A slightly black winterland

Posted on December 9, 2023 by Pecora Nera • Posted in home • Tagged englishman in italy, Fräulein, how-not-to-instal-a-pellet-stove, minor-disaster, wood-stoves • 6 Comments

Our house has been getting colder and colder, we use the radiators sparingly because gas is incredibly expensive in Bell Italia. Poor Fräulein who comes from the Baltic sea and should be more acclimatised to the baltic (cold) weather is feeling pretty cold. So in my infinite wisdom, I went out and bought a second hand pellet stove from a friend.

Davide sold me the pellet stove and part of the deal was he would help me to carry it upstairs and set it going for us. I had no idea how heavy this thing was, poor Gianni, Davide and I struggled with it up stairs. At one point I nearly suggested it would look better downstairs.

They went home and promised to return the following evening to start it up. Feeling quite satisfied with my daft self, carefully I connected the rear of the pellet stove to the special round hole in the chimney breast. The following evening as promised Davide returned and turned it on and the Stove promptly blew dirty soot all over the place. Some fool had put the tube on the inlet instead of the outlet. Looking rather sheepishly at Davide, who was standing closer to the stove than I was and therefore ended up dirtier than I did. I watched as he rolled his eyes and swapped the tube around.

Davide was less than impressed with the way things were going.

With the exhaust now correctly connected, Davide pressed the start button and we waited with bated breath as the machine first went through a cleaning cycle and then… blew a fuse and switched off. Fräulein was sent on a fools errand to buy some more fuses. Did I point out it was the Feast of the Immaculate Conception and the shops that sold little glass fuses were closed, meanwhile Davide and I cleaned the soot and waited for the return of Fräulein .

There weren’t any fuses to be had, so Davide went home, but not before saying “Let’s hope your chimney hasn’t been closed” That gave me pause to think and a sleepless night full of weird dreams. 8:30 in the morning, I launched my drone and flew it over my roof. The roof had been renewed by the previous owner and there wasn’t a chimney in sight. They had been capped and tiled over. So now I understand why the wood stove we attempted to light smoked us out …

Monday evening Davide, Gianni and I will carry the Pellet Stove back downstairs and connected it to a hole in the lounge near the stairs in the hope some of the heat will flow upstairs.

So watch this space to see if we manage and that it doesn’t blow another fuse.

Driving Licence, Carabinieri and Fines

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Pecora Nera • Posted in home • Tagged carabinieri, englishman in italy, Fräulein, german-in-italy, italian driving licence, life-in-italy, verbali-italiano • 3 Comments

It is nearly Christmas, good will to all except the carabinieri and Fintel Engineering SRL of Milan. Let me explain why, last month I was calmly driving to town when three ~~wise~~ men driving in the opposite direction flashed their headlamps to warn me that the police or carabinieri were stopping cars to check the documents of the driver. I knew I wasn’t going to have a problem, because my car wasn’t due its revisione (MOT car exam) until the following month and my tyres were more or less ok.

When the carabinieri flagged me down, I greeted them politely and handed over my documents. Imagine my horror when the carabinieri pointed out that my driving licence had expired at the end of June, some four months ago… As he ambled over to his colleague, I googled OUT OF DATE DRIVING LICENCE IN ITALY. The result was a penalty between €2,257 and €9,032, I was trying to think how I was going to explain this to Fräulein, then the carabinieri returned and told me I had an even bigger problem, because some company (Fintel Engineering) in Milan had put a hold on my car and I couldn’t use it until they released it. Plus I had to pay the ‘Verbali” €1,300 this is a charge because the police ‘found’ me!!!

Out of date, ok it really expired in July 2023

Driving home I was wondering if Fräulein would like to emigrate to Bogato in South America and leave this expensive mess behind. I mean if the verbali was €1,300 and €1900 if I didn’t pay within five days. God only knows how much Fintel Engineering wanted to release my beloved but old car. I drove home and broke the news to Fräulein that for the foreseeable future she had been promoted to my chauffeur. well until I sorted this mess out

First job was to pay the fine for using an out of date license, the good news was it was only €110 and not the possible huge amount that google suggested plus the €1300 charge for finding me, good God, all they had to do was ask ‘where is the Englishman who lives with the beautiful German woman with red hair and anyone could have told them!’

