How to Italy

Why I love summer in Sardinia

Summer is definitely the time of year when living in Sardinia comes into a league of its own.

After months of being held hostage to the cold weather (oh, okay, 21 degrees), I finally get to:

* Conduct conference calls while looking at the waves crash gently onto the beach below my house.

* Have business meetings while swimming in the sea the colour of peackcock feathers.

* Work outside on my jasmine-clad patio.

They were three of the things that led my friend Emma, who was out here last weekend, to comment:

"You give a whole new meaning to working from home."

Teaching jobs in Cagliari

For those of you that missed my Tweet on the subject, there are teaching jobs going in Cagliari with British Institutes.

Photo credit: giuliomarziale

If you fancy working near Cagliari's city beach Poetto, you'll need to:

• Be native English speakers
• Speak Italian
• Have Trinity/CELTA teaching certification
• Have EU citizenship

To apply, send your CV and covering letter to Sandra Pala at [email protected]. Oh, and tell them that you saw the vacancy mentioned here.

An Ice cream a day...

An ice-cream a day.

That's one of the most common antidotes to the long, hot summers in Sardinia. And who am I to disagree with Italian experts who clearly know more about the subject than me?

Eating gelato, as ice cream is called over here, has been a popular pastime in Italy for hundreds of years. Even the ancient Romans enjoyed a scoop or two of snow and ice mixed with fruit, wine and honey.

It's not difficult to see why:

(photo credit: yud)

But if all those mouthwatering flavours don't tickle your tastebuds, maybe these will:

(photo credit: Lilian33)

And if they don't, there are always these:

(photo credit: Itsamish)

Needless to say, when you're in Sardinia to take part in one of our Absorbing Writing workshops, we'll be finding the time to eat some ice cream.

After six years in Italy, I've finally found my favourite flavour. I wonder what yours will be?

Useful sites for living and working in Italy

As I said yesterday, I've officially become a Twitter addict. I've found it really useful for sharing my favourite links and websites I've discovered.

Here's a round up of some of the urls and news:

* www.lowcostaccounting.it, www.contipronti.it and www.101professionisti.it for low-cost accounting options in Italy

* Craigslist now in Bologna, Tuscany, Genoa, Milan, Campania, Perugia, Rome, Sardinia, Sicily, Turin and Veneto

* www.milanexpat.com - the best links for expatriate life in Milan

* Starting a business in Italy? You'll need these sites: www.agenziaentrate.gov.it & www.inps.it. Try www.actainrete.it & www.formaper.it

* www.casasanruffino.com - fabulous B&B run by two Brits in Le Marche who've realised their dream of living in Italy

* Looking for an English-speaking job in Italy? www.jobsinmilan.com would be a good place to start

* Want to learn Italian but there aren't any courses near you? www.myngle.com has individual and group lessons via Skype and online

* Want to buy property in Sardinia? Start here: www.sardiniapropertyfinder.com, www.preciousvillas.com & www.housearoundsardinia.eu

* Need office space in Italy: www.italycenter.it, www.mbcenter.it, www.pickcenter.com, www.businesscenter.it, www.regus.it

* If you want to export, click on the Italian Trade Commission's website www.ice.gov.it. It has 16 offices in Italy and over 100 worldwide

* www.milanin.com - business networking club in Milan so successful it's now spreading to other Italian cities

* www.girlgeekdinnersitalia.com - informal networking dinners in Milan for women in IT. The driving forces behind the initative includes Sara Rosso, aka Ms Adventures in Italy. Featured in Glamour, Marie Claire and a host of others, I'll have you know.

If I carry on drinking red wine, will I get to vote when I'm 101?

After all that recent doom and gloom about Italy being in the doldrums, this story in yesterday's regional paper Il Sardegna brought a smile to my face.

To Efisio Piras and his devoted wife Silvia, it was just another election.

But the crowd who had turned out to see the elderly couple arrive at the polling station to cast their vote on Monday disagreed.

For between them, Efiso and Silvia Piras have clocked up 200 years, making them the oldest couple to vote in Italy.

Efiso, who celebrated his 101st birthday in January, is an intent follower of politics and insisted on going to vote. Consequently, his 99-year-old wife followed suit.

But as strange as it might seem, the couple, who have been married for 76 years, are not that unusual in the village where they live.

Orroli, set in the heart of Sardinia's Barabagia region, boasts a population of 2,540. Of those, 39 are aged 90 or over and 17 are centenarians.

The village was also home to the oldest man in Europe: Giovanni Frau died in 2003 aged 112. 

Longevity in Orroli - and, more generally, Sardinia - is put down to the healthy lifestyle and the red wine produced on the island.

With all the vino rosso I knock back, maybe there is hope for me yet.

   

 

Sardinia in April

I love Sardinia in April.

I love seeing life start up again after being packed away in boxes all winter. On Monday, I drove past my favourite restaurant, L'Oasis, and the iron gates were still padlocked shut. Yesterday, however, was a different story. The gates were opened for the start of the summer season, with the sign at the entrance gleaming like new.

