So how exactly is life in Italy? Well, perhaps not quite the wine and roses existence that a romantic might conjure. At least not for us, not now. We’re camping. Here’s how it looks.
We live in a caravan, which has two narrow beds and one double-size bed. Julius & I share the double-size bed, Maria sleeps on one of the singles. Maria is the only one with a duvet (comforter) – Julius and I wrestle during the night for the hodge-podge of sheets that we use for cover. So far I haven’t had an 8-hour night’s sleep, but I wouldn’t necessarily blame it on the caravan, it’s perhaps more my “condition” (vagueness intended).
I’m now contemplating clearing the peeled-off ceiling paint from the bed that was left behind by the house’s previous owner (Maria’s aversion to the fallen paint and the strange bed being the primary reason for sleeping in the caravan instead of the house), and taking my nights in the house. Of course Julius & I will have to thumb-wrestle for either the sheets or the right to choose where we sleep.
The caravan, a large one by all accounts, has electricity, but no water (only because
we haven’t figured out how to hook it up). The lack of water’s not really a problem though, because outside its front door is the outdoor part of our kitchen, which includes a couple of taps sticking out of the house wall, one of them emptying into a sink, the other into a drain. This drain is now backed up, and there’s a pool of standing water of a sort of grayish colour and a deteriorating odour. The other part of the outdoor kitchen includes a white plastic table randomly stacked with dishes, plates, and cutlery, and, depending on the time of day, an assortment of food.
The indoor part of the kitchen is located in a cobweb-ridden room downstairs. Here we have a small fridge and a gas stove with 3 burners.Our ablutions include a toilet that doesn’t flush, necessitating the filling of a plastic jug from the trickling shower next to it, and using it to wash down, well, you know what. Yesterday the shower stopped working, thus requiring a trip downstairs to the taps sticking out of the wall in order to fill the plastic jug. As of yesterday, the sink in the bathroom is also clogged, with a pond of milky, filmy water now greeting us every time we go in there. Today, the toilet itself clogged, refusing to wash down anything but paper. We’re now figuring our next move on that one.
Showering, while possible in the cold, trickling water of our shower, is a lot happier an occasion at our absent neighbour’s house, which is a good few lungfulls’ walk up our steep driveway. This is also where we do our laundry.
In short, we’re camping – pure and simple. Or, perhaps, living a budget-type existence not unlike our travels in South America a dozen or so years ago – this is what my memories keep regurgitating. I figured I’d outgrown that life some time back. Apparently not.
What else is life in Italy like? On the day I arrived, we sat outside in the garden, facing the sun setting over the Apennini mountains. First we had fresh melon with prosciutto, followed by fresh pasta in pommodoro sauce, accompanied by a delectable Rosso Piceno (a local €2 red wine), and capped off by one of Maria’s classic homemade tiramisu’s. The evening sky turned into a rosy glow, and the breeze off the mountains was soft and cooling. The only sounds were those of rural Italy – farmers ending their day, animals ending theirs, and the creatures of the night starting to waken. The cheap, white plastic chair that I was sitting on felt like a throne…
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