Fräulein was remarkably calm about the whole problem, no, Why did you forget? or Maybe next time you will try to remember… She is such a sweet woman.

I have to book an appointment with Mr Cretino , I am sure you remember him, I wrote many posts here about when I was organising my first Italian driving licence.

To finish, Fräulein and I are having a little fun trying to buy reasonably priced bottles of wine. So here is tonights.

Purchased by Fräulein at Gulliver’s Supermarket
German Riesling 2022
Torrevilla
€2,99
We gave it an 8.5 out of 10 (Fräulein said it could be a little more fruity)

I’ll huff and i’ll puff and blow your barbecue down

Posted on September 21, 2023 by Pecora Nera • Posted in home • Tagged englishman in italy, Fräulein, fun expats, humour, italian barbecue, Pecora Nera • 5 Comments

Fräulein and I fell in love with each other…. sorry, I got carried away for a moment, it was with a with a stone built barbecue. The barbecue was red and white and ours for a little over 200 euros. We asked if we could collect the barbecue in pieces. No came the reply, it arrives in one piece.

We searched our wallets and found the money. Happy days. The delivery was promised for Wednesday, so we went to the butchers and bought sausages, steak, pork chops and WINE.

On Wednesday morning, with barbecue tongs in my hand I eagerly awaited the delivery of our new barbecue, what arrived was a jigsaw puzzle, a very heavy jigsaw puzzle, without any instructions.

Sorry, but wasn’t it supposed to be red and white!

The delivery driver, helpfully pointed out that we should paint the barbecue with special paint (that was very expensive) and glue it together with special heat resistant mastic (also very expensive). Oh what joy, Fräulein and I grilled the meat we had bought in the oven and contemplated our new jigsaw with a couple of glasses of wine.

With exceptional teamwork and minimal arguing we managed to glue and paint our barbecue, Saturday was looming closer and we were getting very excited. Fräulein turned out to be a pretty good painter, I have decided her next project will be the bedroom walls…

Some donkey, obviously not Fräulein or me (it must have been the ghost of our house) painted a internal piece white instead of grey.. Tsk tsk. There are no recriminations in this house. As the barbecue started to take shape, we bought some more meat and wine to replace the stuff we had eaten and drank three days before.

During the evening we settled down to a nice bottle of wine, a little food and sat admiring our work, even the mosquitoes took the night off and didn’t bother us. Content, does not explain how we felt.

Today we heard not one bang, but two. I instantly knew what the problem was, after all I have in the past attempted to tile a bathroom wall and been rudely awakened to the sound of tiles falling onto the floor.

Needless to say, Saturdays barbecue has once again been cancelled and we will again grill and eat the meat. But don’t worry my dear friends in bloggo land, because on Tuesday we are going to Munich to celebrate Oktoberfest. Fräulein has bought a Dirndl (a sexy traditional bavarian dress) and I have bought some Lederhosen (sexy leather pants).

We might upload some photos… after we rebuild our barbecue and burn some meat and drink some wine with our friends.

It is still a bit Baltic

Posted on August 20, 2023 by Pecora Nera • Posted in home • Tagged an englishman in italy, Englishman in germany, Fräulein, humour, Pecora Nera • 7 Comments

Fräulein said,

It is going to be sunny today.

I am sure it is.

Well maybe it will be.

I wish I had her confidence in the German weather.

We have been in Northern Germany for a week and I can honestly say I haven’t seen so many pasty white legs since I was last in rainy Manchester.

Friday night Fräulein got all romantic and moved the bedroom into the garden.

What if it rains?

It won’t

Are you sure?

It didn’t rain during the night, but I woke up in a damp dew kissed bed.

In the morning we put the bedding and pillows on the garden table in the vain hope the insipid German sun might dry them enough so we could use them again.

Taking a nice promenade along the beach we met quite a few other mad people who thought walking in the wind and drizzle was good for their health. I am enjoying our German holiday but I am beginning to miss the sunshine and I am worrying about my Vitamin D intake.

