In Another Place, someone recently asked for advice about buying an above-ground swimming pool. I suggested that, if he'd never owned a pool before, he might get a better idea of the work involved in maintaining a swimming pool as well as the posi
Joy, if your electricity consumption is currently 10 kilowatt hours a day, that could be made up of you using 1kW of electricity for 10 hours, 2kW for 5 hours and so on. In other words, what you're doing now should, in theory, be a usage pattern you could continue with in Italy with only a 3kW supply. The real problems come with heat-generating devices. Blowdriers are notable, as are quick-boil kettles. I seem to recall that UK washing machines might also be a problem due to the power they use heating the water very quickly. UK appliances work fine in Italy. However, one thing you must bear in mind is that power lines in Italy are mainly above ground and that electrical storms are very common here. This combination means that it's very sensible to have good quality surge protection on electronic equipment like computers, TV and associated boxes. Even then, it's wise to unplug equipment from power and telephone sockets when there's a storm heading your way. Generally, you don't need to worry about lights and things like toasters, since they're more robust and less likely to be damaged by surges on the line, although I have heard of such things being fried by a direct strike on a house's power line. Al
The default electrical supply in Italy is only 3kW. I forget what the normal power supply to a house in Britain is, but I know that a power-shower unit that heats water on demand can easily draw 10kW. If you only need to run lights, a fridge and television, then 3kW will be more than adequate. Lots of Italians manage just fine with just this. I upgraded our capacity to 6kW shortly after moving in and we've never had any problems. Even though we have pretty much all the stuff you'd find in a British house and we don't pay any attention to when we switch things on, the meter circuit breaker has never tripped. At the moment, I can hear a clothesdryer running in the utility room, while a food dehydrator and a room dehumidifier run in another; I'm using a PC and I can hear the TV upstairs that's connected to a satellite box. Meantime, we have lights on in the rooms that are occupied and four fridge-freezers are plugged in at various places around the house. It's possible that there's a dishwasher going in one of the kitchens as well. One thing that we don't have is an electric immersion heater. Again, I can't remember what the normal power rating of those is in Britain, but I think it could very easily cause problems even on a 6kW supply. We're also aware that things like ovens, kettles and toasters you buy in Italy are generally lowered powered and so take a little longer to heat up. It's not like it takes hours to get an oven up to baking temperature, just that you have to wait a few minutes longer. I would suggest to anyone moving here that they try to get by on the default 3kW supply for at least a while. If it involves too traumatic a change to lifestyle, then upgrade to a higher capacity. When I did this about six years ago, it involved fiddling around on the ENEL website. There was no visit by an engineer, just a signal sent down the line to the meter which meant it would trip at a higher power draw. It's possible that things might be more difficult now than they were then, but it seems unlikely. It is, however, possible that the wires supplying your place simply can't safely carry any additional load, so an upgrade of the line as mentioned by Badger might be required. The reason for trying to keep the 3kW supply if possible is that you pay more for electricity if you have a higher capacity supply. Al
Sprostini, it's clear that there are a lot of people in various bits of southern Europe who are - at the moment - able to get Freesat with dishes that aren't too big. We happen to be one of the households benefitting, although I'm not sure that our current obsession with spending a large part of the day watching back-to-back "Come Dine With Me" programmes is at all beneficial in any sense whatsoever... My suggestion of a big dish is because the conditions at the moment are not normal. Freesat is, for various reasons, currently being transmitted by a satellite which was not designed for the job it's doing. Therefore, the "footprint" is much bigger than the BBC and commercial channels want it to be in order for them to comply with their licensing deals with content providers. The last I read, the plan is for the current temporary satellite to be superseded by the planned Astra replacement around the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013. The new satellite will have been designed to transmit signals focused quite tightly on the British Isles. If everything goes as the television companies want, people in southern Europe will then again find that they simply cannot get Freesat on anything like a "normal" dish. There is, of course, no guarantee that you'd be able to get a usable signal even if you paid thousands for a three metre dish. It's clear from the expat satellite forums that the signals are far from evenly distributed on the fringe of the footprint and being a few tens of kilometres in one direction or another can make a difference between getting a useful signal and getting rubbish. Al
