The sixth IRG Expat in Italy Interview takes us back to a region we have visited before, Umbria, where IRG members Giselle Stafford and her husband Mark run Gusto Wine Tours.
Giselle hails from the beautiful port town of Falmouth in Cornwall and as she says: “If Umbria had the sea – I’d be in absolute heaven! I miss the sea very much! Mark and I married in 2000 and on our honeymoon decided that life was too short for 2 weeks holiday a year! So a year later we set off on our adventures, which 10 years, 2 camper vans, and many great stories later has led us here to the hills around Montefalco and a business that we truly love!”
Gusto wine Tours get off the beaten track, discovering family-owned vineyards in the beautiful Umbrian countryside. Enjoy a truly authentic Umbrian lunch made from local ingredients and admire the views from the cantine (wineries) at your leisure. Meet the faces behind the wines, enjoy generous tastings and sample the famous Sagrantino – unique to this area of Umbria – and don’t miss the opportunity to try the unbelievable dessert wine – Sagrantino Passito. Although this area is renowned for its juicy big reds, excellent white wines are available. You don’t have to be a connoisseur, you just have to like wine and want a fun day out, getting to know like-minded people from around the world. Mark and Giselle will do their best to accommodate any requests because they want you to have the best day of your holidays!
Giselle says: “We want your day, your experiences and your sensations to be unforgettable ….”
The Questions and Answers:
How long have you been living in Italy?
On and off since 2001 but full time since Sept 2007. From 2001 – 2005 we were living in a camper van! We sold everything we had lock stock and sofa and compressed our lives into a 4 berth English camper van with fitted carpets that continued half way up the sides of the van – imagine how well THAT kept the heat in, in what amounts to an oven on wheels in the height of one of the hottest Umbrian summers on record! When we came back permanently in ’07 – we promised ourselves bricks and mortar as a special treat! The nomad instinct was still there tho’, we packed our small Peugeot 306 estate from floor to roof – and a big box fitted on the roof, again with our worldly goods.- minus anything useful like furniture and drove to Umbria. On the last evening our neighbours were presented with a motley collection of things that wouldn’t fit in the car without the car bottoming out, spraying pretty sparks everywhere! Not sure if they were grateful, but we weren’t taking the stuff back from them again!
Who came up with the idea of living in Italy?
It just happened! We were supposed to be travelling around the Med countries in our camper-van with Mark teaching English as we went along – a term here, a term there … We came to Umbria in 2001 for a friend’s party at Lake Trasimeno and were hooked! Best we’ve done with any of the other countries on our original list is had great holidays!
How are you getting on with The Italian language?
Um… I’ll pass that one to Mark… He’s going great guns with it. I keep talking myself into dead ends and forget the ultimate and most important word of what I’m struggling to say. I also get completely tongue-tied when under any stress to speak. However, relaxing with real friends who try hard to understand what I’m trying to say, and it starts to get better! I’d hesitate to say it flows!
Do you miss your home and family?
Our home is here in Umbria – and since we’ve moved to a place with the BEST views and a spare room, our friends and family are only to happy to come and visit us! But yes, I miss my friends and family – but honestly, I don’t miss England.
Did you buy, or are you renting the place where you live?
We’re renting, this is the second place we’ve rented – the first one we found within 5 days of getting here – great outside space, but inside was teeny-tiny! But not bad for a quick find and the landlord was a nice guy.
Found this place by accident while doing our best to get lost on the back roads of Umbria last year. Pure fluke! Best fluke yet though, we love it! And we have another nice landlord – who doesn’t live around here – we get the place to ourselves – marvellous!
We might buy in the distant future when we’ve made our millions (*bursts out laughing*)
What do you think about the Italians?
It can be a bit of a love/not so in love relationship! I wouldn’t go so far as the love/hate bit, we wouldn’t be here if it was that extreme!
I find them warm, ultra generous, thoughtful and fun loving and yet, by turns sometimes they frustrate me with a particularly blinkered outlook or an outmoded way of thinking. The misunderstandings bought about by either language or cultural differences can drive me up the wall! And yet there will always be something that brings a smile back on my face again or makes me feel guilty for getting cross in the first place!
A call from a friend out of the blue either on the phone or turning up at the house on the off chance. A gift of something home-made – Just because!
The fun we have at a get together, a barbecue, a dinner party …. Where we all try hard to understand each other and deepen our friendships. That’s what I think of the Italians I have met!
5 Good aspects of living in Italy?
1. We love the more relaxed way of life here – We REALLY love the festivals we can go to, and they are numerous and diverse – and most of them are truly excellent! We love that our friends and family almost fight with each other to be the next to visit!
2. I love living ‘in the season’. To see the seasons change is something we have come to really appreciate.
3. To eat what’s in season is a better way of living, I think. To look forward to asparagus season is a great pleasure of mine!
4. It’s a great life experience, we have changed direction and almost by accident have discovered work that we are truly passionate about. I don’t see us being able to do wine tours in Cornwall!
5. To be surrounded by countryside, to have the amazing views we have, to have the space to grow our own veggies and yet be a short 2 or 3 hours from somewhere like Roma – to my mind, one of the best cities in the world – it’s a drug for me – I can’t get enough of the place!
5 Bad aspects of living in Italy?
Are we only allowed 5??!!
1. Like anyone, ex-pat or Italian – the bureaucracy drives me up the wall, across the ceiling and down the other side! I want to scream, pull my hair out, rant rave and slam doors, I want to kick the officious know-it -alls where it hurts – over and over again! Yep, that about sums up how I feel about Italian bureaucracy!
