"Alpine Settler": "Alpine Settler"

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

"Alpine Settler"

LOOKING BACK ON HOW IT ALL BEGAN !

Written in August 2004.......

Well here I am in Italy..... I always said I would move back here when I retired, and that is just what I’ve done! It really started in October 2003 when I was here for my ‘annual’ autumn holiday. I started looking at houses and flats and their prices. At that time the housing market in England was really on the up and it seemed to be a good time (if there was ever going to be one) to make a move.

I was quite surprised at the prices for the type of property that I wanted (could afford) here in Italy. I didn’t want some soul-less flat or ‘new build’, but rather something with a bit of background and with any luck not a total ruin. So I decided to return to the Lake Como area (for about a month) and start a real search early in the New Year. I booked the ferry and spoke to a local Dover estate agent, deciding to put my house on the market before I left for Italy. That would, I thought, give me a chance to ‘test the waters’ on house sales while I was away..... I signed the agreement with the estate agents on Thursday, left for Italy on Friday, arrived in Milan on Saturday...on Monday the agents called – they had received an offer on Saturday. I turned that down, and on Tuesday they phoned with a higher offer, which I accepted. So the house had ‘sold’ in six days…and there was I in Italy, on the verge of being ‘homeless’ and I hadn’t even started looking for somewhere else. Well I looked at loads of places, all around the northern end of Lake Como. It became very clear from day one that the kind of property I would have liked would be far too expensive if it had a ‘lake view’. Mountains –yes- but lake – no..... So I finally found a house in a small village, right at the top end of Lake Como and just into the ‘Valtellina’ (famous for its apples, cheeses, pizzocheri (a kind of pasta) and most of all, seasoned beef called Bresaula). My house is a farmhouse (approx. 120 years old) that has been uninhabited for four or five years. It had been extended at some point and boasts two balconies, both different, but next to each other, and neither particularly safe! The roof is on the verge of collapsing and there is no gas or central heating. The stove in the kitchen is a real antique and is wood burning – ‘the family’ have suggested that I keep it and use it in the garden for barbeques and pizzas – that might be a good idea. The house comes with 700 square meters of land which includes a small ‘mountain hay store’ with an open sided tiled roof, a small trout pool/store (handy to keep the goldfish in – if I had any…) which gets it’s water, when in use, from a mountain stream which runs down the side of the property and is fed from a little (very little), waterfall on the side of the mountain (Monte Legnone) that the house backs on to.

But the village road (one lane only) runs past the back of the house so the stream passes under the road through a little tunnel. The neighbour’s chickens seem to like to run up and down the road looking for goodies to eat and exploring people’s gardens - if they can get in! My garden has several (eight) mature - not to say positively ancient - fruit trees. They tell me that there are apples, plum– and maybe one apricot (no-one seems too sure). I’ll just have to wait and see. There are also two real ‘Christmas trees’ (about25ft high) and loads of mature shrubs. As for the house itself, it has three bedrooms (two are large doubles), a large lounge and large kitchen.

The cellar is indoors and is about 5ft deep below the floor and full of broken bottles, it will soon become a down stairs bathroom. There is an ‘under roof’ space which, when the new roof is on, will give me a large closed storage room and room for at least another three or four single beds – as long as at least half of the people/visitors are midgets they’ll be OK up there! I shan’t be using the roof space for sleeping unless there are a load of people – family/friends up for the weekends, then every one will just have to ‘muck-in’.

It sounds very posh, but I now have a ‘geometra’ (a bit like a poor man’s architect) who has prepared plans on how I want the house to look. These are for the village council to see and agree (or ask for modifications) before any work can start. But unlike the UK, I’ll get an answer within a couple of weeks after they have had their council meeting. The land attached to the house has planning permission already so I could, if I wanted, build another house there and sell it.....(I don’t think so though). The whole of the inside will have to be re-plastered and some walls knocked down, and then two new bathrooms put in (one upstairs and one down) and there will have to be a new kitchen too. The geometra, and my nieces husband (a builder) helped me find a local builder to do the work, and he started the work towards the end of August, with the hope that the entire job all will be finished by Christmas… but I have my doubts. I think it is more likely to be some time into the New Year.

All this has happened in the last two to three months, as after I found the house in March and put down a ‘holding deposit’, I returned to Milan for a couple of days planning on setting out for home on the second of April to start wrapping everything up there for my move to Italy. I wasn’t feeling too good at all that first night back in Milan, so I woke my niece and asked her to call a Doctor. She took one look at me and called an ambulance with paramedics and I was rushed to hospital – once there I was put into intensive care. Sergio – ‘number-one son’ was called in England and told to get to Milan ASAP as I had had a heart attack and I had pneumonia too! I was in ‘reanimazione’ (resuscitation) and then the ICU for seven days then moved to the Cardiac Ward for anther twelve. Then they decided to send me to a specialist cardiac unit near Milan to help get me back on my feet. I stayed there for another five and a half weeks – ‘getting back on my feet’. I’m now staying with my niece as I can’t travel yet, I’m still seeing my cardiologist on a regular basis. I couldn’t drive the car for quite some time either, so I had to just look at it and dream. I’ve lost just on three stone (40lbs) and am on a really strict diet, and….I haven’t smoked a cigarette since 30th March, so I suppose that means I’ve given up! It’s really hard (but my own fault I guess), but I can’t smoke, can’t drink, couldn’t drive and I’m living in the country with perhaps the best food in the world and I can’t blxxxy eat it........ Just how lucky can I get?

But joking apart – the writing has been on the wall for long enough, I just didn’t bother to do anything about it - now I’ve got to!!! It was hard too having to leave all the arrangements for the house sale in Dover and the removal details to poor old Serge, all that on top of his own business and dashing back and forth with Ryan Air between the UK and Italy has been a trial for him too – quite apart from the fact that he thought his mum was about to ‘pop her clogs’... But I told him (and the doctors), that nothing and no-one was going to stop me seeing my ‘new’ house blossom into what I knew it could be with a bit of imagination and ‘TLC’. That dream (with the support of son, family and nursing staff) really got me through those dark days in April. Well the house is now officially mine, and all I can say is that I should never have complained about ‘red tape’ in England.....until you’ve gone through a house purchase in Italy, believe me, you just ain’t lived!. It’s like Kate Karney’s Circus..... you’ve only got to sneeze and you owe some official or other a couple of hundred (or even thousand) Euros. I asked (foolishly) about house and contents insurance – ‘they’ including the Notary (solicitor/lawyer) - almost fell about laughing and asked why I would want to waste my money on such foolishness! Can you believe it?

The work now starts with the local ‘village council’. Like France you have to keep on the right side of the mayor if you want planning permission to do things – and boy, do I need planning permission..... I met him (the Mayor) a few weeks ago and it turns out the he’s a distant relative of the family who sold me the house! But I think that by the time it is all finished it should be really nice.

I will be living in an area that is only a matter of 20 miles from the Swiss border near Chiavenna, and that road leads to San Moritz. It’s also near to Bormio and Livigno. There is, of course, the beauty of Lake Como and the surrounding mountains. Where my house is situated is near the river plain leading into the lake and is only 645ft above sea level... The mountain behind the house is 2650m (8200ft approx).
End of Episode One....

1 Comments:

At January 18, 2006 8:08 AM, Anonymous said...: Carole,
Thanks for sharing your story with us. Its very inspiring to read what you've gone through as a woman on her own to realize your dream!
I look forward to following your Blog and who knows, maybe be inspired to get my own up.
Keep writing!
Leticia