Reforged – Reforged Life

Reforged Italian Dream – episode 3 – We are taking two steps back

So as you know from episode 2 post it turned out that buying fees and taxes are not so scary as they could be. I have to be honest I was little worried, but thanks to deep research we know now that we can handle them. Uff 🙂

But because we are from Poland we have another crucial issue to be addressed -costs of living. We don’t want to move to Italy and look for regular jobs there. We want to slow our life’s pace and work only on our own projects. Because of this need, the cost of living is a very important factor that we must consider.

I made a simple assessment of the monthly cost of living and received a figure of around 4,000 EU. I think that for many people, especially for those who live in countries with strong currencies like Euro, Dollar or Pounds this 4 000 EU is not a big of a deal. But for us it is. In Poland 4 000 Eu is around 18 000 zł.
To understand how much it is let’s take a look on the National average in Poland. In 2019 the National average was around 3 800 PLN (around 830 EU). To give you a reference point lets take a look on the National average in Germany – in 2019 it was around 4 000 EU. So yeah, 4 000 EU monthly is a lot.

So our plan to deal with this living costs is twofold.
Firstly, we want to start few businesses here in Poland, develop them as much as possible and take them to Italy. (If you interested to know more about our businesses, feel free to take a look on other sections of the blog).
Secondly we want to start some local business in Italy. We want to have a guest house there and some special services for our guests.

The first part (businesses) is going quite well, but they are not generating as much revenue as we would like yet, so we need more time to improve their performance.
The second part (guest house) is of course only possible in Italy, but to know what to expect, we made estimations for the performance of the house with 5-6 rooms.
Therefore, it is planned to cover 70-80% of living expenses with revenues from businesses created in Poland and 20-30% with income from renting guest rooms.

Unfortunately the COVID-19 came and the situation changed dramatically. Because of the panic and all those restrictions and bans the major recession is expected. Especially in Italy, a country whose revenues largely come from tourism. For this reason, all estimates are pointless now and we have to wait and see what the future holds.
Also, I think that this situation can be really big opportunity for us. I think that there is a big chance that this pandemic will cause a massive property price drop in Italy.

So, yes we are taking two steps back and will see how the situation will develop in the near future.

Reforged Cars – BMW M5 – the best automotive experience in my life

As you may know (or you will in a moment:)) I recently picked up the BMW M5 E60. This is the second car I bought to resell as Reforged Cars. But before we move on, please take a look at some photos of this beauty! 🙂

From the previous post you may know that every car I buy as Reforged Cars is registered and driven regularly. To be sure that everything is working properly I test every car very carefully. I have a lot of fun testing classic BMWs, but testing M5 was something really special.

I can say that driving the BMW M5 was definitely the most intense, frightening, intimidating and beautiful automotive experience of my life.
Some time ago I was happy owner of 115 hp Yamaha Tracer Mt-09, so trust me, I know what real acceleration looks like. But the way BWM M5 bring those 507hp to life is simply astonishing.

I think the most amazing thing is that with a BMW M5 you have two cars in one.

If you just want to cruise, no problem! You set gearbox to automatic and set the gearbox speed to 1 and you can enjoy a comfortable limousine. The soundproofing in this car is so good that you can drive 200 km / h and you don’t even notice.

But when you want to have some fun, you just press the M button and 507 ferocious mechanical horses are ready to rip your head of. When you kick the pedal into the ground the car shows what it is really capable of. And it can do a lot! Driving M5 is such amazing and intense experience that there is no words to describe it. No YouTube videos will prepare you for what you’ll experience driving the M5.

And on top of everything there is this unique naturally aspirated v10 engine sound… Pure perfection!

I will never forget the day I drove the BMW M5 for the first time. When I finally got out of the car, I was so exhausted (in a good way) that after returning home I had to take a nap to process what had just happened 🙂 How great to have a car that gives you so much emotion that it’s difficult to process it? 🙂

This car is a savage beast. But if you take the time to understand it you will be the happiest beast master in the world.

The car is available for sale. It is located in Warsaw, Poland.
Please contact me if you interested.

Reforged Life – an easy way to get a lot of extra time in your life

When I talk to people about things that I do in my life and try to encourage them to change their lives, I often hear the very same answer: “I would like to have time for such activities, but unfortunately I don’t have one.” or “I don’t have the magical power to extend the day, so because of that I have enough time for everything.”

