Nobody reacted enthusiastically. Everyone found it a strange plan. Godfried and Anuscka had their life in Haarlem in order. Godfried had plenty of work as a builder, Anuscka as an interior designer. With their three daughters they formed a strong family; they had many friends and a beautiful house. Would they risk everything? Would they transplant their adolescents to an Italian school? Didn’t they see the television program `I’m leaving’, concerning Dutchmen with the same plans? In this generally the adventurer came back with one’s tail between one’s legs after reality set in.

Yes, that television program Anuscka and Godfried had watched correct well and they had not deterred them. Those had shown them where the weak spots are with such a venture and how it could happen to them. They stock with their decision through everything, especially their own fear for the unknown. 

The friends could do organise nothing else than organise a surprise party and be present at the party for which the family had hired a beach club. At the festival the family got a bottle full of notes for a gift. The bottle could be opened after five years. On the notes the guests had written where they thought that the family would be after five years. For most of them it was clear; the family back in the Netherlands. 

The bottle was thrown ritually in the sea. From there it would float to Italy where the family could fish up the bottle, an exact copy, in the lake at their new house. 

When the family drove with half their stuff out of Haarlem, the street was completely full of friends.

A week later the first friends travelled to Italy to help them with the first unpacking. They found paradisiacal surroundings among the Italian hills. There stood the farm. However that was hardly what it was. In fact more a ruin. In the Netherlands it would be provided with a sign ‘uninhabitable/ condemned’. Also inside the house it was literally a heap of rubble. With open mouth the friends walked behind Anuscka, who led them through the dusty ruin. She told them very seriously; `Look, here comes the living room, here's the kitchen, and this room will be the bedroom. Do you see what a beautiful view?’ That last was correct. 

Next to the ruins stood a small encampment; existing of a small plastic swimming pool and 2 caravans with front tent. There the family lived. Godfried made, in a self fabricated wooden shack, a kitchen, a shower and a toilet. Anuscka had started with chipping centuries old tiles in the farm. All this at 40 degrees Celsius.

Soon their friends chipped also. However there was co-operation in that remarkable dream. During the many pauses they were eating delicious food and drinking delightful wine. As a result, that summer as many as sixty Dutch friends came to visit and help. 

With autumn coming the real work started. The friends returned and the family Heuvelmans stayed behind. Mid-September the three children went to school. Floor (8) went to the primary school, Amber (12) and Carmen (13) to middle school in the neighbouring medieval village, Montalto delle Marche. 

The first months the 3 girls sat in several classes without understanding a word. Six days a week. ‘That was boring’, Carmen says now, with understatement; `after a little while you understand some sentences, such as `take your pen’. Because you see everyone is taking his pen’. They dreamed of the possibility of talking with their classmates. After school the two eldest daughters went to the teacher Mirella, who taught them Italian and did their home work together. Their little sister Floor had less home work and enough time to become bored. After couple of months she got an Italian girlfriend, Elena, with whom she played, initially being silent, with the Barbie’s.

The torment lasted a couple months. After half a year the girls understood Italian and after a year they spoke it fluently. Anuscka could help them no longer with home work, only still a little with maths. The roles had been turned. The girls interpreted while their parents tried to talk with their Italian friends. To everybody's stupefaction all three girls, who meanwhile even mastered the dialect of the village, were promoted to the next class at the end of the year. 

Anuscka and Godfried were too busy to learn the language fluently. The following two years they would personally demolish the ruin to build it from the ground. Only the roof, the foundations and the floors were done by a builder. Anuscka changed into a graceful building worker with muscles like cables. With a pneumatic hammer she removed a square kilometre of plaster from the walls, she chipped off points and pointed them again. Godfried built the gaps for the window-frames, replaced beams above the doors, made walls, constructed doors and tables and built a fireplace. Also sanitary supplies, water piping, electric and solar panels. He installed a particular heating which is stoked with olive stone pulp after pressing.

The first months of their stay the family lived in their encampment, but in November 2007 it became too cold and too wet. They escaped to a rented appartment in Montalto. That helped their relations with the Italians. The children, who till now were brought to school and to their friends', could now walk by themselves. Also their parents made friends with the villagers. Adriana, the mother of Floors girlfriend Elena, became Anuscka's girlfriend. She and her family started consider the Heuvelmans as their own family. She invited them on all family festivals and parties. 

Just in June 2008 the Heuvelmans returned to their ruin. The encampment was no longer necessary, a part of the house was unbelievably habitable. And Godfried had built a beautiful swimming pool, that the new Italian friends made use of gladly. The swimming pool was called the municipal pool. Regular swim parties were organized with sometimes as many as forty children.

Meanwhile Godfried and Anuscka continued working steadily. From time to time a dinner-set flew through the air. That had been calculated in advance. They knew from the programme `I’m leaving’ that the stress of their project would test their relationship. Because of their squabbling they finally made the bedrooms for their daughters and for themselves. That brought some respite. The marriage was not easily damaged.

Litterally and figuratively. During the first night in their new bedroom the complete house started to shock and shake. Anuscka panicked. She thought that the builder had made construction faults as a result of which the house was collapsing. The family escaped outside. Later it appeared that the village Acquila, eighty kilometres further on, had collapsed from an earthquake. Also in the neighbourhood some houses had been damaged but not the house in the valley. The family had invested in building ‘earthquake-durable’. That proved to be a good choice. 

Also on their inner development was extended. One day the three girls said to their not very religious parents that they wanted to become catholic. Perhaps this religious switch originated less from inner conviction than because already their friends were catholic and there were organized exuberant festivals by the church and family. Under the supervision of the bishop Carmen and Floortje were baptised and did their holy communion. Amber will do it next year. Their parents looked on interested. The ceremonies were beautiful and again it was good also for the integration in the village. 

In spite of all that integration the family kept their contacts with their old Dutch friends in an intensive and faithful way, that nourished those old friends as if they were not away at all. Italy seemed suddenly round the corner. Montalto had become a district of Haarlem. In summer and Christmas holidays the family came to visit. By means of their tales, by means of telephone, by means of Internet the Dutch friends kept track of the transformation of the house in the valley. They saw the change of the ruin into a delightful spot, and their friends into half Italians. 

In 3 years the bottle with the notes can be opened. Then it will come to light how wrong the Dutch friends were. In fact they know already. The Heuvelmans family will never return.