Cost of living in the Italian countryside

The other day I filled up my car. I was horrified, not because the pump just stopped before the tank was full, but because it took 78 big old euros to get that far ... and it still wasn't finished - the pump was somehow set automatically at that amount, and so it didn't even fill up the tank. €78??? That translates to about $114, or R893 (South African rands).

Such is the price of living in the Eurozone. It prompted me to thinking that those of you in the netherlands (USA, South Africa, the UK, and other places) might find it interesting to know what it costs to live here. So I put together a list of day-to-day items. (In truth, I didn't just do this for the blog - I have a couple of assignments that were looking for this info.) The grocery items come from a local co-operative and include in-season fruit and vegetables, which are either more expensive or simply not available out of season.

Shopping basket	Euro	South African Rand	US $
Loaf of rustic bread	2.03/kg	23.24/kg	1.36/pound
Milk	1.25/liter	14.31/liter	6.95/gal
6-pack of coke	2.64	30.23	3.88
Bottle of table wine	3-5	34-57	4.50-7.35
6-pack of beer	3.76	43	5.53
Mineral water	0.45/1.5 liter	5.15/1.5 liter	0.66/1.5 liter
Sugar	0.90/kg	10.31/kg	0.60/pound
Coffee	2.05/205g	23.50/250g	5.47/pound
Free-range chicken	4.30/kg	49.25/kg	2.87/pound
Ground beef	6.00/kg	68.70/kg	4.00/pound
Pork chops	4.90/kg	56.11/kg	3.27/pound
Norwegian salmon	7.90/kg	90.50/kg	5.28/pound
Prosciutto	19.80/kg	226.70/kg	13.23/pound
Bananas	1.69/kg	19.35/kg	1.13/pound
Peaches	1.89/kg	21.65/kg	1.26/pound
Onions	1.28-2.45/kg	14.66-28.05/kg	0.86-1.64/pound
Potatoes	0.86-1.14/kg	9.85-13.05/kg	0.57-0.76/pound
Zucchini	0.89-1.49/kg	10.20-17.05/kg	0.59-1.00/pound
Carrots	0.89/kg	10.19/kg	0.59/pound
Tomatoes	1.48-1.98/kg	16.95-22.67/kg	0.99-1.32/pound
Quality Pecorino (sheep's milk) cheese	14.50/kg	166/kg	9.69/pound
Italian butter	1.66/250g	19/250g	4.43/pound
Eggs per 1/2 dozen	1.32	15.10	1.94
Spaghetti	0.86/500g	9.85/500g	1.15/pound
Olive oil	5.05-9.59/liter	57.80-109.80/liter	7.42-14.10/liter
Monthly costs for running a 2000 sq ft (200 sq m) farmhouse	Euro	South African Rand	US $
Water & electricity	60	687	88
Gas (for cooking, hot water and heating) – winter	375	4294	551
Gas (for cooking and hot water) – summer	100	1145	147
Fixed phone(moderate-significant international calling)	50	572	74
Cell phone	30	343	44
Hi-speed internet	25	286	37
Satellite TV	45	515	66
Going out	Euro	South African Rand	US $
Movie tickets for 2 w/popcorn & 2 sodas	18	206	26.50
Dinner for 2: 3-course + wine	50	575	74
Espresso	0.80	9.15	1.18
Local beer	2.50	28.65	3.70
Car expenses	Euro	South African Rand	US $
Gasoline	1.47/liter	16.83/liter	8.18/gal
Diesel	1.44/liter	16.50/liter	8.01/gal
Car insurance per year (bare bones for 10-year-old car)	1200	13740	1764

HRH: pre-teen going on 20 ... or 70

"Eh."

"Bo'."

"Si."

"O!"

"Eh."

"Ciao."

This is the regal telephone diction of HRH. He's rather more eloquent with us, but only sometimes, and only just. I guess it's the age, and the concomitant slide into monosyllabic taciturnity.

This summer, a new habit has evolved - the Urbisaglia get-together. Urbisaglia is the little town just 10 minutes away where HRH goes to school. His mates live there. They go out to the local piazza and campo (field) on a daily basis to play football and "hang out" (one of HRH's more verbose phrases).

We typically drop him off at about 4 or 5pm, and pick him up as close to midnight as we can manage. Italians are night owls, and their children get inducted into their ways when they're still toddlers, so there are often plenty of them still milling about when we pick up HRH. Needless to say, this "early" pick-up is not the most popular of our parental actions.

I must confess that rural Italy is probably one of the few places I'd feel comfortable about doing this. I'm sure he'll want to start moving further afield the older he gets - he's already started talking about getting an Ape when he's 14 (fat chance) - so maybe our concerns will grow accordingly then. Last year it was Colmurano, this year Urbisaglia, next year ....?

