Un anno fa

Un anno fa, a year ago. Today marks the day exactly one year ago that we got the keys to our apartment in Sardegna and slept on the cold floor on our air mattresses in a sleeping bag. That night we made a simple salad with fennel, orange and olives and opened a local bottle of wine. Paper plates, plastic cutlery… luckily the wine glasses from IKEA had arrived that morning – even before we got here. Tonight we are going out to dinner to celebrate: a bit fancier in a restaurant with ceramic plates and proper forks and knives.

So much has happened in a year and at the same time not much at all. Slow living. Our apartment feels like home, it’s comfy and we have everything we need (happily ignoring the hot water running out, the power shutting down with 3 or more electric appliances on and wifi quitting on us when it rains). Happy as a clam.

The first half of the year was all bliss, excitement and discovery mixed with a little stress of getting everything functioning, from register with the municipality to getting our Carta di Identità and health insurance and stumbling our way through Italian phone conversations with the parcel delivery guys. The winter went super slow, getting used to a house without heating (and leakage and crumbling walls) and a little sleepy town where everything goes oh so quiet in winter time.

Beautiful spring
When the dust settled we really got to enjoy the beautiful spring that was even better than I could have imagined. This season went by a lot faster: the warm sunshine, the empty beaches, long walks, bike rides, fields full of flowers and incredible sunsets. Eating outside every meal. All this time we had been here on our own. Friends and family were planning to come and visit in the spring, but Covid wouldn’t let them. So we stayed in our cocoon for a bit longer while our little town came alive for the summer season.

By the end of June our first visitors arrived and we finally got to show where we live in real life. After that, and a long hot summer, at the end of August the next guest arrived and then it kind of didn’t stop until the end of October. We’ve been socializing, showed people around our island, made day trips, visited many, many restaurants and had lots of evenings with good wine and friends.

How lovely it all was, I must say I am happy to get back into my cocoon for a little bit. Recharge. And finally dedicate some real time to my creative study sabbatical that I had planned, but never really took off due to all the fun interruptions. The plan was to start in September, and although I did spent some days playing and experimenting, it wasn’t enough to get into the flow of discovering new things and getting lost in something. But I have started now! Doing multiple courses at the same time – including Italian – I feel like progress is being made. From drawing boxes in perspective to painting flowers and drawing realistic portraits.

The slow, quiet – and wet – season has started and we are crawling back into our cocoons. Looking forward to evenings by the fireplace with strong red wine, stew, pumpkin risotto’s and roasted chestnuts.