This post is for those collecting information and opinions on the packing & shipping process, as well as those just interested in how John and I are staying married through all of this. I could say I was just joking, but I’ve always heard that there is truth in jest. Believe me when I say that this whole moving overseas process is not particularly easy on couples. Well, moving in general isn’t, but it gets a bit more complex when you throw in shipping overseas, customs, delivery in a foreign location.  Lots of stress with many details not to be overlooked. We’re both in our mid 60’s and by the end of each day we’re just plain tired. But we try to laugh through it all and remember to give thanks and kiss each other before our heads hit the pillows at night. And hopefully we’ve contracted with the right mover to smooth out the waves a bit.

Everyone will have different shipping needs, determined by what you absolutely need or want to ship to your new home, what you can realistically get through customs and what you can or cannot buy in your new homeland. Do you want to pack it up yourselves or hire someone do that part? We looked at some different options, and determined we’d do our own packing. We could have stripped this further down than what we boxed up, but it’s all about choices as these boxes just contain things. Yes, a lot of memories and cherished belongings, such as my old family pictures, art books from my dad, John’s beloved guitars… you can see where this is going. We took note of what we wanted and looked around the internet a bit. Checked out what those companies offered and the reviews not on their sites. This is the company we chose, upakweship.com. They had some mixed reviews. We checked with pods and shipmybox kind of sites, but in the end this company we chose had a lot of great options and affordable. Customer service to-date has rocked. They have kept their schedule as promised but the jury is still out until the shipment is delivered safely to our new home. Right now it is at sea. I’ll keep you updated on progress and final outcome.

From among the shipping options, we picked 2 of the U-CRATE 100. After you sign contract, give the company all pertinent data on your move and give a down payment, they ship you, when you’re ready, your pallets or any other container you have chosen. These are pallet kits that come with the side and tops, strapping, etc. John, being his meticulous self, calculated the size of boxes we needed to fit nice and snug within the kits.

Any holes in the stack, as there were a few because of some odd shaped items, we just stuffed with blankets and pillows. It was just amazing that all the things we felt we couldn’t part with in our lives, actually fit in these two kits. John did a wonderful job getting them ready. We had the company send the truck back out to get them, and they headed to the port of Charleston, SC.

Once in Charleston, they awaited their shipping assignment. It takes about a week to 10 days for that assignment. We were just notified this past Friday that they sailed. It was 10 days on the nose. The company gave us the tracking info, so we

are watching live as our ship sails for the UK and then on to the port of Rotterdam. There are a couple of sites you can use to track. I’ve been checking Marine Traffic and Vessel Finder. (I’m sure checking one would be just fine, but it’s my OCD manifesting itself.)  Upakweship assigned us a contact in Rotterdam, with whom we have started a conversation. The hand-off went to Global Moving and Shipping. They will keep us up to date on arrival of our shipment and its trucking to Italy & customs. They asked us to fill out a few more forms in regards to customs clearance and delivery. From reading the reviews, problems arose for others with customs and delivery to final destination. Per Global’s letter to me today:

Please be advised that additional charges will occur if we are dealing with the following situations :

• Delivery above the ground floor (curbside) or first floor (full service)
• Bad access where a truck cannot get anywhere close to your residence
• Arrangement of a parking permit or a no parking zone
• Items in your shipment that are less than 6 months old, wine, spirits and/or cigarettes (duties and taxes)
• Physical customs inspection or an x-ray of your shipment by customs either in the USA or in Rotterdam

In this case these charges will have to paid before the delivery of your shipment.

