Twelve months ago Celine and I knew very little about Abruzzo – mainly the fact that it produced a pretty good red wine – and we certainly had only a very vague idea where it was; and as for Pescara, it sounded like the name of some quaint little Italian fishing village.
So it was a well-timed marketing coup for the publishers of Live and Invest Overseas (LIOS) to convince these two travel-hardened cynics that both the region and the town were places that were not only worth visiting but were also a suitable venue for us to attend a conference about starting a new life in Italy. Well not exactly, as Celine and I were very much in the right frame of mind to be tempted by anything that might reinforce our interest in all things Italian, and could perhaps help us further our search for the perfect place to set down new roots. Indeed, when we heard about the conference, we were already starting to plan the Italian phase of our exploration of Mediterranean Europe and without a moment’s hesitation requested that our names be added to the list of potential delegates.
Personally I have never been a great fan of conferences. Sitting hour after hour listening to people waffle on about their pet subjects, and then networking my way through the throng of fellow delegates, hoping to find a sympathetic ear for my own ideas about life, isn’t something that I have ever taken to with great relish. So I do admit to having considerable misgivings about our decision to attend as we checked into Hotel Esplanade, a grand looking edifice overlooking Pescara’s waterfront, that displayed the faded genteelness of a down-at-heel dowager who remembers better days. However, that day we had passed through some very beautiful countryside as we drove from Umbria into Abruzzo along quiet country roads, bordered by lush green fields beyond which the wooded hills were a mass of autumnal red, orange and yellow leaves.
Thus we arrived believing that this region of Italy could indeed be the amazing place we had been reading about in recent weeks, even if the outskirts of Pescara itself seemed unremarkable.
As circumstances had panned out, this was to be the second group event of our this year’s Mediterranean odyssey, as we had taken a little detour to a Portugal and Spain event a couple of weeks earlier. That had not turned out to be a great success [see “SFTF Italia o Portogallo Pt.3 – Ten days with International Living”] which only served to magnify my misgivings. However, with registration formalities over, the proceedings soon began to draw us in and we started to feel that this experience was going to be much more positive. The selection of presentations included many of the same topics we had heard and read about previously such as healthcare, taxes, real estate, assimilation difficulties etc etc, but they were greatly enhanced by the evident enthusiasm of various local mayors and entrepreneurs who so convincingly conveyed their love of Abruzzo, and their desire to welcome us foreigners into their communities. There were some subjects that seemed to us to be irrelevant to our ideas of settling in Italy; investing in truffle farming in France or in an outrageously expensive condominium development were certainly of no interest to us whatsoever. Whilst I appreciate that such subjects might be part of a “How to get rich quickly without lifting a finger” type of conference, there was no reason for them to be presented to a group of people who had travelled half-way round the world to learn about the pros and cons of starting a new life in Italy, and Abruzzo in particular.
The opening presentation introducing us to local dignitaries was a great start for the conference. The mayor of Citta’Sant’Angelo, Gabrielle Florindi, was a real gem not speaking a word of English and yet managing to convey his welcome with the help of an interpreter, plenty of typically Italian gesticulations and a serious look on his face that seemed to want to smile but rarely did. His invite to host everyone on a tour of his elegant little town, a tour which included a visit to the Sciarrm winery complete with generous wine tasting and concluded with a sumptuous dinner in Osteria Cavour, was truly beyond the call of duty! And for me, a visit to a winery that produced my long-time favourite tipple, Montepulciano D’Abruzzo, was an added bonus! Whether or not anyone will be taking up his offer to personally ensure that the purchase of a house in his town by any of us will be completely stress-free is another matter, especially considering he is resigning his mayoral duties in six months time. All the same, he and I, after a wine-soaked conversation over dinner promised to learn each other’s language better before our next meeting!
The aforementioned tour took place on the Friday afternoon, the conference itself having finished at noon that day. Two days earlier, after the local mayors had welcomed us to “la piu bella regione di abruzzo”, our MC and Editor-in-Chief of LIOS, Kat Kalashian, had got proceedings going with an enthusiastic introduction ensuring we were all most definitely ready to be enlightened. Ten very informative sessions, one lunch break and two networking coffee breaks later, we were all feeling very positive, our brains were overflowing with informative facts about our prospective new lives in Italy, and we were more than ready for the evening’s “cocktail party” which turned out to be a delicious buffet in the ristorante pizzeria, La Sirenetta, on the waterfront across from the hotel. Suitably sated, Celine and concluded the evening with a long walk along the beach enjoying the mild, early-autumn, sea air and considered what we had heard so far, coming to no immediate conclusions except that Pescara itself had failed to impress. One presentation of that first day deserves particular mention however, namely that of Raymond Seitzer, a local expat, from which we gleaned a real idea of everyday living.
Day two was much the same, Guido Lo Iacono, a state notary kicking off the proceedings with a very well presented treatise on the practicalities of buying a property and avoiding the many possible pitfalls. Unfortunately our interest wained somewhat during the day as subject matter more relevant to financial high flyers, but totally irrelevant to our interest in living in Abruzzo, drifted into the mix. Thus our eyes began to glaze over and eventually we played hooky during one or two of the late-afternoon presentations.
That evening, being just simple “VIP” delegates, we had our noses slightly put out of joint as the evening’s activity was a “Premium Members Only” cocktail party. This only served to alienate us and make us realise that LIOS is perhaps more interested in the richer echelon of potential overseas investors, rather than ordinary folk such as ourselves who simply want to move abroad. And it also started me wondering why anyone would want to become a Premium Member, investing a comparatively large sum of money to allow them to attend several more similar events, especially when there seem to be a small coterie of presenters who are obviously regurgitating the same old material at each and every conference. Another way of looking at it is this: if you have to keep on attending conference after conference, then perhaps the conferences aren’t doing a very good job of helping you decide where to move to!
