the living room. The shop manager was so friendly and he was so enthusiastic about our project that he asked us what we were planning to do in Italy. So I mentioned teaching English. Upon which Christine added that I also teach the piano. The man's eyes suddenly popped wide open of surprise. He told us that his best mate was the director of the music academy of Castelnovo ne' Monti and that they'd been searching for a piano teacher for a long time, especially to give evening classes. So to him I was like a gift from heaven! I humbly added that I don't really have an official license as a piano teacher. But perhaps they consider my skills to be adequate for the job? Who knows if they're desperate? It could mean that I already have a real job (perhaps part time, perhaps only for a couple of evenings per week,...) before leaving Flanders!
You can judge my skills for yourself through this excerpt of a home recording I made of Bach's Goldberg Variations. Please don't mind the sound of the piano itself because it's a 100-year old grandmother. But I hope you like it altogether...
Last Tuesday was D-day for us. It was the day where we would go to the city of Reggio Nell'Emilia to sign the act of the house sale at the sollicitor of the sellers. Unfortunately... again... the mother of the sellers couldn't be present due to illness. The poor old bird is 97 and for some mysterious reason she too has to sign a few papers. Perhaps to ensure that her 3 sons are over 18? So the event has been postponed until next Friday and I signed a mandate allowing Christine to sign the act also in my name. It will now proceed at the sellers' house - we won't take any more risks. So we can only hope that the old lady will not pass away or do something else inadverted the coming week.
The first thing we did in Italy was going to the bank. We had already worked so hard to bypass all the petty little rules and restrictions that kept us from simply paying the sellers of our house with the Belgian bridge loan. The only thing we still needed was opening an account at our Italian bank. We tried it over the phone and through e-mail, but it was absolutely necessary for us to visit the bank personally before they could give us an account number. Then it would be a matter of five minutes and everything would be in order. At least, that was the sales pitch.
When we eventually met the bank manager and asked him to do something simple, like... opening a new account, this suddenly turned out to be impossible. In spite of all of his promises over the phone. We are "foreigners" and for that there are special procedures which may take some time. Christine started to lose the last remainders of her patience and angrily explained that the one thing we didn't have anymore was time. The sollicitor's act had to be signed and for that we needed regular cheques and enough money on our Italian account of course. She became so angry that a second person, who we believe was the director of the whole office, entered the room and asked the manager how far he was with the account. In the mean time, Christine explained our problem once more while ostentatively tapping with a large part of our savings - in cash - on the manager's desk. This gesture had the desired effect. In no time phonecalls were made to the head office and personal data was entered into the computer system. Five minutes later we had our account number so we could call our Belgian sollicitor to transfer the money we needed from the bridge loan. Hurray!!!
This afternoon I came back from Italy. Alone. The final goodbye was tearing me apart. And Christine too. Tears were countless. Furthermore I feel absolutely tired after 6 days of driving around, cleaning Christine's temporary Italian home and trying to sort things out with banks, notaries and building plans. So this will be a brief message. Tomorrow I'll start reporting about our adventures of the past week.
And to end with a positive note... I just booked a plane ticket for a week's holiday in Italy when it will be Christine's birthday half November! hehehe...
Tomorrow at dawn we'll be off to Italy. It will be a very important week in many aspects. One of them is signing the sollocitor's act and the hand over of the keys to our new home. But another one makes me feel terrified. As from next Wednesday afternoon, Christine and I will be separated from eachother for months. Never before we've had to do without eachother for such a long time. I'm not sure how we're going to cope. We're both very attached to eachother. Yes, I know... in the end it's going to make us stronger. But that's only a bitter consolation.
