Transcript with Show Notes Embedded:
Michael Tenbrink: What I tell people is that moving overseas is, I would say the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it’s totally worth it to me. But I will say that even on the really bad days, and I want to be totally clear, there are bad days. There are days where…
Kathy McCabe: Of course, it’s real life. It is real life. Yeah.
Michael: Yes. But even on those bad days I’ve never said I want to move back.
Kathy: This is Kathy McCabe. Welcome to the Dream of Italy podcast. You know me from the PBS Travel Series Dream of Italy, and the award-winning website and publication. Join me as we explore the sights and sounds of Bella Italia. From the canals of Venice to the piazzas of Puglia. From the fashion houses of Milan to the vineyards of Tuscany. Hop on, it’s going to be a great ride. Andiamo!
I’m Kathy McCabe back with another Dream of Italy podcast about where to live and move and retire in Italy now. And you may know from our other podcasts that are coming out or things that I have said I think Milan is really having a moment. It’s that city that often would get a bad rap but I think is a fantastic place to live and to move as an expat. And today I have Michael Tenbrink with me who moved to Milan recently and I’m dying to hear his whole story because there’s always layers to the story. And his advice for anyone interested specifically in Milan. So Michael, thank you so much for coming to join me from Milan.
[01:51]
Michael: Thanks for having me.
Kathy: And tell me a little of your backstory, your where you’re from, sort of your personal and professional life and what brought you to want to move to Italy.
Michael: Okay. Well I grew up in Michigan and west Michigan, Grand Rapids, and my whole family is still there. But I knew even when I was a teenager that I wanted to go see the world. So when I was 18 I moved to Chicago, lived there for three years and then I moved to Nashville, and I was in Nashville for over a decade. Until I moved to San Francisco in 2005. And my career was kind of accidental, I didn’t really choose it per se, but I was in marketing. And when I was in Nashville I got a degree in the music business, the business side of the music business. And then I did a combination of freelance journalism related to the music industry, as well as marketing for the music industry for a couple different record companies and a publisher. So when I moved to San Francisco I transitioned into professional services marketing. Working for a law firm and several architecture firms. I was in San Francisco for 17 years. Had a wonderful experience there, I met my husband there, we actually met at one of the firms that I worked at, he’s an architect and I was again in marketing. We got married there, and then I think as for many people, when COVID hit, it changed everything. We were both working from home, and in the summer of 2020 some close friends of ours reached out to us and they said, “Hey, we want to move somewhere.” And we were making a list, like literally now we’re making a literal list of places that we think we maybe could move, that we maybe could get a visa to go. And one of those places was Portugal. And they had never been to Portugal, but my husband Andrew and I had, and so they just wanted to know what did you think of it. So long story short, in the process of talking with them about their move, and spoiler alert, they did move to Portugal, it was still COVID so they moved to Portugal without ever having been to Portugal. They obviously did not speak Portuguese, as part of their visa process they had to buy a house in Portugal without having been to Portugal.
Kathy: How did that work out? How did that work out? Are they still there?
[01:51]
Michael: They’re still there, they still really like Portugal.
Kathy: Good, good.
Michael: So as Andrew and I talked with them about their move and answering some of their questions and listening to some of their dreams and fears, it got us talking. So Andrew’s backstory, his parents were Polish. They left Poland during communism, they survived the war in Poland, and then they left Poland in the 50s and moved to the UK to do their doctorates. They never went back to Poland because of the communist regime. Andrew and his brother were born in the UK and then the family moved to the United States and Andrew was brought up between the US and Australia. The reason I say all that is because of the fact that his parents were Polish, he was able to get his Polish passport, and Poland of course is part of the European Union, the EU.
Kathy: Yes.
