Our flight from San Luis Obispo to San Francisco was only 35 minutes long, but with a 2 hour delay – that is a record in itself, but I’m talking about our flight from San Francisco to Munich that was unusual in many ways:

The flight was only 2/3 full. We had great seats with enough legroom, which was a plus, because if you have legroom you have the possibility to stretch out and sleep! I only watched one movie the entire flight, worked on a crocheted top and played some games. The rest of the time I was either sleeping or eating!

BTW eating: I think I had the best food I ever ate during a flight! It was delicious, both dinner and breakfast.

We arrived on time, and broke another record: it took us only 45 min to arrive at the gate, go through immigration/ passport control, grab our 2 suitcases, visit the restroom and go to the parking area where Anja and Tamara, my sister-in-law and her daughter were waiting! Then we made it to my moms house in just 45 minutes which usually takes another hour!

Waiting were my mom of course, and my brother Jürgen, who prepared a delicious „Brotzeit“ (a typical German dinner or lunch or in-between way to eat really REALLY good bred with cheese, cold cuts, butter, tomatoes, pickles, etc.) Beer or sparkling water and catching up on the latest news included. Heaven! And „home“ comes to mind. And only if you haven’t had this for several months you’ll understand…

My dream of owning a house in Italy always seemed out of reach. Back when I lived in Munich, being a single mom of two, money was tight on each end. Or now that I live in California, Italy just seems so very far away; money is not tight anymore and the kids are not kids anymore.

What made things change is my attitude towards life: I don’t give a s—- anymore what people think, what people expect me to do, I don’t care if it is a great idea or a crazy one, I want to live my life as if it is the only one I got. 😇

And it is the only one I got and each day could be the last one, so why not buy a house in Italy? Why not fulfill a dream that you only see in movies?

So we did it: we fell in love, we made it work, and we’re on a flight over there as we speak. What also comes in handy is getting married late in life: you marry a soulmate. So that’s what I did: I married a man who likes to travel, who is flexible, curious, and not afraid of adventures. Because that’s what you need if you want to buy property abroad.

It was not very difficult to convince Ted, my hubby of almost 7 years, to sell a property in Germany and find a house in Italy.

Details to come… We have to check in to our flight now!

Every month Arezzo has an antique market. So we had to check it out! And dice Ted had to stay home and rest, and Tom wanted to go on a hike, Leslie and I took off. A 1 hour drive, a broken side mirror later, we arrived and found free parking as a reward for the broken mirror.

The antique market is all over the old town, and you can find everything and anything you need, you don’t need, you always wanted and you never ever thought anybody would ever want. So all in all, there is something for everybody!

Arezzo also has a lot of cute stores and bars, one more appealing than the other

Spoleto, another beautiful hillside town, a 1.5 hour drive from Borgo di Vaglio. We came to attend and eat our way through the Italian dessert festival, and we were pleasantly surprised by its beauty and the big surprise inside the mountain.

Outside first: cute little stores, fantastic views, steep up and up walking!

And once we were all the way at the top, we discovered the secret inside the hill: a system of elevators leading to a tunnel with escalators, all the way down to the bottom of the hill. Fantastic!

Borgo di Vagli is a remote village. A very VERY remote village, that consists of 21 fractional shared units. That means, there are 100 owners who share 21 units. It’s not a timeshare where you only own time somewhere, you actually own a fraction of a unit. You can choose your fraction, 2/3, 1/10, 1/12, or whatever. Everytime you come here, you can be in a different unit, or always the same. Interesting concept!

The village has a swimming pool and a restaurant and a gorgeous setting in the middle of nowhere. In fact, the last 2 km are on a funky, narrow, scary dirt road, where you always wish there is nobody coming your way. Backing up is 😵‍💫, driving at night is 😬, driving with a car with bad headlights is 😖! But so far so good! A few people we’ve met here choose to hire a chauffeur; they are too scared of driving themselves. But I’m a German trained driver and I like roads like that! Even at night 😎

I love this village; the olive harvest is in full swing, several of the “owners” are working with the farmers to rake and collect the olives – 🫒 to be made to olive oil at a mill nearby. Those “owners” are usually the ones from Norway or Canada, where olive trees are not to be found, so they go crazy about it!

