Your Second Home in the Sun - Aaaaaargh!

[tom]

It’s been years since I’ve lived in England, 13 to be precise but I still pass through every now and then to connect with a few old friends and make them feel old with my Peter Pan traveling life.
It’s also been about 13 years since I watched television – if everyone wants to live longer how come they all waste so many years in front of the Hypnosis Box?

But as a guest I couldn’t very well tell them to turn off the TV and in the course of the day I saw no less than three programs about ‘how to buy your second home in the sun‘. The show followed middle class couples with a few hundred grand to spare whose dream was to discover a beautiful, rustic little cottage somewhere in the south of France of the foothills of the Italian Alps and… transform it into a few tinny little apartments to rent to holiday makers.

Travel anywhere in the countryside of Spain, Italy and now Croatia and Bulgaria, and the local news is all about the rich Germans and English who’ve bought up the nicest bits of land and houses for their summer homes. The houses stand empty for 9 months of the year, a gardener making sure that the pool is clear of leaves for the summer when the owners come to make the most of their ‘_fashionable European properties which double as an attractive investment’.

I watched the programs with a growing nausea and anger inside me as the preoccupied entrepreneurs negotiated with the local authorities to build an extra driveway to their properties, utilising the help of local lawyers and translators – because, naturally, they had no intention of learning the language of the country they’d bought land in.

For the English and Germans (there are others but these are the main culprits) it’s all good. The sun shines on their new properties, the beer is cheap and they have something new to boast about at their dinner parties. True, the locals don’t speak much English and you can’t get Tetley tea bags anywhere but it’s only for a month or two a year…

Thing is, in the countryside of Europe, the only thing people have is land. There’s no money, no work and only the slow-paced, gentle life of tending the allotment and looking after the goats or the bees. Stress levels are low and life is simple and uncomplicated, if a bit dull. There isn’t much need to work as many people live on the land belonging to their families and so there’s no need to pay rent.

This also means, though, that no one local can afford to buy land either. When I was traveling in Ibiza, a local told me:
‘Es una lastima. When someone buys a cinca, an Ibizan house, it’s lost to us forever. It’s like we lose a little bit of our culture and become like all the rest of the world.’

Road Junky supports the abolition of frontiers and passports and maintains the right of anyone to live anywhere they want. But how many homes do you need? Houses stand empty, the community spirit is drained and the countryside of Europe becomes another target for the endless consumerism that threatens us all.

[Lineker10]

It's not just abroad - a ton of the Lake District in the UK is taken up with holiday homes from people who live in the cities and want somewhere for weekends or holidays. Pushes the house prices up and reduces avalibilty for young local people who are trying to get on the housing ladder and they end up having to move away. They need to bring in holiday home quotes within certain regions to curb this kind of thing.

[ohio]

"When you want more than you have, you think you need, when think more than you want your thoughts begin to bleed.... Society you're a crazy breed, I hope you're not lonely without me." That's eddie veddar from the into the wild soundtrack. What' I'm listening to right now, very good.

People want too much, they'll destroy shit to get it. Look if everyone looked at the world from a kantian perspective and the greater good, people would be more considerate of others and wouldn't fuck up the environment or local way of life.

[rocco]

You pointed out a critical issue, Tom!
English buyers made the price of real estate grow so munch in places like Tuscany, Umbia, Marche that the new generations of locals who want to - say - have kids, get married and make a family in their own stone village or in the Venetian sestriere (quarter) where their family have been living for generations are just kicked out by the exorbitant prices asked by real estate agents, who now target to British middle-aged couples looking for their piece of Italian autenticity. What's the effect of this? go to Venice and you'll see a ghost city with all the magnificent buildings uninhabited for 10 months per year, or go to Siena to see that every shop or warehouse once used by local artesans and craftmen who catered for the needs of the locals has been turned into a more lucrative "traditional" cantina toscana/osteria/bookshop/souvenir shop or, even worse, McD. The local blacksmith just cannot afford the rent or, if he was the owner of the place he worked in he preferred to move his activity in an impersonal area outside the walls of the city and sell out or rent his shop. All the autenticity the red-haired, freckled faces are in search of is just disappearing with the locals leaving Venice for Mestre and the Sienans moving from the walled city to the concrete blocks in the suburbs. Let's take the example of Sperlonga, a tiny little white washed village perched on a cliff along the amazing coastline half way between Naples and Rome: now the price of a small 50 sqm flat in the narrow hallyways costs between 500 thousands and one million euros (depending on the view you get) and all the young couples which were born there are forced to move to Fondi, an impersonal small town 12 kms inland 'cause they cannot afford a house in their own town... I'm afraid that, to keep it "authentic", in the next years some old local women will be hired to sit on the doorsteps, completely dressed in black, to do crocket work for the joy of the passing photographer! from real life to the living museum.