Thursday is approaching at breakneck speed. For Christine, these are the last few days in good old Flanders. She'll still return perhaps once or twice, especially for the final move next year. But as from next week she'll already be an official Italian resident! Actually, I envy her a bit. I'm the one who has to stay behind here. Then again, the cats will keep me company I suppose. They're growing big and are more than a handful when they play and run about. It's nice to see how happy they all are. Fortunately they don't know yet about what'll be coming towards them next year. I'm certain that having to miss Christine for 6 months will already give them more than enough stress.
Christine is also making a long list of all the things she'll have to pack. Our trailer is as good as new again and we're surely going to need it. She'll not only need most of her clothes, but also part of the dishes, cutlery, a water boiler, pots 'n pans, most of our tools (to help with the refurbishment of our new house) and lots of other stuff. And not to forget her laptop of course so we can use Skype to keep in touch with eachother. If anyone of you would like to have her Italian Skype address, just send me an e-mail!
Today the representative from the movers company dropped by to sign a couple of documents and to discuss some of the details. For example, we will also need a lift at the destination because carrying a wardrobe up the stairs... well... you see what I mean?
The man was also very interested in the access road to our house. Would it be suitable for a lorry? Errrr... with a bit of luck...
So that's also something we need to work on. Otherwise our B&B will be for 4x4 fanatics only!
Yesterday we went to our sollicitor with the buyers of our house to sign the compromise of the sale. It is the first step in order to make everything official. Somewhere half-December we shall return to the sollicitor's office to sign the final act. And then the house will no longer belong to us. We've agreed that we can still live in our house until the works in Italy are finished. But then we irreversibly have to leave. In the compromise it says "by the 31st of May 2010 at 19:00". If not, we can be expelled by a bailiff!Hahahaaaa... We'll be packed and ready by 19:00 allright!
Afterwards we shared a nice glass of champaign with the buyers. They're a very sympathetic, elderly couple and we sincerely hope that they will find the piece and happiness in our house that they were looking for. Thanks to them, we can start building our Italian dream. And they truly granted us that dream with all of their hearts. It really fills us with joy that so far everything goes more or less according to our wildest hopes. For us it's a sign that we had to do this and that our decision was the right one.
In the evening we went out to a nice restaurant, together with Christine's mum. It was very cosy and we very much enjoyed the evening. It's actually a bit sad that only for the past year or so Christine and her mother seem to grow close to eachother. The cold war is settling and for the first time Christine feels that she truly has a mother. And now we're going away to Italy... Then again, Bologna is only an hour and a half away by plane. And I've installed Skype on my mother-in-law's laptop. So there's no excuse why we shouldn't see eachother anymore!
It will be exactly in just two weeks that Christine and I will return to Italy to sign the sollicitor's act which will finalise the acquisition of the house. I will return home shortly afterwards, but Christine will already remain in Italy. Permanently. A painstaking 6 months awaits us where we'll hardly see eachother. It's a very distressing thought, although I'm absolutely certain that we'll come out stronger than ever before. It's going to be hard but we're doing it for the "higher goal".
We're also experiencing another strange phenomenon at the moment. All of our friends and family (at least that part which we're still on speaking terms with) are contacting us to ask if they can still come to visit us to say "goodbye". This means that our agenda for this week and the next is absolutely crammed. Not that these moments are very emotional or painful. Italy isn't the end of the world and we're certain that many of our friends will still come to see us over there. I don't really know how to describe the feeling we're having. Personally I'm less touched than I thought I would be. We've made the big decision and that's that. Also having to say goodbye to our house doesn't move me in the least. Tomorrow we're going to our local sollicitor to sign the compromise for the sale. Hurray! Italy's coming closer! Strange, isn't it? Perhaps my emotions will still change and pain and regret will take the upper hand. But right now I think that that's very unlikely.
Yes, you read it correctly. Since yesterday we do not have one but two new kittens in the house! Blu, our Nowegian Forest kitten, likes to play with other cats. She's such a wild and excited little furrball. Unfortunately, our older cat Canelle doesn't like all that personal attention. Therefore we decided to buy another Norwegian Forest kitten, Chloé, as a playmate for Blu. But then we started thinking... We felt that perhaps we had room for one more (male) cat. Tomcats are usually a bit calmer and tend to look more for contact with humans than with other cats. So we found Thomas with the same breeder in the north of Holland where we had already booked Chloé. Aren't they both adorable?