Topping up Vitamin D with a stroll in the German sunshine

Fräulein has taught me a new phrase, ‘what is that ? – vot iz daz ?’ it is easy to remember because it sounds like an Englishman trying to speak German. . Fräulein pronounces it as Was ist das? ‘

This morning in our local cafe, I saw a German eating bacon and eggs !!! I could have hugged him. I have been surviving on croissants stuffed with ham with a mug of German tea. Boldly I marched over to him pointed at his breakfast and said ‘Vot iz Daz? ’ he looked at me strangely and then replied ‘Strammer Max’

Fräulein was laughing as I walked back to our table and demanded that she order me some bacon and eggs.

While I was eating my breakfast Fräulein told me, I had slept really well, this translates to I didn’t snore much last night so Fräulein slept well. Maybe it was sleeping in the fresh air of the garden..

This is really worrying, what if Fräulein decides I should move a bed to the garden and sleep more often out there, while she gets a good nights sleep in our bed..

And I am not over impressed with the German’s attempts at making English Tea. It tastes ok-ish, it is a bit weak and looks very strange. Is it normal for the milk to sink to the bottom ? Fortunately Fräulein can make a proper mug of English tea.

Today is Sunday, so we are chilling in the garden, tomorrow Fräulein has some German bureaucratic things to deal with, then we are heading home, with a stop off at Therme Erding, the largest spa in Europe.

It’s a bit Baltic

Posted on August 13, 2023 by Pecora Nera • Posted in home • Tagged an englishman in italy, Fräulein, Holiday in Germany, humour, Lübeck, Pecora Nera • 6 Comments

Over the past couple of days Fräulein and I have been discussing taking a mini break somewhere, just a week to relax and recharge our batteries before our hectic work schedules restart. Yesterday Fräulein was watching a documentary about Greece and their cuisine and cute houses, she was quite animated and excited, obviously I was quite interested in the local beverages and the warm blue sea.

A week sitting next to the beach drinking ouzo with the occasional swim sounded perfect. In fact I was really taken by the idea. I started planning which clothes I should take. Shorts, knotted white hanky, grey socks to wear with sandals, the usual things an Englishman takes to the beach.

And then she came up with another exotic destination for our mini break… Lübeck! With the little dots over the letter ‘U’ it was beginning to sound a little German. You will need to pack a jumper, she told me, it can get a little chilly in the evenings. With huge excitement she added, “We can go swimming in the Baltic Sea.”

Hmm! So I won’t need the knotted hanky, but probably a good supply of goose fat.

A liberal coating of goose fat is needed before entering the Baltic Sea

I tried to explain to Fräulein that we have an English expression namely ‘It’s a bit Baltic my dear’ this is used when the weather is bitter and cold. The kind of day when it is better to sit in front of the fire and listen to the wind howling outside, whilst dreaming of a summer holiday drinking ouzo on a hot Greek beach. I even sent her the following photo to prove I wasn’t kidding.

I have decided not to pack my swimming trucks, knotted hanky and shorts, my case will be full of jumpers, thick trousers and my new swimming costume that will hopefully arrive before we leave on Tuesday. I will need a lot of German Schnapps to keep me warm.

I hope you have a nice WARM holiday planned or are already enjoying a nice holiday on a sun kissed beach, Ok I am off to find my scarf and woolly hat.

Sheep and a Wild Boar

Posted on March 24, 2023 by Pecora Nera • Posted in home • Tagged englishman in italy, expat, Fräulein, Italian wildlife, living in italy, Pecora Nera, teaching in italy, wild boars • 8 Comments

Today started off fairly uneventfully, my first lessons started at eight am at my favourite wine cantina. Is eight am too early to start drinking wine? If I can somehow manipulate the English lesson to include among other things, how different wines taste, can I please start drinking wine at eight am? After two lessons with the owner of the cantina and his right hand woman I went off to a local school to provide lessons to all the children. The primary school has five classes, three toilets, a dining room for lunch time and a grand, no an impressive number of children. There are a total of nine children in the school, the staff almost outnumber the pupils. Class five has only two children, so on any day they have a 50% chance of being the top of the class, or the bottom of the class. After two hours at the school, I really wished I had drank some wine at the cantina.

