Sardinia

Karen is the first person I met when I moved to Seattle in 1998. A friend of a friend that moved there just before I did. We kept in touch for a while after she chucked it all and moved to Sardinia around 2005. 

I figured that since I was going to be in the neighborhood, I would track her done and set up a lunch date on my way through. 2 months later, I am just now planning to head out of Sardinia.

It has been a busy couple of months since I got here. 

Karen got married a few years ago and the couple bought a house here to restore using a the Italian version of matching Covid economic incentive money. Between the builder and the architect being somewhere between fully incompetent and criminally negligent and her husband running away to be with his 20 year old niece, she has her hands full juggling lawyers, replacement builders and dopey travelers showing up on her doorstep. 

Since her house is down to bare walls, floors and ceilings, she and her dog have moved onto her 30′ sailboat in a nearby marina that is trying to evict everyone next October to make room for redurbishment of the docks. They need fixed up but there is nowhere for 350 boats to go. So that is another bowling pin thrown into juggling act. Talking to her about it, she would describe it as more like juggling chainsaws.

So lots of Italian legal efforts going on. She asked me once “what do you call 5 lawyers in a room?”. She answered it herself, saying “It’s a start”.

She offered to let me stay on her friend’s boat while I am here in exchange for some work around her house. And she cooks breakfast and dinner too. A pretty good deal so I gladly accepted.

Because the house is tied up in legal troubles and the work so far is way out of compliance from the approved permit, no real work can be done in case demolition is in the near future. 

I have been tasked with building a greenhouse with the debris from the first demolition work she did when they first bought the house. Mostly just windows and some lumber that has been sitting in the yard under a tarp for the last year. 

It isn”t all work for sure. I think Karen is mostly just glad to have some company even if I do go to bed at 9 and she is on the typical Italian schedule of just sitting down for dinner at that time. 

A typical day for me is waking up at 6am, going through too many coffee capsules while watching building videos on YouTube until I get a whatsapp text that she has eggs and more coffee ready on her boat around 9 or 10. 

Once that is done, we’ll either head over to the house or to a school where she teaches conversational English for an hour or two while I walk her dog around the town or countryside depending on what’s around the school. On those days, it is a late start at the house but still any progress Is better than no progress. 

Some days, she’ll leave me at the house while she heads to another class or we leave early for her evening classes. 

At the end if the day, she puts together a really good dinner with just a hotplate, air fryer and rice cooker in her little kitchen 

 have picked out the best bits and am almost done.

I have not seen anyone else but I am told there are a couple of other livaboard people in the Marina. The nearest town is a couple of miles away so it is very quiet here once all the fishermen leave for the day. 

We have taken a couple excursions around the area on days off from the house work. I really didn’t know what to expect but I am still a bit surprised. It is a pretty big place. Driving a few hours in any direction will take you through miles and miles of farmland and some pretty impressive mountains. There are a lot of small towns and villages that honestly all kind of look a like unless you know someone who knows what makes each one special. Often it is a quirky Church. We visited one on a mountain top that had a noticeable slope built into it from the altar to the door and outside to its grounds for some unknown reason. Its s thigh burner just walking the narrow cobblestone streets to get to it. But once you get there, you have to walk up hill to get the communion. No doubt the healthiest people in town are the old ladies who go to church everyday. Many people make there own wine and in some cases you can bring your own jug and a couple of Euro and take some home.  

There are a lot of festivals. I was lucky enough to be here for the run up to lent. This part of Sardinia is very horse oriented so the festival incorporates equestrian events. A lot of acrobatics on horses running full put and jousting to snare a small hole in a small star ornament hanging from a rope. At full speed in a mask and costume. Lots of eating and drinking and socializing for week of the festival.

It is a pretty friendly place. Not much English spoken so that is a bit tough. Karen is friendly and speaks pretty good Italian. I wouldn’t know but people look like they know what she is saying. That is a huge help in getting to know the place.

My time here is winding down and I need to get busy getting busy finishing up my projects and figure out where to go next. So I’ll leave you with the photos at trippinwithdon.com/photography until I pop up somewhere else soon.