Italy Diaries - an Australian girl living in Tuscany
What life is like living in a tiny Italian village...
I’ve been living in Tuscany, Italy, specifically a small village of 3,000 people, for just over a year now. Living my Elizabeth Gilbert ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ life.
Thinking about my life here is something that continues to surprise me. Hearing my Australian accent people often ask with curiosity where I live. I normally respond with uncertainty, like I’ve actually forgotten where I live, “Italy…?”
Why? I’d always dreamed of having an Italian romance, summer, chapter but dreaming of it then finding yourself in it are two totally different, wild, chaotic, beautiful things. Booking a one way flight from Australia, I declared to my friends and family that I was moving to Europe. I had no plans or ideas of what that would actually look like. All I had was two suitcases packed to near explosion and a heart full of dreams.
Italy started as a holiday because of a need to escape an overwhelming 6 weeks in London, and did in fact end with an Italian summer romance. It was delicious! It truly was everything you imagine when someone says - Italian, Romance and Summer. But i’ll get to that juicy story later, my Italy Diaries will be shared in a totally non-chronological order.
Without a doubt, it’s one of the most beautiful places to live. The food (of course), the landscapes, history, people, wine, countryside, cities, I could go on and on. It’s certainly full of character. The more time you spend here, you begin to see that Italy and Italians have their very own way of doing things. It’s certainly full of character and never boring. The longer you send here, you also realise things are a little more back in time than you’d expect - through an Anglo-Saxon perspective. For example, if you lose your bank card you have to get a police report before you can ask your bank for a replacement. If this was the case back home in Australia my dad would be at the police station once a week! Maybe you go to the police station on a Saturday to get a police report, well they’ll probably tell you that they can’t do the report because it’s a Saturday, and on Saturday’s they don’t have a computer. So Italian!
Another example happened the other weekend when I was house sitting for a friend. We both live in the historical centre of the same Tuscan village. Where the church bells ring every hour and half hour, balconies are filled with colourful flower pots, and there is the constant delicious warm smell of pasta sauce wafting through the air. I often look out my kitchen window to see the nonno across the street, curtains pulled aside, watching the street below. Very nonno behaviour. All of our friends either live in the streets behind or in front of us. It reminds me of the childhood friendships I had with the kids in my neighbourhood where we used to play on the street until dark. As an adult it feels like it’s a rare thing to have all your friends within walking distance of your house. We still play until dark but playing is an aperitivo at one of the villages three bars.
I was making the most of house sitting by using my friends appliances. As you do. Especially because we don’t have a clothes line. We not only live in the historic centre but in the main street, which means we’re not allowed to have our white linens floating in the breeze like so many iconic pictures of Italian villages. Why? No idea. We also don’t have a dryer which makes drying your clothes in winter near impossible. Hence why I was using my friends washing machine and dryer. Their washing machine is a little different from the washing machines I’ve used before. Normally I put on a load of washing and the water takes itself wherever the washing machine water goes and I get to relax and live my life while it takes care of itself. Well, in a little Tuscan village where the condition of plumbing is of an unknown age or condition or existence, this isn’t the case. The pipe for the water needs to be put in the toilet. Which I was in fact told about, but because I don’t normally have to do this I put on a load of washing and walked to the farmers market in a state of Saturday farmers market sunshine bliss.
A phone call shattering my bliss tells me that I have flooded an entire apartment building. Turns out I forgot to put the pipe in the toilet so all of that water not only flooded my friends apartment but in amazing fortune flooded all the apartments below - a lot.
And it wouldn’t be a Saturday in an Italian village if there wasn’t some drama involved. A game of phone whispers had also been in play. Several people were called before the residents of the apartment, my friends, were called. Probably half the village. It was said that the water travelled it’s way through the building into the courtyard in the street below. Absolutely not true. But when Italians are involved you know the drama will be flamed into a brilliant fire. Believe me, the village drama is like a telanovela.
I ran to my friends apartment building in a state of anxiety, dragging my Italian boyfriend behind me for damage control and translation. It’s confronting finding yourself in a situation where you can’t understand what a group of very upset people [Italians] are saying to you because it’s in a language you’re still learning!
I spent my Saturday mopping an apartment building with many “mi dispiaces” and a massive feeling of guilt for my poor friends and their neighbours. It was softened a few hours later by a few Campari spritz’s in the warm Tuscan sun, and with phone calls to my Australian friends and family who laughed with me and shared my shock that the pipe goes into the toilet and not the wall?!
It’s one of my favourite things to sit with a friend or loved one and speak about something that felt embarrassing, painful or cringey and have a really good laugh about it! Nothing feels too heavy when you can laugh about it or someone says “me too” or shares a story back. God knows we’ve all got some.
What’s something hilarious, embarrassing or cringey that’s happened to you recently? ❤️
All my love,
The Hungry Romantic
