[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: In Italy. And you're listening to the Magic Towns Italy podcast.
[00:00:08] Speaker C: Happy Saturday to all our listeners. We're back with the Magic Towns Eatery podcast. I'm Luca and Anna.
[00:00:16] Speaker D: Today we are heading back to one of the regions that often gets overlooked in conversations about moving to Italy. But really, shouldn't people move to it today?
[00:00:25] Speaker C: They imagine I'm going to go to Tuscany, Rome, Milan, maybe Puglia. But the market is off the radar for most people and one of the things we like to do at Magic Towns is look a little bit further.
[00:00:39] Speaker D: Yeah, absolutely. Because, you know, Le Marche have the sea, the mountains, beautiful towns, strong food culture. It's a beautiful area.
This area also feels more structured than most of central Italy. And there are lots of towns that qualify for the 7% tax scheme of
[00:01:01] Speaker C: which you have spoken time and time and time again. You're the expert.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:06] Speaker C: So today we're going to discuss the process of settling down in the market through the voice of our guest, Sarah. Sarah is originally from Australia and she moved to Eckerry after what she described as a bit of a midlife crisis.
She came to Italy to study gastronomic sciences. I didn't even know it was a thing before hearing it from her. And then she made the decision to stay in Italy and to build something of her own.
[00:01:35] Speaker D: Yeah, you know what I liked about Sarah's story is that it isn't random at all. Like she didn't fall in love with a postcard and dump. She approached the moon very thoughtfully.
She had a spreadsheet criteria, account size in mind, access to airports, access to trains. And then eventually she found herself in Fabriano.
[00:01:58] Speaker C: I thoroughly approve of that approach, as you can imagine. And the property angle in talking to Sarah is interesting too.
It's not like she came, she bought a small apartment and settled down. She took on a big renovation project and added into her background in food, hospitality and working internationally. And she imagined a creative and community based future for the property she was fixing up.
[00:02:26] Speaker D: Yeah. So in this episode you will hear about why she choose the town of Abriano. What surprised her about moving inland rather than to the coast, how she found the buying and renovation process in Italy, and also what she sees in Le March as a place for food, tourism and a slower, more intentional travel.
[00:02:47] Speaker C: So without further ado, here is Anna with Sarah on living in the market.
[00:02:54] Speaker E: I am from Australia and I've been living in Melbourne for most of my life. And I'm from a small country town about the same size as Fabiano and I'VE worked in the food industry all of my life. I was supposed to kind of reason that I came to Italy was a bit of a midlife crisis because I'm 50 and I applied for the University of Gastronomic Science which is located in Para in Almante and it's a university that was started by Carlo Cucharini from.
I was accepted so I done a master's pursuit of communication and marketing and the traffic was great.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: And then from Bra you moved up to Le Marche.
[00:03:39] Speaker E: Yeah, so I really enjoyed that. Near Umbra the trains were amazing. I could get to Milan where the Aidsme and just the right side town I think as well. So when I did start my kind of like oh maybe I'll just move somewhere, I need to leave look around. I had quite a detailed spreadsheet and some of the things on that list were being quite close to a major capital. So it written two little whiles was really important for me just because I need to get home in a hurry and that's more possible.
A 50 meter swimming pool was also on my list but that wasn't available which is a shame. The size of a town. I think 30, 40,000 people is a really nice sized town.
[00:04:21] Speaker A: So you made a sheet and how did it happen that you found Fabriano? Just looking around or did you know someone or.
[00:04:27] Speaker E: I know the region a little bit obviously because of the wine food. I think because I studied food I was already a little bit aware that I spent a bit of time in Senegalia before. So I kind of knew this coastline but not inland so much. And I thought not being on the coast was a good idea. I just wanted to be a living off at forest and I was with Viennese and the Teleka and Sabimarma and in the end it was actually the property that made me decide. But also the town is really cute.
I'm going to hill like a traditional Italian south. It's a little bit in Morico Valley and there's a beautiful river that runs through the town and my property backs onto the river which is really amazing. It was a really wealth of town. So there's a lot of really beautiful old buildings and rooming churches as you would expect, really gorgeous theater.
[00:05:19] Speaker A: And how was the process of finding the property? Did you speak it down at first like finding professionals most of the time
[00:05:27] Speaker E: the most difficult part, how did I find the property? Chatting with different real estate agents online and I just so happened to find a really great agent in Fabiano and they had a really fantastic team that are very organized.
[00:05:42] Speaker A: Can you tell a bit more about this project, how the idea started and what is your vision for the future? So the property you're talking about is Crypto Mysto Comone.
[00:05:50] Speaker E: Right. I would have just bought an apartment to myself, but I've renovated some properties in Australia before, so I do enjoy that challenge. So when I'm looking at houses and this one came about, it was a bit of a project, actually. A very big project.
I suppose fraternity still came about because when I was studying, some friends I made in my class, one of them is Finnish and one of them is Canadian. We were in the back of a taxi one night and the taxi driver said, wow, you're all speaking English but all different accents. Where are you from? And they told him, and then he said, ah, you're like a pitch on this spot.