But most of all, I love watching the tourists who will always look like tourists no matter how hard they try to fit in, thanks to their satorial choices. Flip flops, sandals, white trousers, swishy Boden skirts and anything linen or Per Una are a few of the giveaways. Others are lobster red skin and getting dressed up in their holiday best to go out to dinner at 6pm while the rest of us are still digesting lunch and getting into the mid-afternoon workload.

Cost of living and quality of life in Italy

Back in February, I wrote my only post about being back in England and expressed my annoyance at the cost of a cappuccino.

Hannah, who lives in Viareggio, picked up on a similar posting from October 2007 and asked an interesting question about quality of life in Italy versus England.

I understand her plight. Lots of people think that by moving to Italy, everyone is going to be living la dolce vita happily every after. But, unless you live in a sprawling castello in Tuscany and already have pots of money, life in Italy isn't quite as idyllic as it is made out to be. And the facts are there to back this up.

A few days ago, OECD published, among other things, its factbook into industrial development. Given Italy's current political and economic climate, I don't think anyone is really surprised to find the country ranked last among industrial countries for its productivity.

As I've mentioned before, salaries are low and housing costs, whether you're renting or have a mortgage to pay, are comparably high, especially if you live in a big city or tourist area. Lots of Italian families don't make it to the end of the month and it's also one of the reasons so many young people live with their families until they get married.

House prices is one of the first things I notice in England. Prices in Dorset, where my parents live, are high. Prices are also high in the Gallura region of Sardinia, where Mario and I live. If we were living in England, our incomes would be higher (in Mario's case nearly double what he earns now), yet house prices aren't double what they are here. Consequently, we would be able to afford a much larger property than the one we move into in September. If you're reading this in the US or the north of England, then you'll probably notice an even bigger disparity.

Then again, the plus side of Italy is that ICI, the property tax, is low. We pay slightly more than Eur250 per year, compared to more than that amount per month in England. And, because we're in Sardinia and don't have central heating, our gas bills are low, too. That's my situation, though. If you're living in northern Italy, then your heating bills are going to amount to a big chunk of your outgoings.

If you send your children to state school in Italy, then you have to pay a school fee (it's nominal, but you still have to pay), plus buy all the books they need each academic year. And you can't necessarily hand them down because different years will use different books or updated versions of the books. When you have two or more children going through the system, that soon adds up. They also don't have school uniform which means the classroom becomes a junior catwalk for the likes of Versace, Christian Dior and D&G.

As for eating out, Mario and I go to dinner in restaurants two or three times a week without it making too much of a dent in our wallets. But that's in Sardinia. Whenever we're on the continente (the Italian mainland), we're horrified by how much lunch or dinner comes to. Again, though, it's all relative. Wages are lower in Sardinia than they are in Italy.

To assess quality of life properly, the best thing to do is to make a list of your monthly income and expenditure, right down to the last apple or gelato. You need to do it for life in Italy and life in your home country.

I'd be interested to know what conclusions you come to, especially from those of you already living in Italy.

 

 

 

 

Teaching English to Italian students

When students snog in lessons (yes, it's been known to happen) or wander out of the room to smoke the cigarette tucked behind their ear, I repeatedly ask myself why I choose to teach English in the state system.

But then all I need is something small like the comment left by Andrea Deidda on this blog yesterday and I remember why teaching can be so rewarding.

Andrea and I met back in the summer of June 2006. He was 19 and in the last year of high school and I was teaching English to him and his classmates for two hours a week for three weeks. As with most students taught by Italian teachers who can't pronounce words in English properly and don't have a wide vocab, they had a low level of the language. But they were keen and they were disciplined. We made progress.

My last lesson with a group always follows the same format: talking in English about dreams and plans for the future and discussing inspirational quotes. Italian kids don't get career advice, don't do work experience and no one tells them that the world is full of opportunities for them to grab. Their chocolate brown eyes should be alive when they talk about the future not dulled with sadness because they've only got a life of unemployment on the island to look forward to.

I always tell them that unless people know what they want, no one else can help them. My students hesitently begin sharing their hopes and dreams for the future and, together, we discuss what they need to do to get there. In Andrea's case, he shyly said he wanted to become a foreign correspondent but he didn't think he'd get there because he didn't have any contacts. He didn't know I used to be a journalist so I explained how I started out writing for my local paper when I was 15 and even got a stint working for a  French regional newspaper when I was 17, thanks to my French teacher knowing how desperate I was to become a journalist. I told him if he started writing for local papers while he was still a teenager, by the time he graduated he would already have a huge 'bagaglio' of experience which would impress future employers.

The article Andrea referenced in his comment was written two years ago when he was still 19. He regularly writes for the paper now. If you understand Italian, then you'll know how special his talent is. Not many 19-year-olds can write like he does with no formal training.

I've finished teaching in high school for this year but I can't wait to be back next year. 