Michael: So when going back again to 2020 when we started talking about hey, we’ve kind of tossed around casually this idea that someday we might want to move to Europe, and COVID of course had everybody thinking differently about their life and about how unpredictable life was and how potentially short life can be, and so we started talking seriously about it. And in January of 2021, he and I had I guess we’ll call it a visioning session where we got giant post-it, poster size post-it notes, and we put them up on sliding glass doors and windows in our house in Berkeley California. And on those posters we wrote things that we looked forward to about a move, things we were afraid of, and what would it look like for our move to be successful. And by the end of that session we sort of looked at each other and we were like, “Okay, I think we’re going to do this.” So then the next question obviously was where would we move? Because again with an EU passport, we could go anywhere within the European Union. So we did consider Portugal, we liked Portugal. Portugal was a pretty easy place to move to, our friends were there. But ultimately, for a number of reasons we chose Italy. One of those reasons, and a very significant reason, is that Andrew had been studying Italian for over 20 years.
[07:58]
Kathy: Wonderful.
Michael: So he’s a polyglot, he grew up speaking English and Polish, he as an adult learned Italian, Portuguese and French. So I on the other hand grew up speaking English.
Kathy: Right.
Michael: So the language was a big part of the reason why we chose Italy, but I think we also chose Italy because we knew it a lot better than we knew Portugal. We’d only been to Portugal once, we’d been to Italy multiple times, various places, everywhere from the north to Sicily. And then as to how we ended up in Milan specifically, we knew from the beginning we wanted to be somewhere in the north. And we worked, I should say we worked with a relocation consultant, I’m happy to say the name or not say the name, I don’t have any affiliation with them.
Kathy: Okay, which one?
Michael: We worked with Samantha from Smart Move Italy.
Kathy: Mhm, mhm.
Michael: And she was very helpful and one of the things which was very simple advice, but she said to us at one point, “Look, there are literally hundreds of great places in Italy. You could spend the rest of your life just trying to figure out where you’re going to move.”
Kathy: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: “But,” she said, “at some point you just have to pick a place and go. And she said if you get there and after a year you’re like this isn’t the right place for us, you can always move. But if you don’t pick a place you’ll never actually go.”
Kathy: Right.
Michael: So we followed her advice and we settled on Verona. This is a little twist.
Kathy: Yeah. Yeah, no, Verona, I know people have moved there. Yeah.
[09:51]
Michael: So we picked Verona because we had spent several days there on our honeymoon and we loved it. It was probably our favorite place of our whole honeymoon. And we felt like it’s not a tiny town but it’s also not a big city. It felt right. And again this was still all during COVID when it was quite challenging to travel, so it’s not like we could just come to Italy for a month and travel all around and figure out where we wanted to be. So a few months after we decided yeah we’re probably going to go to Verona, and at this point it was the fall of 2021, and we had said we were going to move in the fall of 2022. So we needed a bunch of time to sort of tie up all the loose ends in California. A few months after we decided on Verona, I got the idea that I was interested in going back to school. Specifically, I’d been in marketing at that point for over 20 years and I was interested in pursuing a master in photography. And so I started doing a bunch of research. First I approached Andrew and I said, “I have this idea that I’m really excited about but it’s kind of crazy and I don’t know what you’re going to say.”
Kathy: Right.
Michael: And I told him, and to my surprise and delight he was like, “I think it’s a great idea.”
Kathy: Yeah.
Michael: So, but then it also sort of meant we didn’t know where we were going to move. Because I, well, to be more specific, my idea was I wanted to do a master in photography in Europe. So I started doing research and I found programs really all over Europe that were taught in English. But as it turned out, my top two favorites were both in Milan.
Kathy: Oh perfect.
Michael: And so we said, “Well, instead of moving to Verona, why don’t we start in Milan, the program is one year. When you’re finished with school, if we don’t like Milan, then we’ll move to Verona.” So we moved to Milan in October of 2022, and I did my one-year master’s program, and at the end of it we both were like, “We really like Milan, we’re going to stay here.”
Kathy: Okay.
Michael: That is how we ended up here.
Kathy: There you go. And so when you got to Milan, everyone, the hardest part is one of the hardest parts is finding the place to live. How did you do that? I see it’s a beautiful place.
Michael: Well, thank you. You know, we got incredibly lucky. There’s really no other way to say it. So as I mentioned we were working with Samantha from Smart Move Italy, and one of the things we hired them to help us with was to find a place. Because we’re like, we don’t know anything about renting a place in Italy, and also like we both had full-time jobs in the US, like we were so busy we were like we don’t have time to do this and we don’t know how to do this on our own.
