A One-Way Ticket to Italy – Our First Three Weeks in Tuscany

And just like that, we’ve already been in Italy for three weeks. In everyday terms, you might call this a summer holiday. The only difference is that, for us, it came with a one-way ticket. But man, oh man, how quickly time flies here.

Between getting used to everything, settling in, acclimatising and discovering new things — you get the idea 😊 — we also take some time to look back and ahead. If I had to give us a score for where we are right now, I’d give us a 7 out of 10.

As a reader, you might think: well, a 7 isn’t exactly an outstanding score. Believe me, back in my school days I was absolutely delighted with a 7.

So why a 7? Because when you move abroad, you quickly realise that when it comes to settling in, arranging things and organising your new life, you have to figure almost everything out from scratch. Your knowledge of how things work in the Netherlands doesn’t always get you very far here. So besides settling in and organising everything, you also have to learn to let go of the Dutch way of thinking.

And that 7? I’m proud of it. Proud of where we are after three weeks. Proud of my girls and how they’re handling everything. And proud of us for actually taking this step.

Right, enough patting ourselves on the back!

As I said, plenty of funny things happen during those first few weeks. For example, the temperature here averages around 38 degrees, so by the afternoon you wouldn’t dream of doing anything remotely productive. Even walking to the fridge is enough to arrive sweaty and seriously consider climbing inside and closing the door behind you.

That’s roughly the feeling.

At first, we struggled with that. Because come on… a siesta? That’s something other people do.

So for the first two days, we proudly maintained our Dutch work ethic… only to come to the conclusion shortly afterwards that a siesta is actually a wonderful invention.

These days, we get up early. And by “we”, I mean Hanneke and me — I’ll get to the girls in a minute. We work on the land in the morning, and from early afternoon onwards we float around in the swimming pool or take a nap, before slowly returning to life at around four o’clock.

And honestly… it’s wonderful.

Now, back to the girls.

They’ve clearly developed a different rhythm here and have also come up with their own interpretation of the siesta.

They’ve discovered that there’s a bar in the village where they can “meet new people”. The fact that these “new people” are mainly judged on their appearance and, by pure coincidence, happen to be of the opposite sex is, of course, entirely accidental.

So when I start preparing dinner, a cloud of hairspray, perfume and other exotic fumes slowly begins to form upstairs, before two fully dressed-up daughters eventually appear.

While eating in Italy is usually a moment for spending time together, meeting people and having good conversations, in our house it currently means one thing above all else: eat as quickly as possible so they can get to the bar.

You can probably guess what happens next. They come home late, which naturally means they need to sleep in.

Let me put it this way: around the time Hanneke and I start our siesta, our daughters are roughly waking up.

And honestly? I hope they enjoy it while they still can. Once school starts again in mid-September, the party will be over.

In the meantime, we’ve managed to get our Italian phone numbers — and we’ve shared them too. If you didn’t receive ours but would like to have it, just send us an email!

The electricity is now officially in our name as well, but the water… that has turned out to be slightly more complicated.

In the Netherlands, your water meter is usually neatly tucked away somewhere inside your house. In Italy, meters are often hidden somewhere near the outside wall.

Or, in our case: somewhere. Just definitely not near our outside wall.

Like a scene from a bad movie, I’ve spent the past few weeks opening every imaginable manhole and inspection cover on our property in the hope of finding a water meter.

After checking with the estate agent, we were told that the meter wasn’t actually on our land at all, but somewhere on a neighbouring property.

So, armed with a hammer and a crowbar, off I went onto the neighbour’s land in search of yet another manhole.

After inspecting pretty much the entire property — apparently nobody here finds it particularly strange when a complete stranger wanders around with a hammer and crowbar opening manholes — we came to the conclusion that the meter wasn’t there either.

The next tip was that it might be near the petrol station.

I have to admit, at that point I started to seriously wonder whether somebody was taking the piss.

I didn’t just open the water inspection covers there, but also the ones near the underground fuel tanks. I certainly saw plenty of meters.

Just not the one I was looking for.

Eventually, I called the estate agent again. Two gentlemen came over to help me.

Or at least, that’s what you think at first.

I then found myself explaining to them that a water meter is connected to the main water line and is not hidden somewhere inside our barn. Although, admittedly, that would have been convenient.

Long story short: we’re now waiting for the water company to come and locate the meter themselves.

Oh yes, probably not until September.

Because, of course, it’s holiday season.

There’s no point getting worked up about it. We have running water.

We’ll see.

And so the Italian days pass by. Slowly, some kind of routine is beginning to emerge, and there’s finally a little more space in my head to sit down and write another blog.

That’s enough for today.

Time to end the day with a glass of wine.

Salute!

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