If your house is in a mountainous area, you first need to check whether you can get terrestrial broadcast television at all. It's possible that the hills will block signals to such an extent that you have no alternative to satellite TV. So do the houses near yours have aerials on the roof, satellite dishes or a mixture of both? Digitial Terrestrial Television, or DTT, is becoming the norm in Italy. This is the equivalent of the Freeview service in Britain. One of the strong points about DTT is that the picture and sound quality is excellent when everything is working properly, but the downside is that it's pretty much the case that you either have a good signal or you've got nothing usable at all. With old-fashioned analogue TV, a bad signal meant you had a poor quality picture, but you did at least have the option of watching the programme through a snowstorm. A bad DTT signal means a blank screen or something that looks like an animated cubist art installation. Of course, Italian DTT channels broadcast Italian television and Italian television generally just doesn't do subtitles. Instead, they dub programmes into Italian. If you're not huge telly watchers, maybe that's fine for you. If nothing else, it will probably help with learning the language. However, it is the case that some progammes are transmitted by Italian DTT broadcasters with both the dubbed Italian and original language audio tracks. If your digital television is set up correctly, I know it is possible, for example, to watch NCIS in English. Possibly not your cup of tea, but some people apparently find it entertaining. The alternative to DTT is Italian satellite television. Since we don't have this, I can't comment on the channels available, but I believe the selection is pretty much what you get from DTT plus a few more. You see TivuSat boxes in lots of places (supermarkets, electronics and DIY shops) and this is what you need if you want - or need - a satellite dish and you don't want to give money to that lovely Mr Murdoch. I believe some sort of registration is required when you set up a TivuSat box but, as I say, we don't use the service so my experience is limited. The alternative to Italian television is British satellite TV and this is something I do have experience with. If you live in the north of Italy, getting the UK Freesat service is not hugely difficult in technical terms and it does not require a dish much bigger than what's normally used in Britain. However, the further south you go, the more difficult it becomes to get a usable signal since the transmission by the satellite is focused on the British Isles. Because your house is in Lazio, it's very likely you won't be able to receive UK satellite TV without a pretty large dish. And by "large", I mean you should assume you'd need something around 2 metres in diameter or even larger if you want to get the same service as people in Britain using Freesat. You would get some English language channels with a smaller dish (say, 1 metre), but the choice is very limited and the programmes generally second-rate. While you don't mention radio, it might be of interest to know that you can, even with a relatively small satellite dish, get a large number of British radio stations, including all the BBC flavours. An alternative to getting TV via aerial or satellite dish is to do it via the internet. This is not possible for us and for many others living in rural areas due to the poor quality and dire reliability of our ADSL connection, but you might find that you can get broadband good enough to stream television. Again, this is not something we have, so I can't say much about it other than I know people who use it and they're very satisfied. You do need to do some technical fiddling about because, for licensing reasons, the UK television companies take measures which are supposed to allow only those living in Britain to watch their programmes, but these can be circumvented. For most people, it's also important to consider how you'll get the programmes to appear on your television as opposed to your computer monitor. Hope this is of some help. Al
Yes, you would be very wise to forget about buying a house for the time being. If you can arrange to live here in your camper for a few months, that would probably be a highly educational experience. While it may only confirm that Italy is where you want to live for the indefinite future, I'm sure you appreciate that being permanently resident anywhere is a very different thing to being there on holiday. One other issue which I meant to mention in my previous is that some people who don't live in Italy seem to think that the cost of living here is low compared to Britain. It isn't. While you will doubtless find that some things are a lot cheaper (obvious ones being booze, in-season fresh fruit and veg and eating out), you'll also discover that many things cost as much as they do in Britain and some cost quite a bit more. One important difference is the cost of energy, since the cost of heating a house can be much more in the cold months than you'd pay in Britain. This is something that's of no concern to someone on holiday here, but it becomes very important if you're trying to get through a chilly winter in some comfort and with all your fingers and toes intact. Well, okay, that's an exaggeration: you're unlikely to suffer frostbite while camped by the southern shores of Lake Garda. But it can get bloody cold in the Po basin during winter and the legendary fogs don't make things any more comfortable. If, as happened last winter, a huge mass of Siberian cold creeps south and sits on Italy for weeks on end, you'll probably begin to wonder if your memories of what life in summer is like on the shores of Lake Garda were all just a dream. Al