[13:00]
Kathy: Right.
Michael: We came here about six months before we moved because I wanted to visit both of the schools I’d been accepted to, to choose which one I was going to actually go to. So while we were here, we were here for one week, and while we were here we told Samantha, “We’d love to just look at a few places. I’m sure we won’t get a place while we’re here for a week, but we want to just look at some places so we have an idea that for this amount of money we can get this kind of apartment in this kind of neighborhood. So we at least have a better idea of what we’re looking at.” And so we set up several viewings of apartments, and several of them fell through for various reasons. One of them I think was rented before we actually got a chance to see it. Another one the leasing agent just didn’t show up. And so this was the last one that we looked at. Well, the last one we were supposed to look at, it’s the first one we looked at, literally the first one.
Kathy: Right.
Michael: And it was in a neighborhood, it’s in the Isola neighborhood, which is not even a neighborhood that was on our radar, we didn’t really even know about it. But when we saw this apartment we looked at each other as we walked out the door, we looked at each other and we were like, “It has to be this one.” And there was another couple waiting at the door to meet the leasing agent to look at it right after us. So we called Samantha and we were like, “Put an offer in, put an offer in, it has to be this one.”
Kathy: Right.
Michael: We just were so fortunate because they accepted our offer, and we were able to even sign all the paperwork the day before we flew back to California. And there’s one part of that I forgot to mention because I said we were here six months before we moved to look at those schools. But the reason we were able to rent an apartment six months ahead of time is because it’s very common in Italy to have to give six months notice when you’re moving out of a rental apartment. And so the woman who was living here had just given her six-month notice that she was getting married and she was going to be moving out. And so she gave the notice, the landlord put it on the market, again, to be rented six months later. And we were among the first…
Kathy: So you didn’t have to pay for those six months.
Michael: Right. So it again we were incredibly lucky and we certainly know people that were not as lucky that their first apartment was like not a good situation, they ended up having to move. But for us it all worked out.
[15:44]
Kathy: Amazing. So and you came from California so I’m sure the price point even though it was Milan was attractive.
Michael: Yeah. I mean Milan I think is generally accepted to be the most expensive place in Italy. But for us coming from San Francisco and we were in San Francisco most of the time, the last couple years we were in Berkeley. But to us it actually seemed quite reasonable.
Kathy: Mhm.
Michael: And I’m always… I’m sensitive that’s coming from a place of privilege, like we had California salaries and…
Kathy: Of course, of course.
Michael: And it is now especially, it’s becoming quite an issue in Milan that the cost of housing has gone up substantially. And it is getting more and more difficult for people to afford to live here, especially people who maybe have lived here a long time but their income has not gone up at the same rate that housing prices have gone up. Both rental and purchasing.
Kathy: And what is it that you love, what are the things you really love about Milan?
Michael: There are many things. I think and I’m sure if Andrew was here he would have some other ideas as well, but I think for me, one, it’s an incredibly rich culture. Center of culture. There are more… and again we were coming from San Francisco which is certainly a place with great culture, but…
Kathy: Sure.
Michael: There is just so much here. There is always stuff going on. Art openings, movie premieres. For me photography exhibitions, like incredible photography exhibitions. With literally world-renowned photographers. That’s one thing and that’s a big thing for both of us I think is the cultural opportunities. Another thing for us coming from the Berkeley hills in California, we are thrilled that it is flat here. Because it’s so easy to walk and to bike. And so we don’t have a car. We rely entirely on either walking, biking, bus, subway. And very occasionally we rent a car if we have to have a car, like if we’re going to do something that public transit isn’t really an option.
[18:30]
Kathy: Right.
Michael: So that’s something that and Milan is a big city, I think the population is roughly like one and a half million maybe, so it’s a large city. But in a lot of ways it feels pretty compact. Like from our apartment we can walk to the Duomo in less than half an hour.
Kathy: Yeah.
Michael: So it feels in some ways like a big small town. With a lot of people.
Kathy: Yeah. And I’m sure, did you meet a lot of people through your photography program?
Michael: It was a quite a small program, so I did not meet a ton of people, and unfortunately once school was done we kind of scattered all over the place.
