The apartment door was opened by a young couple, with deadpan faces. The gate buzzed open and we entered with apprehension. But surely the owners wouldn’t let us make a wasted journey? Did we check properly this morning? Was it just the name of the previous tenant? We hoped for the best and pressed the button again. But what on earth was that? We stood looking in disbelief at a name next to the number of our apartment! That could only mean one thing, we concluded crestfallen: the flat had been rented out today. The flat was seemingly still free: that was at least a positive sign! We returned that evening, full of expectations, and rang the bell. We saw at the entrance, where the doorbells and tenants’ names were listed next to the apartment numbers, that the name plate next to our chosen apartment was empty. Although our appointment for the viewing was later on, in the evening, we decided to have a quick look around the neighbourhood in daylight. We had nothing left but to hope that the last of the apartments we had selected was still available and that we would like it. Maybe this is the Italian way of doing things, we thought, quite put out by the way things were handled.

What was the point in looking at a flat that wasn’t (yet) available? Did the owner worry that he would disappoint us and let us carry on with the viewing? But now we were even more disappointed. Why didn’t the owner tell us this earlier, we wondered feeling annoyed. In one case, for example, we were allowed to view our chosen flat but later it transpired that it wasn’t quite clear whether the present tenants were really going to leave. At first, that week seemed as if it would end in total failure because all the suitable apartments we found on the Internet in the Netherlands fell by the wayside one by one. In the summer of 2007, we visited Pavia for a week to find an apartment for my six months study abroad and Nico’s sabbatical. Our base in Pavia, which we were renting until we found a house to buy, was a flat owned by Giorgio and Franco. Stef and Nico in Italy Living in Italy: the Real Deal

Living In Italy by Stef Smulders