It's certainly true that looking for and buying a house in Italy can result in serious tension headaches and sleepless nights. La Dolcevita has made some sensible suggestions on how you can try to avoid some of those. My main suggestion is that you try to avoid falling in love with a house and so prevent all the problems that an irrational fixation can cause. It's highly likely that you could be very happy in loads of different houses in Italy, but agents will – naturally – try to make you believe that the property they're showing you is the One And Only and that you must put in a binding offer immediately or else you'll lose it and be forever doomed to living in a second-best house. But all that actually should be low on your list of priorities and concerns. From what you say, it seems that you will not have a certain income from a pension or some other source when you move to Italy, but that you will rather be trying to make a living here. There are people on this forum who have managed to do this, but it is far from easy. Indeed, I suspect that the ones who have succeeded in creating a self-supporting life for themselves in Italy would have probably been successful no matter where they were living. In fact, I think it's very likely they would be doing much better – in financial terms, anyway – if they were living in Britain or the USA. In other words, I strongly suspect that they have succeeded here in spite of living and working in Italy. It's no secret that there are serious structural problems with the Italian economy, although the area you're looking at (the North) is doing much better than other parts of the country. Still, given the current financial climate, that's more a matter of "relatively better" rather than "good by European standards". While I have no experience of living in Veneto, I strongly suspect that family and social connections matter a great deal when one is looking for work there, although possibly to some lesser degree than they do in the more southerly regions. Unless you have family connections here which you haven't mentioned, then I suspect you're going to find making a new life for yourself in Italy very challenging. It's very difficult for Italian young people to find work that allows them to support themselves and leave the family home, even though they have the benefits of speaking Italian as a native and Italian educational qualifications as well as extensive family and social networks. While I think it's possible that, if you're very determined, presentable and personable, you might be able to get some sort of cash-in-hand job in the touristy areas of Veneto during the summer season, I also think you would be unwise to assume that everything will just fall in to place once you've sorted out a place to live. But maybe you're the sort who enjoys bungee jumping without being totally certain that the elastic is securely attached at both ends. If so, then go ahead and start looking for a house you can afford to buy here. However, be aware that the social safety net in Italy is largely made up of family and friends rather than official government types doing good works on behalf of the taxpayer. You should assume that, in the event nothing works out and you're left with no job, nothing to eat, no money to pay the electric bill and no fuel in your camper to get home, you're going to have to sort out your problems on your own. If you're determined to do what you say, then I'd suggest that your first priority must be to learn to speak Italian at a fairly competent level. A lot of young people do speak some sort of English here, but you would be wise to assume that nobody who will be important to you in your search for a home and work will do so. Al
Bella, I suspect the widow you refer to does have some options. In the worst case, if she decides that her Italian dream died with her late husband, she can sell up and go back to a place that feels more like home. True, the housing market here is not exactly fizzing at the moment, but if her house is habitable and not in a totally awful place, I'd be surprised if it was actually impossible to sell her house, no matter what price tag she put on it. The money she'd get from the sale might well be a lot less than what she and her late husband put into the property and that would be galling, but it seems to me it's all a matter of priorities: if she's utterly miserable in her Italian house and she's certain that living in Britain would make her life at least tolerable, perhaps it would be better for her to be living in a tiny, grotty flat in, say, Solihull rather than to be lying dead by her own hand in a lovely Italian home? Less dramatically, if she thinks that the lack of social interaction with the people living around her is what's making her miserable, she could decide to get out there and force herself to integrate. I don't make that suggestion lightly. Having gone through the spousal bereavement process myself, I understand that it is all too easy to get mired in a cycle of misery and depression. Also, since I've always been a bit of a misanthrope and I've never been great on socialising in any of the countries I've lived in, I would find it very difficult to start hanging out at our village bar/cafe now. But then I'm not the one feeling miserable due to isolation; I quite enjoy the peace and I'm happy that our Italian neighbours haven't attempted to force me to conform with the local norms. I am amused when people chastise expat Brits for not living correctly in Italy. It seems that some people do genuinely believe that the only proper way to approach Italy is to seek to become more Italian than the Italians. They bring to mind a few US servicemen I knew who, on being posted to Scotland, immediately went out and bought a full formal kilt outfit and started to take lessons on how to play the bagpipes. But still, even if they became able to stage a one-man Burns Supper complete with haggis they had made and poetry recitations in historically accurate Lowland Scots, they would always remain the product of their Polish-Swedish-Irish-German genes and their upbringing in Pittsburgh, Denver or Dallas. And still most Scots would see them as just another Yank sailor. I'm not Italian and I have no aspirations to become Italian. Even if I did, I know I will never be seen as Italian by my neighbours. And, as long as the political and social climate remains relatively hospitable to stranieri, that matters to me not a jot. However, as Flip says, there are those who feel very strongly that an approach such as mine to living in Italy is wrong – outrageously so, in fact – because it doesn't agree with their opinions about the correct way to fully appreciate the wonders of Italy and Italians. I can think of several reasons why some people might be so fanatical on this point, but as long as they're not taking me hostage at gunpoint to go listen to "Tosca", physically