Kathy: Right.
Michael: So yeah, so that was an interesting experience for me. Again, Andrew speaks Italian, so really since we got here, we have had two very different experiences.
Kathy: Tell me about them. Tell me how they differ.
Michael: Well, I mean to put it really simply, he can understand what’s going on and I can’t.
Kathy: Right, he probably meets more Italians.
Michael: Yeah, and even just like walking down the street, like he can understand what’s going on around us and I can’t.
Kathy: Right.
Michael: If we’re in a restaurant he can understand what the people at the table next to us are talking about, I can’t.
Kathy: Right.
Michael: So the program I was in was in English. So my first year here I lived in a bubble. Because I was surrounded by people who all spoke English and we spoke English all day at school, and when that year came to an end I was like I have to figure out a way to meet people.
Kathy: Yeah.
Michael: And so I one of the things that’s great and also really challenging about moving to another country is you have to put yourself into situations that are way out of your comfort zone.
Kathy: Absolutely.
Michael: You do not have a choice, you have to do it. And so when I realized like, oh, school’s over, I have to figure out how am I going to meet people, I auditioned for and was accepted into a choir.
Kathy: Oh.
[20:55]
Michael: It’s an LGBT choir, it’s a pretty big choir, there’s roughly 70 people in it. And it’s all Italians except I think there’s three French people and one guy from Argentina and one guy from Germany. But with the exception of the guy from Germany, everyone else is fluent in Italian. So it’s been a real interesting experience for me. So we sing a mixture of songs in English, sort of medleys that are both English and Italian, and then about 25% of what we sing I would say is all Italian. So I’m singing lyrics that I don’t know what they mean.
Kathy: Right.
Michael: But I mean that’s one way that I’ve just had to put myself out there and say I have to meet people, like I’m in many ways I’m an introvert, but you can’t just sit home alone all the time in a country where you don’t speak the language. You have to get out.
Kathy: Have you worked on, tried the Italian?
Michael: Oh my goodness, yes. So it’s you know, this is one thing really worth mentioning too. I did start taking weekly classes in California before we moved. Through, I think it’s called the Italian Institute of San Francisco or something like that. And they were good classes but they were once a week for like two hours. And anybody who’s ever moved overseas knows it is incredibly complicated to move. Like there are you have a to-do list a mile and a half long of stuff you have to do before you move.
Kathy: Yeah.
Michael: And so learning the language just felt like something I could not really tackle before the move. I and everybody told me, “Don’t worry. When you get there and you’re surrounded by Italian, you’ll just pick it up.” And I’m sure that is true for many people. It is not true for me.
Kathy: Everyone’s got this different… and I think sometimes we get older it’s harder. You know it’s, it’s easier when you’re younger. But that is, you know it always helps to have as much. But it’s great that you have your husband also for that.
[23:17]
Michael: Yeah. And that’s been yeah that’s been really helpful for things where you know for well for all of the bureaucracy stuff, he’s been able to interact with the Questura and what not and so that was a huge help. I had some medical issues last year, nothing terribly serious, but it did involve a hospitalization. And so Andrew was able to translate in those you know those sticky situations where I’m in terrible pain and I don’t speak Italian.
But yeah I’ve tried a number of different ways to learn. I have gone to a pretty well-known school here, a language school. I hired a tutor via Zoom. I also went to a year-long class through the Comune.
Kathy: Oh that’s interesting they have classes.
Michael: They do, and they’re very affordable, it’s like 110 euros for the year or something, I mean very affordable. But I’ll just be completely candid, it has been for me, by far the biggest challenge of moving has been learning the language. Last summer I got a new teacher, he lives in Rome and we meet via Zoom two or three times a week. That’s been tremendously helpful and I do feel like I’m making real progress now. But I’m still, I actually just this week took an assessment test because I’m going to also do some conversation classes at a school here in Milan, and my assessment landed me at about an A1.5 level. So after living here for three and a half years…
Kathy: It’s okay, to each his own. It’s okay. You know we do what we can. So you mentioned your health issue, how have you found the healthcare to be?
