Author: Karina Hauser

Yesterday, we dug up some of the weeds and planted the veggies we had bought a few days ago. It’s not much compared to what we are used to but it’s a start. The soil is a joy to dig in and even the weeds are fun to pull. Whereas in Boulder Thomas had to do most of the digging, here I can just use a little hand trowel to make a hole. Within no time we went from all weeds to a nicely planted garden.

We also let the cats out for the first time and they immediately went over/under the fence to explore their surroundings. They came back after 2 hours and spend the rest of the morning sleeping. I was relieved that they already know where their home is.

My brain was completely fried by Sunday. Even little things like buying laundry detergent take a lot of mental effort and Google Translate. For example, I spend at least 15 min looking for laundry detergent sheets. I was happy to see something that looked like them but after translating the package I discovered they are sheets you put in the washer in addition to the detergent to “catch the color” ??? . So I had to put them back and continued searching. I finally was successful and already did a load of laundry. Unfortunately, I forgot that I didn’t have a drying rack any more and the one in the boiler room turned out to be insufficient so now our underwear and socks are spread out in the living room. We spend the rest of Sunday watching tennis and doing nothing which felt really good.

Today it’s back to gardening for me and Thomas is trying to get gas to the house and somebody to come out to repair the boiler. I definitely are having more fun than he does.

Thomas promised me a trip to another big garden center if I setup my Italian bank account. Something that took him a full day and several chats with the help center. They want the Italian insurance card in addition to the passport to verify somebody’s identity. But since we don’t have one yet the help center person told him to uploaded his tax code, which then gets rejected but after uploading it three times it gets accepted. Thankfully he had figured all of that out already so it only took me 10min and the bank another 30 minuted for them to verify the account. So I am ready for my reward trip to the garden center. Still hoping to find some more vegetable starts but I will be happy if I find some lettuce seeds and a cherry picker. The cherries are ripe but the tree we have is at least 20ft high so most of them are not accessible.

Day 3 was not successful at all, we didn’t get garbage bags from the town administration but we filled out a bunch of paperwork and they will contact us. We will see when that happens, not sure what they expect us to do with our garbage. For now we are storing it in the empty garage. The store that was “similar to Ikea” didn’t have anything we needed, so to combat our frustration we had some gelato. Mine is a size “piccolo” which is the smallest I can get. I usually get brain freeze from too much ice cream but so far I was fine. I also expanded my ice cream flavor range from hazelnut to sour cherry with amaretto and it was very tasty.

Yesterday things looked up, we had hired a cleaning company to deep clean the house (it looked like it had been neglected for years, not just the last few weeks) and they did an outstanding job. I immediately felt more at home and wasn’t afraid to touch anything or sit on the floor. I am a lot pickier when it comes to cleanliness that I thought – live and learn.

Our sleeping accommodation also has improved significantly. From camping mattress the first day, to mattress on the floor the next and now we have a real bed, after spending a few hours assembling it.

The cats are slowly exploring the house but they are not happy about all the activities going on, especially the cleaning. I still have to look for a pool float or something so that they don’t drown in the pool when they fall in and after that we will slowly introduce them to their new yard. We have a small clowder (we have seen three so far) that regularly visits our front yard and demands food so I fed them ones but we are rethinking that. They are all well fed so the woman that lived here was probably not the only one feeding them. I rather not have cat fights in my yard.

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.