The City Mouse and the Country Mouse Make Peace

We love to have a project waiting in the wings. Now that things have settled down (at least a little), we can think about the next thing we want to do. We plan to spend this next year in Chiusa di Pesio. We’ll be waiting for Tony’s citizenship to go through, learning from Beatrice across the street how to milk cows and make cheese, and enjoying life in small-town Italy.

We’d also like to spend the next several months exploring Italy a little bit. We were totally unfazed by our eight hour train ride from Trieste. There are many amazing Italian cities within that distance of us. Florence and Venice are at the top of our list. We’d also like to spend some time on the seashore. However, July and especially August are the main months that Italians go on vacation. So I don’t want to go anywhere near the sea until after September. I’m too spoiled by being brought up homeschooled, and always going everywhere when nobody else was there.

I also want to go spend a day in Turin being a tourist. It was the first place we saw in Italy, but sightseeing was the last thing on our minds. We’ve passed through Bra as well (the capital of the Slow Food movement), but I’d like to go there for some kind of festival. Actually, we see festivals advertised all the time here. The only one we’ve attended is “Fruttinfiori” (fruit in flower) in Lagnasco. I wonder if Cuneo is some kind of anomaly, or if all Italian provinces have hundreds of festivals celebrating the local agricultural products.

We’ll probably make it back to the States sometime in January to visit family and check up on the business. That’s also when we’re planning our first trip to France.

That was my stroke of inspiration the other day. My solution to the problem of the city mouse and the country mouse. I think the French have the same dilemma. That’s why they live in Paris but have a summer home in Provence (or some other rural region). Only I think we’ll do it the other way round. We’ll live in the country (maybe the Dordogne, like Tony always used to say) and have an apartment in Paris.

Eventually we’d like to have our little farm outside of some pretty French village. Maybe we’ll remodel an old farmhouse. That’s sort of a rite of passage. But for now, we just want to find a little house to rent where we can keep a few goats and chickens and have a large vegetable garden. I’m not sure which region of France. Somewhere not too hot and not too flat. Somewhere with forests and winding rivers. Somewhere that looks like you could walk right out of it into a fairy tale. If you know of such a place, please let me know.

What do you think?