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A ‘World is Flat’ AttitudePosted by: Paolo Last updated: May 2, 2007  Many of you have asked, since my earlier blog posted back on 12 Dec 06, for more information about our get-away place in Calitri (Avellino), Italy. Back then I mentioned that I’d write more about it “some other day” – so why not begin now? For openers, my hypothesis is that you have to be a special breed of person to run off and buy a little place in far away Italy. Some might say ‘nuts’, certifiable’ and ‘whacko’ and indeed, I wouldn’t blame them. We were on and off, hot and cold for some time on the decision to actually jump in. It’s more like how you felt when you first jumped, or at least attempted to jump, off the high diving board as a kid. You want to badly but are apprehensive to actually take that final step. First time jitters, fears, even backing down the ladder to the protest of the other kids, sometimes wins out. Buy a place it Italy?! Then we started thinking ... but others have done this, why not us, good investment, or we love to travel and Italy is our place of choice so why not get a home there for retirement? Things like that run through your head. And then there is the more rational side of your brain that questions how much you’d ever use a retreat in Italy, no matter how fabulous and romantic. Or the even more sobering, why tie ourselves down and have to always restrict our Italian adventures to medieval Calitri? I think it was my wife who first voiced that one. All these and many, many other micro-volts of thoughts ran through our heads. But jump in we did! It takes a sort of “leap of faith” - equivalent to actually stepping off that diving board, out there into the ether and the unknown. The rest of the adventure, to this point, has been exciting and exhilarating and we haven’t even hit the water yet! Definitely a life changing experience. So, for the non faint-of-heart and those endowed with a dash of impulsive adventurism, I can honestly say, ‘you can do it’. It also helps that we live in an ever increasing global community where people, dollars, products and information move fluidly around the globe as never before and where it is no longer unreasonable to think globally, commute globally, and invest globally. The advent of Internet also helps tremendously. It allows people to be empowered as never before – honestly, without the Internet none of this would be possible. Besides, isn’t Airbus building a new 600+ passenger aircraft (A380), which dwarfs the B747 – who will fill all these seats? It’s baby boomers like us on the cusp of retiring and deploying worldwide to places like ‘Bella Italia’ (by the way, we begin Italian classes at our local community college tonight). Well, what about the place? Chiseled in the stone over our door is the date ‘1875’ and the initials “L.S.”, but it goes farther back than that, we’re told, as evidenced from the name of the place ... “Casa della Feritoia” or “House of the Arrow Slot”! Yes, arrow as in narrow opening through which you could shoot arrows at attackers! There is a castle farther up behind us so once upon a time this may have been part of the first line of defense. This installment went long, so other than a picture of the ‘casa’ before it was restored, I promise to write more later. Paolo POST A COMMENT |
