Italy 1.0: we take risks not for risk itself, but for the self risk brings forth
We learned that, and a thousand other things, in Italy.
Thank you for being here! You can read more about our Italian life here, here, and here. I tend to write a lot about Italy, but about other things too - like how what we do makes us who we are, or about food and wine, or gardening, or all of it!
Acqui Terme, Italy 2008
“I really don’t know why you’re doing this.” An uncomfortable moment set in front of a glorious sunset, mountains shadowed in the distance, our table set with salami and proscuitto and bread, wine flowing freely.
These people weren’t friends, more like acquaintances who booked our B&B through the recommendation of mutual friends. She was stricken by comments her partner made. I cleared crumbs from the table; Michael grabbed a watering can for the flowers.
“I don’t see why you’re so upset,” he dismissed her defensiveness. “These people have obviously taken the risks, and look a the reward,” his hand gesturing over the house and view.
I thought for a moment.
“Well,” I started, “The rewards are easy to see. We’ve wiped the bloody aftermath of the risks from view for our guests.” From their stare I surmised that more explanation was needed.
I recounted a few of the more painful hurdles we crossed.
The moving nazis. The roof that collapsed in the dead of winter. Getting ripped off by a project manager who put his unqualified friends on our construction crew. Sheer terror from trading in dollars while the euro was rocketing, halving our liquidity when the pool payment was due. There were are few others I’m forgetting, but it was enough to make a point.
“You regret it, then?” She asked. “You wish you had stayed where you were living a more normal life?”
Her husband rolled is eyes. “Are you kidding me? They’re living the dream!” He turned to me. “Right?”
Some variation of this scenario happened so many times those first few years in Italy we knew there had to be something more behind it. Couples would sit with us and argue the same battle, their layers peeling on that beautiful hill. Layers of themselves. Of what they wanted, and of what they didn’t want. At home, in the safe protection of a routine and with ego safely locked in place with four walls and a regular income, it was easy to play with the idea of risk. But here, exposed, differences bubbled to the surface quickly.
We, simply put, were a real-life provocation. Our existence, having taken those big-change steps that “people always talk about” forced others to face their own lives and what risk meant to them personally and to their partners. It was never anything anyone expected to think about on vacation on a hill in Italy. But Michael and I are lousy at small talk, and tend to go deep if someone asks us the right questions.
The deep truth is the aftermath of massive change is hard. There’s no sugar coating it. When I moved to Germany it was hard to learn German well enough to speak it in social situations. It was doubly hard to move to Italy and have the same thing happen again, this time BOTH of us having to learn the new language. There were a couple of years neither of us wanted to answer the telephone when it rang in Italy. And calling an Italian that didn’t know us, like the phone company? Tortuous. We did it, but don’t think for a minute it was a fun, silly expat experience. We learned Italian, and can look back and laugh (kind of), but those years were really challenging and there are scars..
When you see you’re probably getting ripped off by a tradesperson, and you don’t have the communication skills to call them on it in a way that they get? It hurts because our entire careers were built on communication skills. We never gave these sticky intricacies a thought in the planning stage. But when it’s in front of you and costing you large amounts of money at a time when there is no income? Terrifying. It’s just that simple.
There is so much to reckon with when you take a large risk. If you’d know the aftermath before you stepped into the unknown would you do it? Probably not. Which is why rose coloured glasses are an essential part of the risk taking experience. Not ignorance, mind you. But just a rosy tint on your lenses so that the rough corners of “living the dream” are polished away for the time being.
We desperately wanted Italy to be the answer for us. We wanted it to be the lush, rich, green, esoterically satisfying place of our many vacations. I’m Italian American - for me it was Italy or nothing. There was no doubt we were willing to put in a lot of hard work; both of us are doers. We had a vision, and we wanted that vision to be planted, bloom and grow and become our life’s work.
And we were willing to risk everything to make that happen.
