The Miracle of the Rose, or How To Succeed In Overseas Home Rental Without Really Trying

So I needed a home for this year's adventure. I looked at a bunch of Italian rental property websites, but the few I wrote to never wrote back (well, one did, but he wrote in English rather than Italian and it was so terrible that I'm still not entirely sure what he said). I was getting a tad desperate -- my visa application appointment was coming up, and I had to have a confirmed address in Italy to get the visas. So I spent a lot of evenings up way too late looking at anything that might work. And I came across a house for rent through a British holiday homes rental site. Gorgeous. Near Salsomaggiore Terme, a town I knew a tiny bit about because I have an acquaintance who lives there. Six bedrooms, 2500 sf, beautiful views. And apparently 900E a month. I wrote to him, explaining the Plan for the Great Adventure.

The email I got back was rather curt, and basically a "900 a month are you kidding. No." Well, I thought, 900 did sound awfully low for such a nice house. (Turns out it's really 900E/WEEK.)

The next morning, however, I had another email from him.

"Meg

In conclusion, I have to decline this particular opportunity with you.  (<--who STARTS a letter with that?)

However, my Brother has a property around 10km from mine which you may like to consider. They are willing, in principle, to consider a 12 month rental contract.

The following is the web link to their property:

http://www.holiday-rentals.co.uk/p91892

If you are interested, I suggest you contact my sister-in-law (Roisin), copied in on this email. I will leave the negotiations between the two of you, should you both wish to pursue."


I had a look at the new suggestion. Hmph. A tiny bit smaller, a couple miles further out. There's no way this is enough cheaper than the 2500E Mario is asking to make it affordable. But hey, I'm a polite person, I will write to Roisin ("rose" in Gaelic) and say thanks for letting me look at your pretty house, and move on. So I did that. And the next thing I know I have an email that says, "Can you please give me a number where I can contact you. We have skype or the landline."

So I skype her. And we talk for an hour and a half. And the upshot of it all is, she'll rent it to me for 1000E/mo -- well within my budget. And suddenly, from a shot in the dark late at night when I should have been asleep, I have an address, a rental contract, and a landlady who is so excited about our coming to Italy that she has already registered the kids for school, gotten me contacts for getting a car, arranged for us to have Parmegiano cooking lessons, and set me up on 4 dates. We talk about once a week on skype, always for at least an hour. Not just a landlady -- a new and already dear friend. How miraculous is that?

The important thing, when faced with a blank sheet of paper, is to make it not blank anymore. Makes it less intimidating.

This is the story of how I took a year off from my life, uprooted my girls and dragged them 1/4 of the way around the world to look at what life is like being somewhere totally else. Filia Maior and Filia Minor will be in Italian schools -- their Italian will be significantly better than mine when it's all over. We'll be living in a town called Besozzola, Pellegrino Parmense (thus the title of the blog -- Pellegrin-a- Parmense means "A Female Foreigner in the area of Parma"). You can look at it on Google Earth. My house is the one at the other end of the hamlet from the house with the swimming pool. We're going to do a good bit of looking at Italy, but mostly we're just going to live in Italy. I've wanted to do this for a long time. Finances, emotional and physical health, and a good break point for everybody converged. And so on Thursday, July 19, at 6:25pm, we will board the plane headed for our adventure.

But that's not actually where the adventure began. More soon on the lead-up to The Great Migration.