I think, in fact, it is true that some people may have such a busy schedule that there is simply no space for anything new. But when you take a closer look at the average schedule of the day, you’ll see that some things consume so much of your time that’s pure madness.

For me of the most important thing in my life is my free time. When I don’t have enough time for myself, I feel unhappy. That’s why I hate wasting my time when I don’t have to. Therefore, I followed some rules that allowed me not to waste too much time on meaningless activities. On this post I would like to share few tips, that can give you a lot of additional free time.

First and the most important rule is to choose activities that are close to your home.
Yes, it’s really that simple. This single rule can save you many hours monthly.
One of the most time-consuming tasks is getting to work and returning home from work. In some cases, this task may take 2 to 4 hours a day!
This task has two main factors:

The distance from your home to the workplace – just pick the workplace that is as close to your home as possible. The ideal situation is when you can walk or drive to your job in less that 10 min. If you can’t change the job, maybe you can change the home?
The way you get to your job – is the way you chose to get to work is the fastest possible way? The same distance can be covered very quickly or very slowly, depending on the chosen means of communication. So, if you are stuck in your car in traffic everyday, maybe is good idea to go with subway or some electrical vehicle?

But of course this is not just about work. It is the same case with all everyday activities you do. Just make a fast calculation and you will see that small changes can give you a lot additional free time.

Get a car
I know it is obvious, but I will write it anyway. Car is one of this special things which can change money for time! It will help you save so much of your time that you can’t even imagine.

Get a electrical vehicle
If you live in a big city, I definitely recommend buying an electric vehicle. It is also a very strong time saver. Plus, many models will also give you a lot of driving pleasure.

To sum up I would like to show you quick calculation I made, so you can see some numbers:

Far away from home	Times a day	Minutes	Times per week	Total min per activity
Work	2	60	5	600
Training	2	30	5	300
Studies (weekends)	2	40	2	160
			Weekly	17,67
			Monthly	70,67

Close to home	Times a day	Minutes	Times per week	Total min per activity
Work	2	10	5	100
Training	2	10	5	100
Studies (weekends)	2	20	2	80
			Weekly	4,67
			Monthly	18,67

			Difference	52,00

As you can see with only 3 main activities the difference is huge +50 hours monthly. And the savings will be the greater the more activity in the month you have. Take some time and make your own calculation and you will see how much extra time you can get for yourself.

Do yourself a favor, make a change and enjoy the many extra hours of free time!

Reforged Italian Dream – Episode 2 – purchase taxes and fees and living costs

Ok., so we finally are finished our consultation with an Italian Accountant. To be honest we didn’t learn anything that we couldn’t find on the internet already, but what’s very important we were able to confirm the information we found and discuss it in more detail. So, below you can find what we found so far. I think is quite complete guide for buying a House in Italy.
At the end of the post I will also write few words about the costs of living in Italy.

Purchase guide and Ownership taxes
During the research I found amazing purchase property guide made by Studio Legale Metta for 2018. It is in english (not so common when it comes to Italian companies) and is written in a simple and easy to understand language.
You can find there all you need to know about the proces of purchasing a property in Italy and about the taxes and fees related with this process. You can also find there information about ownership taxes and fees.
You can download full guide here.

Business costs
Because we want to move to Italy with our businesses we are curently building here in Poland we wanted to know how the tax system looks like in Italy when it comes to self-employment.
Below you can find information we gathered (remember that it is March 2020 and this numbers may change in time):

The VAT
VAT is 22%.

The Income Tax
Income tax in Italy is progressive and has the following thresholds:

€ 0 to € 15,000	23%
€ 15,001 to € 28,000	27%
€ 28,001 to € 55,000	38%
€ 55,001 to € 75,000	41%
Over € 75,000	43%

The INPS (social security)
This is quite a big tax, so be aware and remember that this one will consume a lot of your income.
Standard equasion for INPS is: (Total Income – deductible costs)*27-28 %
But INPS has an annual minimum contribution of about 3 500 EU (for partner in marriage company) and 3 800 EU one person company. So minimum of 7 000 EU for 2 people company (marriage type).

Accounting cost
Of course, the exact numbers depend on the amount of work the accountant will have to do, which is related to the number of documents and invoices you will produce monthly. But we can assume that the costs would be between 2 500 – 3 000 EU annually.