But even then it's not a major problem - the local comune puts on buses to the discos on the coast a half-hour away that pick them up at 11pm on a Saturday night and bring them back in the wee hours. Now that's what I call a pro-active attempt at keeping the youth happy and keeping them safe at the same time. But in any event, I'm hoping the fairly frequent presence of girls in the current crowd helps to motivate a more "local" interest.

Last night I went to pick him up just before midnight at one of the local bars. Now this is not the type of bar you'd find in the US or the UK or South Africa, for example. Here they're gathering points for the village, probably the biggest item they sell is coffee, and anyway heavy drinking is not something one finds in rural Italy.

The boys had gone down to watch the Inter Milan - Roma derby on TV. When I arrived, they were playing cards on one of the outside tables. Just across from them on another table, the 60 and 70 year-olds were also playing cards. Both tables were engaged in rapid-fire chattering, loud remonstrating, and hand-led gesticulating as is the Italian wont. I had to do a double-take. For a moment I thought I was looking at a superimposition of future time against the present - which one of the old guys was HRH?

Colmurano Go Kart Grand Prix in pictures

The setting

Didn't quite come out as intended, but the sweeping colours are interesting

Through the neighbourhood

Avid potential go kart buyers (HRH at center)

More unintentional waves

Hot August

Hot. Stinking hot, in fact. Indeed, it wouldn't be out of place to suggest, Bruce, that it's hot enough to boil a monkey's bum (a knowing nudge and wink to Monty Python adherents). As dry as dust, too, with a hot wind just to make it that smidgen drier.

At this point clichéd vernacular would normally require me to attest: "At least it's not humid." But unfortunately this provides no solace for a sweat-drenched gardener or tree-house builder who has to wear long pants to keep the biting flies off his legs.

On the windless days, clouds puff up into thunderheads, the air crackles with electricity, shadows darken the distant skies ... but it's all just a ruse - nothing happens. I'm surprised, with the lack of rain, that our plants have not simply said "To hell with this place" and died. They're actually still going - well, dragging, really - and some of them (the weeds, mainly) are positively flourishing.

Unfortunately, the heat does not dissipate household and garden tasks, and so - when my writing deadlines allow me a day or half-day - I take to the broiler outside and tackle a heat-inducing task. Like clearing out the back porch so that you don't trip over any one of a hundred stacked-up, metamorphosising "things" ... donning pore-less plastic gear to take on the wasp's nest right on a frequented path in the garden ... building a tree-house with (and for) HRH.

This last task has been both a joy and struggle (although thankfully the latter in lower measure). The heat and our differing opinions on what to do to secure the thing have produced a few beano disagreements, but the end product is nonetheless taking shape, and is - as a first effort on both our parts - quite a thing. Julius even slept overnight in it once the lower walls were up to prevent him rolling over mid-dream into the dark abyss. With just the roof and the deck remaining to be done, I'm hoping it accords some utility beyond the satisfaction of constructing it - we'll see. At some point I'll post some pictures of the finished article.

In the midst of the heat wave, the streets of our local village, Colmurano, were once again transformed for a weekend, this time for a national go-kart grand prix. Attracting top-class drivers from all over Italy, it was curious to see my normal routes play home to screeching rubber and squealing engines. Julius, of course, now wants one, but he's been told that he'll have to be satisfied with his dad's robust rendering on those hairpin bends, an assertion that elicits nothing but contempt from HRH, given his claim that said dad lacks any trace of a spirit of adventure.

The grand prix was somewhat out of the ordinary for this time of year. Italy is in the throes of shutting down for August, and every town, village, hamlet, and collection of more than one house is in festa mode. What's so pleasant about it all is that here they make no attempt to disguise their primary intent behind each festival - eating. This is what it all comes down to - life, the universe, and everything: they want to eat. Lots. Different things too - lentils with pork rind ... paparadelle with duck ... nettles ... And always with a passion that is unique, infectious, and nation-defining. Yes, August in the Italian countryside - I haven't experienced one yet (last year we were in southern Africa), so I'm looking forward to the phenomenon.

But right now I have to go - after all that food talking I'm starting to get a little peckish. I'll have to see what's on the festa menu in Cessapolombo tonight ...

Cosmopolitan rural Italy

Our local village's annual arts in the street festival (Arti Strada) is on again right now. It's brilliant - top class music, dance, magicians, performance art, painting and sculpture, along with the requisite stalls selling perfumed candles, rings, ornaments, and a host of other interesting stuff. Not to mention tarot card and palm readers next to the fortune teller. It's arranged along much the same lines as last year's event, which is chronicled here, so I won't go into it in detail.

But there is one thing about the festival that prompted some reflections about living here. I was standing mesmerised watching a band playing, applauding loudly at the end of a piece when a friend tapped me on the shoulder and said: "That was worth coming here for, wasn't it?"