Chloé:
And this is Thomas:
We were absolutely knackered when we returned home around 22:00 yesterday. Especially on the way to Emmen we lost over an hour due to the extremely busy traffic. But both kittens had survived the trip better than expected. In fact, they slept during most of the journey. And thi morning they were all playfulness and excitement. To such an extent that even Blu had to throw the towel in the ring and look for a quieter spot in the garden...
We've made a decision about the company we're going to hire for the final move next year. This is a very expensive part of the whole project so we weren't going to take it lightly. We've contacted several companies and we were amazed about the price differences. And you have to carefully examin the details as well. Will there be extra workers included for the unloading in Italy? What about an electric lift both here and in Italy? Is the price per cubic metre or can we load the lorry until it's completely full? Are there crates included for the statue in our garden and the fragile living room chandelier? And what about the excess for the insurance? Especially this insurance-bit was very tricky. Some didn't inform us that moved items are only insured if they are packed by the movers themselves. But having your stuff packed costs quite a bit of money. Eventually we were able to cut a deal, meaning that we pack everything, but the movers will check whether it has been done properly. And we won't have an insurance excess either. Most likely, if anything will break along the route, it will be a couple of plates or glasses. But if we have, let's say, an excess of 250, these will not be reimbursed. So we had to drive a hard bargain in order to get our way with the company of our choice. That's to say, a hard bargain... All in all this move will still cost us something around 7.000 taxes and insurance included. If you're planning to move abroad as well, don't forget to put a serious budget aside for the movers!
The problems with the banks, both over here and in Italy, are driving us mad. We just can't believe that such simple matter can cause such big difficulties. And then there is the shear arrogance. The Belgian bank who gave us the bridge loan bluntly told us that "we should in fact be grateful that this loan was granted" and that "we should stop moaning about their demand to only send money to a sollicitor in Italy". We tried in vain to explain that the sollicitor doesn't want that money and that things are just different in Italy.
Christine was so fed up with it that she wrote a sharp e-mail to Guy Verhofstadt, the self-declared "pope" of the unified Europe and in his wet dreams the first president of the United States of Europe. No reply so far, probably because he's on a holiday to his own estate in Tuscany. How ironic...
And then there are the problems in Italy where we are denied a small mortgage because we don't live in Italy (yet) and don't have a fixed Italian income.
So Christine wrote a letter to Berlusconi. Hand-written and on blue, high-quality letter paper. And in Italian of course! She'll probably never receive a reply, or at least a decent one, to this letter either. But nevertheless she feels good to have given rein to all of her bitter frustration.
I already elaborated on the cookies and cupcakes that Christine intends to make in Italy. But when her two little nieces came for a visit (as a matter of fact for a late birthday party), she had to create something extraordinary to celebrate this occasion, didn't she? So she made a birthday cake with a buttercream/red currant filling and a topping... well... you can better see for yourself. Do you think that this could become a success in Italy? Personally I'm convinced it would and also our beloved Cosetta is already going crazy about it.
I'm soooo proud of her. And since she mostly needs the eggwhites, I can use the yellows to make a delicious "Advocaat", which is a very popular egg/milk/vanilla/honey brandy. Actually, it's not really a brandy but it's mostly used as a topping for ice-cream, pancakes or any other kind of desert. Also the Dutch readers will surely know what I'm talking about because it's also very popular over there. Hopefully the Italians will like it too!
