Another step closer

Another meeting today at Massimo's office, this time with Signore M., the father of the woman who's selling the apartment, and the son of the man who used to own the whole building. Luckily Pam was there, too, since the discussion went into great detail about all kinds of small but important details that we could barely understand when she explained them to us in English. The idea that we'd ever be able to buy a house in Italy without a trustworthy, cheerful, insanely helpful friend-cum-translator at our elbow every step of the way...I shudder to think of what a hash we would have made of it. My gratitude to Pam and Romano knows no bounds.

Here are Massimo and Signore M. I am developing a bit of a crush on Massimo. Perhaps it's all that indifference, always catnip to the ladies. And all that machismo--how butch do you have to be to wear those lady-glasses?

There seem to be three stages of documentation in Italian real estate transactions, or at least this one. Step one is a contract where the buyer and seller agree on a price and a timeline. We did that when we first arrived, except that the seller, who lives in Ireland, took several days to sign her side of the document and email it back. Whether this is her fault, Massimo's, or the internet's now no longer matters.

Today we completed the second step, the compromesso, which as far as I can see duplicates the first thing we signed, but with more ceremony. The entire document had to be read aloud to the assembled group, with Pam translating for us everything that wasn't obvious boilerplate, and then multiple signatures had to be inscribed.

The town's photocopying machine is still broken, Massimo reported, and somehow they also haven't managed to get to the copy shop a few blocks away from City Hall to make copies there. What exactly these copies are for remains vague, and in any case Massimo is confident that we can go ahead to stage three, the final closing, as early as next week, no matter what's going on with the Fidenza bureaucracy. Since everything else has been moving along, perhaps he's right.

The highlight of today's gathering was meeting Signore M., who is a good person to know because he is familiar with the full history of the building and will moreover be our neighbor--he lives in the apartment behind the one we're buying, whose windows look into our kitchen. Thankfully he turns out to be a very nice man, and an old Fidenzan whom Romano has known forever. Pam, who'd initially been a bit dubious about some of the odder aspects of this transaction, now feels very at ease, and so do we.

Woot!

After we handed over a deposit for Massimo to hold in trust, Signore M. gave us two sets of keys, permission to turn on the electricity, water, and gas, and a quick tour of the apartment's various locks and meters. We are almost home, figuratively, and literally already in.

After taking Pam out to lunch, Danny and I spent much of the afternoon taking more measurements in the apartment and fantasizing about what might go where.

I am no longer worried about whether the sale will fall apart; now I am worrying about how we are going to fill all these rooms.

Tomorrow we meet with the notary, who is going to help us give Pam a proxy so that she can complete the sale on our behalf if things don't get resolved before we head back to the land that the Italians call "Ooo-zah." (That's "USA" to you.) We still have to put up the money, though; there are apparently some limits to Pam's eagerness to help.