The weeks leading up to my return to Europe were incredibly busy. I was working madly on a new website and the corporate retreat for my major client when they asked me to contribute to another project which required far more time than I had anticipated. My calendar was filled with meals with friends, club meetings and conference calls. Sleep evaded me most nights as I tried to figure out how I would ever be able to handle work, my social calendar and packing for not one but two trips. My retreat would require four days, including travel. Three days later, I would leave to spend the weekend at my parents' house to celebrate Father's Day and my Mom's birthday before flying back to Europe.
I was also spending time daily on Skype with Running Man (RM), partly for business but mostly because we missed each other. Skype is a wonderful invention. It made the world seem much smaller and helped bridge the thousands of miles between us.
Negotiations on the Trebusa house were stalled but RM was doing reconnaissance on other properties for me. I can't imagine how much more difficult or, perhaps, even impossible the search would have been without having RM doing all of the legwork half a world away. During the three months between my first and second visits, RM had been back to France, returned to Slovenia for a tour, then back to France where he awaited my arrival. I would fly in and out of Stuttgart, Germany, this time around.
I certainly hadn't marked Trebusa off my list but I was excited about seeing some of the other properties I had found online or RM had found just by asking around. People in Slovenia and Italy don't stick a "For Sale" sign in the front yard. In fact, I've seen only a few such signs attached to the side of buildings during my visits there. But Slovenia is a small place where everyone seems to know everyone else, and that proved to be very beneficial in my search.
While RM was back in Slovenia for a few weeks, he called me on Skype to tell me he'd seen an incredible old property not far from the B&B we'd stayed in before. He was there for a few days before guiding a 10-day tour and had gone hunting for wild asparagus with the owner in the surrounding countryside. Rarely without his camera, RM had taken a few snapshots from a distance and would email them to me. He was right. The old farm comprised several stone buildings, all connected in a u-shape with a small courtyard in the middle that you entered through a stone archway. Most of the buildings had been barns with a small house at one end. There was another small detached house as well. The grounds were lush and green and dotted with red and yellow flowers. He would ask around to find out more.
The B&B owners knew the property owner and where she lived. RM contacted her and she agreed to meet to talk about the property. It wasn't officially for sale. It wasn't listed with any agents. She wasn't really even planning to sell it. Nonetheless, they met for coffee and she told him about the property.
Ms. M. had inherited the property from her grandparents, and the parcel included nearly 50 acres of meadow, orchard and timber. The small detached building had been used by an Italian general as his headquarters during the first World War. Most of the property's buildings were nearly ruins but three rooms in the house were habitable and were, in fact, occupied by a woman. The woman and her husband, both doctors, had fled Rijeka, Croatia, in the early 1990s during the war that dissolved what had been the Republic of Yugoslavia. They had nothing when they left their home and found shelter in Slovenia as did many other war refugees. Ms. M. had invited them to live in this place until they could get back on their feet. But the husband left his wife and Ms. M. didn't have the heart to ask her to leave. That would be an issue for any potential sale.
I was intrigued by the beauty of this place, the history behind it, and the potential it might hold for a B&B. Unlike Trebusa, this property was in the wine country of Goriska Brda which was a far better location. But Ms. M. was reluctant because the place was sentimental to her. Still, she might consider selling to someone who would restore the property properly and would love it as she did.
At RM's suggestion, I wrote Ms. M. a letter to introduce myself and to tell her about my dream and what I would want to do with her beloved family property. I also told her that I would not kick out a war refugee who had then been abandoned by her husband. We could cross that proverbial bridge if and when we came to it. After all, I was looking for a refuge in my own, far less dramatic way. Ms. M. told RM that during my next visit, she would show it to us but made no promises about selling. That was good enough for me.
RM had also gone to look at a couple of other properties, including one I'd found online. It looked like a beautiful old Italian villa in a small village near the border. It needed less work than some others I'd seen and even featured a small elevator. But when he called me after seeing it, he was evasive, hesitant to tell me what he was thinking. RM didn't want to spoil it for me, he said, but he had a bad feeling about it when he visited. It felt cold and dead to him.
One thing I had learned about RM was that he did, indeed, seem to have what he calls his "sixth sense." He'd demonstrated it to me more than once. And one thing I'd learned about my brief experience looking at properties in Slovenia was that they all did seem to have a "feel" about them. For all of its charms, Trebusa didn't have the right feel. I would need to continue searching until I found the house that did. And if I didn't find it, perhaps I was searching in the wrong place.
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