The Learning Curve is Long Hard and Steep and the Path is Interfering with My Sleep!

Sorry Robert Frost, I love your works and this poem, “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening”, has greatly been in the front of my mind these last two weeks. Moving to another country with 5 suitcases, a very delicate but adorable little Shih Tzu, a medical condition or two without speaking the language and a husband that is not known for his flexibility is much more difficult than I thought it would be. AND I’M A PLANNER! I’ve been planning this puppy for months. There have been highs to be sure but yesterday I bottomed.

Setting up house has its newly married aspect to it and the apartment is as advertised. Spacious in a 200 year old mansion, in a lovely old residential neighborhood surrounded by other stately old mansions. The views of the River Po and the majestic Alps bring a smile every morning. The very narrow road (strada) is cobblestoned and the first time we tried to find our place we totally dismissed it as someone’s driveway versus the road. The road wound up a mountain and we were transported to another time in another country, lovely truly lovely.  

Sentry kitty's on top the columns to our apartment

The first night was a little rough but we didn’t have anything other than the things we had brought with us, certainly not enough to feel nested. Tomorrow, we said, tomorrow (domani) we will put our little nest together, go do some more Christmas shopping, find a FedEx spot, and get the little fuzzy one her hypo-allergenic pet food, yep we can do this, we’ll be ready for our journey.

We were having trouble finding her special food

It has now taken almost three weeks to accomplish the ‘nest’ and all of the core things we felt needed to be done so we could start taking our next steps. Let me correct that, VPN has not, so far, been as easy as we thought it would be. Keeping in touch, which is what in part this blog was to be about, continues to be sporadic because of weak signals or loosing connection all together. We have one English speaking television station and it is EuroNews with about a 30 minute repeat cycle for 24 hours and my favorite of all is the portion of EuroNews that runs intentionally with ‘no comment’, whhhaatt?

So what is the hardest part? It may be a three way tie between the street names not clearly marked, actually they are barely marked with carved signs on the corner side of the building about 6”X16” and they aren’t lit and there may not be a side of the building that you can see while driving through a huge roundabout at 35 miles per hour. Okay that’s one, the second is shopping in a one stop manner is not the preferred way of doing things in Turin, it seems they prefer sole proprietor shops that may be scattered all over a very difficult town to get around in, that’s two. Language, it is challenging to even purchase things like cream for your coffee, half of a pound of ham for sandwiches (parmacotto is ham; dodici fette is 12 slices) but perhaps more importantly products are not necessarily even used here, such as diet soda, salad dressing, breakfast cereal is extremely limited, there is no maple syrup for pancakes. Well, that’s three and that is the end of my whining.

Heavily bundled up me waiting for ham slices

Yep Foxy Mega rolls of toilet paper

The days can be exhausting just trying to get something to eat when you are hungry, admittedly we have an unusual dining habit even for the states. BUT, my hubby has been the strength and hand needed when I thought I couldn't lift myself another moment or rise to the physical or mental challenge. The little fuzzy one with her big beautiful dark eyes the calm she provides that is better than any pharmaceutical but much more habit forming and last, but in no way last, our lovely landlady Anna.

Anna, the generational owner of the mansion is gracious, inclusive and a phenomenal guide we simply could not have asked for a better spot to begin our European journey, she is going to be very difficult to match. We are here in Turin for another month and know that every day will have its lows but also the highs will be more frequent as we learn more.

The next post has got to be Food and Fashion right?  See you can't get the girl down:)