forcing me to eat at the local sagra della tripa or threatening me with physical violence if I don't agree that Mussolini was a misunderstood political genius, such people and their opinions simply don't matter to me. Finally, I don't think that Brits have a particular problem with living as expats. I was born and grew up in the States, so I am very familiar with immigrants. Historically, every one of the ethnic and national groups in the USA started out by living together in communities where their native language was spoken, the food of the immigrants' childhoods was prepared and business was conducted largely internal to the group. As most people know, there is a huge Italian-American community and they're renowned for maintaining – and adapting – their culinary traditions in the New World. I suppose some fanatical Italian chauvinists might believe that they continue to cook Italian simply because it is beyond all doubt the best food in the world, but the truth is that Italian Americans continue to cook and eat Italian food because it is what they enjoy and that's largely due to it being the sort of food they've known from their earliest childhood. I see no difference between someone of Italian descent living in New Jersey relishing linguine alle vongole and an expat Brit living in Liguria waking up hankering for a breakfast of soft boiled egg and Marmite soldiers. It's simply human nature to enjoy the flavours, sounds and smells that bring to mind the earliest feelings of "home". Al
Even our (relatively) cheap Intex saltwater chlorinator has a timer which you simply set to run for a certain number of hours and it does it again every 24 hours. Power cuts can cause problems with timers, but it's not a huge issue. Most days, I just wander down to the pool in the morning to check the filter and chlorinator are running as they should be and to scoop out any leaves and bugs in the skimmer and that's the sum total of my pool care for the day. As for customers who ignore your requests that they treat your property with some respect and say, by way of excuse, "But we're on holiday!" that's one of the main reasons why we've never even considered B&B or rental. If we were desperate for money, I'd sell a kidney before taking on paying guests. Al
I do think that there's a big difference between our relatively small above-ground pool used only in hot weather by two adults and a child (and occasionally by one or two additional people), and larger, in-ground pools used by bigger groups of holiday letters who are determined to spend as much time as they can splashing in sunny water during their fortnight in Italy. I've spoken to someone who runs a B&B here and they have problems with scummy rings due - they're convinced - to guests using Nivea sun lotion. This in spite of the fact that they specifically ask guests not to get in the pool after putting on lotion and in spite of the fact that they're on-site keeping an eye on things at all times. I have no idea how well a saltwater chlorinator would cope with thick oils in the water. If Pags wants a pool only to be used by their family and guests, then I think it would be reasonable to look at saltwater systems. As I've said, we think ours is great, both from the maintenance standpoint and as far as the experience of splashing around in the pool is concerned. However, if the pool is going to be used by rental clients - particularly if Pags is not going to be in residence when the guests are - then I think a maintenance contract has to be in place. During a hot, sunny Italian summer, a pool can get in a pretty horrid state very quickly if something goes wrong and nobody is monitoring how the equipment is operating and how the pool chemistry is being affected by what people are doing in the water. Al
Penny, I wonder if the friend you refer to has a contract with a pool maintenance company who tell her just what's required to be done? Or perhaps she has a holiday let which means the pool gets a lot of use by people who don't pay any attention to the requests made by the owners concerning sun-lotion and so on? We've got an 18ft Intex above ground pool which is saltwater. This is our fifth summer with it. I'm sure I could fiddle about with daily tests and nudging various values up and down if I wanted to make pool maintenance a hobby in itself, but I can think of more interesting things to do. In fact, the water is crystal clear, lovely to swim in and the only "chemical" maintenance I do is dump some more table salt in if the chlorine generator displays a warning that the salt level is low (due to rainfall causing overflow, for the most part). Apart from that, I backwash the sand filter every week or ten days and switch on a robot vacuum cleaner when there are leaves and dead insects on the bottom. My opinion of the pool has not always been so positive, though, since I used the crappy paper filter system until last Spring. That was a major pain and a huge on-going expense, but buying an Intex sand filter has made life so much easier and the water a lot clearer than it ever was with the cartridges. FromNowOn, only you can know the regulations in your building, so I have no idea how viable your idea is from that standpoint. As far as the technical issues are concerned, if you get a 10ft pool, you'd probably be fine with a filter using paper cartridges as long as you make a point of coverning the pool all the time it's not in use. Just don't expect the filters to last as long as the manufacturer says they will. If you use a dark cover, this should reduce the growth of algae which is really the major pain. It will also reduce evaporation and that will reduce water costs and help to keep the pool at a comfortable temperature. Obviously, the smaller the pool, the easier things like covers are to handle and that means you'll probably use it more often. While I am a fan of saltwater systems, I'm not sure if I think that's a sensible approach for a small pool that's just used a few weeks a year. If you don't mind the chlorine and you can get to grips with the correct way to dose it, then it will have to be a lot cheaper than the chlorine generator. Al