Anyway, Friday morning soon arrived, our last half day, and thankfully things ended on a high as most of the talks were of considerable interest – my success index being the number of notes I made during each session. Kat Kalashian closed the proceedings by succinctly reminding us about some of the most important things we had heard during the last couple of days, though she also could not resist adding in a few LIOS commercials. Which brings me to another issue that continues to bug me; was it really necessary for nearly one third of the conference proceedings booklet – 8 of 26 pages – to be advertisements for other activities and programmes one could purchase from LIOS? After all, everyone at the conference is already bombarded daily with lengthy e-mails all trying to inveigle them to purchase this or that programme. Or am I the only subscriber who gets heartily sick of the non-stop demonstration of excessively wordy copy-writing that if I am honest, tends to turn me off rather than making me want to participate in more of their activities?
Friday afternoon of course brought with it the very enjoyable tour of Citta’ Sant’Angelo, but the real property hunting began on Saturday morning for those of us who had chosen to join Monia Di Guilmi on a two day bus tour of mainly rural properties available in and around the more southerly city of Vasto. Unfortunately four of us who had driven our own cars to the conference, now found ourselves having to follow the bus for much of the day, so we did perhaps miss a bit of the commentary; but we most certainly did not miss out on seeing any of the very interesting houses she had chosen to show us. 
Not having a clear idea of the average budget of her prospective customers, Monia hit the high end of the market to start with, showing us a rather splendid old three storey mansion with a delightful garden climbing the hill behind it and with close-up views of the Adriatic at the front. It had been lovingly restored and packed full of antiques by its owners who very graciously allowed us to swarm all through their home; but sadly, with an asking price of €800,000, it didn’t quite fit the description of “low-cost housing to be found in Abruzzo” that had been foisted on us over the previous 72hours. Our next stop was high up in the hilltop town of Colledimezzo where we were delighted to find ourselves feted by another mayoral welcoming party including the local police chief and various other worthies from among the enormous population of 500 or so.
Then after a couple of glasses of local plonk and some home-made pasticcini and twenty minutes chatting with the locals in the usual mixture of our two languages, Monia took us in tow again and led us through four properties that were very much more in line with our budgets, all in very old buildings but in various degrees of restoration. The wonderful views towards Lago di Bamba in the valley far below us from a couple of the fully restored properties made more than a few of us start to seriously consider hilltop living!
The day’s real estate tour ended with a very bare apartment in need of a complete work-over on a busy main street in Vasto, where we were due to stay the night in the very chic boutique hotel San Marco which was a lovely change after the not-so-splendid Esplanade. Like many of the towns we visited in Italy, the old centre of Vasto was pedestrianised and a very pleasant place for that Mediterranean tradition, the evening promenade; and for Celine and I, a couple of the stalls in the market were just what we needed to purchase some tasty victuals for our supper.
The next day we were bus-borne and our first stop was a very spacious property across the valley from Torino di Sangro, a village whose name translates to something like “blood of young bulls”. A delightful country property of half a hectare and with plenty of rooms to rent it was also way out of our price range. A town-house in the village, owned by an ex-USAF pilot with a penchant for painting naked ladies, in superb condition and with yet more wonderful views across the valley, was much more desirable and as the owner plied us with a very good prosecco one or two of us were starting to look for our cheque books.
Town-houses in old villages have their disadvantages however, especially as one starts to think about living in them into old age; and one we saw later in the day in Casalbordino, exhibited the commonest fault, namely when hemmed in by other buildings they can be very dark.
However, we were at last looking at properties within the budget of most of us, and after Monia had treated us all to a very nice lunch at Borgo Antica, local cuisine and plenty of my favourite Montepulciano di Abruzzo, she took us to see a property that was right up my alley, so to speak. A single family home on two levels, on about an acre of land sloping down towards the valley with 40 healthy looking olive trees, a flat area for an ordinary garden and my veggies, only minor work needed to make it very liveable and a price tag to suit.
If only we had been hooked on living in Abruzzo it would have been ideal, but, sorry to say, we weren’t and much as I would have liked to reward Monia’s gracious hospitality, we finished the tour as undecided as we were when we arrived in Pescara five days previously.
It was raining steadily the next morning as we said our goodbyes and headed north to do a bit of simple sight-seeing in some of the better known tourist traps. We were in many ways disappointed with the little we had seen of Abruzzo, but we had also come to understand why housing there can be cheap, and why the locals were so eager to bring in foreign investment. Personally I am glad that we had attended our first LIOS conference but I am not sure we will be repeating the exercise in the near future. I may well continue to subscribe to their newletters for the foreseeable future as they do help to keep me inspired to look for that ideal place for Celine and I to plant those new roots. But I am not convinced that attending a conference does anything more than increase my cynicism about the motives behind the organisation of such events.
Right now, as I finish writing this post, Celine and I are staying in the extraordinary town of Matera, a few miles inland from the instep of Italy. Since leaving Vasto and Pescara we have seen lots more very beautiful countryside, visited some of Italy’s busiest and at the same time most beautiful cities and met with many lovely people, both Italians and ex-pats, who call Italy their home. We are doing that vital thing, putting our boots on the ground, and in my next blog I will let you know if and how our views of this beautiful country have evolved . . .watch this space!