A ruckus over 20% tax

There are many new things to learn about living in Italy, and one of them is how to assimilate into, and make sense of, our place in the ex-pat community.  Ex-pat is a word many object to, in that it implies a social class that differenciates ex-pats from immigrants. Although I am aware of the class distinction, for clarity I will use the word ex-pats.  So. Our ex-pat community here is mainly made up of English people who have lived in Umbria for a long time.  Most of them live out in the country, up in the hills above the Niccone Valley.  They are a fairly tight community and pass on information to one another, provide security warnings, and generally keep one another apprised of the events that are happening in the community.

We are on the peripheral of this group, not being English, not living up in the hills with kids in school, and not living here long.  This past week we were included in a bit of a wild fire ruckus in the ex-pat community regarding taxes. It seems that the former prime minister, Letti, before his departure from office, passed a law that said that any money transferred in from outside of Italy, would be subjected to a 20% withholding tax that the bank would impose and collect on the wire transfer. The reasoning of the government was that there are many ex-pats who are not paying money on investments made abroad, and it would be the job of the bank to withhold the 20% and then people would have to document at the end of the year, that the money should not have been with held.  Hope you followed that.  The US has a trade agreement with Italy that we are not subject to double taxation. So if we pay 20% capital gains tax on our investments in the US we should not have to pay the 20% here.  Now a big however, if you are a resident of Italy, which the Stoic One will be this year, you must pay Italian tax, and then deduct that from your US tax.  Oh, mamma mia...one can see the cost of accountants going up now.  Everyone was in a tizzy about this.  The Italians said, the law will never change, you will have to pay your 20% and they will never give you your money back in your life time.  I believed them.

So I called the best financial advisor in the world, Will Wolf (WilliamWolf@MyInsightAdvisor.com)
and asked him about all of this.  We had an hour of financial therapy. I felt so much better talking to him.  Then this morning, miracle of miracles, the Italians "suspended" the law requiring the 20% hold back.  We live in a strange, global world.

Speaking of strange...

 Cigarette smoking reducing fertility should be the least of the negative effects, but I guess this is more scary than lung cancer!

Rain

We have had a lot of rain this February.  The local people have said it is 'unusual".  I am giving up on the whole usual or unusual bit as far as weather is concerned.  The weather we have is what we have and ours has been very wet!

You are looking at one of Umbertide's claim to fame.  It is where the Reggia (stream, now more like a raging river) goes into the Tiber River. Watching the river is one of the major passtimes of the old dudes, right up there next to playing cards.

We have another little river in the area called the Niccone.  It also overflowed its bank because of a landslide.

In this picture, you can see that there is a green bridge that is no longer functional.  The road washed out and with it the bridge.  The road went to an abandonded house that had been left as a memorial to the family that lived there that was killed by the Nazis at the end of WWII.  It also looks like the farmer's cabbage field may be a little soggy!

Just when you think the sun will never shine again, we are greeted with this scene.

This is the Tiber river, now calm.  The sun came out, and all was well once again.

New friends, new projects

I am so very happy.  Our new friends, Nancy and Luther, have decided to buy an apartment in the Centro Storico of Umbertide. We are so excited to have new people who choose to live here.  I met Nancy through this blog! She emailed me, told me about her desire to retire in Italy, and we agreed to meet.  It was as if we had been friends forever.  Such a great feeling.

They live in Virginia.  He worked in IT for IBM and she worked as a web designer.  They lived in Germany for many years, so the shock of living in Italy should not be too severe. I have really missed having female friends here, so I am very excited to have them join our community.

Nancy writes a blog that I encourage you to read.  It is about her househunting experiences here in Umbria.

http://nancygoestoitaly.com

The Stoic One and I have resumed our Italian classes.  This means we go to Perugia Mon. Wed. Friday.  We decided we couldn't go every day, as it was just too much.  Our teachers are as charming as usual, and I see no way around it but to learn the subjunctive tense.  I have been dancing around that tense for years now, but I think I am finally ready to attempt it.

We have had loads of rain here, but I am not going to weather complain.  We are so lucky compared to many other places in the world.

My latest idea is that I would like to write a book about Umbertide and World War II.  There was a bomb that was dropped on the town on April 25, 1944.  There is a historian in town who has written several books about the subject.  He is 94 years old, and still quite lucid so they say.  I have all of my questions ready, in Italian, and am ready to meet with him.  Wish me luck.

Here is Luca in his latest sweater.  I think this is the favorite of the town's people.  They call him "elegante" when he walks by.

A sense of community Italian style

When I talk to different Americans about why they love Italy and or why they would like to live here,  a common answer is "life style."  I also love the Italian life style. But what exactly does life style mean to people? As people discuss this topic further, they talk about life being at a slower pace, which means that they live at a slower pace.  What makes the pace slower here, or to think a bit differently about it, why is the pace in the US so fast?  One reason, which I have talked about ad nauseum, is the difference in our understanding of the value of time.  Coming from Silicon Valley, there was a sense that time was a precious and finite resource.  To not value time, brings up the idea of profligate spending.  Italians, as opposed to most Americans, have a much broader sense of time.  I think that it is based upon living in a place that has been inhabited for more than 2000 years. I am still struggling with the idea that time is something to be enjoyed rather than segmented, and accounted for in a total reckoning at the end of the day.