The day before yesterday, my brother and his family came to visit us. It was already some time ago since we last saw them and also this event had already been postponed a couple of times. Like if we were trying to postpone the inevitable. You have to know that my brother and I haven't been on speaking terms for years until more or less a year ago. Apart from a series of painful things of the past, we're just two totally different persons. He's a true family man who likes security and a solid foundation for the future, whereas I can be very impulsive. So our discussions on the Italian adventure didn't really amount to much because we both have so very different views on it.
On the other hand, Christine and I could clearly feel a strong regret in my brother's behaviour. He didn't say it out loud, but we think he's truly sorry to see us leave. It took us years to overcome our quarrels of the past, and now that everything's going better, we're moving to a distant land. Well, this is a bit exaggerated of course, but we believe that this is how he sees it. Our invitation for a holiday in Italy was only a minor consolation too.
But why should we stay here then? We only live a 45-min drive apart from eachother and yet we see eachother perhaps 3-4 times a year. The same goes for our Flemish friends, by the way. Should we sacrifice our dream for that? Comments appreciated...
What a strange week this has been. I'm slowly getting to grips with the fact that our house is sold to someone else. As a close Italian friend of mine told me: "Alea iacta est". There's no way back anymore. I'm not scared. Just a bit anxious, nothing more. The fact that I'm not panicking means that our decision was the right thing to do. I'll probably still feel scared every now and then. Who wouldn't be if you're embarking on such an adventure. But I know that in the end, everything will be allright. I can't wait for the final move, when I'll see our new home finished for the first time. I imagine myself already stepping into the entrance hall and opening my eyes... With Christine's good sense for taste and detail, I'm sure that I'll be absolutely astonished. And that's a nice thing to look forward to, isn't it?
It's unbelievable! Only after one and a half weeks our house in Belgium is SOLD! And at the price we had dreamt of. This is such an amazing stroke of luck that it makes me speechless. Now we will surely be able to commence our new life in Italy with a solid foundation. Even in case we wouldn't have any income, we can survive there for years.
The people who eventually bought it are an elderly couple who are desperate to get away from the rush and crime of downtown Brussels. They wanted a haven of peace and immediately fell in love with our place when they passed for the first time this afternoon. In fact, they only passed by to see if our house would really be worthwhile and were utterly surprised to find me at home. So I gave them a tour. Later they called me back to ask if they could drop by once more with their daughter (to have a second opinion), so I said that I was available this evening. I was cooking my special eggplant risotto (yes yes... getting slowly integrated in the Italian way of life! ) when the doorbell rang. Again they visited the house and our garden and... they wanted it right now. So we signed a preliminary contract. Next Monday I will get in touch with our sollicitor to make arrangements for the further proceedings.
I feel good... nanananananana...
Sorry... that Trappist ale tastes even better than usual...
It's amazing how much "stuff" one collects over a couple of years. When Christine and I ran off with eachother ten years ago, we only had a mattress without a bed, a small table without chairs, a couple of plates and cutlery and a couple of cardboard boxes containing clothes. But when we are now making the inventory of the things which have to move with us to Italy, it's actually quite astonishing how much rubbish we have gathered in this period. There are two options: first, you throw it all in the bin. Or second (if it's too big), you drive it to the local waste disposal facility.
Not with Christine though. She's carefully packed everything we won't need anymore, from excess glasses to old clothes, and drives with all of that stuff to all the flea markets in the area. With good results too! Up till now, she's already made a 230 profit out of it! This is with the fee for the stall and her lunch sandwich already subtracted from it. Actually, she's quite amazing. Last time she was at the market of our village's annual fair. I drove down on my bicycle to visit her because I had decided that I wouldn't need this bicycle any longer in Italy. It's a rather heavy one and with the steep Italian slopes... let's just say that I'm not all that courageous... I had already made a sign saying "100" for the bike. But when I arrived, Christine immediately took the sign off and told me not to interfere with her sales tactics. So I had to obey, didn't I? Later when she returned home, she proudly announced that she had sold the bike. For 150. Isn't she a star?
