What I love about my small town and living in Italy

Many of my friends back home in LA ask me what it is like living in Tuscany, especially in a small town. Chiusi has a population of approximately 9000 people and growing. This includes all the little surrounding towns, called “frazioni”. I have to say the one thing that I do love, that really puts a smile on my face is the fact that you know so many people and they know you….by name! Imagine going to the pharmacy and everyone greeting you by name and asking about your entire family, knowing all their names, where they go to school, what they did this summer. You cross the street to the bakery and they greet you too and tell you you don’t have to buy the bread today because your husband got enough this morning when he brought your son to buy a snack. Amazing. When you go to restaurants there is always someone you know sitting at the next table. This was so foreign to me being from LA. How often do you run into the same person twice in LA?? I mean you have to plan meetings weeks ahead, right?

Owning a home and living in Italy, especially in a small town keeps you closely tied with your neighbors. There is a certain warmth you get when your neighbour brings you “mimosa,” a yellow flower, every March 8th which is “giorno della donna” or woman’s day. My neighbour Anita not just brings me a flower, but an entire branch from her tree!! I now kind of expect it from her and if I don’t hear from her, I call up to find out if she is feeling ok!! What a nice, sweet lady. She will stop you every time your car passes her house and ask about the entire family and get angry if you don’t accept her chicken’s fresh eggs of the day! I call it my “drive through” only I get fresh eggs, onions, tomatoes. I adore Anita.

Moving to Tuscany and /or visiting Italy also means really savoring the new foods of each season. In LA I kind of just took for granted that everything at the supermarket was always available. Now I know there is a time to buy olive oil, walnuts, chestnuts, cantaloupe, apples, peaches and all sorts of delicious foods. Now I look forward to getting the new olive oil (olio nuovo) in which the olives I see from my windows are picked in November. I watch the farmers and see as they carefully pick each olive. No wonder why it is so expensive!

In this small town I have not yet met or know of another American who lives here year round. Sure there are many who come and go, spend holidays here and maybe months too but I am the only one that actually lives here. So I am treated special and you know what, I like it. I like this unspoken title of the American. I am also though very proud of where I come from, L.A. I am proud to be American and the USA will always be home sweet home. You don’t really really appreciate home until you are far from home. So right now I have the best of both worlds. I consider myself on an extended vacation in Tuscany but home is always L.A. When I tell those from Chiusi I am from Los Angeles, the usual response is “Wow.” When I tell my friends in LA I live in Tuscany their usual response is “Wow.”

Can I just say that parking is great in Chiusi. I have unfortunately adopted the Italian way of parking so give me a bit of space and I will stick my car in it in anyway, shape or form. Parking is always available and pretty cheap too. If there is no parking, just drive around the block a couple times and something will surely open up. For now I will take advantage of living in Italy and really appreciate all this small town has to offer!

Seasons and Closets while Living in Italy

Having been born and raised in Los Angeles, I was somewhat spoiled and oblivious to seasons, heavy clothing and the whole “cambio di stagione” or changing of seasons with regard to your closet. Let me explain. In L.A. most of us have closets that are built into the walls. Some people have walk-in closets and others have those where you just slide open a door and are arm’s length away to anything you want to wear. So my moving to Italy had an impact even on how I stored my clothes!

Let’s be honest here. Los Angelenos don’t really own winter wear. You may just put on an extra sweater if it is cold but who actually owns coats? Anyhow having said this, living in Italy has a totally different scenario. In Italy, be it the weather (colder than LA) or be it the great importance of how you look, Italians own every type of jacket for every type of weather. You have the light raincoat, the heavy raincoat, the light coat, the heavy coat, the bomber, the leather jacket, the leather coat, the ski jacket, and then each of these in various lengths and colors depending on your attire, shoes etc. So this is a big affair. These are just for outerwear. The same holds true for clothing. You have the light pants, heavy pants, jeans, skirts heavy or light, suits, shirts of all types, sweaters of all fabrics, weights, colors, etc.

Anyhow what happens when the seasons change?? If you move to Italy, you will see that there are no walk in closets, at least I have never seen any yet. Instead Italians have beautiful armadi or closets that are furniture pieces. These armadi have two levels in that the bottom level you put all the clothing of the current season except the long apparel like coats that go in another section of the armadio. On the top level you put all the apparel of the next or last season. This is where it gets tricky. Basically on the days you decide to do the change of clothing you take a long stick like instrument with a hook on the end (I am sure this has a name) and one by one like a balancing act, you put the hanger on the hook and place it ever so carefully on the rod above. I laugh when I think of this because you have no idea how many times the whole thing just fell on my head. I opt now to stand on a chair and do it the old fashioned way.

Oh don’t even ask me where Italians place their shoes??!! Again in LA you just place them on a shoe rack at the bottom of your walk-in closet or something similar. In Italy there is another piece of furniture called the scarpiera which is meant to hold shoes. However the space allotted to the shoes is somewhat small and does not hold ankle boots or regular boots nor my husband's shoes which are too big. So what do we do?? We have shoes everywhere, stacked ever so carefully as to not ruin them. I try to be somewhat organized in my stacking, with shoes for the current season at least in the front in view and others in the back. We are big on shoes but that is a different post altogether. Living in Italy means being creative with space and using it very wisely.