Indeed it was - a rhythmic, energetic, infectious world beat number played by a band thrown together from immigrants that gather in a piazza in Genova. They're from all over the world - Russia, Brazil, Morocco, China, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Senegal, and - believe it or not - Italy. Here in our little corner of rural Marche, a region that none of the 20-strong band had been to before, a world-class act playing just for the couple of hundred of us swaying enthusiastically with them.

And while they were the top billing, they weren't the only top notch performers from far afield. Uruguay, Australia, Holland, Spain, Chile, Macedonia, Congo, and Honduras were all represented as well. I could have been almost anywhere.

The international flavour of the day didn't end there. The friend watching the band with me is Scottish, an author and illustrator of books on goblins, legends, and spirits from all over the world. And earlier in the day as we sat on the beach, a Venezuelan who used to play baseball for the White Sox in Chicago struck up a conversation with us. He lives not too far from us with his Italian wife.

Who would have thunk that we'd be rubbing shoulders with such an eclectic mix in this place? It's not an isolated occurrence either. While this weekend was perhaps a little more concentrated on the international flavour front, interacting with "foreigners" is a fairly regular occurrence. And that's not including the many English people here, their community on its own offering layers of class, outlook, and soap opera happenings on a daily basis - there are also Australians, Americans, Argentinians, Kosovari, Albanians, Senegalese, Nigerians, Ghanaians, Moroccans, and still others.

Then of course there are also the locals, who provide their own distinct essence in an already rich patchwork. Vitaliano, our contadino neighbour, has likely seldom ventured much further than Macerata, a half-hour away. In contrast, our other neighbour, pensioner Franco, has travelled more than I have, in his days with Italian oil company Agip reaching distant parts of South America, North, Central and South Africa, and the Middle East. He still doesn't speak English, but it didn't stop us spending an Arti Strada night together, sharing travel stories and enjoying the music, him tapping his 70-year-old feet along with the teenagers surrounding us.

It's a veritable surprise of diversity. In a country known for its xenophobia, more pronounced in its rustic reaches than the urban sprawl, it's just another contradiction in the mass of anomalies that somehow hold Italy together.

It's a wonderful thing. As I look out of my office over the rolling hills at the breeze blowing the cotton-wool clouds gently across the cielo azzurro, bringing a welcome coolness to the air, I can only think how lucky I am to be here.

Our garden in pictures

A few pictures from our own little plot of turf. While some of the colourful products of our garden had us to thank for their robust vibrance, many are entirely free of our intervention, helpful or otherwise.

First up, a few cherries. Delicious they were, as the birds I'm sure would agree.

This rose had Maria to thank for its survival and ravishing health.

Growing wild ...

... as are these.

An onion blossom.

A couple of onion blossoms getting to know each other a little better.

Corn flowers a long way from the corn.

Four existing hibiscus bushes decided to burst forth this summer after taking a year off. No thanks to us either.

This yellow broom has likely seen its last season as a wood stack is destined to take its place.

Another wild guest.

And another Maria rose.

Flowers from our flourishing potato plants.

More cherries ... and an apple.

Talking of apples ...

And finally, another wild, unaided member of our colourful throng.

The three P's of wisdom in rural Italy

As things start taking on a semblance of normality, there is occasionally the time to think. Make no mistake, there is still plenty to do before we could say the house is "phase 1 finished":

- light fixtures to replace the blatant wires and bare bulbs
- office file cabinet to eliminate the iceberg-pile of stuff in the corner
- patio paving and loggia
- garden differentiable from the nearby forest so that it actually looks like we're in control, not the plants (weeds)
- TV moved from temporary location with frenzy of wires to permanent wall fixture
- furniture in the lounge(s) to replace picnic fold-up chairs, Marty Crane specials, and bare carpet
- kitchen drawers to reduce risk of back problems from having to bend over for everything
- proper storage space for tools so that we can actually get in and out of our back door without tripping over something

... and so on.

Basically what I'm finding is that there are 3 main ingredients for living contentedly here, or anywhere, for that matter - planning, passion, and patience. (OK, "passion" may be a bit poetic, but it was alliterative.)

The prime example is the garden. We planted vegetables back in April/May, romantically envisioning the bulbous onions, fabled beanstalks, and Popeye spinach adorning our daily tavola. Indeed. But such is the fertility of the soil here, and such was the dampness of the spring, that our garden positively exploded, burgeoning with green growth everywhere to such an extent that I'd barely finished the hacking through the rash-inducing, sweat-provoking, jungle-like growth on the bottom slope that I had to start again on the flat surfaces on the top (since they'd shot up in the interim like speeded-up home videos).

The vegetable garden? Forget it. It was a tangled mass of stalks and vines and leaves and grass and weeds within a few weeks of planting. It was so overgrown that on several occasions I simply turned away from it and banished it from my thoughts (at least temporarily) because it was so overwhelming I didn't know where to start. Eventually I came back to it, of course, and did some weeding, just enough to be able to recognize the vegetables from the feral growths that had invaded the place.