Comments posted
Joy, if your electricity consumption is currently 10 kilowatt hours a day, that could be made up of you using 1kW of electricity for 10 hours, 2kW for 5 hours and so on. In other words, what you're doing now should, in theory, be a usage pattern you could continue with in Italy with only a 3kW supply. The real problems come with heat-generating devices. Blowdriers are notable, as are quick-boil kettles. I seem to recall that UK washing machines might also be a problem due to the power they use heating the water very quickly. UK appliances work fine in Italy. However, one thing you must bear in mind is that power lines in Italy are mainly above ground and that electrical storms are very common here. This combination means that it's very sensible to have good quality surge protection on electronic equipment like computers, TV and associated boxes. Even then, it's wise to unplug equipment from power and telephone sockets when there's a storm heading your way. Generally, you don't need to worry about lights and things like toasters, since they're more robust and less likely to be damaged by surges on the line, although I have heard of such things being fried by a direct strike on a house's power line. Al
The default electrical supply in Italy is only 3kW. I forget what the normal power supply to a house in Britain is, but I know that a power-shower unit that heats water on demand can easily draw 10kW. If you only need to run lights, a fridge and television, then 3kW will be more than adequate. Lots of Italians manage just fine with just this. I upgraded our capacity to 6kW shortly after moving in and we've never had any problems. Even though we have pretty much all the stuff you'd find in a British house and we don't pay any attention to when we switch things on, the meter circuit breaker has never tripped. At the moment, I can hear a clothesdryer running in the utility room, while a food dehydrator and a room dehumidifier run in another; I'm using a PC and I can hear the TV upstairs that's connected to a satellite box. Meantime, we have lights on in the rooms that are occupied and four fridge-freezers are plugged in at various places around the house. It's possible that there's a dishwasher going in one of the kitchens as well. One thing that we don't have is an electric immersion heater. Again, I can't remember what the normal power rating of those is in Britain, but I think it could very easily cause problems even on a 6kW supply. We're also aware that things like ovens, kettles and toasters you buy in Italy are generally lowered powered and so take a little longer to heat up. It's not like it takes hours to get an oven up to baking temperature, just that you have to wait a few minutes longer. I would suggest to anyone moving here that they try to get by on the default 3kW supply for at least a while. If it involves too traumatic a change to lifestyle, then upgrade to a higher capacity. When I did this about six years ago, it involved fiddling around on the ENEL website. There was no visit by an engineer, just a signal sent down the line to the meter which meant it would trip at a higher power draw. It's possible that things might be more difficult now than they were then, but it seems unlikely. It is, however, possible that the wires supplying your place simply can't safely carry any additional load, so an upgrade of the line as mentioned by Badger might be required. The reason for trying to keep the 3kW supply if possible is that you pay more for electricity if you have a higher capacity supply. Al
Sprostini, it's clear that there are a lot of people in various bits of southern Europe who are - at the moment - able to get Freesat with dishes that aren't too big. We happen to be one of the households benefitting, although I'm not sure that our current obsession with spending a large part of the day watching back-to-back "Come Dine With Me" programmes is at all beneficial in any sense whatsoever... My suggestion of a big dish is because the conditions at the moment are not normal. Freesat is, for various reasons, currently being transmitted by a satellite which was not designed for the job it's doing. Therefore, the "footprint" is much bigger than the BBC and commercial channels want it to be in order for them to comply with their licensing deals with content providers. The last I read, the plan is for the current temporary satellite to be superseded by the planned Astra replacement around the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013. The new satellite will have been designed to transmit signals focused quite tightly on the British Isles. If everything goes as the television companies want, people in southern Europe will then again find that they simply cannot get Freesat on anything like a "normal" dish. There is, of course, no guarantee that you'd be able to get a usable signal even if you paid thousands for a three metre dish. It's clear from the expat satellite forums that the signals are far from evenly distributed on the fringe of the footprint and being a few tens of kilometres in one direction or another can make a difference between getting a useful signal and getting rubbish. Al
