The Apulian Mood
Arriving in Puglia for my summer break felt like stepping out of Milan’s boiling whirlwind and into a soft breeze of light, peace, and timeless simplicity. After months of paperwork, calls, and speculation, finally standing again on the land of Trulli Caliandro brought everything back into focus. Being here every day—walking through the fields, touching the stone, watching the horizon shift with the light—felt like reconnecting with the very heart of this dream.
This trip was anything but idle. I spent my days guiding friends around the property, listening to their (often brutal) feedback, meeting the engineer to review a computo metrico that suddenly seemed full of blind spots, and holding back-to-back visits with seven (!) different construction companies—later narrowed down to five simply because exhaustion won the battle. Each conversation brought new challenges, new contradictions, and yet, somehow, new inspiration.
Somewhere between the critiques, the long technical talks, and the constant juggling of opinions, a strange and unexpected clarity started to grow. Maybe it came from the land itself, where time moves more slowly. Maybe from the warm advice of locals who know that things here unfold differently. Or maybe from the simple fact that I was on holiday and therefore not supposed to force every moment into a schedule. Whatever it was, I began to sense what I now call “the Apulian Mood”: a gentle, aware acceptance that not everything needs to be decided, controlled, or solved right away.
In Milan, my brain is wired to turn every input into action. Here, too much input leads to the opposite—an overload that gently pushes you to let go, breathe, and smile your way through uncertainty. So this time, there’s no detailed plan to share and no project timeline to obsess over. For now, the plan is beautifully simple: to have no plan at all.
August 3, 2023
Arriving in Puglia for my summer break felt like stepping out of Milan’s boiling whirlwind and into a soft breeze of light, peace, and timeless simplicity. After months of paperwork, calls, and speculation, finally standing again on the land of Trulli Caliandro brought everything back into focus. Being here every day—walking through the fields, touching the stone, watching the horizon shift with the light—felt like reconnecting with the very heart of this dream.
This trip was anything but idle. I spent my days guiding friends around the property, listening to their (often brutal) feedback, meeting the engineer to review a computo metrico that suddenly seemed full of blind spots, and holding back-to-back visits with seven (!) different construction companies—later narrowed down to five simply because exhaustion won the battle. Each conversation brought new challenges, new contradictions, and yet, somehow, new inspiration.
Somewhere between the critiques, the long technical talks, and the constant juggling of opinions, a strange and unexpected clarity started to grow. Maybe it came from the land itself, where time moves more slowly. Maybe from the warm advice of locals who know that things here unfold differently. Or maybe from the simple fact that I was on holiday and therefore not supposed to force every moment into a schedule. Whatever it was, I began to sense what I now call “the Apulian Mood”: a gentle, aware acceptance that not everything needs to be decided, controlled, or solved right away.
In Milan, my brain is wired to turn every input into action. Here, too much input leads to the opposite—an overload that gently pushes you to let go, breathe, and smile your way through uncertainty. So this time, there’s no detailed plan to share and no project timeline to obsess over. For now, the plan is beautifully simple: to have no plan at all.