Abroad income, properties and assets
If you own a house or other property you will have to pay 0,76% on the market value annually.

If you have financial assets including bank account you will have to pay 0,2% with a minimum of 34 euros for each current account.

If you have income including rentals or interests from financial assets or any income, you will have to pay taxes on it at the regular tax rate (progressive from 23% to 43%) but you may be able to deduct from the amount payable the taxes you have paid already in you country. It depends on whether specific income abroad is regulated by a double taxation agreement.

Tax incentives
In some cases you can take advantage of the preferential taxes that the Italian government has prepared as an incentive to attract human capital to Italy. You can download this guide below:

Tax_incentives_for_attracting_human_capital_in_Italy Download

Local differences in taxes
Please note that in Italy each region and often each municipality or even city or village may have their very own rules and taxes. So, it is crucial to check this before you decide to buy a property. With that issue I would recommend you to contact Italian accountant.

Living costs
This issue is very crucial for us. It’s because we live in Poland and here, we have Polish Zloty (PLN), which is more that 4 times weaker currency than Euro (1 Euro = 4,25 PLN). We have to calcutale everything very carefully, so when we take our businesses to Italy they will withstand currency change and much higher taxes.

I will certainly write a dedicated post about the cost of living, but for now I can say that we have estimated that we need around 4,000 EU per month.

Reforged Cars – my first classic car for sale – BMW 735i E38, 3.5L V8, 38 000 km mileage (2001)

Yes! It finally happened. Just look at this beauty! 🙂

I proudly present you first classic car for sale from Reforged Cars. You can’t imagine how happy I am. I’m making one of my biggest dream come true. This is super special for me, because I always wanted to own a BWM 7 series. Every time I saw this model on the street I was talking to myselft: “Some day I will own one”. And of course I’m aware that this car will eventually change the owner, but before it happens, I will be able to drive it from time to time and this is simply amazing 🙂

I was already able to take it on few little trips and all I can say it’s that I trully love this car. The comfort of the drive is simply top notch and the suspension and gearbox work is just flawless. And this amazing V8 sound. Inside, the car looks like new. I swear if it wouldn’t have so low mileage (37 000 km) I would definately keep it for myself. But because I’m trying to start a business here I think that keeping the first car woudn’t be the best decision. But the temptation is huge 🙂

This is good news for you because you can become the owner of this beauty 🙂 Below you can find detailed information about the car.

BMW 735i E38 M Sport (2001), milage around 38 000 km.
As you may know from this post all my cars are driven few times a month so they don’t stand idle and they can be shown on wheels on car events and meetups.

Accident free – car history is documented.
Car was imported from Japan, now it is registered in Poland.
The car is after the full checkup by professional mechanic and it’s ready to drive. Oil has been changed with the milage of 37 800.
Right wheel arch laquer thickness is 169um, so I assume that this part was laquered second time. Other parts has factory laquer thickness.
Car’s VIN: WBAGG41010DN64892

Below you can find equipment info based on VIN raport:

S202A Steptronic
S210A Dynamic stability control
S548A Kilometre speedo
S204A Shorter final drive ratio
S216A Hydro steering-servotronic
S245A Steering wheel column adjustment,electr.
S261A Side airbags for rear passengers
P337A M Sports package
S339A Shadow-Line
S341A Bumpers completely in body colour
S354A Windscreen, green-tinted upper strip
S403A Glass roof, electrical
S415A Sun-blind, rear
S423A Floor mats velours
S428A Warning triangle and first aid kit
S430A Interior/outside mirror with auto dip
S441A Smoker package
S459A Seat adjustment, electric, with memory
S473A Armrest front
S481A Sports seat
S494A Seat heating driver/passenger
S496A Seat heating, rear
S500A Headl.washer system/intensive cleaning
S522A Xenon Light
S609A Navigation system Professional
S640A Preparation f tel.installation universal
S672A CD changer for 6 CDs
S676A HiFi speaker system
S704A M Sports suspension
S710A M Sports steering wheel, multifunction
S739A Fine wood trim
S775A Headlining anthracite
S780A BMW LA wheel, M parallel spoke
S785A White direction indicator lights
L807A National version Japan
S818A Battery master switch
S823A Hot-climate version
S845A Acoustic fasten seat belt reminder
S853A Language version, English
S875A Infrared remote control
S992A Control of number-plate attachment

If you have any questions do not hesitate to ask.
Seriously interested in buying, please contact me by email.

