9 September

I got sick of using those "stupid bags" so I upgraded.

You can see how much debris the Maggia river dumps into Lago Maggiore after 4 days of rain.


OK, this is now getting weird. I got my voicemail working today and found a message from one Ines Zimmermann from Saturday. You remember Kai, the helpful guy from Ikea? Well he’s her brother in law. She’s a realtor with RE/MAX in Contone and wanted to know if there was anything she could do to help. I wasn’t sure what to tell her, there was a ton of stuff – where to start? I told her my situation and she said she could probably help out. Since I’m leaving on Thursday, we decided that she should come over tonight. She definitely seemed “highly assertive” shall we say. I didn’t get a bad feeling from her at all, just that she’s a go-getter – and that stands out here in Ticino. In any event, I figured I’m buying stuff, let’s see what she’s selling.

So tonight she comes over and is giving me feedback on the house and what’s being done and what needs to be done. I’m glad to get her perspective. She says to emphasize the kitchens and get rid of the dark colors – which I am working on. It turns out (here’s the rub) that her other brother in law (her husband has 7 siblings, a point we’ll return to shortly) is a contractor. But he’s more a general contractor in the American sense. If you’ve been following my story, you’ll notice that I have been playing general contractor to a bunch of Italian-speaking subs. This guy could do that for me – he lives across the lake in Cannobio, in Italia.

But she’s not really pushing anything, just talking a mile a minute. If the energizer bunny were 50 years old and a type A German women, Ines is it. But it’s fun to kind of complain about the hard parts of the process and get opinions since somehow blogging hasn’t really afforded me that opportunity. We decide that she’ll bring her brother in law by tomorrow morning. As she’s leaving, I ask her where she’s from. She says she was born near München and I look at her skeptically and she quickly adds that when she was 2 they moved to near Düsseldorf. I say, “That’s funny, my family is from Dortmund.”

She’s shocked, “Get out!” (or the German equivalent) That’s what she meant by near Düsseldorf. I say my uncle lives and I used to live in Aplerbeck. She practically faints, she grew up in Höckenheim and her husband is from Aplerbeck! It’s quite likely our families know each other.

Wow, things like this happen for a reason. We’ll see what it is.