Our New Second Home in Le Marche

After a 2500 km journey by car from our home in Stockholm, Sweden we arrive to Ripatransone, a small village with a little more than 4000 people, on a mountain top at 15 km from the coast of south Le Marche. In this lovely village we have just bought our beautiful apartment.

Before going on, I'd like to introduce ourselves. We are Bengt Jödahl and Susanna Millberg, a Swedish  couple, living in a house very close to Stockholm. Bengt is running a contract cleaning service provider with operations in Stockholm and Gothenburg. Susanna is responsible for the fresh food department in a supermarket close to our home.

The idea of buying a house or apartment somewhere abroad started when myself (Bengt) and my long-time friend Anders were visiting south France some six to seven years ago. We had discussed about it for a long time and during this trip we met several people, mainly English, who bought a second home in France and they were enthusiastic. So we decided to start our search.

We wanted to have it in a sunny place, so the choice pointed to either France or Italy. Personally, I was a bit inclined towards France as I lived in Paris for some time and I can speak French, but apart from that the “match” between the two countries was quite even. After many evening spent discussing about it we picked up Italy.

Why Italy? Probably because none of us had a great knowledge of the country but all of us knew enough to understand that Italy is definitely a country worth to be discovered! People are very friendly and even if you don't speak the language they always try to help in one way or another and, as a foreigner, this is something that you really appreciate. Ah, I was forgetting, we are all four of us great fun of Italian cuisine

We wanted the house to be situated in an area with a fairly central location, not too many foreign tourists, a nice scenery, not more than 20 minutes to the sea ( a demand by the ladies ) and of course at last a reasonable price. My friend Anders went to Le Marche for business and was stunned by the beauty of this part of Italy, so Susanna and I decided to go there to have a look around and convinced ourselves that this was the places where we wanted our house.

After some tours to view properties around the area we decided that probably a house wasn't really good for us, because the houses we saw were quite isolated, dark at night and we would need a car to go anywhere, even to go for a “caffè macchiato” or to buy the “giornale”. So we decided to go for an apartment.

We heard about this apartment in Ripatransone from a friend of us back in Stockholm who knew this estate agent with this opportunity, and shortly after he presented  a proposal for us regarding a house in Ripatransone where it would be possible to build two or three apartment.

So in mid February 07 all the four of us flew to Italy and went to have a look at this project. The property ended up to be in a very central location of Ripatransone and had fairly good external conditions but the inside was not far from being a disaster. What did strike us was not only the potential of the house once restored, but it was also the jaw-dropping view over the wonderful hills at 180 degrees all the way down to the sea. This is quite unique for an apartment in such a central position to have such an amazing view, so we decided to go ahead with the purchase.

After seeing some drawings we signed a preliminary agreement and ended up with two apartments who would be restored in a way we would decide.

At last we were on the way to our Italian home.

At the end of 2007 the building contractor started his job after all building permits had been
approved. Luckily, we were spared this process with the local authorities as this part was
handled by the contractor in a very good way. I have to say though, that we were also much less involved in the building process than what we thought we would be. We just had to choose tiles for the bathrooms, living room and the balconies and parquet floor for the bedrooms. But after all the building process went on fairly well and with e-mails and few visits on the spot we had good contact with the builder, so in August 08 we managed to spend three weeks in our new apartment. Of course it was not finished yet but we had a nice Italian style wooden kitchen delivered to us just in time for our arrival by a very good local kitchen provider. But there was one problem to solve. The balconies were not ready. As we understand it the building permit for the balconies took some time because we wanted them much bigger than the standard allowed in this village. We wanted balconies big enough to sit 6 people on a dinner table. Maybe it was too much as we couldn't reach our goal but eventually we are very satisfied with the balconies we got.

Finally we got a very nice apartment with good work from the builder and we must say that especially the bathrooms and the parquet in the living room are excellent.

One important lesson I learned is that you must speak the language if you want to have a good stay and get to know your neighbours and be able to phone the plumber when the water is not going in the right direction. You need to know the language if you want to watch the TV, read local newspapers and get to know the locals. In fact, Susanna and I have been going to evening Italian language classes given by a nice Italian guy called Roberto. It takes time to learn a new language but it’s easier now to talk to our neighbours Maurizio and Franco and phone the gas technician when the heating doesn’t work, as it happened last October.

We didn’t get a house and the balconies are smaller than we wanted, but eventually we ended up with an apartment we love in the very charming village of Ripatransone and it feels like “coming home” when we drive up the hill and see the lights of “Ripa” (as the locals call it) after driving 2500 km from Stockholm.

Bengt Jödahl and Susanna Millberg