I think the key to doing your own packing should encompass at least these points:

• use heavy weight boxes with a lot of tape on all seams
• think ahead like John did and calculate contents – size of boxes and how they fit by drawing up a diagram
• make certain the kits are well wrapped and strapped correctly. – provided
• follow all instructions on labeling – template provided
• absolutely be diligent on your packing list as this will make or break you when it hits customs examination – online app provided
• be honest on any forms you fill out!
• buy insurance – it’s offered
• double-check any issues with delivery to your final destination and apprise the shipping company

With all this said, we have no idea what will transpire with our shipment once it gets to Europe. We’re hoping we covered all the bases, but will prepare for the unexpected. Again, it’s just things. Yes, things we treasure, but not necessary for survival. Case in point: we know of a  couple from our county here in Virginia that moved to Italy about 1-1/2 years ago. I do not have their shipping details, but know that they company they contracted shipped to an Italian port. Their entire shipment burned at the docks. Not a happy story, but they had insurance and when I spoke to the wife recently, she said moving was the best decision they ever made. No regrets.

Some notes about our delivery: Customer service on the US side thought our road looked suspicious for a truck delivery and we would need another delivery site. I’ve informed my contact at Global, so they are not blindsided and have Luigi’s (our property manager) contact info.  Luigi has graciously offered to meet the truck in an agreed location to transfer to a smaller truck to take to our house. But hopefully once Luigi and our EU contact talk, they may find out our road can take their initial truck. Keeping our fingers crossed on this one. All we can do is cover all the bases and hope for the best. I’m breathing in and out.

This is definitely a story to be continued…….

 

 

 

 

From our past vacations, we narrowed down our search to the Abruzzo & Molise regions. The terrain & climate are somewhat similar to Virginia. We love the mountains and the water so living in the hills, between them both, appealed to us. What isn’t there to love? The food is always good (well more like amazing), views to die for, the people capture your heart and living can be very affordable. And also, a biggy – half my family is from San Salvo, Abruzzo, which is just on the line between Abruzzo and Molise. And actually prior to 1963, Molise was a part of Abruzzo.

Now that we had sold our house here in VA, I had to make a conscious effort to locate some prospects. John and I didn’t want to buy quite yet as our nest egg needed to grow a bit more. Our plans were to rent for about 5-10 years then ‘possibly’ buy. We wanted to live in a few different places around Abruzzo and Molise to figure out our permanent home. We were and still are hesitant to buy at our age (mid 60s) with the amount of resources we have, knowing there will be maintenance, taxes, upgrades, etc. needed.

I started looking at all the real estate sites available, both on Google and Google.it. I didn’t find too many houses for rent year-round within our price range or with our requirements. We have two very large Labrador Retrievers and both them and us are very use to being outdoors with loads of room to move. There are many great houses on the market today at very enticing prices, but we aren’t in the market….yet.

When I contacted real estate agents, some said they just didn’t deal with rentals. I did find rentals in other regions fitting the bill, but seemed to struggle with Abruzzo & Molise.  I then found out that property owners have some additional taxes for renting homes long term. You can read about it here at Gate-away.com. (Toward the bottom of the article) Also, noted by a good Italian friend of mine, ‘extra’ homes were parceled out to relatives. Now I did find a lot of apartments along the beach for rent, but detached houses habitable in the hills… not a lot right off. But remember, we weren’t able to put an extensive amount of time into searching and just may not have looked in the right places or asked the right people.

Vacation/holiday homes are another story, many to find on Airbnb, VRBO, etc. I started writing to the managers/owners of houses that I thought we may be able to afford with a long term rental discount. You will find that many of the vacation home owners will rent from October/November through April (their off-season) at deep discounts. If we could find a place for 6 months, we could then make an all-out search for a year or more lease in the region. And it worked. I got a number of good responses, narrowed down the ones I wanted us to see, and we proceeded to do so during our two week vacation. A bonus on doing these off-season rentals is, even though the rent may be a bit higher than a year-round, it can be all-inclusive; wifi, garbage, utilities (maybe a surcharge for extra heating during the cold months), furnished, etc.