The views from here are gorgeous, it is quiet, peaceful and relaxing!

The only hesitation I have is the inside of our unit. The stairs are very steep and each step is very high! It is dark inside, and the lighting is dim and yellow. Unfortunately our unit doesn’t have any outside area to sit; that’s the biggest disadvantage. But we are right above the restaurant and very close to the reception area!

And this inside is what I call the American dream. Americans love „old“, anything that’s older than 100 years creates a sparkle in their eyes. Is it a house built in 1890 or a piece of furniture, Americans are in awe of things that are older than themself.

In Europe, we live with history. Growing up in a city that was founded in the year 900 and being surrounded by history on a daily basis is more an arrangement than an obsession.

Borgo di Vagli‘s first buildings were made from stones of an old watchtower from the 14th century. The watchtower wasn’t needed anymore because the reign of the Medici (15th-18th century) brought a more peaceful life to the region. People settled down, they built homesteads and needed building materials. That’s how Borgo di Vagli was built.

Nobody in Italy or in Europe in general would choose to live like that anymore, unless they cannot afford it. Italians love modern design, they are masters in the symbiosis between old and modern. They accept the old, but they do love modern! And thank god we moved on, made our lives more comfortable and healthier. We build stairs that are even and not life threatening. Our heating systems are easy to use and do not require chopped wood. The houses at Borgo are somewhat upgraded: they have smoke detectors that immediately start peeping once you start a fire, but even after 3 days and 855 km away, everything smells like smoke, despite being in a separate room with the doors closed.

Btw doors / privacy / peace of mind: not all the doors are meant to give you privacy or peace of mind. The walls upstairs are 2.5 meters high, the ceiling is almost 5 meters high. And next to the bedroom is the bathroom. So if someone needs light in the hallway or bathroom, it is shared with everybody. So is any noise or smell. Did I mention the bathroom walls are also just 2.5 meters high?

I love old, but I feel very fortunate to live in the 21st century. I like my stairs even, I like a kitchen sink that drains the water and I really like privacy in the bathroom.

But as mentioned before, Americans are obsessed with history. They pay an arm and a leg to play medieval life for a few weeks a year. And it’s not cheap! If my calculations are correct, one fraction (1/10) is ~€100k, so each unit is worth €1million! And the maintenance cost €4000/year for the 1 month you can use it.

So it’s no surprise that almost all the owners at Borgo are Americans or Canadians (and one couple from Norway).

If you haven’t read or watched “Under the Tuscan Sun”, you might not know Cortona. A typical hillside town, beautiful, steep, adorable! The American woman who visits Tuscany after a mayor disappointment back home, spontaneously buys a house in Cortona, and falls in love with the town, an Italian ragazzo and life in Italy. That’s very easy to experience here. Even the gardener mowing the lawn here at Borgo di Vagli is a ragazzo, charm as can be, movie star potential and the age and testosterone of a picture perfect Italien lover.

We walked around Cortona as much as Ted knee allowed, we had a delicious lunch at Quanto Basta at Piazza Garibaldi and we – I – did some shopping damage in a few cute boutiques and stores in the old town.

We happened to be in Cortona on Monday and it seemed to be laundry day…

Another collection grabbed me while strolling around: mailboxes!

But Cortona is not just a town of laundry and mailboxes, it is – as said before – a town you can easily fall in love with…

It all started with this:

And then there were several days of suffering, until we took a day off vacation and spent 9 hour at the Ospitale Santa Catarina in Cortona.

Paracetamol and a moist dressing with medication (5-6 days), rest for a week and some pain drops were ordered. The dressing fell off after 3 days, so we bought a stretchy brace. And here he is, heroic conqueror of the bees’ knees: