Vagabondi

Read all the way through for an important announcement.

It seems so long ago that my former landlord declared us vagabonds because of our frequent travels with family and friends. Not long after we arrived in Ascoli we had a rush of visitors and found ourselves sempre in giro to show them around, a not unwelcome task, I might add. Dorina told us that we should just invest in a camper instead of paying rent to her. Now I sort of wish that we had taken her advice.

This past week we departed The Villa that we had been so hospitably offered and arrived in Rome a couple days ago. Unfortunately (for us, fortunate for our hosts) the villa had a last-minute booking for the week of Easter, and the owners needed to complete some work in a hurry to get it all prepared for the season. It will be fully occupied with weekly guests until the end of October. We had to vacate a couple of weeks earlier than originally planned, but we certainly can’t complain.

Besides, I was getting very homesick for Ascoli, and the timing works out well, with the arrival of Bryan’s sister and her husband for their first visit to Italy. We will be spending a week near Ascoli showing them our adopted hometown and are excited about introducing them to the beauties, flavors, and fun in our corner of the country.

But after that…boh! You see, we will be vagabonds for some time to come. When we lost our lease and left Ascoli for our house-sitting gig, we had fervently hoped for some change of fortune and brighter bank statements. Unfortunately, la crisi economica that has plagued our homeland has hit home here, too. While I continue to hold out hope for some sort of work opportunity (hey, I believe in miracles!), we are, in all practicality, having to plan for a return to the US, barring divine intervention.

I don’t want to go. Really. Don’t. It has been an extremely emotional decision. My heart went into denial mode for a while, until it could no longer ignore the reality of the little drips of water pinging in the nearly-empty well that is our savings account. The well needs replenishing and the current drought is filling it up none too fast. We considered becoming briganti, but sort of figured that highway robbery would void our visa.

Facing these facts also made us realize that we want to spend the next couple of months seeing a lot of the places we had been putting off, always assuming there would be time to get there, so we will truly be vagabondi as we cruise around the southern regions.

Our vagabond status will follow us “home,” if you can call it that, since we don’t *actually* have a home in the US, and don’t know where we will end up. But as Scarlet said, “Tomorrow is another day!” and we will cross that ponte when we reach it. This will be a temporary repatriation; as soon as we can kick-start the coffers, we will be high-tailing back to Italia; you can count on that!
For now, and the next couple months, we will wish for that camper Dorina recommended we buy as we roam around and explore points south.