A different sort of vacation

In Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes, little Frankie's family is living in a two-storied flat for a while where the ground floor gets flooded every winter, so during the wettest months they live exclusively on the upper level. To cheer things up a little, their father says that it's like going on vacation to a dry warm Southern country like Italy, and that's what the kids call the upper story from then on, Italy.

In analogy, I am writing this from the Netherlands.

( Lenghty rambling about building projects and related issues )

I for my part am half amused and half optimistic. I'm sure glad my parents are currently skiing in Austria (the actual country), though, so my mother doesn't see what's going on here...