Reforged Cars – how it’s started and how I want to do this

Why cars? Well it’s simple. I love cars. It’s not that I loved them since I was a little kid – of course I had a posters of Lamborghini Diablo on and Ferrari Testarossa on my wall but at that time sports and video games were two things that comsumed most of my free time.
But when I finally get my first car I instantly fell in love with it. And I know that it was real love because the first car I drove on the street (apart from that on the track) had nothing to offer. It was a white Opel Combo B from the 90’s. This car was so bad I can’t even find the right words for it, but it still managed to find the right path to my heart and because it was the first one it will stay in my heart forever 🙂

I love the driving experience. I love engineering. But I also love that cars and motorbikes can save you a lot of time by taking you wherever and whenever you want. You can feel really free while driving. What’s more, every car has something unique and interesting, so you can discover their secrets throughout your life and never get bored. There is always something that you have not yet tried.

My interest of doing something with cars started when I realized that the path I have chosen for my professional life is very virtual and I get much more satisfaction when I work physically and I can see, touch or use effects of my work.
So, when I finally quit my regular job I started to think seriously about the cars. I remember that one day I saw TV Show called “Zadowowi Handlarze” (eng. Professional Traders) and there was a 2 guys who were importing cars from Japan. This interested me very much. I thought if they could, so would I. So, right after the show I did a research and I found that the cars from Japan are indeed in amazing shape and the prices are also very nice. So the decision was done I will try to buy some cars from Japan.

I decided that for few first cars I will buy a cars that are imported from Japan but are already in Poland. That way I would be able to check the market demand without going trought the whole importing proces.
I started talk about my plans with my friends and soon I get the contact to a guy (Hi Piotr :)) who is importing cars from Japan and that way I bought my first classic BMW! You can read about it more here).

My plans for cars trading are little different than you normally see on the market. I don’t want to be a guy who only carries his cars on a tow truck and most of the time the cars stay idle in some garage. I want for my cars that they will live their dream car life, getting all the love and admiration that classics deserve! And of course I want to be big part of this dream car life.

So, because of that I set some rules to myself, that will help me doing things right:

I will search and buy only interesting cars (true classics or masterpiece of engineering).
Every car that I buy will be checked by a professional mechanic and prepared for driving.
The transparency is crucial for me – you can ask me anything about the car you are interested in.
Every car in my shop will be driven regularly.
I will show my cars on as many car events or meetups possible.
I will write and make as much post and videos possible about every car in my carrage.

My plan for first year is to buy and sell 4-5 cars. I will keep you posted on every step I take to make this happen.

Inmotion V10 is a great vehicle, but it is not suitable for everyone. Think twice before you buy it.

I was looking on the electric vehicles market from the beginning (yes I’m that old :)) and I was waiting until the bateries will be more powerful and the specs I want will be affordable for me.
So this time has finally come and I decided to buy one for me. I wanted to have something that could help me to move around the city without a car. My main activities are no too far away from my house, so driving a car two or three streets does not make much sense.

I was looking for vehicle who has this three things:

Big wheel, so it will be dealing nice with different surfaces
Long range, so I can go deep in the city and back
Speed around 30km so I can move fast and have some fun

All additional features were of course welcome but not so important for me as those three.

So after quick research I found that there is something I was looking for. Inmotion V10 electric monocycle. I used the black friday sale and I got my first electric vehicle 🙂

But this post will not be a standard review when the owner pointing out why he loves his new gadget. I would like to tell you very important thing that I think you should know about this device.
Inmotion V10 is really great monocycle! But it’s definitely not for everyone. If you are not careful, it can catapult your face into the pavement so quickly that you won’t even notice.
I think that is should be quite obvious for everyone that a monocycle which can go 40 km/h may be dangerous. Specially with unexperienced rider. Unfortunately I didn’t find even one video on YouTube about it, so I decided to make my comment on this.

Issue 1 – Learning curve
The learning curve is really steep. It means that you have to put a lot of time and effort just to learn the basics like: getting on, moving forward, braking, turning, keeping the balance. And learning this will not take you an hour, it’s gonna be much, much more.

