Episode Details

Luca: Hey Anna

Anna: Hi Luca. Where are you right now?

Luca: I’m actually at Catania Airport.

Anna: Why?

Luca: I’ve just come back from a little tour of Sicily. I spent a week going around. Visiting places. Meeting up with expats.

It was, it was very enjoyable. My only problem with Sicily is that every time I go to Sicily, I put on three or four kgs.

Anna: Mm-hmm.

Luca: So it’s a bad place for me to be.

The, the food is amazing, but there’s a lot of it that’s fried. So it’s good, but it’s dangerous.

Anna: Oh, and where have you been?

Luca: There was a bit of a wide tour, started off in Caltagirone. Licata Sciacca and then went off to Mussomeli. No. Of which, you know, yes. You know a lot about Mussomeli, so,

And then ended up back in, Catania.

Anna: But sorry. Are [00:01:00] the one euro houses real there, or is just.

Luca: Yes, yes. Oh, I can attest to the fact that they exist.

There’s not many of them. In fact, I don’t think there’s any of them left. That’s actually a funny, a funny thing that all the expats I met, none of them bought a one euro home. They heard about the place from, of course from George Laing, and we know him. From the one euro home system, but none of them bought a one euro home, but they’re still affordable homes, you know, so.

Anna: Yeah. So did you get to see any of these properties? Like what condition are they actually in?

Luca: Yeah, so the, you have to understand this. Mussomeli like many Sicilian towns h as an old historical center that was not made for cars.

Tiny homes, very often in a very bad state, surrounded by newer buildings, mostly erected in the sixties and the seventies. I actually had a chat with an architect a Sicilian architect yesterday who does [00:02:00] not want to be named. He told me that this is almost inevitable in Sicily, that he cannot think of a single town in Sicily that does not have this layer of frankly, a bit ugly buildings from the sixties and the seventies around it.

So what you can play with is the size of the historical center. Some have a very large historical center like Catania, Catania, five kilometers wide historical center. Some of them have a very small historical center and, in the case of Mussomeli, you have the outskirts, which are like I don’t wanna say modern, you know, semi modern sixties and seventies buildings. Not super pretty, although the nature around it is very pretty. Then you have the historical center, which has all these very cute, lanes, alleys, stairs, going up and down, winding, absolutely not made to be driven with a wide car. I am thankful that I had a, a Cinquecento, Fiat Cinquecento with me [00:03:00] so it will fit and the one euro homes are in this section.

They’re mostly very old buildings, they need a lot of love.

Anna: Does it feel like a place you could live year round or more like a slow rural escape?

Luca: It is surprising when George says that there’s a lot of expats. He is not kidding. I personally met quite a few of them and I’m just gonna say hi to Charlotte and Tim, I know you’re listening, so I’m saying hi to you.

There’s maybe four restaurants. Mm-hmm. But they are quite busy with expats a