Good bye, quiet life!

When we moved to the village 2 1/2 years ago, one of the main reasons was to have a quiet life in a countryside yet not too far from the town where we work, study, do sports and meet with our friends.
Also, our cats would have there more freedom and security (from human neighbors and cars!).

The thing is... We knew that we couldn't enjoy our privacy indefinitely, and here we are: a construction site has been set up nearby and from now on, instead of the morning bells from the church and the birds singing their "good morning" to the sun, we gonna wake up with a busy roar/rumbling of bulldozers, trucks and concrete mixers (not saying of exhaust). And people, of course. I don't mean those building workers but the people who'll leave in a new house when it's finished.

So, it's time to start working on our own building project in the forest more vigorously. I hope, neighbors will not follow us too fast...

Land (cont'd)

How to build a house on a slope? Shall we hide it in the trees or put it on top of the cliff? How strong are the winds here? Is it possible to remove a tall pine tree from one place to another?

These and many other questions we were pondering on for weeks and last Saturday we went to the land with our friend who has a house in mountains. He gave us a lot of ideas and useful hints.

I think the first couple of months we'll be going there every weekend with different people and just collect ideas and suggestions how to make our new place beautiful and comfortable to live on.

I figured out one obvious benefit yet - fitness! Climbing up is gonna be our main exercise for now :)

The land is bought. What now?

The last 16-18 weeks were an ongoing search for a decent plot of land.

Actually, there is a distinction between the definitions of "plot" and "land" here: the former is for a sort of pre-developed piece of ground (incl. roads, electricity, telephone, water) where you can build a house or a bunch of them at once whereas the latter means a "wild" place either on flat terrains or high in the mountains or somewhere in the middle, and this land requires development and has a little %-age of covered area (6 to 10%).

Since we leave in a cute little house in the village near the shore, we were looking for something absolutely different - forest, heights, cold winter and NO PEOPLE for miles around.
And, finally, we found it. Thanks God!

What made me excited and at the same time a little bit perplexed that the whole deal took only one hour early this morning, when we went to the Land Register with the vendor, signed some papers, paid some money - that's it! We left the building with a piece of yellow paper which confirms the payment of transfer fees and the registered contract. The title will come in a couple of months, and the land is up in the mountains. So we couldn't carry our "purchase" with us :)

Well, it was more than one hour if we count all preliminary works and searches through the public registers, disputes with the vendor and meetings with our lawyer and architect.

But I still can't get used to know that that beautiful piece of pine forest 1100m above the sea level is our now. And I'm missing it already and going to visit it every day (50 min drive one way), because I love it.

I let myself to savour these feelings for a while and don't think of what is coming next - I mean a building project. I suspect it means less free time, less money (or more money to spend, to be precise) and more headache and communication with people for the next couple of years.

The latter shall be a topic of some other posts.