At 12:30 I drove down to the little house we are buying and had another look at it. Amazingly it still looks as if it was the right decision to buy it. The plaster I ~~skillfully~~ stuck to the wall ( I nearly resorted to using super glue to keep it in place) was still in clinging valiantly to the wall. Admittedly it was the ‘easier’ first layer of plaster, I haven’t yet told Fräulein that I have purchased 50 kilos of final plaster and I will spend Saturday morning turning the air blue with my language as I attempt to create a perfectly smooth final finish. It is possible I might have wasted some of our money on the 50 kilos of plaster.

Driving off to a lesson over the hills and far away I encountered a shepherd, a collection of motley sheepdogs and a lot of sheep. I managed to screech to a halt and the car behind me managed to stop just before he ran into the back of me. One good thing about meeting several hundred sheep, is my car won’t need washing for a couple of days, well certainly the front and sides won’t.

We are lucky to live in the countryside, Fräulein is a city girl and she is still getting used to driving down long winding roads in her monster truck. I sent her my photo of the sheep and she sent me back her photo of her last encounter with sheep.

My photo shows more sheep, however I have to admit two donkeys are pretty impressive. A couple of months ago, a wild boar ran across the road and attempted to head butt Fräulein’s monster truck, the truck suffered minor damage, bits of plastic fell off and the wild boar managed to run away with nothing more than a headache.

The repair of the monster truck cost €2,200 it seems bits of plastic are very expensive in Italy. Fräulein was really lucky, because cars that tangle with wild boars normally do not survive the incident, the weight of wild boars in Italy can reach 150 kg or 331 lb in real money.

There has been some progress in preventing car collisions with wild boars in Italy. Pedestrian crossings are being painted all over the place and hopefully more boars will learn to use them.

And as today is Friday and I refuse to work at the weekend, I can look forward to ~~resting, reading books and relaxing with some wine~~ going to our little house and trying to plaster the guest bedroom’s wall, swear a lot, and paint the lounge. Fortunately Fräulein is a good painter, maybe I can persuade her that it will look better if she does the painting and I just watch her.

Have a good Weekend

Pecora Nera and Fräulein.

And so it starts

Posted on March 12, 2023 by Pecora Nera • Posted in home • Tagged an englishman in italy, Buying a house in Italy, Fräulein, House in Italy, Pecora Nera blog, piemonte • 18 Comments

As you know my life has never been what you might consider.. simple. I have been living in Bel Italia for eighteen years and never bought a house, why? Because I was supposed to be moving to Sicily. A month ago the decision was made to buy a house. Let the fun start.

Fräulein and I met Signore Roberto in the local bar and over a couple of glasses of prosecco we agreed a price for his house. Originally Fräulein and I wanted to rent the house, but Roberto persuaded us to buy it. He had had some tenants from hell who had wrecked the house, just like the Muckers who trashed my UK house and he didn’t want to rent it again.

His tenants had destroyed the boiler so Fräulein and I decided our first purchase should be a wood burning stove to heat downstairs whilst we made repairs, the boiler could wait. We hot footed it off to an old man who had advertised a beautiful little stove on Facebook, in fact he had eight or more stoves. Every time we tried to haggle with him over the price he would remind us of how beautiful the stove was. There was an old rusting iron wheel the rest of the barrow was missing but he said “it is a wonderful wheel, absolutely beautiful”. We were ~~conned~~ into buying this lovely beautiful antique old stufa (his words not mine) and promptly installed it in the living room, It did look quite wonderful surrounded by our drills, hammers and assorted tools. Eager to try it, I threw some toilet paper in and lit it.

It worked so a couple of pieces of wood were added. Within 10 minutes we noticed a few stray wisps of smoke near the ceiling. We checked the stufa and then the tubing, no leaks, it was very strange, smoke was definitely leaking from somewhere. We opened the windows and even more smoke entered the living room. Fräulein spotted tendrils of smoke leaking out of the air conditioner unit. Fantastic whoever had installed the air conditioner had cut big holes into the chimney for the wires and pipes. Job number two would be removing the air conditioner and repairing the chimney. Fräulein was coughing a little bit so I suggested she went outside, she decided to go upstairs and low and behold, we had plumes of smoke in two of the rooms…… Maybe I had now found job number 3 and 4…

Fortunately the source of the smoke was traced to a chimney cap in the bathroom that had rusted through.