If your house is in a mountainous area, you first need to check whether you can get terrestrial broadcast television at all. It's possible that the hills will block signals to such an extent that you have no alternative to satellite TV. So do the houses near yours have aerials on the roof, satellite dishes or a mixture of both? Digitial Terrestrial Television, or DTT, is becoming the norm in Italy. This is the equivalent of the Freeview service in Britain. One of the strong points about DTT is that the picture and sound quality is excellent when everything is working properly, but the downside is that it's pretty much the case that you either have a good signal or you've got nothing usable at all. With old-fashioned analogue TV, a bad signal meant you had a poor quality picture, but you did at least have the option of watching the programme through a snowstorm. A bad DTT signal means a blank screen or something that looks like an animated cubist art installation. Of course, Italian DTT channels broadcast Italian television and Italian television generally just doesn't do subtitles. Instead, they dub programmes into Italian. If you're not huge telly watchers, maybe that's fine for you. If nothing else, it will probably help with learning the language. However, it is the case that some progammes are transmitted by Italian DTT broadcasters with both the dubbed Italian and original language audio tracks. If your digital television is set up correctly, I know it is possible, for example, to watch NCIS in English. Possibly not your cup of tea, but some people apparently find it entertaining. The alternative to DTT is Italian satellite television. Since we don't have this, I can't comment on the channels available, but I believe the selection is pretty much what you get from DTT plus a few more. You see TivuSat boxes in lots of places (supermarkets, electronics and DIY shops) and this is what you need if you want - or need - a satellite dish and you don't want to give money to that lovely Mr Murdoch. I believe some sort of registration is required when you set up a TivuSat box but, as I say, we don't use the service so my experience is limited. The alternative to Italian television is British satellite TV and this is something I do have experience with. If you live in the north of Italy, getting the UK Freesat service is not hugely difficult in technical terms and it does not require a dish much bigger than what's normally used in Britain. However, the further south you go, the more difficult it becomes to get a usable signal since the transmission by the satellite is focused on the British Isles. Because your house is in Lazio, it's very likely you won't be able to receive UK satellite TV without a pretty large dish. And by "large", I mean you should assume you'd need something around 2 metres in diameter or even larger if you want to get the same service as people in Britain using Freesat. You would get some English language channels with a smaller dish (say, 1 metre), but the choice is very limited and the programmes generally second-rate. While you don't mention radio, it might be of interest to know that you can, even with a relatively small satellite dish, get a large number of British radio stations, including all the BBC flavours. An alternative to getting TV via aerial or satellite dish is to do it via the internet. This is not possible for us and for many others living in rural areas due to the poor quality and dire reliability of our ADSL connection, but you might find that you can get broadband good enough to stream television. Again, this is not something we have, so I can't say much about it other than I know people who use it and they're very satisfied. You do need to do some technical fiddling about because, for licensing reasons, the UK television companies take measures which are supposed to allow only those living in Britain to watch their programmes, but these can be circumvented. For most people, it's also important to consider how you'll get the programmes to appear on your television as opposed to your computer monitor. Hope this is of some help. Al
Yes, you would be very wise to forget about buying a house for the time being. If you can arrange to live here in your camper for a few months, that would probably be a highly educational experience. While it may only confirm that Italy is where you want to live for the indefinite future, I'm sure you appreciate that being permanently resident anywhere is a very different thing to being there on holiday. One other issue which I meant to mention in my previous is that some people who don't live in Italy seem to think that the cost of living here is low compared to Britain. It isn't. While you will doubtless find that some things are a lot cheaper (obvious ones being booze, in-season fresh fruit and veg and eating out), you'll also discover that many things cost as much as they do in Britain and some cost quite a bit more. One important difference is the cost of energy, since the cost of heating a house can be much more in the cold months than you'd pay in Britain. This is something that's of no concern to someone on holiday here, but it becomes very important if you're trying to get through a chilly winter in some comfort and with all your fingers and toes intact. Well, okay, that's an exaggeration: you're unlikely to suffer frostbite while camped by the southern shores of Lake Garda. But it can get bloody cold in the Po basin during winter and the legendary fogs don't make things any more comfortable. If, as happened last winter, a huge mass of Siberian cold creeps south and sits on Italy for weeks on end, you'll probably begin to wonder if your memories of what life in summer is like on the shores of Lake Garda were all just a dream. Al
It's certainly true that looking for and buying a house in Italy can result in serious tension headaches and sleepless nights. La Dolcevita has made some sensible suggestions on how you can try to avoid some of those. My main suggestion is that you try to avoid falling in love with a house and so prevent all the problems that an irrational fixation can cause. It's highly likely that you could be very happy in loads of different houses in Italy, but agents will – naturally – try to make you believe that the property they're showing you is the One And Only and that you must put in a binding offer immediately or else you'll lose it and be forever doomed to living in a second-best house. But all that actually should be low on your list of priorities and concerns. From what you say, it seems that you will not have a certain income from a pension or some other source when you move to Italy, but that you will rather be trying to make a living here. There are people on this forum who have managed