A new life in Italy

After two weeks in Italy, the least you can say is that I've settled realy well. In spite of all the difficulties. Life over here just takes a different pace than in Flanders. For example, the whole morning and part of the afternoon I've spent chopping and sawing scrap wood which we can use for our stove next winter. And after that... well... a relaxing pint of course. So you can't really say that I've come here to sit on my backside and do nothing at all. In fact, the work Christine and I've done over the last couple of days was quite hard. But it gives so much satisfaction to see how slowly our yard is cleaned up. Christine also already painted the wooden beams above our windows in a special wood varnish.

Regarding the house itself, since Thursday they started to lay the floor heating. Probably next Friday the concrete topping will be laid and then we only need the floor tiles for the ground floor and the windows and front door to make the house habitable. Christine had the idea to also install a small gas heater so we'd at least have hot water, given that we can't really pay the expensive solar panels and hot water collector for the time being. I can alway serve as a backup system in case the solar panels don't deliver enough or when it would be ludicrous to light our wood stove during a hot summer night. The thing is that gas is very expensive in Italy. There is no network at all in the mountains so we're obliged to install a container and have it refilled when it's empty. Fortunately, the gas company will install the container free of charge, but this doesn't take away the fact that the gas itself remains much more expensive than in Belgium. Anyway, at least we can start living in our new house.

By the way, the temporary house we're currently living in is small, but very cosy. And the owner is a very nice lady who's already made us dinner twice. We truly feel at home here and never want to go back anymore. Just before I left, people have warned me and even said to me thatI'd be back in Belgium before I knew it. But when I look out of the window right now, I can only smile and say how wrong these people have been. Even if our house would collapse and we'd lose all of our money, I'd still prefer to stay here. True happiness lies in little things. And there are many of those little things over here.