And it just kind of stuck. I thought it was a great little name. There's nothing to go in the fried food. Sorry. Yeah.
[00:06:33] Speaker A: But also it's connected with your passion for food.
[00:06:36] Speaker E: Yeah. So I've done lots of little projects together and lots of my other friends from around the world have also had some income into the projects and I would like to continue. It's a bit of a community, creatives space and really nice community of people.
[00:06:52] Speaker A: How did you find the Italian market? The pros, the cons, the difficulties?
[00:06:56] Speaker E: I think I've been really lucky in the fact that fantastic team tradesmen were also really great.
I really was in a really lucky position to have time on my hands. So I really wanted to get in, get dirty and work on the project with the team. Yeah, I think that really helped them maybe respect what I wanted and I appreciated their opinions on everything.
[00:07:21] Speaker A: It's difficult to find a trustworthy person that you can feel like reassured that everything that they are doing is fine.
[00:07:29] Speaker E: I mean, they're all men and As a single 50 year old woman, I think it did take them a minute to maybe understand that. They've had the vision of some processes that I want to kind of follow after that experience. Really great.
[00:07:43] Speaker A: You said you're also involved in local food initiatives and I like doing a dance as well. And how is your relationship with the language?
[00:07:50] Speaker E: It's embarrassingly vowed. I'm not sure what you know about Australia, but we grew up with a second language not being something that was particularly taught at schools. It's been really difficult for me to learn a talent. I understand Cuntulanda that actually state background. I get rid of coronavirus.
[00:08:08] Speaker A: Le Marche is a pretty modern region.
[00:08:10] Speaker E: Yeah. I mean there's not a lot of English spoken. I really, I'm going to live here. I'm not just passing or living three months, going somewhere else and going back to Australia. I do need to learn it.
[00:08:21] Speaker A: Oh, there's time.
I lived for a while in France and it was the same. I went there without knowing the language and I ended up just going grocery shopping those things. So it's happening without you realizing it.
So is there something that you miss about Australia being here? Something that you appreciate more being here?
[00:08:43] Speaker E: I think it's. I'm going to sound ridiculous even though I'm living in such an amazing country for food, but multicultural food is something that is a little bit harder to come by in Italy, especially regional areas.
I think as a country like Australia that is only being really white history after about 250 years we're very multicultural. So I didn't realize how much my own taste buds are. Really many more Asian influenced spice.
British as well obviously.
And buying things like coriander don't exist. Yeah.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: Apart from the bigger cities. Yeah. It's really difficult. And if you could give just a piece of advice to anyone moving to Italy or something that you would have done differently, you can't expect it to
[00:09:32] Speaker E: be like your own country. And I think the more that people don't say, well it's not how I do this or that's not how we do it back in Australia. I think those things did not help.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: It's about maintaining the broader view.
Thank you so much, Sara.
[00:09:49] Speaker D: What I liked about that conversation is that Sara's stories feels very real.
[00:09:54] Speaker C: Yes, definitely. There's a lot of conversations about Eteri Dusty at the fantasy level.
The views, the food, the piazzas and ton of stereotypes.
And what stood out for me in chatting with Sarah is the decision making process behind the move. She thought carefully about where to live, what kind of town she wanted, how connected it had to be and then what kind of project she could take on. It was almost scientific.
[00:10:23] Speaker D: Yeah. And I also really like that she chose a place like Fabriano. Like Fabriano is a beautiful corner of Italy, but there aren't that many, you know, tourist or international buyers. The town has a real identity.
[00:10:39] Speaker C: Yes. It's an interesting town because it used to be very popular and powerful in the middle ages and until not so long ago and it has kind of declined. But as you know, it takes a little for it to go back into the map and become popular again.
This is one of the big themes for us. It has always been. It is for places that are not famous in the global imagination, but are absolutely viable, sometimes more viable than the most famous destinations.
[00:11:08] Speaker D: And there was also something quite encouraging in the way she described building relationships locally, like not expecting Italy to become Australia, not demanding that everything works the same way, but gradually learning how to operate within a different place.
[00:11:25] Speaker C: Indeed.
So if today's episode made you curious about La Marque, this beautiful area of central Italy, or the town of Fabriano itself, or other smaller towns in it, in Monzeneri, go to Magic Towns Italy. You can use the Town Explorer to look into Fabriano and 1500 towns. Create a free account. You can compare data points and access the guides we have prepared for you.
[00:11:50] Speaker D: And if you enjoyed this episode, do share it with someone who is thinking seriously about a move to Italy.
[00:11:55] Speaker C: Thank you so much for listening. Thank you Anna for being back here. And we'll be back next Saturday.
[00:12:01] Speaker E: Ciao.
[00:12:02] Speaker A: See you next week.
[00:12:03] Speaker B: That's it for this week on MagicTowns Italy. You can create a free
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