Why I moved to Italy

Why did I move to Italy?  The short answer is because it’s a heck of a lot better than living in Haddon Heights New Jersey.  The longer answer takes some explaining. 

For a long time Angie and I had discussed the possibility of selling our house and moving elsewhere.  We also discussed possibly renting out our house and moving somewhere temporarily.  High on our list was living in Maine, but we seriously considered the western part of North Carolina (WNC) and some other locations as well.  These discussions took on a more viable tenor once she retired from school teaching  – given that I was working from home the majority of the time anyway, I could fulfill my duties as a Sr. Vice President of Bank of America from anywhere in the U.S. that provided a good Internet and phone connection and had a commercial airport nearby.   As much as we wanted to make something like this happen, the demands of my work schedule and the long hours it required made it impossible to manage selling our house or finding a renter, while at the same time looking for a new home in what we hoped would be in the perfect setting.  It just wasn’t feasible until after I retired. 

 
As it happened, we had been long planning a two week vacation to Italy in June following my retirement in February 2012.  Frankly, after 27 years in commercial banking, I was ready for a vacation in Italy.  As we were closing in on our departure date we again discussed the possibility of moving, and it dawned on the both of us that just maybe we should approach our vacation with an open mind about considering a move to Italy.

Italy would expose us to a new culture, language, countryside and way of life that would be foreign to us – because it was a foreign country.  It would stretch us and challenge us in ways that moving to a familiar location (like Maine or WNC) never could. Our vacation (a week on the Amalfi Coast and a week in Tuscany) turned out to be everything we had dreamed about, and it clinched the deal; we went back in August for a week to secure housing for a long term stay in Italy.  After looking at numerous properties both in Florence and in the Tuscan countryside, our new friend and real estate agent Adriana got us signed up for a 5 month lease of an apartment in Florence (December through April 2013) and a 7 month lease of a new apartment in a renovated Tuscan farmhouse (May through November 2013). 

Angie and I are at the perfect point in our lives to embark on this adventure.  We are both retired, but extremely active and in good health.  Our adult children are out on their own and living their own lives, but we have no grandchildren yet.  Financially our plan is a good one, its viability proven by our ability to secure good Italian housing while funding (most) of it through renting our NJ home.

I think it would have been easy for me to decide that this change in my life was too much, too complicated, too beyond the scope of most people typically do. It would have been easy for me to stay home, sit on the couch, watch football, and live an expected lifestyle.  If I had done that I know I would have looked back on this moment in my life with abject disappointment with myself, having let this opportunity pass by because I lacked the personal courage or motivation to pursue it.

Now we are here.  We didn’t come here to live an American lifestyle in Italy.  We came here as adventurers, fully understanding we would be foreigners in a foreign land, yet embracing a new language and culture and striving to fit in and blend in to an Italian lifestyle as much as possible.  We also came here hoping to share this experience as much as we can with family and friends, some of whom will come to visit us over the next year.  We know we are here for a year – what lies beyond that we are unsure of at this moment, but I am confident our future will reveal itself as we turn our faces to this new horizon.