to do this, but it is far from easy. Indeed, I suspect that the ones who have succeeded in creating a self-supporting life for themselves in Italy would have probably been successful no matter where they were living. In fact, I think it's very likely they would be doing much better – in financial terms, anyway – if they were living in Britain or the USA. In other words, I strongly suspect that they have succeeded here in spite of living and working in Italy. It's no secret that there are serious structural problems with the Italian economy, although the area you're looking at (the North) is doing much better than other parts of the country. Still, given the current financial climate, that's more a matter of "relatively better" rather than "good by European standards". While I have no experience of living in Veneto, I strongly suspect that family and social connections matter a great deal when one is looking for work there, although possibly to some lesser degree than they do in the more southerly regions. Unless you have family connections here which you haven't mentioned, then I suspect you're going to find making a new life for yourself in Italy very challenging. It's very difficult for Italian young people to find work that allows them to support themselves and leave the family home, even though they have the benefits of speaking Italian as a native and Italian educational qualifications as well as extensive family and social networks. While I think it's possible that, if you're very determined, presentable and personable, you might be able to get some sort of cash-in-hand job in the touristy areas of Veneto during the summer season, I also think you would be unwise to assume that everything will just fall in to place once you've sorted out a place to live. But maybe you're the sort who enjoys bungee jumping without being totally certain that the elastic is securely attached at both ends. If so, then go ahead and start looking for a house you can afford to buy here. However, be aware that the social safety net in Italy is largely made up of family and friends rather than official government types doing good works on behalf of the taxpayer. You should assume that, in the event nothing works out and you're left with no job, nothing to eat, no money to pay the electric bill and no fuel in your camper to get home, you're going to have to sort out your problems on your own. If you're determined to do what you say, then I'd suggest that your first priority must be to learn to speak Italian at a fairly competent level. A lot of young people do speak some sort of English here, but you would be wise to assume that nobody who will be important to you in your search for a home and work will do so. Al
Bella, I suspect the widow you refer to does have some options. In the worst case, if she decides that her Italian dream died with her late husband, she can sell up and go back to a place that feels more like home. True, the housing market here is not exactly fizzing at the moment, but if her house is habitable and not in a totally awful place, I'd be surprised if it was actually impossible to sell her house, no matter what price tag she put on it. The money she'd get from the sale might well be a lot less than what she and her late husband put into the property and that would be galling, but it seems to me it's all a matter of priorities: if she's utterly miserable in her Italian house and she's certain that living in Britain would make her life at least tolerable, perhaps it would be better for her to be living in a tiny, grotty flat in, say, Solihull rather than to be lying dead by her own hand in a lovely Italian home? Less dramatically, if she thinks that the lack of social interaction with the people living around her is what's making her miserable, she could decide to get out there and force herself to integrate. I don't make that suggestion lightly. Having gone through the spousal bereavement process myself, I understand that it is all too easy to get mired in a cycle of misery and depression. Also, since I've always been a bit of a misanthrope and I've never been great on socialising in any of the countries I've lived in, I would find it very difficult to start hanging out at our village bar/cafe now. But then I'm not the one feeling miserable due to isolation; I quite enjoy the peace and I'm happy that our Italian neighbours haven't attempted to force me to conform with the local norms. I am amused when people chastise expat Brits for not living correctly in Italy. It seems that some people do genuinely believe that the only proper way to approach Italy is to seek to become more Italian than the Italians. They bring to mind a few US servicemen I knew who, on being posted to Scotland, immediately went out and bought a full formal kilt outfit and started to take lessons on how to play the bagpipes. But still, even if they became able to stage a one-man Burns Supper complete with haggis they had made and poetry recitations in historically accurate Lowland Scots, they would always remain the product of their Polish-Swedish-Irish-German genes and their upbringing in Pittsburgh, Denver or Dallas. And still most Scots would see them as just another Yank sailor. I'm not Italian and I have no aspirations to become Italian. Even if I did, I know I will never be seen as Italian by my neighbours. And, as long as the political and social climate remains relatively hospitable to stranieri, that matters to me not a jot. However, as Flip says, there are those who feel very strongly that an approach such as mine to living in Italy is wrong – outrageously so, in fact – because it doesn't agree with their opinions about the correct way to fully appreciate the wonders of Italy and Italians. I can think of several reasons why some people might be so fanatical on this point, but as long as they're not taking me hostage at gunpoint to go listen to "Tosca", physically forcing me to eat at the local sagra della tripa or threatening me with physical violence if I don't agree that