We finally narrowed the search down to one house near Citta San’Angelo; a lovely holiday house with a stunning valley view. There was plenty of room for our dogs, nicely furnished and amenities and services galore. The foil in this was those services and amenities ( shopping, doctor & vet offices, etc) were just a bit too close to us. I’m talking shopping, shopping and more shopping, which I’m not crazy about.  John and I are country folk. Traffic makes us cringe. Too much development is claustrophobic to us. So we went back to the property managers and asked “Do you have anything a bit further out in the country”? And yes, they had two properties of interest. One was another holiday rental for the off-season. It was actually a bit too much for us, good price, but large house with pool. We don’t need all of that now in our lives. The other was a year round rental! Finally! Unfurnished and just languishing for someone to move in and give it some tender loving care.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself a bit here. After we looked at the holiday house near Citta San’Angelo, we headed south to Molise for our week vacation in Palata. We had rented a lovely townhouse in this small hill town. It turned out that our property manager there was also a real estate agent, who proceeded to show us many rentals. One in particular caught our eye; a bit rundown, and small, but loads of character.

The view was lovely over the fields to the Adriatic Sea with the Tremiti Islands in the background. But we soon found out it was for sale.   It appeared that all the rentals were for sale. True, they may not sell for years the way the market is, but we just didn’t want to be in that situation. So we ended back up near Citta San’Angelo looking at the unfurnished house.

To be continued……

So, yes, I have OCD (as well as dyslexia), mild in both, but definitely there.  I’m all about lists. Lists keep me focused, on track and sane. I started the big list about 90 days out from our move date, Oct. 2. And you can Google for International Moving Lists. So I googled and got a couple of them and run them simultaneously, checking off furiously. This is sounding way too stressful, so I put my pen down and take a short hike with the dogs. Then back to it.

Our plan was to downsize first here in the USA, figure out what to take or not and basically we are sticking to that plan. John had built us a big, beautiful mountain house and I loved it. My dream home. Chalet style with lots of glass looking out over the mountains. We realized the equity in the house would give us some cushion for retirement years. Of course that cushion got a lot smaller with the recession, so we have to be smart with our life in Abruzzo. We sold our house in April of this year, then ran  a two day moving sale to sell off our stuff. I invited just specific groups of friends, as I didn’t want the general public at our home. We did well at the sale, and what didn’t go (books, antiques, and just some general stuff) got donated to our local SPCA Thrift Shop or put on consignment at an antique store.

We moved into a cute (cute can also denote SMALL) cottage and learned about downsizing with two big labs. Have no doubt, we are very grateful to our friend that rented us this cottage for a song. But having two very large dogs, who are our ‘children’,  definitely stretched our patience. Downsizing was great in regards to the time it would take me to clean the house each week, but John and I had to learn a new dance not to run into each other during the day.  But it was a great humbling experience, and we learned how to be more adaptable and to live without a lot of ‘things’.

Once we relocated to the cottage, we were ready to look for a home in Italy. We had a two week vacation planned this past June and that would have to do. Not a lot of time to look around, but it was all we could manage with our part-time jobs. I did a lot of work online looking and I’ll elaborate on that in a separate post. We found a great rental near Atri just NW of Pescara and we couldn’t be more excited to call that home for awhile. We may buy someday, but we didn’t not want to rush into such a commitment early on.

So now the fun part begins in earnest to go from the cottage here in Virginia to Italy.

Some of the things we got into place and I’ll do some separate posts on these in detail:

• A Place to Live in Italy – a big one!
• International Pet Mover
• Moving Company for our household belongings
• Another yard sale for remaining items not going to Italy
• Selling our cars
• John’s 92 yo mom
• Everything that goes with bank accounts, phones, healthcare, etc here in the States.

Honestly, I don’t sleep very long most nights. If I get woken for any reason..last night the smoke alarm went off because of dust from a fan..I never really got back to sleep. Run through all my lists in my head as I lie there in the dark. Sometimes I get up and hit the computer to see what I can accomplish. Sometimes I make it back to sleep. John is a rock at night. A bit stressed during the day. No sugar coating here. This is tough for us. We are nesters. We like having a place to call home. Even this cottage is home right now. Getting all the details taken care of takes a lot of energy and patience. But there is no doubt in our minds that this is all so very worth it! If you are thinking of the big move, and it’s your heart’s desire, push through this. We are. It won’t be perfect in Italy. Like I said earlier, our eyes are wide open. But it will be amazing! We can’t wait!