The advance team

We decided to send an advance team (Neil) to Italy ahead of me and Ro flying down on Friday.  He had a short list of stuff: internet, cut grass, get gas turned on and utilities sorted, stop by the bank.  Easy to accomplish, right?

After a lot of research, we figured out that it was about the same cost to hire movers to take our stuff to Italy as it was to rent the truck, pay the tolls, gas (petrol for you Europeans), etc.   Neil went to meet the movers at the storage place on Tuesday morning – all I got was an email that says: “I hope our stuff makes it”.  Very confidence-inspiring, my husband.  Anyone seen Armageddon?  Apparently the gentleman driving all our stuff to Italy was very similar to the Russian cosmonaut.  Yep.

Neil headed to the airport on Wednesday morning and made it to Genoa and then to the house in one piece.  The gas company had already been out to fill up the gas tank (bombola in Italian), woohoo!  We got the water turned on and tested the electricity, all good.  Our ceilings turned out lovely!  Under a bunch of paint and plaster in the stairway, the lounge and our bedroom, there were the original arched brick ceilings so we asked if those could be exposed.  So happy we did that, just disappointed that the kitchen didn’t have similar ceilings.

As Neil was getting ready to head to the hotel for a shower on Wednesday evening, the mover, scheduled to show up on Thursday morning, arrives and is ready to unload.  So, generally exhausted, with a bleeding hand, Neil proceeded to help unload everything while taking care not to smear it all with blood (appreciated!).  Good news was that he had all of Thursday to do anything else that needed doing.

Thursday morning, Neil had the pleasure of sorting out a bunch of stuff at the bank and getting the WIFI.  We have this handy little hotspot box that gives us a really good internet connection – we are officially connected so I can update you all from Italy  J  Later in the day, Neil headed back to the house and noticed that the electricity wasn’t consistent.  He called the builders who headed over quite quickly as there was a live wire in the lounge from when they blasted the plaster off the ceiling.  That was pretty easily taken care of but then he discovered that the boiler wasn’t working.  Low water pressure = no hot water.  No. Hot. Water.  Luckily Fran (our builder) was around and he helped look at it and intervened to call the plumber who worked on it before to come around and have a look.  He agreed to come take a look.  So between Mauro, Piero and Neil’s italian skills, we determined that we needed a new boiler. Yea. At the bargain price of 2200 EUR. Ugh.

On top of this, Neil also found out that the stove doesn’t light.  I was very excited about having a gas stove – now, not so much.  That’s a problem for another day.