Michael: So overall I think things have been pretty good. It’s you know we again we’re in Milan which is probably the most advanced healthcare in the country.
It’s really I would say it’s been pretty good. There have been situations though where the nurse or doctor that I was meeting with did not speak English. Like really almost at all.
Kathy: Right.
[26:00]
Michael: And so again I was very fortunate that Andrew could be there and translate for me. I’m sure if he wasn’t there I would have somehow figured out a way to get by. But you know getting by in a coffee shop with Google Translate is a lot different than meeting with a doctor and trying to use Google Translate, like there are situations where Google is not going to cut it. So but overall I do not have complaints about the healthcare system. Like a lot of western countries the healthcare system is a bit overtaxed right now. There are for some procedures and tests there are significant waits. But you’ll find that really almost anywhere you go I think now. We have friends in other European countries, we have friends in Canada, the US, I mean it can be challenging. The healthcare systems are just…
Kathy: Right.
Michael: They’re overburdened. And there often are not enough doctors. But overall I don’t think either of us have any serious complaints. I’m in my 50s and Andrew’s in his 60s, so.
Kathy: What are there any cons of Milan? Are there any things you wish were different or you know maybe if you move moved to Verona would be different?
Michael: I think well I don’t know that this is a con but this is a challenge which is the language and I just I know I already talked about that but like it is a really significant thing. And I would encourage anybody considering moving to really think hard. You cannot start soon enough and you really have to ask yourself am I really willing to do this. Because…
Kathy: Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: I was very clear from the very beginning I was not going to be one of those Americans who moved to another country and then lived in a bubble of other Americans and couldn’t be bothered to learn the language. But also again I wasn’t expecting it to be so challenging. As far as drawbacks to Milan specifically, the air quality is an issue here. Which anybody who does even five minutes of research about Milan or the Po Valley as it’s called here, will you’ll see the air quality is an issue especially in the winter. I mean right now it’s a gorgeous blue sunny day outside, but in the winter especially the air quality can be bad. I will say I lived and worked in China for several months a decade ago, and we’ve not gotten to the level of pollution like I experienced in Shanghai.
[28:58]
Kathy: Yeah.
Michael: Some sort of scale. It’s not like that, but it’s definitely…
Kathy: Oh it’s, yeah, I spent some time in Milan. I’ve lived in London, I’ve lived in major cities in the US. Actually, I live in Denver which we have a brown cloud. We have ozone that stays and when there are bad days in Denver I it is difficult. Because we’re also at an altitude so you need more oxygen. But I will say I struggled in Milan this winter. And it’s interesting, how does it manifest for you, you just like some people get sick, some people just feel it in their chest, like what do you, how does it kind of translate for you?
Michael: You know I’m fortunate in that I don’t…
Kathy: Some people don’t feel it that badly.
Michael: Yeah. I don’t feel it terribly physically. There I don’t get me wrong, there are times that both of us are like oh my throat feels a little…
Kathy: Yeah.
Michael: I don’t know, scratchy or a little bad. But for me it’s mostly psychological. It’s just when it’s when it’s a bad air quality day it’s gloomy.
Kathy: Yeah.
Michael: And again it’s not as bad as when I was in Shanghai. There were times in Shanghai like I literally didn’t want to leave the hotel I was staying in because it just was so bad.
Kathy: Yeah.
Michael: And it’s not that bad here. But it does get quite gloomy and gray and you know we were coming from California, so we were a little spoiled with the weather. So the winter months are a little bit difficult. But I will say that in a total surprise to me, I think that winter has become my favorite season.
Kathy: Why?
[30:54]
Michael: Air quality aside.
Kathy: Aside.
Michael: I just, I love winter. I don’t know I never would have thought I would love it.
Kathy: I actually love Italy in the winter and I was there this winter, but I gotta say it was gray, grayer than usual. So in the winter when the sun comes out, but you know nobody’s there. You know you have it to yourself, right? I don’t know if that’s part of it for you, that it’s less there’s less tourists and you can get into the restaurants, you can get into the hotels.
Michael: I mean for me I think I kind of enjoy… so people often ask like oh is winter really bad there? And no, winter is not really bad here. We’ve not had a single real snowfall since we moved here three and a half years ago.