I asked my builder friend to come and have a look at our new house, “bring a screwdriver and a hammer, I want you to remove an air conditioner unit” Riccardo the builder, turned up, he walked around the house and sucked his teeth a couple of times and raised the odd eyebrow. I took him upstairs to look at a wall where the plaster was cracked and in my humble opinion was about to fall off. Riccardo confirmed my opinion by poking it with a screwdriver and I watched as it did fall off.

So now we have a large heart at the top of the stairs, I was wondering if we could turn it into a feature. I think there are four more chunks of plaster about to fall to the ground. Does anyone know a cheap plasterer? Yesterday I bought twenty-five kilo of plaster, seven kilos stuck to the wall and ten kilos fell to the floor. In my defence it was my first attempt at plastering a wall. Fräulein was very calm about it. I splashed the wall with water and with quick confident and decisive strokes I spread the plaster on the wall and then watched as it fell onto my feet. I might have swore a couple of times. I tried again, amazingly there was more plaster on the floor than on the wall. I was tempted to phone a friend or look on You Tube. Memories of the great poo adventure came flooding back. If my grandad was still alive he would have plastered it in five minute and thinking about him I realised the plaster was too dry, so I added more water and mixed it again.

On Monday I will go to the house to see if the plaster has stayed in place, if it has I will tackle one of the other ‘problem’ areas. If I can remove the loose plaster and repair it, I can then pay a real plasterer to skim the surface of the walls. I think the house has more holes than Swiss cheese.

Fräulein meets the locals (and me trying to learn German)

Posted on November 11, 2022 by Pecora Nera • Posted in Language • Tagged an englishman in italy, englishman, expat, Fräulein, fun expats, German, humour, Pecora Nera • 3 Comments

It is Friday afternoon, Fräulein and I have gone down to the local bar for a cappuccino and brioche. We both know cappuccino should only be drank in the morning, but we are both stranieri in bell’italia. Like an idiot I suggest Fräulein should start to teach me some of her German language. She readily agrees so I went into the bar and asked for some paper, pen and a big glass of red wine…. The most important thing was the red wine. Knowing my proficiency at learning Italian over the past fifteen years, wine was going to be an important learning aid.

One to ten in German, plus some other words..

After I had struggled through trying to learn number 1 to 10 and we had drank the cappuccino plus the red wine (Rotwein = red wine in German! who would have known) and had eaten some chocolates that I won at the bar. I am sure Fräulein thinks she won them, not that it matters as I ate most of them when she was trying to teach me numbers 1 to 10. We decided to leave the bar.

On the way to the car, an old Italian man greeted us….

Old Man: Salve. (Hello)

We both responded back in perfect Italian ‘Ciao’ (Fräulein’s Italian is better than mine)

He looked at Fräulein and said “You are stupendous, you are beautiful, so tall, Magnificent.”

I asked him his name and he replied You are so lucky very fortunate, she is so beautiful”

Ok thank you, but what is your name?

He completely ignored my question and said, “but you are shorter than me and she is so tall and beautiful and stupendous”

OK. I understand she is 10 cm taller than me and it is me who has to stand on tip toes for a kiss, but.

She will never need to stand on tip toes to kiss me, unless I am stood on two boxes

While this conversation is going on, Fräulein is giggling like a schoolgirl. The old man told us he was 82 years old and followed this up with “Fräulein is wonderful and beautiful”…. Although I asked him four or five times for his name, he was so entranced with the beauty of Fräulein, he never got around to telling me his name…

So at the moment I am still trying to learn Italian so I can laugh and talk to the locals and now I am trying hard to learn some German. Why? I am not sure, Fräulein’s English is near perfect, her Italian is much better than mine, for example, she said I don’t use conditional tenses when speaking Italian, whatever that means.