House Update

I really, really wish this update was "Yay, our house passed inspection and we're moving in a week!" Sadly, it is the complete opposite. One of the things the landlord has to do is have a city gas line installed. Prior to now, he's had a very large gas tank in the backyard which is plumbed into the house. This is very common here. A new Italian law has put strict limits on how these things are stored, and one of the conditions is they must be underground. It's cheaper for our landlord to just plug into the city gas line. At our pre-contract meeting, I clearly remember the housing representative saying the city gas line did NOT have to be completed by the time of the inspection. However, the inspection was supposed to be yesterday, and today, we found that the inspector did not perform an inspection. Once she saw the above ground gas tank and no installed city line, she left and apparently will not return until the gas line is ready to go.

Nathan raised the point with housing that since the inspector is probably going to find other problems the landlord will have to fix, why not perform the inspection, and then give him the list of repairs required...which would include the city gas line installation! We did not get an answer back. This says to me that the inspector is just not going to budge, so the gas line installation is going to take another 1-2 weeks (in Italy time, that means one month), then housing will schedule another inspection (probably at least a week's wait for that), then the inspector will give the landlord a list of required updates/maintenance and schedule another inspection 1-2 weeks later. Once we pass inspection, if ever, then our contract signing appointment will be made (takes about 4 business days to get on the books for that). Once the contract is signed, we can move in approximately 5 days later (we can't get utilities set up until the contract is signed, and the utility companies need 5 days). To cap it all off, our stay here in temporary lodging expires in three weeks. I have no idea what hoops we're going to have to jump through to get an extension approved, or if we get the extension, if there's room in the hotel. We could very well go to the front desk to extend and have them say, "Too bad." And just to complicate matters even further, Nathan's travel schedule for November has gone bonkers. It seems he will only be home 7-9 business days in the entire month, and I'm including Veteran's Day + the holiday Friday after it as well as Thanksgiving and it's holiday Friday. This whole house thing could go a couple of ways - one, it could very well take another two months, or two, something we don't understand will happen that all of sudden allows us to move in. We called our realtor this afternoon to ask her to please encourage the landlord to get this thing done, and her response was, "Ciro [landlord] is going to give you a free bombola (basically, a propane tank people w/o city gas or a gas tank use for house gas) while the city line is being installed." Nathan told her over and over that housing is not going to let us move in until the city line is installed, but she didn't seem to understand. 

Despite the delay, I do want the city gas line installed b/c if we move in w/o it, we'll never get it. It will always be, "The line will be put in next month," and we'll be stuck buying bombolas and having to worry about turning them on and off, leaking, exchanging them, hooking up the hoses, etc. Looks like at least another month in the hotel, probably two. I love living in Italy. I love living in Italy. I love living in Italy...seriously, I really do like it here, but I hate being unsettled. It's the worst part of the constant moving we do. We've now been living out of two suitcases each for 8 weeks. The weather is turning, and my teachers at school give me sad looks when I show up every day in sandals. I did bring in my suitcase some winter shoes, but I need to break them in, and don't want to do that on a day when I have to walk two or three miles. So far I haven't had one of those days.