Peter Bills: Italy is great to visit but living there can come at a high price

Italy's beauty comes wrapped in layers of red tape. Photo / Supplied

It's about this time of year that a great many Europeans fall in love. Not so much with human beings, although that does happen, especially in spring time in the northern hemisphere. But the love affair in this instance is with a country, Italy.

As spring dawns, flowers and trees bloom, shooting into spectacular life to celebrate the warmer days and longer hours of sunshine. The colours are beautiful, especially in settings such as the Amalfi coast around Naples and anywhere beside the Mediterranean and Adriatic Seas.

On a hot, lazy day one summer, I boarded a boat near Livorno, just past Genoa, and chugged around a couple of headlands before disembarking on a tiny island where stood a Benedictine monastery. You climbed the cliff path behind it, descended gently through a glade of pine trees and came to a small bay. Above it, shaded by the trees, lay a restaurant serving the freshest of fish from the crystal clear waters below.

Now I might, hopefully, still be a bit young to be making plans to meet my maker. But if ever you found a location, an idyll where you'd happily bid farewell to life and float away into the beyond, this surely was it.

Italy can be like that. The Tuscan hills, the fabulous sights of Rome, Venice or Verona, Turin's elegance and the beautiful Aosta valley - Italy boasts more gems than is downright decent in a single country.

Yet paradise on earth? Not if you listen to many Italians. For an omnipresent bureaucracy lies over this land, like some winter fog blanketing the Po valley. It is everywhere; you can see it, hear it discussed and experience it if you dare to be anything other than a brief visitor to this bewildering, enchanting but maddening country.

Italy beguiles in a way the locals understand all too well, but foreigners can misunderstand. Some time ago, I became engrossed in a fascinating conversation with someone who had a long and painful experience of Italy and its ways and customs. He was not impressed.

He had bought an olive farm, complete with old farmhouse, somewhere deep in the Tuscan hills. It seemed the perfect life; until work needed to be done to repair his roof. There the nightmares began.

Planning permission was required to make some adjustments and in due course, after paying an architect to draw up the plans, they were submitted. Now this being Italy, things can operate at a fairly tardy pace. But when he hadn't heard anything for more than six months, he enquired with the local regional office as to where they stood.

What happened next will not greatly surprise those of you with international travel experience. Basically, he was told that if he paid €10,000, his planning permission might come through quite quickly.

About the same time, he had decided he wanted to extend his olive grove by buying a plot of land near his own property. Again, alas, his decision to go down the legal channels was met with inertia.

Again he asked questions why. Once more, it was charmingly suggested to him that a "donation" of a separate €10,000 to the local mayor would be so warmly received he was sure to receive authority within days. Again, he demurred.

The last I heard, a sizeable olive grove with a beautiful 400-year-old farmhouse on the land was for sale at a snip of a price. And the owner told me anyone who bought it would need their head examining.

Coincidentally, shortly afterwards, I happened to mention to the Italian wife of a friend, that buying an apartment in a place like Rome or Venice would be a wonderful idea. A look of complete horror came across her face. "Well, before you do so, you should know that we have just sold our apartment here," she said. "I just couldn't stand the bureaucracy and corruption any longer. Good luck if you do, but even if you are Italian and fluent in the language, it is almost impossible to understand the councils and their ways of working."

Corruption is a word much in vogue in South Africa at present. But in Italy, with its Mafiosi, it is a practised art and has been for centuries. So be not seduced, dear traveller, if you find yourself amid Italy's myriad splendours. Look and enjoy but do not for one moment think about buying a place there.