Kathy: Sure.
Michael: It does occasionally get below freezing, but not like way below freezing. So winter is not brutal here cold wise. I like winter clothing, I like wearing cozy sweaters and hats and gloves and We really like going hiking and so I’ve just found it’s really enjoyable to hike in the winter because you’re not all sweaty, it’s not all humid.
Kathy: Right.
Michael: There’s no mosquitoes in the winter, which I love.
Kathy: Yes.
Michael: Also we really like hiking, so we have a place up on Lake Como as well like a weekend place.
[32:37]
Kathy: Oh did you buy that or rent that?
Michael: We did, we bought that.
Kathy: Mhm.
Michael: And so we really like to go hiking in the mountains around the lake. And what I realized is in the winter the visibility is so much better because there’s no leaves on the trees. And so you can be on trails and be able to see for a long distance whereas in the summer all the trees would block the view. So that’s one of the reasons I really like winter.
Kathy: And tell me not to take a tangent, but Lake Como is of interest I think to a lot of people. And Milan is definitely a city where people leave on the weekends, is that what you found?
Michael: Yeah. I would say so, but also again there’s always stuff going on the weekends. So it’s sort of like do we leave or do we stay this weekend.
Kathy: And what have you, do you find, Lake Como so beautiful, but the last time I returned it was so packed.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathy: And what has your experience been there?
Michael: So we are on the far northeast shore of the lake. So it is not a major tourist destination, certainly not for Americans and Brits and whatnot.
Kathy: Yes. Yeah.
Michael: We do get quite a few tourists coming down from Switzerland because it’s quite close to the Swiss border. And it’s a lot cheaper than Switzerland. So if you go to the hottest spots on Lake Como it is incredibly packed. Especially in the summertime.
Kathy: Oh yeah.
[34:23]
Michael: Incredibly. But you know there’s a lot of places on the lake that are not nearly as mobbed.
Kathy: Yes. Yeah.
Michael: I think the places that really everybody goes to Como like the city of Como because they think Como, that must be Lake Como. And they don’t really realize like Lake Como is pretty big.
Kathy: It is.
Michael: And then the place that everybody goes to is Bellagio.
Kathy: Yes.
Michael: And so the way that many of them get to Bellagio is they take the train from Milan and they get off in Varenna. And so the place that we have our apartment up there is several stops past Varenna. And so I can tell you from a lot of experience… Literally, I mean literally like 90% of the train gets off in Varenna. And they all get on the ferry boat and they go out to Bellagio. And I mean Bellagio is beautiful, I don’t mean to pooh pooh it.
Kathy: Oh it is. Oh it is stunning. When I went back, I hadn’t been back in a few years to Como. And I was like oh I get, you know I always got it, but I’m like yeah I really get it. It’s so I went, I spent some time in Menaggio which is really cute. But then, I drove, I don’t remember where I was going to a different lake that’s not famous, a very tiny Lake Annone, you probably don’t even know it.
Michael: No, I don’t even know that one.
Kathy: I’ll send you the name, there’s a place there’s a hotel and restaurant on it that’s delicious, I was the only American. There’s there’s a few small lakes up there. But as I was driving up, you know that a lot of the signs change to German, you know, like different tourists, campers. You know, so there is room for people. So even though you have the place out there you don’t have a car for that, for getting out there.
[36:16]
Michael: We’ve talked about getting one that we would keep up there, and it would really just be so we could go up into the high mountains where the trains don’t go.
Kathy: Yeah. But it’s great that you’ve been able to do all this basically with public transportation.
Michael: Yeah. Yeah. You know going back a few minutes to you asked about the drawbacks of Milan, one drawback for us coming from the San Francisco Bay Area is we’re so used to being by the ocean. And Milan doesn’t even have a river.
Kathy: Yeah.
Michael: Which was and I grew up in Michigan and Michigan of course has the Great Lakes. It was kind of shocking for me to be not near water. So that’s one of the reasons we really enjoy the lake so much, it’s totally different. We think of it. We’ve come to think of it as having the best of both worlds. Like, we have all the advantages of city life, but we also have this small town up at the lake that’s a very different vibe. It’s gorgeous. The air quality is much better.