Then, when you finally will be able to get on the monocycle easily, you’ll acess to it’s all capabilities. And to use them safely you have to master riding techniques and this task will definitely be a difficult process. It will require a lot of time, effort and mindfulness to do this right. I think that this may be too much for most people. And if you simply would not be eager to learn the technique you will propably end up injured quite badly.

Issue 2 – Riding on one wheel it’s hard
Maybe this is obvious but I still want to say this – riding on one wheel vehicles is hard and unintuitive. Although when Inmotion V10 it’s turned on it will keep the tension in the motor, so when you stand on it, it will not flipp backwards or forward but it still can easily fall off on side.

Another thing is that when you stand on the wheel you will work like a little sail. Every stronger side wind can affect the wheel behavior. The wind can push you and your wheel off the track. Also a sudden gust that occurs, for example, when you leave from behind a cover or building may cause the wheel to wobble and when it happens it’s very hard to take control back and it probably will lead you to a fall.

Issue 3 – Power
With great power comes great responsibility. This famous sentence from Spiderman movie is quite well known. But I’m not so sure if people really see the message. People often underestimate the power of vehicles and at the same time overestimate their skills. The perfect prescription for an accident.
You should know that Inmotion V10 has the power that can deliver fast acceleration and max speed aroud 40 km/h. Everything will be ok., when the speed you ride will always meet you skills level. But I don’t believe that avarage rider will use it this way. So, if you are not patient enough and you cannot dose the power right, you can seriously hurt yourself.
You should also understand that good and safe riding at 20 km/h is something really different than good and safe riding at 35-40 km/h.

Isseu 4 – Weight
Despite the fact that Inmotion V10 is able to ride well on many surfaces, it climbs well uphill and even doing very well offroad, there still will be some situations when you will have to pull it up and carry with you for some time. Just remeber that this wheel weighs 20.6 kg. It’s good to make a small test and try to pull up 20kg with one hand and walk few steps with it.

Summary
I don’t want you to misunderstand me. I really think that Inmotion V10 is amazing, well designed vehicle and the performance it can deliver is top notch. I can guarantee that if you take the time and effort to do it right, you won’t regret it and I will have a lot of fun riding it.

But I just want to tell you that riding on Inmotion V10 it is not easy. If you are a person who does not like challenges and does not like to spend a lot of time and effort to acquire the right skills, this vehicle is simply not for you and riding it can end up with serious injuries.
So, please take your time and think twice if this kind of electric vehicle is right for you.

Reforged Italian Dream – episode 1 – picking the right house (house requirements, transaction fees and taxes and best real estate online base)

Welcome to episode one. The first of many to come. In each post I will describe what issue we are currently working on, we have just worked or we will be working in the near future.
I hope that in time this section will become a mini guide for everyone who wants to know how to carry a project like that and maybe help you make your Italian Dream come true.

So, as you know from the section’s opening post we decided to move to Italy. For us moving to Italy is a part of a larger plan – we want to change our lives and slow down our life’s pace a little. Our business plan for moving to Italy is partly based on the idea to make a guest house there (I will write about our business plan in details in near future). So, because guest house is an important part of our business plan, the house has to meet specific requirements. Because there are thousands of home ads online, before we could start browsing ads, we wanted to specify requirements for our dream home.

Our requirements list looks like this:

Size: at least 200-250 m2, ideally around 400-500.
Rooms: at lest 6, ideally 8-10
Bathrooms: at lest 2, ideally 3 or more
Constuction:
- Detached house, free on four sides
- Region specific desing, ideally traditional italian stone house
- 2 or 3 floors with bathroom on each floor
- Terrace or/and balconies and ideally large windows
Condition:
- Ready to move in or small renovation works required
Location:
- House in quiet place, but at the same time not to far from small city or village
- Not to far from the main tourist attractions such as a big city or natural attractions located near lake, sea or in the mountains
- House in dominant position with panoramic view on mountains, lake or sea.
Important additives:
- Medium or large size garden with few trees
- Garage at least for one car – ideal for 2
- Good quality road leading to the house
- Furnished or partly furnished
- Possibility of connecting the internet with a good quality connection

The next key thing when it comes to buying a home is of course money. You probably think that this should be the first thing to consider and maybe for you this is the issue number one. But for me, and it’s not just about buying a house, I like to first build the vision of my dream in my mind and then think about the money and how to make it happen. So first I build this picture in my mind:

I see us living in a nice, stone house in a beautiful place in Italy. As every morning, we go out to the terrace for tea and we look at the breathtaking view. In our garden we can see our dog happily gambols. While drinking tea, we think about tasks to be carried out on the coming day and we can’t wait to start. We are happy and calm and we feel really special.