In the meantime, of course, while I turned my attention to the vegetables and my back on the remainder of the garden, the parts I ignored took the opportunity to enjoy a growth spurt. When I looked back at them again, it was as if I'd never even tended them in the first place.

Demoralising. When we stopped and commiserated with each other, we came to the realization that we just tried to do too much. We weren't ready for the vegetable garden, to give it the numerous hours per week that it needs. We hadn't planned adequately on what we wanted to plant and harvest, when we were going to do so, and where we were going to put them. And after a hellish year of renovations and nomadic living when everything was such an effort, we wanted it to happen too quickly.

Well, guess what? Everything is still an effort, and it'll always be. The garden will come in time, but only in it's own time, and after we've put in the time. And got the blisters and callouses on our lily-white hands.

Only if we embrace the process too, not just the end result. Without the passion going into it, the results will be lacklustre.

The same is true for the rest of the house and the property. Ditto for living here - the language, the friendships, the life...

It reminds me of an article I read some years ago about a young Yahoo! turk who had reflected that something that took two years to come to fruition (in business) was way too long. Six months was basically the edge of his time horizon. As a forty-something at the time, I had to smile wryly at the impetuous impatience. Such is the world in some minds.

What I'm finding is that things that endure take a little longer. And they don't have definitive measuring units - they simply take as long as they take. And there's no place better to learn that lesson than out here in rural Italy, where this concept is baked into the earth and infused in the veins of the locals that surround me.

I'm coming to terms with it, and calming down as a result. The key is to keep planting one foot forward, and if you get knocked backward - as we have innumerable times already and will be in the future - to step up and plant it again. With conviction. Slowly. Thoughtfully. Deliberately. Maybe in a decade or two, I may even have a few pearls of advice for my son and his progeny.

Having endeth-ed the lesson here, a couple of more encouraging sequels. First, the fava beans were delicious and monstrous, we're enjoying the 3 types of onion right now, and the potato plants have been prolific in their output. Casualties? The peas and spinach. But 3 out of 5 ain't bad for a city slicker with computer keyboard fingers.

The rest of the garden, too, has taken it upon itself to grow anyway, in spite of my efforts to hold it back, rendering a colourful display that will be the subject of a pictorial blog in the not too distant future.

A Grande day - in pictures

The visual companion to the verbal version chronicled here. (Note also that if you click on the picture it opens full-size.)

A Grande day

Up in the Apennine mountains in a bowl surrounded by soft, curved hills is a wonderful place. It’s called Piano Grande, and is actually just across the regional border in Umbria. It’s famous for its thin-skinned lentils grown in checkered fields that deck the plain, every year yielding a crop of wonderful wildflowers in late June. The phenomenon is celebrated in the form of an annual festa in the Piano’s sole village perched on a mound on its northern edge. In typical Italian fashion, the town has a rhythmic, tongue-satisfying name – Casteluccio. Last Sunday, we went there.

The spectacular weather attracted throngs, and as we sauntered through the shady, oak-covered avenues in the valley en route, we were constantly overtaken by bikers buzzing like black insects toward the honey pot. Biking is a very popular weekend sport here, particularly among the curving mountain roads in our neighborhood. For some reason – maybe it’s a biker thing – they’re always in a hurry, which means, given the innate and unchangeable habits of the Italian driver, a constant dance with the wild side: overtaking on solid white lines (what lines?), speeding by on the other side on blind curves (who's blind?), and generally making a mad dash to get there … and do nothing. It’s all black leather, making everyone look the same, so it’s always intriguing getting to a communal stop to see who’s actually underneath all that black – anyone and everyone, as it turns out, and – in this country – pretty much as you’d expect.

Casteluccio has a permanent population of about 3, and on festival days, 30,000. Cars are parked all the way down the approaching roads in typical Italian fashion: eclectic, avante-garde style. The numerous mammoth coaches slow things down to a crawl, and jam up the village’s piazza, but it doesn’t matter – it’s festa time and all that’s important is that you’re there in some way or other. Chaos, after all, is what Italians thrive on, it’s like a life juice that injects them with an oblivious energy that makes everything just OK.

Ignoring the apparently obvious requirement to park a kilometer away, we crawl into the piazza, and scoot up a sidestreet, finding a parking on a precipitous slope just 50m from the action. Why everyone else isn’t doing this is anyone’s guess – I thought that finding obscure but convenient parking places was a national pastime.