Kathy: Oh it’s probably perfection. Yeah. And was that a fairly easy process to find and buy or challenging?
[37:32]
Michael: There’s two parts to this answer. The first part is it was quite hard to figure out where we wanted to get a place. Because again as Samantha said from Smart Move Italy, there are hundreds of great places. Initially, I was really pushing for us to get a place kind of up in the mountains in a place called Domodossola. I don’t know if you’ve been there but I was absolutely smitten with Domodossola. It does have a river, but it doesn’t have a lake. And so once we decided that really the water was more important to us, then we just had to figure out okay well which lake. And of course everybody knows Lake Como I think partly because of George Clooney. But what people maybe don’t realize is there are like at least half a dozen significant lakes in northern Italy.
Kathy: Oh yeah, Garda, Maggiore, and then there are these little ones that are Iseo.
Michael: Yeah, like Lago d’Iseo, Lago d’Orta.
Kathy: Oh yeah, film there. It’s becoming very popular, Iseo. I filmed there like 11 years ago but it’s beautiful.
Michael: Yeah I mean they’re all beautiful. They’re just not famous like Lake Como is.
Kathy: Right.
Michael: So and really one of the reasons we wound up on Lake Como is we were really clear we don’t have a car so we want to be on a direct train line from Milan. We don’t want to have to transfer. Because I forgot to mention but we also have a dog, a German Shepherd mix, so she’s not tiny. And she goes on the train with us. But we were like we don’t want to have to transfer trains because that’s just another level of complication. And so we were so it took us quite going back to your question it took us a quite a while to figure out where do we want to look for a place. Once we actually started looking, we found it really quickly. And in fact so quickly that we were kind of like…
Kathy: When you attract things, I think I can feel it. Like hello, you just are for your husband are both of you, it just is like boom.
[39:48]
Michael: Yeah, I mean we looked at three places, they were all in the town where we ended up. We made an offer on one and it did not get accepted because someone else had put an offer in the night before ours. And then we looked at this place and it had been on the market for a few months and it’s right on the lake, which is priceless to me honestly.
Kathy: Hello. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael: And we just kind of looked at each other and we were like I think we’re crazy if we don’t make an offer on this. And so we had gone into it thinking this might take one to two years to find a place that would be like our weekend and holiday place. And we ended up closing on this place like three months after we started looking.
Kathy: When you know you know. So with the dog, I’m a very big dog person although mine passed away. Do you have to take, do you put a muzzle on the dog when you go on the train or not?
Michael: So the rule is you have to have a muzzle with you.
Kathy: Oh with you, okay.
Michael: But you only have to put it on the dog if the I don’t know, conductor or the person the train employee who comes to check tickets, if they tell you have to put a muzzle on then you have to put it on. In the three and a half years we’ve been here, I think only twice have we ever been told we had to put a muzzle on. Maybe a dozen times they’ve asked us like, “Do you have a muzzle?” And we’ve said yes and then they’re like, “Okay,” and they just move on. So…
Kathy: What is your dog’s name?
[41:36]
Michael: Her name is Bibi Banu Queen of Persia.
Kathy: As it should be. And did she move with you?
Michael: Yes. So she’s she’s we just call her Bibi or Beebs, but she has a crazy life story of her own. She actually was born in Tehran. And then…
Kathy: Oh wow!
Michael: Yeah, and then she was brought over to San Francisco by a Bay Area rescue. Which is where we adopted her. And then of course we brought her with us. And I will just give the 15-second alert, like it is very complicated to ship a dog to Europe. Very complicated. Like if you…
Kathy: Although I did it twice, I took my dog twice, but my dog could go in the cabin.
Michael: Yeah see if your dog is small enough to go in the cabin it’s a very different, big, complicated thing and you need to get started at least six months before you move. Like it is very complicated. We ended up hiring a pet shipping company.
Kathy: Yeah. It’s a good idea.
Michael: And I will tell you it was very expensive. But honestly I don’t know that we could have done it on our own. It was it’s one of those processes that there are so many moving parts, and at the end, like when you are the most frazzled because you’re about to get on the plane and go, there’s all these things that have to happen in a sequence.