 

   

What I love about England and what I love about Sardinia

Now that I've been back a couple of days, I've been thinking about the life I've left behind in England, and the life I've picked back up in Sardinia, especially at the end of this month, I'll have lived here five years. 

There are lots of things I love about England:

1. The variety of food in the supermarket

2. The cleanliness - it was lovely not having to side step dog muck and litter on the pavements or see cans and cigarette butts strewn on the beach. Graffiti was absent, too.

3. The variety of restaurants

4. Pubs with free wifi. Pub lunches are pretty good, too. Oh, and fried breakfasts in greasy spoon caffs. Before I moved to Italy, I rarely indugled. Now I crave them.

5. Well-looked after dogs rather than ones trying to survive at the edge of the dual carriage way where they've been abandoned.

6. Clothes shops (Italian trousers/skirts/dresses just don't fit me)

7. Beaches are used all year around and children are allowed to get sand on them and splash in the sea

8. Sunday newspapers, complete with supplements.   

9. Boots (the Chemist, not pairs of boots) where I can pick up lots of things all under one roof

10. A more chilled, less formal lifestyle

But, equally, I love lots of things about Sardinia, too:

1. The warm weather - now that the summer is kicking in, the island really comes into its own

2. Restaurants that look grotty on the outside serving the most incredible food inside for low, low prices. An enormous salad for Eur2.50, anyone?

3. Last minute plans for meeting up rather than scheduling coffee with friends up to three weeks in advance

4.  All of the sagras to celebrate a new fruit or vegetable coming into season. I always look forward to the first chesnuts in October, the first artichokes in December and the first cherries in May.

5. The noise. Not screaming or shouting, just lots of people talking loudly. It makes everything seem so much more alive and human.

6. The coffee - I have definitely missed my 11am ritual of cappuccino at the bar.  That's to say, a cappuccino that doesn't taste of burnt coffee beans or has too much schiuma, and doesn't scald your tongue.

7.  It's a lot cheaper. When I was back in England, I saw my bank balance drain away before my eyes: GBP7 to park for 2.5 hours at a country park and GBP1 to take the bus into the centre of town which is a five minutes walk away. Money definitely goes a lot, lot further in Sardinia.

8. Easy access to Rome and Milan. Rome is 50 minutes away by plane from Olbia and Milan is an hour. I know I left Milan because I found it smoggy and I missed the beaches but it's still one of my favourite cities.

9. Friends who go out of their way to do anything for you. It takes a long time to make friends with the locals as opposed to being friendly with them. But once you've broken through the barrier, you've got friends for life.

10. The beaches. Long stretches of sand. Secluded coves. Baches accessible only by boat. Sardinia really does have it all.   

 

 

Back in Sardinia - ready to start blogging again

Here I am.

I was planning to write yesterday but was so exhausted from my epic journey back to Sardinia, I spent the day recovering. I'd had just three hours sleep the night before (at the good old Yotel again. sleeping rough in airports is definitely relegated to a former life) and crawled into bed at 1am yesterday morning. It took 19 hours from boarding the plane to get back home to Cannigione, thanks to the disorganisation and lack of customer service from one particular airline that shall remain nameless except to say it's made up of two syllables: first letter B, second letter A. Oh, and it's a UK company.

I hadn't expected to be away quite as long and now that I'm back, I'm beginning to realise quite how much I missed Sardinia - and being able to start my day drinking in the sea view from my patio. I grew up a couple of miles from Sandbanks beach and, slightly further afield, the rest of the Dorset coast. As such, I'm used to stunning coastlines. Even so, being able to wake up to a view of the Gulf of Arzachena is a pretty special way to start the day.

 

(okay, so this isn't the actual view from my patio but it is the beach at the bottom of my road and that's one of the trees I sit under to write - photo credit by ramsch_ursel on Flickr)

But I'm not back in paradise. Not by any means. Nearly three months after applying for broadband, we've still not got it. And I've got no idea when we'll have it either.

It's also cold today, so I can't sit outside and write. Inside is freezing. I'm sat here in a pair of ski trousers, two thermal vests and a cashmere jumper, with the little electric heater on. Those are the joys of living in homes meant for holiday accommodation - beautiful on the outside but breeze blocks and no central heating make for a very cold apartment indeed. I know my friends in southern Italy, Sicily and here in Sardinia will back me up on that one. I wish the sun would come out. 

Thanks for all the comments when I've been away. Because I've not got broadband, it's going to take me an age to answer them all individually, so I'm not going to do. I've been reflecting a lot on the differences between life in England and Sardinia/Italy while I was back in the UK, so I'll roll together the three comments on that into one post either later today or tomorrow. As for citizenship and also applying for jobs, I'll post on that, too.

I've been burried in writing over the past two months and frustratingly out of touch with what's happening on the political front, except that the vote for the Senate takes place Sunday and Monday. Once I'm back up to speed on all things Italian, I'll start sharing them here.