Anyway, after spending a nano-second on that thought, off we go to explore. In the town itself, there are only three things to do – browse the few stores for the local products (lentils, salami, cheese, and curios), watch the people … and eat (of course). We did all three, crushing into a busy diner-cum-restaurant that had a single, heaving line to get in and out. Amongst the many dishes available, Julius and I had the compulsory lentil and sausage soup – more like a stew but delicious. My son then followed this up – much to our surprise since his appetite has shrunk since his eating-machine days – with a monster of a porchetta sandwich: whole roasted pig, a specialty of the larger region and an absolute must if you have the stomach for it. To our even greater surprise, he flattened it, and left sated and satisfied, hands and mouth glistening with grease.

We then took a drive up a bumpy dirt road that leads to who-knows-where up and around the corner, and stopped to watch the group of hang- and para-gliders readying themselves and throwing themselves off the slope and into mid-air. It reminded me of Douglas Adams’ flying instruction manual: throw yourself at the ground … and miss. Well, miss they did, these fellows, most of them English, it seemed, and went soaring over the plains and some of them up into the stratosphere, gliding peacefully some few thousand feet above the central Apennines’ highest peak, Vettore. There’s actually a school for such ventures not far from where we live, and watching these guys do what birds do – apparently as easily as they do too – took me another step closer to being convinced that I want to do it too. We shall see, maybe it’ll be my 50^th birthday present to myself, although my Italian would need to improve in order to be able to understand all of the instruction and increase chances of survival.

After a couple of hours of this, down we went into the plains to get a close-up of the flowers. Not inordinately spectacular, I have to confess, but given the peaceful setting, buzzing with happy visitors lying down in the fields posing for photos, there was little to criticize.

Driving back at the settling dusk, I was reminded why I came here (notwithstanding my son’s unfathomable tantrum). Sure there are other beautiful places like this all over Europe and the world, but this one is just an hour from my house. And it’s an experience – bikers, congestion, food, gliders, throngs, and more – that you could only have in Italy.

Contrasts and contradictions

About a year ago, a friend visiting from South Africa pondered our move as he stood looking at the shell of our house in the early stages of renovation. “I’m trying to get my head around your life here,” he said. His words echo frequently as I do my own share of pondering our life here, full as it is with contrasts and contradictions.

We get our honey from one neighbour, eggs from another, milk from a third. Our vegetable patch is doing OK given the lack of attention it’s received, but we had a few delicious meals from our first crop of the season – the fava beans.

In between, I do research on the internet and write for my American and Irish clients. Last Saturday, I watched South Africa play Wales in a rugby international, and on Sunday I watched Rafael Nadal win the French Open. Tonight I’ll watch Italy play France in Euro 2008.

I can go days without speaking Italian. Over the past three weeks, I’ve had to dust off my improvised German for Maria’s visiting friends and family, causing my hard-wired brain untold confusion and my bumbling speech to substitute languages with reckless abandon.

I suppose it is a little more complicated than it used to be in some ways, but it most ways, it isn’t. The simplicity of it is calming, even if the pressure to make money – a greater challenge here for me than ever before – isn’t.

But I’m reminded every now and then how different my life is - not only from my old life - but also from so many people around us, the locals in particular – what constitutes a good day, what a crisis is, how I earn a living … the list goes on.

A week or so ago a particular event brought it home in a jarring, etched-in-the-memory type of way. When we went to collect our milk from the farmer across the valley, I noticed one of the cows lying on its side next to the road. Thinking this an unusual posture for a bovine, I looked closer, and noticed a long gash in its neck. The cow-hand (a woman) came over and told me that it wasn’t well (pointing to its swollen leg) and so they slashed its throat. As we watched, it was eking out its last, moaning and groaning as the life bled out of its neck.

“Mi dispiace” (I’m sorry), the woman kept saying matter-of-factly, which is pretty much how they must have come to the decision not half an hour before our arrival. And then led the cow across the road to its death gutter.

I suppose this sort of thing shouldn’t bother me, but it simply points to how different an upbringing and life I’ve had. People like me imagine life in the rolling hills of Italy to be romantic. It may be so, but it’s also real – perhaps a lot more real than I’ve ever experienced.

From the land where nothing is straight-forward

There is no peace for the wicked … no such thing as a free lunch … no gain without pain … one forward, three back – you name it, there’s a cliché out there to describe our experience here.

Take our internet connection – my life-changing internet connection, chronicled here – for instance. Everything went fine for a couple of weeks. Even our neighbour backed off when I was able to string the cable a couple of metres off the ground, allowing him to cut the brush below it.

But then the inevitable happened – failure. During a storm. Just quietly shut down.

So down I go to the internet store – my network port is dead. Well, not dead really – the system knows it’s there, but it just didn’t work. No-one knew why.

So they gave me a network adapter that plugged into my PCMCIA slot. Worked like a charm … until the next storm (two days later). Down it went again.

Back to the internet store – network adapter’s dead. No problem with the antenna or my computer during and after the storm, mind. They were puzzled.

So they gave me a different type of network adapter, one that plugs into a USB port. Again, no problem … until the next rain, that is (two days later).