I know the picture is nothing special in general but it is special to me. Maybe your picture would look different? I think it’s worth spending some time visualizing your dreams. In my life I made a lot of many different projects and I made a lot of my dreams come true and I would not be able to do that wihout vizualization. Visualization is a powerful tool that has this magical power of making things happen. I honestly recommend it to everyone.

Ok., so after we did the visualization and requirements for the house, we started to work with the numbers. After short research I found that buying a house in Italy is quite expensive when it comes to transaction costs. According to the report from Global Property Guide it could be even 32% of the property’s value. Below you can find detailed table with fees and taxes and here you can read the whole article about the costs.

Registration Tax	3.00 – 7.00%	buyer
Value Added Tax (VAT)	4.00% – 22.00%	buyer
Land Registry Tax	1%	buyer
Notary Fee	1.00% – 2.50%	buyer
Legal Fees	1.00% – 2% (+ 22% VAT)	buyer
Real Estate Agent´s Fee	1.50% – 4% (+ 22% VAT)	buyer
Costs paid by buyer	9.05% – 32.82%

So, all these fees and taxes are really high even if I would consider the optimistic variant that the costs will be around 10% (and they will probably be more). This is especially problematic for coutries that do not have the Euro or their currency is much weaker than Euro.
In Poland we have Polish zloty (PLN) and we have to pay around 4,25 PLN for 1 Euro. So for example if we consider buying a house that cost 250 000 Euro, the fee would be around 25 000 EU. To make you realize how much it is for us, I will say that it is a quarter of the price of a two-room apartment that can be bought in a good district of our capital city, Warsaw.

So knowing exact fees and taxes values for a specific house is crucial information. Reading online articles about fees and taxes are great source of information for the start, but to know the exact numbers we have to contact with some local accountant and real estate agency.
To find the italian accountant I used the Advocate Abroad site. Currently we are in the middle of consultation about the costs, so I can’t say if the contact was ok or not. I will definately update this later. The results of this consultation is crucial for our business plan, so we are really looking forward to it.
I have to admit that I’m a little afraid of the result of the conversation with the accountant, because I’m afraid that the amount of taxes can make it very difficult for us to make our dream come true. As soon as I will have the numbers I will definately write a post about this.

Regardless of the result of the conversation with the accountant, we have already started looking for a home so that during the next vacation we can see a few of them personally.
We currently mainly look for houses on Idealista.it and I can definitely recommend it. It has good interface, very nice search tool (you can draw a search area on google maps), but the most important thing is that its data base is really, really big, so you will not have a problem to find houses in any area you are interested in.

So that would be all about how we defined the criteria for searching for our house, how we determine the budget and where we are currently looking for online real estate sale advertisements in Italy.

The next step will be to create a complete tax and fees table, so we can see how much money we actually have for the house.
Then we will start working on a business plan that will show us how our plan looks in numbers.

Our Italian Dream – how it’s all started

I love when its warm, the sky is blue and the sun is shining. For me 30 degrees celsius is just ideal temperature. I have always thought that I was born at the wrong latitude and I should live somewhere in the south. Unfortunately I was born in Warsaw, Poland. Don’t get me wrong I love my country and I am really proud to be Polish, but the weather here is just killing me. Although, I must admit that the last two years have been really great, it does not look so beautiful normally. Our polish summer weather is very capricious and unpredictable. You never know if its gonna rain or not, and you can be sure part of your long awaited holidays you will have to spend in hotel room because of the rain or rapid temperature drops.

There is one more thing that makes it very difficult for us to spend our dream vacation in Poland. It’s geography. Like our great comedian Marcin Daniec said in one of his standups: “Every normal country has a sea in the south and mountains in the north. But of course in Poland it must have been the opposite.” As a result, it is often too cold and unpleasant by the sea in the summer, and in the mountains in the winter it is too warm and there is no snow.

