Author: Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Facelift

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

So, how do y’all like the new look? Since the family website has a notorious history of pirating content off my blog, I decided to steal some design elements off the website. I also copied almost all the posts off my old blog. Casteluzzo now tells the entire story (up till now) of our search for a dream to call home.

So here we are. We have a moment to breathe. All we have to do now for citizenship is to periodically take Gianfranco in the Anagrafe cookies, so he’ll remember to work on our case.

Tomorrow’s the Fourth of July.… Read more

We love Luigi

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Officially, he’s our real estate agent in Saluzzo. But he has gone above and beyond the call of duty. When we had just arrived in Italy, we were naively going about looking for a short-term housing contract. We needed a furnished place, and we thought we’d like to rent for six months. Every real estate agent told us the same thing. Rental contracts in Italy are for four years. Four years! We’d never lived in the same place for one year. We were utterly incapable of committing to four, especially without our furniture.

Enter Luigi. He showed us three different apartments he had for rent.… Read more

A primer on citizenship

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

My inner country mouse had the upper hand yesterday evening. We took our nightly walk over a route recommended by Giorgio, our host here. It began on a classic quite lane framed by tall trees, and then hugged the forested hill for two or three kilometers, looking out over fields of freshly cut hay and little farms.

I tried to think why agricultural land is so much more attractive here than in my native country. Partially, it’s because everything is Lilliputian by comparison. Small farmers are the rule, perhaps because the land has been in the same families for generations. Looking out over the gently rolling plain, one can see quite a few yellow houses, each surrounded by a little collection of fields with various crops, and perhaps a quaint old wooden fence enclosing a donkey or some chickens.… Read more

What color is your house?

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Sometimes my dreams run away with me. A month or so ago (just as things were getting very stressful here in Italy with the whole citizenship crisis) I decided that rather than living in Italy, I wanted to move to France, buy a castle, and make it into a bed and breakfast.

It arose from a little discussion Tony and I have frequently. It starts with him looking out the window of the bus (we take a lot of busses, since we don’t have a car in Italy) and saying, “I really like that yellow house.” Most of the houses here are yellow, and he likes them all.… Read more

Casteluzzo

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I’ve changed the name of my blog to be the same as the URL. Casteluzzo (“little castle” in Italian). It’s the name of the house in the country we’re going to have someday. And I’ve subtitled it “In Search of a Dream to call Home.” We’re not sure exactly what our dream is, but we’re pursuing it nonetheless. As Bilbo says, “It’s a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don’t keep your feet, there’s no knowing where you might be swept off to.”

I also decided to merge my old, very infrequent blog with Casteluzzo.… Read more

Consider the lilies of the field

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

This verse came up in my scripture reading this morning. 3 Nephi 13:28-30 (and Matthew 6:28-30). “Consider the lilies of the field how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; And yet I say unto you, that even Solomon in all his glory, was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, . . . even so will he clothe you, if ye are not of little faith.” He has clothed us and fed us and taken care of us in a multitude of ways here in Italy, as we are learning to do it ourselves.… Read more

Curiouser and Curiouser

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

Wonderful Alicia called Bruna at the Centro Migrante yesterday. Bruna confirmed that there does not exist a Permesso di Soggiorno that I can get, but that it’s not a problem, since in a few months Tony will be a citizen, and then I’ll be able to apply as the wife of an Italian. She even called the Capo di Polizia (Head of Police) at the Questura, and he said I should just stay without Permesso di Soggiorno and apply when Tony’s citizenship is recognized. He said there’s no way I will have any problems because Tony’s applying for citizenship.

So this is weird.… Read more

Dreams

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I dreamed last night that my friend Peter sent me a little kit to fill out for French citizenship. It was very easy, and I just sent it off. Then I found myself wandering with my family through the streets of an old city like Saluzzo. We were trying to make our way back down into the modern world, but we kept running into dead ends. Whenever we asked people for directions, they would tell us it was very far and we were going in the wrong direction. We ended up in front of a tiny house as Giorgio explained to us how he was going to make it into our house by adding three more floors.… Read more

The road to true love never did run smooth

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

I think our feelings, both of excitement at good news and horror at bad news may be permanently numbed by this experience. Monday bright and early we rode the bus down to our new little town. We hadn’t heard from Carla and Giorgio since Thursday, and they hadn’t been at Church on Sunday. We hoped they weren’t all deathly ill, or else too stressed out about dealing with this whole process to do it any more. But we decided to go down on Monday anyway, to pick up the famous letter from Gianfranco saying that we are indeed applying for citizenship jure sanguinis.… Read more

Trieste

Sarah Bringhurst Familia

And here the real fun begins. Ryanair has two daily flights from London to Bergamo. The first leaves at 6:35 in the morning. The second arrives at 10:00 at night. When we initially booked our tickets, we guessed that it would be easier to get to the airport in London early in the morning than to get home from Bergamo late at night. We never considered the idea that both were impossible.

We had already moved up to London to be close to Victoria Station, where we knew we could catch a bus to the airport. We calculated that we would need to leave at 3:30 a.m.,… Read more