2. Italians outside of their cars are wonderful warm-hearted kind souls – get them in a car and suddenly they grow horns, think they are a mixture of a formula one driver and immortal and that they absolutely HAVE to overtake you on a blind bend at the brow of a hill at dusk without any lights on, while on their precious mobile phone! Or take the racing line – at whatever speed they are going or whatever is coming at them in the opposite direction (Usually me!)
3. Coming to terms with the fact that we will ALWAYS come last in a queue, no matter where we actually ARE in the queue!
For an example, in the middle of being served in a shop – it could be selling anything, it doesn’t matter – an Italian will butt in with a ‘quick question’ which turns into an epic and the person who was serving us, leaves us *for a momentino* to go and help the Italian leaving us stranded for rather more than a momentino. (We have walked out of shops because of this before now!) That’s if we are acknowledged by the shop assistant at all after the butt in!
4. Ordinary medicine like paracetamol is WAY overpriced. When you can get an approximation of the medicine you want, it’s over-packaged, overcomplicated and completely useless! Got a sore throat? Want a throat lozenge to soothe it? Oh no, you want this contraption that will make you gag and spray noxious gunk onto the back of your throat, making you cough and hurting your throat even more and it doesn’t work to boot! Oh yes, and that will be €18 please.
If you insist on the lozenges, you will pay a small fortune for them as well – over €10 I seem to recall! I have yet to come across an over the counter medicine that actually does what it says on the tin!
5. For me, buying clothes in Italy is a big problem. I can buy shoes. Sometimes I can squeeze a coat on – but only if I buy a man-sized one! For reasons probably lost in the mists of time, the clothing sizes don’t actually correspond with the international standard – they are ‘Italian’ sizes. Even shoes, come to think of it! I take a size 38.5/39 depending on what type of shoe it is. I’ve just bought some Italian made shoes – size 37. I haven’t taken a size 37 since I was about 10! If I go to the ‘Big Girls’ stores – the clothes are goppingly awful, fire-hazard material and aiming for the ‘matronly’ market. Not exactly funky! Oh and very very expensive too! I guess it’s an incentive of sorts to lose weight so I can slip into a sexy XXXXXL number!
5 Top tips for our readers about living in Italy?
1. Try not to take the knocks personally. There will be plenty of knocks. You need to understand that these happen to Italians too and they’re not out to get you … much!
2. If you want something done – wait until you have an Italian friend who knows someone – it’s not what you know it’s WHO you know – every time! On the other hand, check out any recommendations, it might be a favour for a cousin once removed who doesn’t actually know S**t about what you want doing!
3. Go with the flow of life – sometimes it feels like you are trying to row against the current and it’s REALLY hard work to do this. Take a deep breath, relax a little and turn yourself around – going with the current is much less stressful or tiring – if you want to stretch the metaphor a little further – sometimes you will encounter a set of rapids – it will become turbulent – but you will still be going in the right direction!
4. You live in a country that isn’t your own – try and integrate – communicate with those around you – smile a lot! Saying that, it’s so nice to be able to kick back and have a good ol chat and a nice cuppa tea with someone who shares your background, your humour and your language. Sometimes that does you the world of good! (It’s taken our Italian friends simply YEARS to get our sense of humour! ‘Ahhh ….. English humour’ they say without a glimmer of a smile!)
5. And… ladies of a certain size – get your bras from home! They simply don’t get them right here – well, not for me anyway! I have found that if you know how to measure yourself, getting them delivered mail-order is a fine way of shopping – saves a trip to the UK for me anyway! M & S and Debenhams have a good mail order system in place.
** A bonus tip – never – I mean never – let an opportunity pass when your friends or family visit, to ask them to bring proper teabags, paracetamol, cheddar cheese and if they are coming straight to you – bacon! Everything else, you can do without!!**
Thanks Giselle for a sparkling interview!
Drop by Gusto Wine Tours Facebook fan page and/or Twitter @Gustowinetours
Giselle and Mark can also be reached by email: gustowinetours@gmail.com
The Gusto Wine Tours website can be found at: http://www.gustowinetours.com
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Ciao a tutti
Love Giselle’s interview and even though I am Italian, I feel everything you said!!!
Have the same problem with clothes (I loved it when I lived in UK, Marks & Spencer’s trousers for short people like me!!!) Now I buy them online from http://www.bonprix.it, it is fantastic, they have all sizes, have a look!
Ciao from a grey Venice!
Great interview! Gives you a real down to earth idea of the ins and outs of living here. There are generally more ins than outs, but some of the outs can be a real pain in the derrière.
I can certainly relate to the expensive paracetamol and other normal everyday drugs. I believe Italy is one of Europe’s biggest markets for treatments. You spend a fortune in the chemists here – but if you have a codice fiscale card and hand it over when you buy something, you’ll get a receipt with the CF number on it – you can then give this to your commercialista accountant as a certain amount of the price of all the drugs is tax deductible.
Keep these interviews coming!
Cheers from Milan,
Alex
Enjoyed this, Giselle and Adrian! Like the Big Girl tips! I have friends bring large bottles of Vitamin C and ibuprofen as well as baking powder, Mexican salsas, and frozen bacon and tortillas from the states.
Thanks guys and. Alex, I didn’t know that about medicines! We’ll give that a go next time we brave the farmacia!