Now, at the best of times, this would have been a frustrating experience, but with two looming deadlines and a bucket-load of online research to do, the timing couldn’t have been worse.

But we soldier on. Down to the internet store again – now this network adapter is dead. The techie’s suggestion? Get an exorcist. He chuckled when he said that, and in a different scenario, I might have joined him.

He and his techie partners are flummoxed – they don’t know what’s causing it. So as a last resort, he gave me a network filter to moderate the signal coming through. Of course I had to get another network adapter, but since I had already blown the only two they had at the store (they only have a call for about two a year, since, in their words, “they never fail”), I had to go and get it somewhere else.

The store down the road was closed – permanently, it seems (their timing from my selfish standpoint was perfect, of course). The other store had to order it, and it took a day to arrive (not bad, given where I am).

In the meantime, my deadlines came and went, and I scrambled through them by to-ing and fro-ing to the internet store, where my wireless card – a useless piece of equipment so far in this neck of the woods – got me onto their network.

But the new network card has a gimpy connection, so I lost the connection the second time I tried it. I was distraught, thinking that the ghost was still in the machine. And hoping the fact that I got the network cable outside caught up in the weed-eater (strimmer) yesterday wasn’t the reason for it. Luckily, a firm push and the network card connected.

The network filter, however, needs to be properly earthed, something I’m led to believe will require an electrician. Which means a phone call & an appointment, neither of which has happened yet. So the filter is not operational yet.

As a result, the network adapter gets disconnected when rain threatens, which right now is daily, for several prime working hours. Last week it rained solidly for 3 days.

And so when the weather starts turning, I have to do something else – like cut the lawn, weed the vegetable patch, install something …

Yes indeed here we are in the Italian countryside, mixing vegetable growing with internet surfing.

But only when the weather’s good.

Another step forward

Life over the past two months - at least in terms of its convenience quotient - has indeed taken leaps and bounds forward. First, we got a fixed phone. Then, we got the internet. Both have saved hours of to-ing and fro-ing in the car to internet points and phone centers, eliminated a not insignificant number of euros in cost, and a schedule that no longer requires planning around phone calls and emails. As one might imagine, this has simplified our lives and reduced the stress index accordingly.

But that's not all. Our most recent addition to our growing new millenium acquisitions in this old world domain has no less of a daily impact than these other two giant steps for mankind.

Solar panels.

As a previous blog might have alluded to, our infrastructure plans somehow forgot to include an alternative to our fireplace (camino) for our hot water needs. Most people in this neck of the woods use gas. How this happened is another story; suffice it to say that it belongs in the same category as the Bermuda triangle and the wreck of the Mary Deare.

Anyway, our fire-for-hot-shower system meant that every time we wanted to indulge in a spot of personal hygiene, we'd have to light a fire. Not a problem when it's chillsome outside, but a real pain in the ass when it's shorts and T-shirt weather. Given the current law of diminishing vestiture that goes with the advent of spring, lighting a fire was becoming something of a bind, if not downright humiliating to my common sense. Hence the solar panels.

It would be something of an understatement to simply say blandly that life has changed since they've gone in. These days, every time I want a shower, I can just go and take one. It's hard to explain to anyone that's never been in such a position, but it's positively a revelation - no going to collect kindling and wood (more than a simple task if it's been raining), getting the fire going, and then waiting at least half-an-hour for the fire to heat the water enough to take the plunge. Since we invested in the best solar panel system (Paradigma from Germany), we can simply step in, and within minutes be smiling under a cloud of steam. Even when it rained for 3 days and we never saw the sun in that time, the system's insulated boiler held sufficient water at a hot enough temperature to have a bone-warming doccia.

Another benefit is that it's going to help in the winter when we're using the fire for hot water and heating - the partially-warmed water from the solar panel boiler is routed to the camino reservoir, giving a head-start in the heating-up process.

Plus, of course, if leaves us virtually free of any gas obligations. our stove currently uses about 6 euros a month in gas, while others who heat their homes and hot water can spend 400 euros a month in winter, and maybe a third of that in summer.

It's a learning process, this living in Italy thing, often a challenge, and always an exercise in patience, but we'll get there in the end. I mean, how can I feel anything but good when we're not only saving money with solar panels (in the long run, obviously), but we're also doing our tiny little bit for the environment.

Phone update

In the excitement of several other landmark developments (at least from our humble, provincial perspective) in the last month, it somehow escaped the blog’s attention that a fixed phone line was installed at our house. After a long, frustrating, and fruitless relationship with Telecomm Italia – much of it chronicled here – they finally turned up and spent all of 10 minutes to (re-)connect our long-standing, plain-for-all-to-see, existing phone line. Apparently we’re going to have to fork over some €400 for their questionable effort.