Mussolini was a misunderstood political genius, such people and their opinions simply don't matter to me. Finally, I don't think that Brits have a particular problem with living as expats. I was born and grew up in the States, so I am very familiar with immigrants. Historically, every one of the ethnic and national groups in the USA started out by living together in communities where their native language was spoken, the food of the immigrants' childhoods was prepared and business was conducted largely internal to the group. As most people know, there is a huge Italian-American community and they're renowned for maintaining – and adapting – their culinary traditions in the New World. I suppose some fanatical Italian chauvinists might believe that they continue to cook Italian simply because it is beyond all doubt the best food in the world, but the truth is that Italian Americans continue to cook and eat Italian food because it is what they enjoy and that's largely due to it being the sort of food they've known from their earliest childhood. I see no difference between someone of Italian descent living in New Jersey relishing linguine alle vongole and an expat Brit living in Liguria waking up hankering for a breakfast of soft boiled egg and Marmite soldiers. It's simply human nature to enjoy the flavours, sounds and smells that bring to mind the earliest feelings of "home". Al
Even our (relatively) cheap Intex saltwater chlorinator has a timer which you simply set to run for a certain number of hours and it does it again every 24 hours. Power cuts can cause problems with timers, but it's not a huge issue. Most days, I just wander down to the pool in the morning to check the filter and chlorinator are running as they should be and to scoop out any leaves and bugs in the skimmer and that's the sum total of my pool care for the day. As for customers who ignore your requests that they treat your property with some respect and say, by way of excuse, "But we're on holiday!" that's one of the main reasons why we've never even considered B&B or rental. If we were desperate for money, I'd sell a kidney before taking on paying guests. Al
I do think that there's a big difference between our relatively small above-ground pool used only in hot weather by two adults and a child (and occasionally by one or two additional people), and larger, in-ground pools used by bigger groups of holiday letters who are determined to spend as much time as they can splashing in sunny water during their fortnight in Italy. I've spoken to someone who runs a B&B here and they have problems with scummy rings due - they're convinced - to guests using Nivea sun lotion. This in spite of the fact that they specifically ask guests not to get in the pool after putting on lotion and in spite of the fact that they're on-site keeping an eye on things at all times. I have no idea how well a saltwater chlorinator would cope with thick oils in the water. If Pags wants a pool only to be used by their family and guests, then I think it would be reasonable to look at saltwater systems. As I've said, we think ours is great, both from the maintenance standpoint and as far as the experience of splashing around in the pool is concerned. However, if the pool is going to be used by rental clients - particularly if Pags is not going to be in residence when the guests are - then I think a maintenance contract has to be in place. During a hot, sunny Italian summer, a pool can get in a pretty horrid state very quickly if something goes wrong and nobody is monitoring how the equipment is operating and how the pool chemistry is being affected by what people are doing in the water. Al
Penny, I wonder if the friend you refer to has a contract with a pool maintenance company who tell her just what's required to be done? Or perhaps she has a holiday let which means the pool gets a lot of use by people who don't pay any attention to the requests made by the owners concerning sun-lotion and so on? We've got an 18ft Intex above ground pool which is saltwater. This is our fifth summer with it. I'm sure I could fiddle about with daily tests and nudging various values up and down if I wanted to make pool maintenance a hobby in itself, but I can think of more interesting things to do. In fact, the water is crystal clear, lovely to swim in and the only "chemical" maintenance I do is dump some more table salt in if the chlorine generator displays a warning that the salt level is low (due to rainfall causing overflow, for the most part). Apart from that, I backwash the sand filter every week or ten days and switch on a robot vacuum cleaner when there are leaves and dead insects on the bottom. My opinion of the pool has not always been so positive, though, since I used the crappy paper filter system until last Spring. That was a major pain and a huge on-going expense, but buying an Intex sand filter has made life so much easier and the water a lot clearer than it ever was with the cartridges. FromNowOn, only you can know the regulations in your building, so I have no idea how viable your idea is from that standpoint. As far as the technical issues are concerned, if you get a 10ft pool, you'd probably be fine with a filter using paper cartridges as long as you make a point of coverning the pool all the time it's not in use. Just don't expect the filters to last as long as the manufacturer says they will. If you use a dark cover, this should reduce the growth of algae which is really the major pain. It will also reduce evaporation and that will reduce water costs and help to keep the pool at a comfortable temperature. Obviously, the smaller the pool, the easier things like covers are to handle and that means you'll probably use it more often. While I am a fan of saltwater systems, I'm not sure if I think that's a sensible approach for a small pool that's just used a few weeks a year. If you don't mind the chlorine and you can get to grips with the correct way to dose it, then it will have to be a lot cheaper than the chlorine generator. Al