Author: Karina Hauser

I couldn’t be happier. Yesterday we found a giant home improvement store and not only did we get a hammer drill, lamps and some smaller stuff like bath mats and toilet brushes (very important) but they also had a few vegetable plant left. I already had gone to a nursery this morning and the woman just shock her head and said “verdura niente”. Even with the little Italian I know I immediately understood. It’s definitely a little late in the season but I am hoping we still get some tomatoes and peppers later in the year.

We rewarded ourself for 3 hours of shopping with a nice dinner at one of the smaller lakes in the area.

This morning I already unpacked all the tools so now we can start gardening and installing the lamps we bought.

Today’s challenge is signing up for trash service and getting our recycling supplies from the city of Ranco. We already know from the trash calendar that we have to separate our trash in 5 different categories, we are just unsure of what goes where. Luckily, I enjoy little challenges like this and it will be very satisfying when it actually works.

Yesterday was the big day. At 6am we put the cats in the car and started our trip to our new house. They weren’t excited about another trip but when we let them out of their carriers they did ok.

After 6.5 hours with 2 quick stops to charge the car we finally arrived

I immediately started unpacking and cleaning some drawers for our kitchen stuff and we had our first meal in our “new” 70th orange kitchen.

A walkthrough discovered a few interesting things, like old shovels and that we have no more lamps. We forgot that it is common in Europe to take the lamps when you move so today we need to make a trip to the hardware store.

We had a few pleasant surprises in the garden. We already have raspberries and some fruit trees: 1 cherry, 2 plums, 1 apple, 1 fig, 1 orange and 1 lemon. And the neighbor has a big walnut tree with limbs in our garden. Everything is green and covered in new growth. Looking forward to my trip to the garden center today while Thomas awaits the arrival of our mattress.

Thomas already had setup mobile internet last Friday but it was too slow, so he went and got Starlink until we get fiber. Wifi works fine in the part of the house that is close to the Starling router, but not at the other end. Having solid brick walls has its pros and cons. Thomas will setup a Wifi mesh tomorrow. After everything was unpacked and organized we celebrated with a bottle of prosecco and went to “bed” early.

It’s official, Sheila and Toffee are now EU citizens. The vet was amazed by the amount of paperwork I had for them but after an hour of sifting through it she gave me their passports. Now they can freely roam anywhere in Europe.

Made bavarian potato salad with fish filets; feeding a whole family is a lot of work. I know why I normally don’t cook.

While Thomas is in Italy the cats and I stayed behind in Germany with my in-laws. I enjoy walking to the bakery every morning and getting fresh rolls and some sweets for our afternoon “Kaffee and Kuchen”. It’s an additional small snack that Germans have in the afternoon, similar to the British tea time, just with coffee and cake.
I also took over the cooking duties and so far everybody survived. My salad dressings are getting tastier but are still not as good as Thomas’s.

Besides that, I am trying to make myself useful in the garden. Gerd and I already organized the garden shed, the patio and half of the garage. We went shopping for plants today, so tomorrow I can get my hands dirty and plant tomatoes and zucchini. Can’t wait to do the same in my garden in Italy, I hope the garden centers are as well stocked as they are here.

After 2 days of final sorting and packing we made it to the airport hotel.

The paperwork for the cats finally has been send out and is at the Fedex facility in Louisville, to be delivered to the vets office this morning. It should have been there on Friday so we spend a very anxious weekend not knowing if we are flying or not. Thomas will pick it up at lunch time together with the last bag from the house. Our flight leaves at 8:25pm, so unless FedEx screws something up we will be on our way to Germany this evening.

The cats are not happy about all of this

We will be staying with Thomas’s parents near Munich for a few weeks. We first need to register in Germany to get a EU drivers license. Italy does not allow us to exchange our US drivers license to an Italian one and we would have to take an Italian drivers test including driving lessons. Since our Italian skills barely allow us to order food we thought that was a bad idea.

Today’s the big day, the movers are coming. They are coming with a truck that has a 20ft mark; they will just load everything and bring it to a warehouse where it will be packed in a 20ft shipping container. We have two piles in the garage, things that we really want and things that are optional. I started packing four weeks ago but it still got a little hectic the last two days, we got up at 5am to pack the last boxes, but everything was ready when the truck arrived. The tricky/time consuming part was that everything had to be inventoried, so every box has pictures and a list of items that are in the box and I now have a giant spreadsheet with all our belongings. I thought after the fire we didn’t have a lot of things any more but boy was I wrong. At the end we had 18 large boxes, 15 medium and 20 little boxes, in addition to all the garden tools and furniture and other miscellaneous items that did not fit in boxes. Seriously, how do you pack a pickaxe or a weed whacker? I am glad we decided to get a container and not just move with what we can get on a flight. We still probably will be flying with 9 bags in addition to the cats.

All done ! Most of the optional stuff, the barstools and one rug did not fit but overall it went well. Let’s hope everything will arrive in Italy safe and sound.

The cats did not like the movers and all the loads noises associated with packing. Sheila and Toffee stayed close to us when possible or they were out in the yard.

Still waiting for the USDA certificate for the cats to be allowed to leave the country. I spent 2.5 hours at the vet on Thursday, 30min for an exam and then waiting for 2 hours for them to submit the paperwork. The certificate should arrive today but something must have gone wrong because I still don’t have a tracking number.

Luckily we have a Murphy bed in the guest room, so we will be staying at the house until Monday, then we move into the airport hotel until our flight Tuesday evening.