Living the Villa Loca- Part 2, Villa of Broken Dreams

“In truth, Hans and Lisa vary the work for their guests and are extremely gracious and giving hosts.”  This is a quote from my last blog entry.  If you read it, it was the one where life on a farm/villa in La Marche, Italy is everything one would imagine it to be.....fun, romantic, tranquil.  Turns out this is not always guaranteed, as Trisha and I discovered.

I think our problems began when the weather turned for the worse. Our first day was bright, sunny, and extremely pleasant. Then the rain, cold, and gray rolled in and remained for the majority of our seven days in La Marche. Perhaps we would have persevered through this soul-dampening weather under normal circumstances, but unfortunately other factors intervened making sure we did not. One of those factors was our hostess Lisa. 

Lisa, the woman who enthusiastically welcomed us and was most hospitable our first two days, transformed into a negative and moody braggart, whose brusque mannerisms did little to brighten our days. To begin, she talked incessantly of how expensive things cost in Italy, how little money they had, and how she had no time for anything. This of course left us feeling awkward about asking for seconds on food or preparing something on our own. We also became extremely cognizant of putting enough work time in each day. And that led to the next problem. 

 

Lisa never clearly defined her expectations for our work. When we first arrived, I asked how long she would like us to labor each day. She said they were very flexible (whatever that means). So Trisha and I chose to begin our days around 9:00 and usually completed our day at 5:00, with an hour lunch thrown in there. We only took bathroom breaks and always accomplished a great deal of work. 

The difficulty was knowing if the work schedule we were adhering to was sufficient. Lisa and Hans (Hans is her Dutch boyfriend who actually owns the farm, but had little say in anything related to our work), never gave us any clear feedback on the subject. When we finished working at 5:00 the first few days I'd ask if it was okay to quit. They would say yes, but would continue to work for another hour or so, making us question our earlier end time. More difficult were the weekend/weekday differences. Lisa claimed they both worked straight through the weekends. She never mentioned if we had to as well. They did encourage us to take a day trip to a historic town, which we did, but then a fateful Sunday rolled around.

Trisha and I had just worked about five days straight (since the day trip to the historic town) and asked if we could make another outing. They agreed and everything seemed to be fine. However since it was a little cold that day and all the shops and restaurants were closed, we returned early around lunchtime. We told of our situation and asked if we could prepare a little something to eat. After a pause and apparent apprehension, Lisa told us that there should have been four restaurants open in the town. We told her we did not see them. She did say okay to the food, but you could almost see the ice developing in this woman's eyes. And it got worse. 

Since we figured that this was our day off we in turn spent the day relaxing. Hans, Lisa, and John (Lisa’s best friend from the states who came to stay for two weeks; another weird story) were all working that day outside. So every time we saw them during the day we could feel the bad vibes radiating from them. The frustrating part was they didn’t say anything. Had they wanted us to work? If they were upset, why didn't they just say something?  

Feeling extremely uneasy about everything, Trisha and I even left a little money on the table for our lunch thinking that might be the issue. I also approached Lisa later that night and asked her if everything was okay and if we had done something wrong in our day off. She said it was fine, no problem, but did not elaborate to give us anything close to piece-of-mind. She also said nothing of the money I left on the table until I brought it up, and even then the feeling was not very warm. So from this time on, we felt her attitude changed toward us. We of course followed suit and began incessant Lisa bashing when she wasn't around, which at least made us feel better(very mature on our part).  

The following days the ice seemed to thaw in Lisa's demeanor, but our drive and enjoyment in the work we were doing ceased. To add to this, the amount of people staying in the farm grew (Hans, Lisa, John, Han's mom and aunt, Han's best friend and family). The new additions to the house were very nice people (and Dutch which Trisha got a kick out of), but caused Lisa to became even more stressed and wound up. Also, the delivery of 5000 lavender plants and their immediate need for repotting so they could be stored for later field planting did not help her disposition (We may never be sure if repotting lavender for four days straight with no variety in the work really sucks, or if it was just our poor attitudes at that point) So around this time, Trisha and I decided to leave our farm stay two days early and re-coop before our next one began on Friday.  

before...

after...

In hindsight, Lisa's less than cordial personality during our stay was likely not totally aimed at us, nor the result of actions we precipitated. The reality is Hans and Lisa are about 65% complete on a bed and breakfast farm that they want to open in June. At the same time, they want a working farm (with lavender fields) and need to make a profit from both. Their money situation is not where it should be at this point and the family and friends they had visiting, turned out to be a decision made long ago they were regretting. But that was enough for Trisha and me. Our next farm-stay awaits in Velletri, 45 minutes south of Rome. We're hoping for a nicer hostess.