Life style is a way of living that reflects our values, habits and attitudes.  My life style here in Umbria is quite different than my life style was in Oakland, California.  It is not only that I am in a small town.  I have lived in small towns in the US and trust me it is not the same as living in this small town in Umbria.  For me life style also includes a sense of community; the emotional experience of community; a sense of belonging, of identification, of feeling emotionally and physically safe; a feeling that I can influence others and they can influence me. I feel all of these things in Umbertide.  I know that part of this is because we are retired, and so we can take the time to integrate into the community here.  Part of this is that there are not many Americans in town, so the citizens here still have patience and interest with foreigners.

We had lunch here the other day with a mixed group of Italians and Americans.  We talked about how you can never really "belong" in a small community like Umbertide.  I said I belong here as much as I want to belong.  Quite frankly any more feeling of belonging would feel very invasive, but that is just me.

I have a very simple example to show how a sense of community works for me here.  We were leaving town for a few days, and asked our friends Joseph and Paul to watch our dog Luca.  Before we took him to their home, we had Luca bathed and groomed.  (He came back with a bit of a short hair cut.) When two of the Italian women in town saw Luca, they almost had a heart attack.  "It is too cold to have the dog in such short hair."  "Luca will surely catch cold without a coat. What was Susan thinking?"  So far this might seem like criticism rather than sense of community.  What happened next seems like it could only have happened here.

Clementina and Simona decided that Luca needed a sweater. so they got him one and put it on him!  It looks a bit like a horse blanket to me.  They were so sweet to do it.  They thought I might be mad, but I was touched that they noticed him, were concerned for him and took steps to fix it.  That to me represents a sense of community.

(When I got back in town, I did return the pony blanket and got him a proper US sweater.)

A sense of community Italian-American style.

Having McDonald's and a hot dog in Florence

Sometimes guests who are visiting us, have a longing for American fast food. I think it is difficult for people to totally change their diet, even if the new diet is delicious and healthy.  So for those readers out there who are visiting Italy and have a hankering for American fast food, here are some comments from my guests.

The McDonald's in the train station has a regular American menu and the food tastes like it does in the U.S.  The store is clean,  the bathrooms are free and the security guards forcibly run off the gypsies who ply their trade. 

Hot dogs, with mustard, (sorry no relish) can be had at cafes. The cost is about the same as it is in the US.

Any comments from others who have eaten American fast food in Italy?

January in Venice

In the winter Venice is like an abandoned theater.  The play is finished, but the echoes remain. (Arbit Blatas)

Venice is a slippery, mysterious, seductive city. Its narrative is one of romance, longing and escape from the harsh technological drama of the 21st century. Samuel Taylor Coleridge called drama "that willing suspension of disbelief, for the moment, which  constitutes poetic faith…"

Can you enter this city and for the moment, suspend your disbelief? Your logic tells you that this is a city that can not survive.  It is feeding off the mortal majesty of generations past and its history is not sustainable into the future.  Other than artifacts, we believe that the past is not worth preserving if nothing new is added to complement the thinking. And yet… in this place, in this heavy laden city, we preserve and revere the past and do not ask what we can add, or change or supplement,  only how can we keep from destroying that which has been done. That desire to be connected to something larger than our own lifetime, our own generation, creates within us this poetic faith of place, and hope. If ever a city emblemetizes poetic faith, it is Venice.

Look past the poster charm of this photo.  What do you really see?  A canal of water where there should be a street alley.  What does this mean?  Why does this charm us? What is the narrative of this place behind the stillness of the watery reflection.  Do you see what Colerideg meant by poetic faith?  There is a poetic faith that this stillness, this captivating scene evokes more than the reality of a polluted body of water and a city that is slowly sinking into the ruins of its moors.

That is what you must look for when you visit Venice. Just take a moment. Only for a moment, to look past the reality, and perhaps you can catch the shimmer of light that can break through the cold realism of our scientific heart. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

January in Asocli Piceno

January is the perfect time to travel in Italy, as long as there is no rain or fog.  On sunny days it is almost impossible to sit quietly home.  The urge to explore comes over us, and off we go.

The first place on our agenda was Ascoli Piceno. We went there with our guests after January 6th to explore the sales.  I love to shop in this city. First the city is absolutely gorgeous, second they have the nicest sales people, and finally they have great clothes, all within walking distance, with no car needed.  Driving to Ascoli Piceno from Umbertide we pass the wildest looking territory. It is hard to believe that there will be a town in the mountains, much less one as stunning as this.

Saldi is the word for "sales" in Italian.  January is the month. The sales start on January 6th and continue til the end of the month.  Everything in Italy, by edict, is on sale! This is when I buy my winter coat, sweaters, etc.  I try to contain myself during the rest of the year.

In case you think all I do is eat and shop (not too far from the truth), we also did some sight seeing with our friends.  We discovered the reopened crypt in the town Basilica  that we hadn't visited before.  It is stunningly beautiful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Emygdius

I am not Catholic, so theses saint stories fascinate me.  Anyway, this is the crypt of Saint Emygdius.
There are restored mosaics on the ceiling, travertine marble on the floors and elegant columns throughout.

The actual crypt of the saint is also down here, but I am not too much into the relics and dead saint bones thing. I think the protestant strain of the family knocked that out of me.  It just seems creepy and weird, but this place was bright, and comforting. I could have stayed down here for a while, but the Stoic One was pushing on.


The piazza in this town is one of the most beautiful in all of Italy, in my opinion.  I love it. The decorations for Christmas was out these shooting stars coming from the tower.  Very dramatic.

I love Italian children in the abstract.  These little darlings are waiting patiently for their ice skates to be put on.

Isn't this a great scene?

Have I mentioned that I love Umbria, Le Marche, Italy????