I wrote already about the problems with our banks, both over here and in Italy. The Belgian bank only wants to send money of our bridge loan straight to an Italian sollicitor. Or it proposed an international checque which would "only" cost us about 150. And the Italian banks don't want to give us a mortgage because we don't live and work in Italy yet.
Regarding the first problem, we may have found a solution. Our Italian sollicitor told us that it is possible to transfer the money to the sellers directly in stead of using a personal cheque. He doesn't want to receive the sum for the purchase on his account anyway due to some strange fiscal reasons. But therefore the Belgian bank needs a full draft of the act, including the full names of all parties involved, addresses, bank account numbers and amounts due. Unfortunately the sollicitor is now on holiday until the 7th of September. Since the date of the act is set for the 15th of September, this would cut things really short. Fortunately, the sollicitor's associate will be back on the 26th so hopefully she can arrange everything for us in time. Because then this draft needs to be translated and approved of by our bank and then the money still needs to be transferred. You surely know that this too will take at least a couple of days.
Then, Christine believes she may have found a solution for problem number two. Since she has been suffering from the Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for a year and a half, she has officially been declared a disabled person. And she therefore receives a monthly social security fee plus a bonus from a private insurance fund. She received confirmation that she will continue to benefit from both of them, even when she moves to Italy. This would mean that we will have a fixed income in Italy! It's a long shot, but it may just be enough to convince the Italian banks that we are trustworthy enough to approve the mortgage.
For those of you who are wondering what our three cats look like, here are a few pictures. First one up is Canelle. She's 7 years old and we saved her from an asylum almost a year and a half ago. She's still quite timid and we can only guess what a horrible life she must've had in the past. She was dropped off at the asylum because her owners were having a baby. Isn't it just sad?
And next is Blu. In fact, she replaces our beloved Ciuffa, a 9-month old Norwegian forest kitten we lost due to feline "AIDS", last June. The breeders felt so guilty that they gave us Blu. She's now just over 4 months old and you can obviously see that she's an upper-class lady with a pedigree, can't you?
Since Canelle is so easily scared and Blu is such a wild and sociable little critter, we decided to buy another Norwegian forest kitten. Her name's Chloé and she's now 11 weeks. She's still at the breeder's at the moment and we can collect her the weekend of the 22nd of August. In fact, she currently lives in Emmen, all the way up in the north of Holland . But we found her on the internet and immediately fell in love with her cute little muzzle, and therefore we just had to have her. Hopefully she'll also be very energetic and sociable (as Norwegian forest cats normally are) so Blu and her can play together and keep out of Canelle's hair.
I humbly added that I don't really have an official license as a piano teacher. But perhaps they consider my skills to be adequate for the job? Who knows if they're desperate? It could mean that I already have a real job (perhaps part time, perhaps only for a couple of evenings per week,...) before leaving Flanders! 
So the event has been postponed until next Friday and I signed a mandate allowing Christine to sign the act also in my name. It will now proceed at the sellers' house - we won't take any more risks. So we can only hope that the old lady will not pass away or do something else inadverted the coming week. 
Furthermore I feel absolutely tired after 6 days of driving around, cleaning Christine's temporary Italian home and trying to sort things out with banks, notaries and building plans. So this will be a brief message. Tomorrow I'll start reporting about our adventures of the past week.
Actually, I envy her a bit. I'm the one who has to stay behind here. Then again, the cats will keep me company I suppose. They're growing big and are more than a handful when they play and run about. It's nice to see how happy they all are. Fortunately they don't know yet about what'll be coming towards them next year. I'm certain that having to miss Christine for 6 months will already give them more than enough stress.
and on blue, high-quality letter paper. And in Italian of course! 
. But we found her on the internet and immediately fell in love with her cute little muzzle, and therefore we just had to have her. Hopefully she'll also be very energetic and sociable (as Norwegian forest cats normally are) so Blu and her can play together and keep out of Canelle's hair. 
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