Once you meet Mika, the German owner of our villa, it’s hard not to feel totally inadequate. Here’s why:
a)Mika is a Mensa—there are only 300 Germans with the same scary IQ
b)Mika is an astrophysicist, a former Quantas airline pilot and has had successful entrepreneurial forays into construction. He also had the first hang-gliding school in Bavaria, is a connoisseur of the arts, history, music and of all things culinary. He speaks multiple languages fluently and listens to Italian opera while he cooks. But wait. It gets worse.
Six years ago, Mika traded in life in the fast lane in Germany for country living in Tuscany.
He built this villa with his own hands, using traditional Tuscan methods and materials...
and surrounded the place with flagstone patios, pebbled walkways and picturesque gardens filled with aromatic herbs such as rosemary and sage...
pink and white oleander, as well as potted lemon trees and yellow roses.
Irritatingly, he also happens to be a gourmet cook. And, when he isn’t producing his own organic wine, olive oil and honey from his own vineyards, groves and hives, he sun dries his own tomatoes under the Tuscan sun
and harvests his garden, hanging things picturesquely around the porch rafters.
He has a lovely and very large white dog called Jana (of an exquisite Italian working breed called the Maremma) and a small herd of sheep that bleat and follow him around with their bells clanging.
