Benvenuto in Italia

in which I make an offer on an apartment

Detail from the duomo in Spoleta.

I have been in Italy almost 10 days – a few days in Bologna to see my friend Niamh, followed by a week in Umbria. I am now in Salerno, a surprisingly nice port city with the typical Italian beach strewn with cigarette butts and a surprising number of dogs, many of the small ones trotting along off leash, a blur of short legs traveling the Lungomare. There is a lively pedestrian street, Corso Vittorio Emanuele, under construction in order to repair the irregular and broken cobblestones. The gardens of Minerva are also closed for some sort of restoration – a pity. They are the main thing I wanted to see.

Lungomare di Salerno.

We were in Paestum yesterday, along with hundreds of Italian high school students, to see the ruins of three temples built when the ancient Greeks migrated to Italy in the sixth century BC, only to be soon overtaken by the rise of the Roman Empire. These are some of the best restored Doric temples anywhere, and they were lovely, but I despise tourism and found the museum, filled with salvaged objects from the site, a bit tedious. I am not in Europe for its history but for the way its history has shaped the present-day culture. 

However irritating it was to be at a cafe when one of these groups descended on us, I enjoyed watching the teenagers milling about like raucous flocks of birds, a few of their faces exactly like those in Medieval and Renaissance depictions of the Apostles and Madonnas. One especially handsome boy was vaping openly, and when he saw that I noticed it he addressed me, Buongiorno, with a precocious awareness of his power. Most of the kids were nothing like this; they were short and awkward, many wearing glasses, their thick hair unruly. In Umbria, all the girls wore black yoga pants. Here in Campania, they wore jeans. A few of the girls, aloof and beautiful, led the procession into the museum like royalty, the less popular students trailing behind.

The oldest of the three Doric temples.

Today I will see the duomo, which dates from the eleventh century CE, and dine with the expats whom my traveling companion, Cedric, knows through a mutual friend. They already took us to their favorite restaurant, which was excellent, on the night of our arrival. Perhaps I will go to the other garden, the Villa Comunale, if I feel like leaving our rental place at all, which is doubtful. I must, however, see the duomo. 

But About the Apartment …

This has been a momentous trip. First, I learned that while I am indeed an Italian citizen, I need to get the documents changed so that my grandfather’s lifelong nickname (Leo) converts to his birth name (Emilio). This involves also converting my mother’s documents. Also every document must be reordered because they cannot be older than six months. I hope I can receive the all-important No Record of Citizenship document before leaving the States; the others are easy to get. It will be a headache to have the discrepancies resolved, something I must tackle first, but what is life without headaches? Worst case scenario I will have to fly to Italy just to purchase the apartment while waiting on a court order in Massachusetts. I hope it doesn’t come to that because that means another cold winter in Maine. The important thing is it can be done in Todi, the town where I want to settle.

The same day that I heard my documents could be processed at the Todi comune, I saw an apartment that I wanted to purchase. 

Views from the terrace.

Two days later, I viewed it a second time and immediately made an offer. I am now in the process of negotiating the final price with the help of my excellent real estate agent, Alessio, who speaks more English than he lets on and is an honest and very patient young man. This apartment is on the top floor of a very ugly 1960s building on the outskirts of Todi. I could not afford to buy in the old town and keep my Maine property – the eternal dilemma, do I sell or keep that place? This apartment costs about the same as a luxury sedan. 

Despite the ugliness of the building — and it is perhaps the ugliest building in the entire neighborhood — it has a 200+ meter terrace with panoramic views over land zoned agricultural, so it can never be built on, and also a large terrace off the larger bedroom that has splendid panoramic views, including a nice view of the Centro, which is about a kilometer up the road. It is very close to a good grocery store, a pharmacy, the gym, and a bus stop. I have no photos of the interior. In my excitement, I shot a very poor video, and that is it except the official floor plan. It is a typical 1960s era apartment, about 900 square feet, with terrazzo floors and reasonably high ceilings, double-paned windows, plaster in excellent shape, a separate kitchen with fireplace, two bedrooms, and a very cramped (but new) bathroom. The wall between the terrace and the sala can be opened — sez the real estate agents; we shall see — to create a large indoor/outdoor space. The apartment also comes with a very large and overgrown garden plot below, a garage to store my gardening supplies, and a murky “soffitta” where I can store the outdoor furniture I don’t have. I asked to keep the furniture of one bedroom, the kitchen, and the washing machine. All the furniture is terrible – not bad quality, just hideous – especially the kitchen cabinets, but I will have to make do until some money comes my way or I sell the Maine place. I guess I will get another bed for the guest room for my guests.

Some would say, why rush into things?

But of course, I have been thinking about moving to Europe since 2005, when my ex husband and I spent his sabbatical year in Munich. And it’s not a done deal. After we decide on the price, they will go through the notary process, and if all is well there, I’ll give a fractional deposit to the owners. We sign the final papers by 30 November. I cannot purchase anything until I have the codice fiscale.

To me, life in Europe was revelatory. Will actually moving to Europe be catastrophic? Only time will tell. It looks like it’s going to happen.