But by far the worst for me when it comes to the weather in Poland are the long, dark periods of no sunshine in autumn and winter. Often for many days or even weeks all we can see are dark, steel and heavy clouds that cover the whole sky. Every winter I feel that it will never end and I will never see the sun again. After every winter I am trully exhausted because of lack of the sun.
We both with my wife simply love the wormth and hate the cold. That’s why for our holidays we choose mostly south destinations. So few years ago we decided to go on Canarian Islands. We stayed one week on Tenerife and one week on Grand Canaria. Before this trip I was only one week on a boat in Croatia, so for me this was the first true holidays in someplace warm.

The whole holidays were amazing and I simply can say that Canarian Island are true paradise. I remember that waking up with certainty that today the sun would definitely shine was a great experience for me. I felt like a great weight was removed from my shoulders. It was very, very nice feeling.
I feel that I never came back from this amazing place. I mean my body is back in Poland but my mind and heart stayed on those amazing islands.

Just after returning to Poland I started to search the information how we can move to Canarian Islands. My plan was simple, we will buy a house and we will start Guest House there. Unfortunately I found very quicky a law that says you can’t rent a home to tourists in which you live at the same time. It simply means that you have to have two houses – one for you and one for tourist. So, because we simply can’t affort to buy two houses, this was the end of the Canary dream for us.

But the idea to move to the south didn’t died with this little spanish obstacle. We continued our search and soon we found two new localizations: Croatia and Italy. We have been in both destinations few times and we loved them both. Two years ago we decided to go on two weeks holiday – one week in Croatia and one week in Italy. The oportunity to be in both countries on the same holiday really helped us made the final decision. We always wanted to live in Italy but we tought that we simply can’t afford it, that’s why we were looking for an alternative locations. Croatia was looking really good especially when it comes to financial issues, so we consider it very seriously. Unfortunately we discovered that many things has changed in Croatia over the last few years and the prices went really high and now there are even higher than in Italy (sic!).
In the meantime we did some research about the prices in Italy and we discovered that we are able to buy a House there. So the decision was done – Italy will be our new home!

Ok., so now we only had to pick the region and start looking for a house. In the past few years we visited: Merano, Cortina di Ampezzo, Bergamo, south and middle part of Lago di Como, northern and middle part of Lago di Garda (Molveno, Tenno, Arco, Riva del Garda, Limone, Malcesine, Arco, Bolognano).
We love Dolomites, so we liked Lago di Garda the most, especially around Riva del Garda. However, this is one of the most expensive regions in Italy and we don’t think we will be able to find a house that we can affort, so our search is around four regions: Trentino Alto Adige, Lombardy, Veneto and Tuscany.

Moving to Italy is by far the largest and most complicated project I’ve ever carried out. In this section I will describe each step we take to make our Italian dream come true. There are so many aspects that need to be taken into account that I’m sure we won’t have any problems to find new topics.

My Reforged Photography

I think that photography is something really magic. For me the most important thing is that it helps you keep the best moments of your life. You simply take a photo and this moment is saved forver. You can return to it anytime and how many times you want. It also changes the way you look at the world – it strengthens your attention and affection to all these amazing things that are invisible for most of the people. All you need is a moment of fun with the camera and you will start to notice that everything can be beautiful and interesting. Another great thing is that you don’t have to travel to the end of the world to take great photos.

I was really fortunate that photography found me very early. It was just after my high school graduation. So, photography has been with me for over 15 years and I still enjoy doing photos. Thanks to how long I have been doing photography I was able to catch a lot of amazing moments of my life and I’m really greatful for that. On the other hand I had all time I needed to learn a lot about photography.
In this section I will try to share my experience with you and I hope you can find something usefull here.

But before I start making posts about more detailed topics I would like to show you some of my photos. I hope you will like it 🙂

Here you can take a look of my panoramas (3:1 aspect ratio):

Two Mountains - around Tre Cime di Lavaredo

Here you can find standard photos (3:2 aspect ratio):

If you would like to have one of my photos on your wall, I can print it for you. You can find avaible formats and prices below:

Panoramas prices:
20/60 cm – €80.00
30/90 cm – €120.00
40/120 cm – €150.00
Standard photos prices:
20/30 cm – €50.00
30/45 cm – €60.00
40/60 cm – €80.00
50/75 cm – €100.00
60/90 cm – €120.00
80/120 cm – €150.00

Accepted payment methods – PayPal
If you buy more than one photo you will get a discount 🙂

Shipping:
Poland – 5€
European Union – 10€
United States – 15€
Anywhere else – 25€

If you want to buy a printed photo from me, please contact me.