Hear from an expert on what causes post-election anxiety and how you can manage it.
A faltering village in Italy is offering houses for 1 euro to Americans upset with the results of the presidential election.
Be forewarned, though, say a couple of experts in being an expat. While they were both peppered with inquiries before and after Nov. 5, relocating to Italy isn't easy. Your new home, particularly if it's Rome, might not be what you've imagined from websites or even vacations. And that seemingly cheap euro?
Translated to American currency, it's actually $1.04.
The village, Ollolai, sits amid farms in a mountainous region in the center of the island of Sardinia. With a dwindling birth rate and only 1,150 residents, about half its peak population, it's offering bargain-rate fixer-uppers but also move-in-ready homes for as much -- or as little, depending on your outlook -- as $105,000.
Rustic enough to have some houses built of granite rocks, Ollolai is also modern enough to have sculpted a website, liveinollolai.com, open to all but designed to lure Americans.
"We can't of course ban people from other countries to apply," Mayor Francesco Columbu told CNN.com, "but Americans will have a fast-track procedure."
"Of course, we can't specifically mention the name of one US president who just got elected," he said, "but we all know that he's the one from whom many Americans want to get away from now and leave the country."
With the most recent incomplete count giving Donald Trump almost 76.8 million votes, a shade below 50%, and Kamala Harris 74.2 million votes, that's a lot of potential emigres and a lot of people willing to happily wave bye-bye.
Threats to depart are easier to make than concrete plans, and have historically been attributed to celebrities who are still here.
As for election-centric inquiries, said American-turned-Roman John Henderson, "My list of friends, contacts and readers asking for advice on moving to Italy is longer than my last blog about my love of living in Italy."
Fellow Roman Patrizia Di Gregorio, operator of a company called Expats Living in Rome and a Facebook page of the same name, said she needed to hire two people to help manage the election-related traffic.
Inquiring minds want to go
Henderson, 68, covered sports for newspapers in Las Vegas and Denver before he retired 10 years ago to Rome, where he writes a highly useful, entertaining and (trigger warning) occasionally Trump-bashing travel blog called Dog-Eared Passport.
He'll tell you that his adopted city is beset with dirt, graffiti and uncollected trash, the postal service is cartoonishly inept, and the bureaucratic red tape could fill the Pantheon. He'll never live anywhere else.
Di Grigorio, 53, was born in Naples, Italy, grew up in Schenectady, New York, left for Rome in 2000 and has been spending too much time lately in New York City while she tries to turn a green card into dual citizenship.
"The food here is garbage," she said, finding a worm in the Big Apple. "You guys are not living a life here. What America does is try to keep you in debt and tie you to your health care."
What Italy does, should you try to relocate, is swamp you with requirements and forms, all of which must be met or filled out precisely and dropped off carefully.
Di Gregorio's Facebook group, now at 43,000 members, has dispensed that advisory to a group that she said grew 211% percent from mid-September to mid-November, and 30% in the week after the election.
"It's not just Democrats," she said, though they predominate. "It's a quality of life thing." And unrealistic expectations cross party lines.
Saying no to expectations
Keep in mind, she said, that once Americans apply for residency, they're just more immigrants in the melting pot, arriving in a country with increasingly strict standards.
Yet they think they'll waltz right in. One spouse makes good money and the other will homeschool the kids and they can pay cash for a house, and how can they get started?
"You can't," Di Gregorio says, again and again.
Or people figure they'll show up and start teaching English.
"Yeah," she said, "you're not."
If you're planning to get a job, you need a sponsor. If you think you can find one, she said, you're probably wrong, unless you're working for the European Space Agency.
Some people can start with student visas, but that's only good for a year, and the old dodge about coming to learn Italian doesn't work anymore. You'll need to show a base level of proficiency.
Henderson arrived on a retiree visa, which does not allow job-seeking and requires an annual passive income of at least 32,000 euros, or $33,322 as of Friday's exchange rate.
Even that process is more difficult than a decade ago, he said. But there are lots of websites with advice, and lots of services like Di Gregorio's, and plenty of rewards at the end.
"To all you desperate dreamers out there, trust me," he said. "Living in Italy is as great as you imagine."
Prepare to be frustrated, stymied, delayed and aggravated throughout the application process. Then expect anxiety when it's time for renewal.
But from his balcony 2 miles from the Colosseum, he said, it's like heaven -- with better pizza.