Since the complex flip-switch just over a month ago, service has, I’m happy to say, been uninterrupted. We were able to sign up – stunningly without a hitch – for a long-distance plan that allows unlimited calling to Europe and North America for a mere €10 a month.

For my South African calls, I’ve signed up for a third-party, call-another-number-first service. They advertised calls to SA for €0.02 per minute, a charge which I’ve yet to see – so far, costs have been in the €0.03-5 per minute range.

Attempted comparisons with Telecom Italia tariffs to South Africa have been fraught with puzzlement and self-doubt – their website gives a creative, neatly-compartmented, and entirely incomprehensible formula which my dull brain calculates to a monumental €0.30 for every 5.5 seconds (or €3.27 per minute). Notwithstanding TI’s likely higher charges given their sparsely-populated competitive realm, it surely has to be cheaper than this. So I’m sure I’m not reading something right, an outcome I’d wager is not beyond the essence of their intent. Whatever the actual tariff – and it wouldn’t surprise me if it changed from minute to minute – I’m pretty sure it’s more than €0.05 per minute.

Consequently, I’m not about to complain. To anyone. After all, I have a working phone, one that rings, and one that gets dial tone consistently. Better to let sleeping dogs lie I reckon, lest waking them rouses a spirit of curiosity in some telecomm bureaucrat or technician that would in all likelihood weave an “unravellable” bundle of telephonic events that would render us paying for something that we don’t have, and sharing a line with our neighbours just like our friends in Paterno do.

It’s already a little peculiar to many of the locals here that our number has a San Severino Marche prefix, a town some 50km distant.

Needless to say, our telephonic adventures have other dimensions – the telephone itself, for example. Our attempts to buy one (a) without a cord and with a built-in charger, and (b) with an answering machine have so far proved as fruitless as my attempts to understand TI’s tariff structure. Italians have not embraced the answering machine culture, and they rarely (if ever) leave or listen to messages on either fixed or cell phones. Consequently there’s not much of a market for built-in answering machines, and so I suppose we shouldn’t blame the sales clerk in the store (that only sells telephone stuff) for telling us there was an answering machine when there isn’t. Or, for that matter, for selling us a cordless phone which requires its "special" rechargeable batteries to be replaced when they finally expire.

In truth, we only have ourselves to blame for not doing all the double-and-triple checks before leaving the store, or asking the questions that we didn’t know or think to ask. (In truth, I’ve managed to stay out of this particular mire myself, leaving it to Maria in the interests of keeping my blood pressure at acceptable levels.)

All of this, however, matters naught, given - as I said before - that I have a working phone, one that rings, and one that gets dial tone consistently ... even if I trip over the cord when I walk into my office.

Another Italian hospital experience

If you’ve never seen a dislocated wrist, I’d suggest not volunteering to go look at one if you’re ever given the option. I had the misfortune of seeing one on my own son last weekend at his football match. It doesn’t take much to dislocate a 12-year-old’s wrist, it seems. Upon his fourth or fifth tumble of the game, one that seemed more innocuous than the others, he leapt to his feet yelping in pain, and clutching his arm. Parents, coaches and players clustered around him immediately, each gasping as they arrived – his wrist was bent at an improbable angle, and his hand was standing grotesquely atop a hill of skin and flesh that rose steeply from his forearm. I was horrified, a reaction that manifested itself in stark silence and a firm grip on his shoulders.

Misfortune, however, often has more favourable bedfellows, it seems, and so far we’ve encountered two.

First was the hospital experience that followed. Lucky for us, one of Julius’ teammates has a nursing couple as parents – his mother was at the game, and she took immediate charge, rushing us off to the hospital where her husband works. Although he was off duty at the time, he called ahead and so the emergency receptionists were primed for our arrival, and after checking in – a matter of 30 seconds – Julius was whisked off for X-rays and thence to the orthopedic surgeons, who said he’d need an operation to put the wrist back in place and insert a few pins to stabilize it. Unfortunately for him though, he had to wait some 4 hours because of the minimum time required after his last meal before a general anesthetic can be administered – his 8am breakfast meant he couldn’t be anesthetized until 2pm, and we arrived at 10am. Even more unfortunate was the total lack of effect the painkillers had, and so he had to wait in constant pain. I felt helpless, as did the hospital staff.

All was well after the op, however, and Julius was all smiles when he came round and found himself pain-free. I spent the night in hospital with him, a rather sleepless affair as a result of the noisy (vocal and other) ablution attempts of the septuagenarian in another of the ward’s beds.

As a hospital experience, it was class A+. The only “forms” I had to deal with involved (a) supplying Julius’ name when we came in (they pulled up all his details immediately from a previous visit) and (b) signing acknowledgement that I was going to sleep the night. In the morning, we were out of there by 9am. Given my prior experiences in the US with forms and bureaucracy and insurance and ass-covering and such, it was a real breeze. And on top of it, all the doctors and nurses, being the child-loving Italians that they are, hovered around Julius as if he was the crown prince, pinching his cheeks and constantly making sure he was OK. Notwithstanding our frequent buzzing for the nursing staff, they always came promptly and with a smile.

