Living as a Part-time Italian

Panoramic View of the Piazza Giacomo Matteotti Almost every Italian town has at least one market day. On that day vendors set up stalls and sell everything from fresh fruits and vegetables, meat and fish, as well as plants, clothing and kitchen appliances. Our town has two market days. The big one is on Wednesday. Most of the food portion is located in the main piazza, Giacomo Matteotti and then trails toward the east with cheese trucks, porchetta (roasted pig) trucks, a large candy stand, and a couple of hand-made jewelry stalls. At the end of this section, you cross a pedestrian bridge and end up between several streets filled with clothing, linens, leather goods, and many other knick-knacks. It is always busy. Mike purchasing some grapes. My routine is to buy fresh fruit (always at least one cantaloupe) and some tomatoes, and then get two sandwiches from the porchetta truck. We tend to visit the same vendors each time. I then check out the bakery which is two streets ...

Panoramic view from a favorite gelato place Much of what I will share is quite positive; we wouldn't have bought a house here otherwise. But as with everything in life it must be balanced. We used an Italian bank to finance the loan for the property. During that time I had to learn how to send money from the states to a checking account to pay the loan as well as utilities on the house. The utilities use direct withdrawal but each requires a form to be filled that is unique to the utility and turned into a different place in the area. You can try faxing or emailing but almost ALL of my emails are ignored and faxes are often busy. After a year of working with our property manager and my own efforts everything was set up. Then... last fall the original bank sold our loan and all the accounts with it to another bank. Only the gas withdrawal remained effective. The process took nine months to a total migration that occurred on May 27th. In each step of the process my bank acco...

Five years ago we made a dream come true and bought a small townhouse in a small town in central Italy. For one month of every year, June, we move in and attempt to live as Italians.  First of all our Italian is limited and most of the people in this town speak little English so that can be quite fun. But they are willing to work with us and communication occurs. These are some of the things I have learned. In no particular order: 1.      Bad pizza in Italy is better than most of the pizzas offered in restaurants in the U.S. 2.      Speaking a little, clunky Italian goes a long way in relationships with the Italians. They like the effort. 3.      Italians drive fast and get impatient with hesitant moves. 4.      You might as well plan for a nap during the hours of 1:00-4:00 in the afternoon because in most non-tourist towns businesses close a...