It was all lies!

We had so many financial worries about blowing up our lives in the US and moving to a villa on a hillside in Tuscany! The big question looming over everything was how we would ever be able to afford to live this life. We thought very carefully about our budget, trying to imagine what we would need to spend money on and what we would have to abandon -- what pleasures we would just have to learn to live without. The propaganda everywhere in America, interwoven with every thought of European life, was that a life of beauty, of olive groves, art lessons, cobbled streets, views of the sea, tagliatelle ai funghi, red tile roofs and wine and roses blooming in November -- all of that would cost a pretty penny and leave us, sooner or later, destitute and regretting our profligate grasshopper ways. Better to work until you die -- it's the American way. But it was all lies!

Here is a very boring post about prices:

Our internet service costs almost exactly one-tenth of what it did in the US. Our cell phone bill is a little less than $15 a month (and we have the Deluxe Plan). Gas costs about $7 a gallon, but the tiny cars are incredibly fuel-efficient. The rent for our car (insurance included) is less than just the cost of just our car insurance back in Colorado. Trash and recycling pick-up is free. A bottle of wine costs about $2 -- or you can go super-expensive and spend $10. An entire basket filled with really fresh and delicious fruit and veg (spinach, eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes, onions, peppers, grapes, plums, oranges) usually runs about $4. Yes -- only about $4 for all of it. We pay for loaves of bread at the bakery -- still warm from the oven -- with pocket change. We don't eat much meat, but a week's worth -- chicken, sausages, fish, prosciutto -- usually runs us about $10-15. Espresso is a dollar a cup. When we go down to the pub in our village for a glass of wine before dinner, we get a half-liter of the house wine and a bottle of fizzy water and are given free snacks -- sometimes so many that we are too full for dinner later. Total cost is $5. The rent on the rustic farm house (trusted gardener included) is less than we could have rented out our house for in Colorado Springs.

The whole idea that life must be a grim treadmill of unceasing labor just to stave off destitution is a lie that capitalism uses to scare us into submission. It's all lies.

And I think it is related that the big thing we have noticed is the lack of anger around here. That violence always bubbling under the surface in the US just doesn't exist here. I think it's because there is no feeling of dog-eat-dog in this world. The dogs eat homemade lasagna with fresh pasta and a glass of the house red just like everyone else.