The second positive outcome came from the outpouring of support and sympathy from Julius’ teammates, their parents, and his coaches. He received numerous visitors in the short time he was in the hospital, among them the director of the football club. He was also asked to a special presentation after the team’s last game, where he was given a football signed by all of the boys. No other awards, just one for Julius. I’ve told him the football should never be kicked around, and that it should take pride of place amongst his keepsakes, one that will trigger a warm glow every time he has cause to look at or touch it.

Needless to say, the cast on his arm is something of a status symbol amongst his schoolmates, and it has the added benefit of freeing him of the burden of homework and tests, given that it’s his writing hand (“Damn!” he said with a wry smile). Thankfully there’s only a few weeks left before the end of term, so we’re hoping there’s no loss on the learning side. It’s also given him a “handy” excuse when it comes to housework, although the other side of that coin is that he can no longer go footballing in the local village square. At least not until the pins come out and the cast comes off on June 17^th, when he will hopefully recount yet another smooth visit to the hospital in Macerata.

The Internet!!!

I’m getting all choked up as I write this, such is the magnitude of the declaration – I have the internet … at home. Those who have read previous posts on the subject (here’s one), and those who can empathize with a profession that lives and dies through its electronic relationships, will appreciate the emotional depth of the subject. It’s been a long time coming – 18 months (give or take) to put a number on it.

I can’t believe what a change it’s wrought in my life – no longer do I have to wait until 9:30 for the internet store to open, no longer do I have to schedule my day around trips to the internet store, no longer do I have to drive 10km each way to the internet store, all I have to do is walk down to my office … at any time of the day. It’s a true revelation, I feel liberated.

Rather ironically, given my rantings and ravings about the inefficiencies of life in rural Italy, it turns out that I could have had the internet all along - well over a year ago - if only I'd tried the solution I doubted for so long. There's a lesson in there somewhere, but I'm ignoring it for now.

After having reached a dead end on what I thought was the most promising avenue for the internet (Telecomm Italia, a curious choice given its gross incompetence and indolence, but indicative of the dearth of alternatives), I turned once again to the internet store that became my office for over a year. The techie there said if I could run a network cable less than 80 or 90 meters from a receiver mounted on a pole up the driveway that is in sight of their tower in San Ginesio some 6km away, I might be able to get a signal.

So, in desperation and in cautious hope, I gave it a shot, and after a couple of false starts, lo and behold, it worked! I still get goosebumps when I think of that “Local Area Connection 100 Mbps” message that popped up on my screen, followed by the strangled whoop that I simply couldn’t contain. Not only am I getting a signal from my receiver that j-u-s-t manages to peep over the hill up to San Ginesio, it’s a pretty solid one as well, matching any one of my friends who have a clear view of the tower.

Of course, it hasn’t all gone without incident or issue. First of all, I’ve mounted the receiver on one of the electrical company’s poles. I’ve no doubt that they wouldn’t take too kindly to it if they knew. I could of course ask them for permission, but I’m pretty sure what the answer would be, and even if they were marginally open to the idea, I don’t think I have the stomach for the bureaucracy and paperwork that would ensue. So I do what most Italians would do – I simply go ahead, and if they discover it (improbable given our hidden-away location out in the rustic reaches), I’ll simply plead ignorance, take it down, and erect my own pole.

But it’s not the only hurdle. The second one is a little more concerning. Turns out that the electrical pole is on one of our neighbours’ land – I thought it was on ours, but given the minuscule sketch of a plan that we got with our deed, I’m not in a position of strength to counter his claim. In any event, the difference is marginal.

However, said neighbour, who has been friendliness personified up until now, has said that he doesn’t want the network cable running over his land. Understandable, naturally. One option would be to bury it, but it’s 80 long meters from the house, entailing a lot of digging if I did it myself, or a lot of euros if I get someone else to. So I thought of running it in the air from one electrical pole to another, and thence to the house. He’s not entirely happy with this arrangement either, but it’s better than the cable interfering with his lawnmower (and consequently my work), and so this is the makeshift arrangement as it stands now.

It’s temporary not only for the above reasons, but also because I haven’t managed to find the right bracket or attachment mechanism to mount it on the electrical pole. And so it’s literally held on with wire and string, a rural Italian solution if ever I saw one.

In the meantime, I’m gallivanting all over the web with a carefree abandon, a smile on my face, and a new daily schedule in my life. In quintessential masculine denial, I’ll ignore the looming issues until they knock on my front door. Until then, I’m hoping my neighbour just cuts his grass under my looping network cable, and doesn’t think of suggesting to the electrical company come and check up on their poles in rural Regnano …