Kathy: Right.
Michael: Yeah. And including it has to be all signed off on by the USDA.
[43:07]
Kathy: Yeah, that’s the most. I had to do that twice. It is dicey because you’re waiting for them to mail. Even if you have given the FedEx, you. It has to be within or when I did it, 10 days. But those are like their weekend days in between. And I’ll tell you, I did it. I got. This has never happened to me before. I was set with this dog to go. I got sick. I got sick to the point where I couldn’t travel. So I was going to do it, had to change my flight and had to do the USDA all over again. But it worked. Yeah, so it’s great to share what the experience is, and people need to start earlier than they think on a lot of this. And also, you know, I don’t know that I would recommend shipping in the summer or there are restrictions with the heat. So you want to be. And then I do have friend of mine runs now they have these airlines which they really didn’t have three and a half years ago, like Bark Air, Canine Air, they’re very expensive. Tuscan Hound Air, where it’s a charter. You can go with about 10 other people, and they bring your dog on a private jet. So.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathy: So what has your dog’s experience been?
Michael: You know, that’s a good question. We were pretty concerned before we got here because we lived in a house in Berkeley which had a backyard that was fenced. So we could just let her out the back door. And she had lived with us in an apartment in San Francisco before we moved to Berkeley. But we were like, “How is she going to adjust from a house, like a free-standing house, to an apartment?” And “How is she going to handle trains?” Because again we were clear we did not want to have to buy a car. And so she was going to have to be able to go on the train. And again we got really lucky like she took to trains just like that. The first one or two times she was sort of looking around like, “Huh, what is this, what’s going on?” And then after that she loves going on the train now. When she knows the routes we take if we’re going to the train station and she is on it. She’s pulling us ahead like she’s ready to go. So.
Kathy: And it’s been a good experience like you probably meet people or you at least know your neighbors a little bit you know having a dog. Yeah.
Michael: Yeah, and you know that’s worth saying that Italy is by far the most dog-friendly place I’ve ever been.
Kathy: Yeah. You can take them everywhere. You could take the little restaurants. You could probably take her to Gucci if you want. You know everywhere.
[45:07]
Michael: It’s really yeah, restaurants, gross I mean we don’t take her to all these places.
Kathy: When I took my dog in he was blind at the time, but he’s a terrier so he was like, you know he kept going till the end. So we brought him blind, and I put him in the cart, and he’s like… like he lost his mind. He did start barking and I had to shut him up. But it was like his dream to go into the grocery store, they have those special carts, it’s fun. So how would you sum up your move to Italy?
Michael: What I tell people is that moving overseas is, I would say the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it’s totally worth it to me. And I think, I tell people like if it’s your dream to move somewhere, whether it’s Europe or South America or wherever, I say go for it. But know going in, like even if things go smoothly, it is probably going to be one of the most difficult things you’ve ever done and you will be out of your comfort zone more than you are comfortable with.
Kathy: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
Michael: But I will say that even on the really bad days, and I want to be totally clear, there are bad days. There are days where…
Kathy: Of course, it’s real life. It is real life. Yeah.
Michael: Yes. But even on those bad days I’ve never said I want to move back. So yeah, that’s what I tell people. If it’s your dream, go for it. And start as early as you can ’cause man, it’s complicated.
[47:37]
Kathy: There’s a lot of pieces. There really are. Just getting everything together. Just leaving is a lot of work too. Oh my gosh well Michael I’ve learned so much what a delightful conversation. Now I found you on Substack so let’s remind everyone where they can find you because I know you write about all kinds of things.
Michael: Yeah.
Kathy: What is your Substack again?
Michael: My Substack it’s called The Way I See It, and I’m pretty sure the URL is michaeltenbrink.substack.com.
Kathy: That’s what I thought. Great so if people want to read more about you, what you’re doing, be in touch, they can look there and then when we obviously, the podcast we have show notes we’ll put some links. I’m going to have you send me some of your photography so that we can edit it and then you’re going to have to send a picture of the dog because I require that. And that’ll be in dreamofitaly.com/podcast. So thank you.
Michael: Well thank you.