In many ways, Italy fulfilled its end of the bargain. And in some ways, it failed us and broke our hearts. Maybe we failed it as well, though. We learned what’s inevitable to learn about any place: there is vacation, there is dreaming about a place, and there is living there. And those three things have almost nothing to do with each other.
We couldn’t know that we were at the end of the water line for the entire ridge of homes before us, meaning, in a drought year (and there are many in Italy now), we were the first to lose water and the last to have it return.
We couldn’t know that electricity to our side of the hill was dependent on a box across the valley from us that hadn’t been updated since shortly after World War 2, causing our power to be unstable all year round, but especially when it was very hot or very cold.
We couldn’t know that it is never a good idea in Italy to allow the person you bought your home through to manage any construction or renovation. Ever.
We had one of the most beautiful properties in the entire area, but we couldn’t know that the dirt road to access our house would wash out with ice and snow every single year, leaving us unable leave the property if we hadn’t managed to get the car to the base of the drive before the snow got too heavy. Road reconstruction? That’s a huge number that wasn’t part of our Italian Dream budget ever.
These are things that affected daily life to the point that we had to quickly act on many levels to resolve huge problems, especially when guests were with us. It was exhausting. I would have done anything for a decent road. Or consistent electricity I didn’t have to think about. Or water for showers and the pool in July.
There is the Italian tax system and trying to squeeze a legal living out of it, which made us understand why everyone wanted to be paid in cash. Italians are not natural-born tax evaders; they simply need to be able to put food on the table. And in Italy, saying that’s real challenge for the self employed is a massive understatement.
Or there’s the fact that the costs of everything were far more than double what we budgeted - even when we paid cash to whoever wanted it. And we had budgeted reasonably according to professional advice we were given. Italy can be a real sham that way for the inexperienced. At some point, taking a large risk will mean having those rose coloured glasses ripped off your face so quickly that your ears almost fall off. But back to the question from our guests.
Was it worth it?
Of course it was worth it. It was worth every single moment and twist and turn. I grew up in those years. And I had already done hard things. Many of them. But that hill in Italy was my Alamo. It’s where beauty slammed into hardship slammed into get up and start again. Over and over and over.
There were those unbelievable guests from 21 countries that made us laugh and cry and drink way too much wine. I prepared thousands of meals, made bread every single day, picked figs and served them with raw goat cheese and honey from the beehives next door, walked the dog with kids that we took to get eggs in the morning from the neighbours’ chickens. There were a million juices I made from watermelon and blood oranges and fresh cherries and whatever other fruit I had. There were couples that told us we changed their lives, honeymooners who cried big tears when they left.
There were those seven renovation phases and learning in a very deep way what historic preservation is all about. It was firing the wrong people and hiring the right ones. It was trusting my design instincts instead of letting someone else spend our money for us.
It was having neighbours that loved us and cared for us and never let us forget we were not alone. It was watching our best friend who helped us every single day die, being destroyed by it, but comforted at being able to be there for his family.
It was about so much more than renting rooms.
There was so much joy and living and philosophising on that hill. It was contagious. People told other people. People came back two and three and four times. We still have contact with so many of our guests to this day - which to me, says it all.
I know now what I did not know then:
We had to take the large risk of moving to Italy with nothing but a dream for a reason: to become the people we are now. That hill in Italy might not have been our forever home (we sold it in 2014) but it was my biggest lesson where my brightest and best self learned to survive and thrive and become the person I was meant to be.
It’s the kind of education that comes when you put yourself in the line of fire.
In the end, our choices are in our own hands, heads and hearts. What we do with our chances and who we become as a result, is completely up to us.
I'm equal parts exhausted and inspired reading this. Gorgeous writing, my friend.
Thank you for writing honestly about your experiences in Italy. Most people will never know who they really are or what they can do, until they are put to the test. I am tempted to look upon the last 3 years of the construction of my house in Greece (it’s almost finished) as a total waste of time, but what you have written has given me a better perspective. Electricity and water here are major issues and until I move in, I don’t know what to expect. This is my challenge.