'Ciao Bella!': Kate Langbroek on Following Your Dreams… and Moving to Italy With Four Kids

This podcast episode is a love story about Italy.
It’s also about following your dreams - quitting your top-rating radio gig, and packing up your four kids, with your husband, to move to Bologna - which is exactly what media star Kate Langbroek did.
The move partly came from a desire to seize life after almost losing their eldest son Lewis to Leukemia.
Now, as you’d expect, Italy was magnificent and wonderful… it was all going along beautifully for Kate and her family! And then COVID-19 hit.
Kate captures it all in her new book, Ciao Bella! including a great reminder of what Italians can teach us about living life - and what really matters - especially when the world starts to fall apart.

SHOW NOTES

Kate's social media: @katelangbroek
Book Credit: Ciao Bella! Six Take Italy by Kate Langbroek (Simon & Schuster Australia $32.99)
https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Ciao-Bella!/Kate-Langbroek/9781760857547
Photo Credit: Tina Smigielski
Need help with your next media appearance? Head to our website at stephaniehuntmedia.com or chat with us on Instagram at @stephaniehuntmedia or Facebook.
This podcast is brought to you by Charles Sturt University - where I studied Communications and I’m proud to be a member of their alumni.
We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast, the Darug people. We pay our respects to their Elders, past and present, and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. 

Transcript

Stephanie Hunt  0:08  
Ciao. Welcome to Season Two of and we're rolling the show hosted by me Steph hunt, where we chat with the world's best female broadcasters, foreign correspondents, leaders and athletes about life and career, what scares them their secret tips and tricks, and how they find the grit to do it anyway.
Stephanie Hunt   0:29  
questo episodio della podcast, a una storia D'Amore suit Italia. This podcast episode is a love story about Italy.
SH  0:52  
It's also about following your dreams, quitting your top writing radio gig, and packing up your four kids and your husband to move to Bologna, which is exactly what media star Kate Langbroek did. The move partly came from a desire to seize life after almost losing their eldest son Louis to leukemia. Now, as you'd expect, Italy was of course magnificent and wonderful. It was all going along so beautifully for Kate and her family. And then COVID-19 hit. Cage captures it all in her new book, Ciao, bella, including a great reminder of what Italians can teach us about living life and what really matters, especially when the world starts to fall apart. Kate Lenbrook fantastic. Benvenuto job.
SH  1:45  
Congratulations, your new book. Ciao bella, six, take Italy. It is so fabulous. I immersed every page. It's like a nice beautiful bath. I felt like I was back in the amongst the red hues of Bologna with you all and now I'm like jacked up ready to sell everything. And there as well. 
Kate Langbroek
Well, I don't, I won't. I won't take any responsibility for that. But it's funny because when I was writing it when we were initially, I would send chapters back particularly to the people who I was writing about. And of course, I was sending back often to people who are in lockdown. And my girlfriend's were like, oh my goodness, I really needed that. And I'm like, wow, that's lovely. But unexpected response was like the the therapeutic nature of it. I've been easily a number of times and I've just taken it for granted. I really have now had I do anything to be back. Well, we realize now that there's a lot about our lives we've taken for granted, you know like I was like I'm never complaining about peak hour traffic again.
How long do you reckon a Steph
KL  2:55  
but yes to be denied easily? If you love easily anyway that you love but once you once you know easily. That's that's very cruel. Whoever it was who said some famous writer I've I shouldn't admit that but I don't know who said God take the world but just leave me Italy. 
SH Oh, exactly. Exactly. So true. I've been a massive fan of yours throughout your radio career obviously. But old school original the panel Yes. Amazing show love the degeneration The Late Show all those each Christmas we'd get the CD like the better live recordings of the bands MC right at the panel. Yeah, yeah. Love the show and love that you breastfed. Oh, Lois. Can we talk about that we show can we set the first time ever had that ever happened before? 
KL  3:53  
I mean, I believe women have breastfeed before. I certainly had breastfeed because I had a four week old baby. So you know, that was all I knew to do when he expressed any kind of desire for anything. Yeah, I was just like, I just put my boob in his mouth. I'm like, This is great. But I had gone back to work to do the first show, our first show post having the baby and I've been at meetings with the guys with Robin, Tom and Glen and Santo. But the first time on air and my husband had come and he was holding Lewis at the back of the studio. And I had said to the guys, I don't know how go during the show. Man, I'd say to pay that. If at any point he's upset or you think he needs me. I'll just step out of the show. It's fine. Anyway, we were nearly at the end of the show and the baby started. squawking we're in an ad break and paid it brought him to me and I just popped him on. When we came back on the ad break there. He was right. I wasn't frame the nipple. I was in fact, enslaving the nipple purpose for which it was intended. And so we just finished the show. I think we're in the last segment or whatever and then it became a massive
KL 5:00  
deal that I had breastfed, which I of course, wasn't expecting with my four week baby brain or even just as a human being, I wasn't expecting that, to be honest. It was in the days when we had a, an answering machine. And I remember in the middle of the night, the answering machine going off, it was the BBC or it was CNN or whatever. I'm like that. So Spader came back to bed, I think, and told me I'm like, That's so strange. And I'm just like, turn it off, couldn't even see what that would be about. And then the next morning, of course, we realized milk comes out of woman's breast, got through international news, and had not done it to be
KL  5:43  
anything other than just how you know obedient you are to the need of the baby when the baby needs something. And now he was so contented there, in my arms fact that you're even out of the house for the full week? Or was it is exceptional and boilerhouse that how much like a triumph does that feel the first time that you leave the house to go somewhere, and everything actually eventually works, you should have that music from chariots of fire plan, as you make your way.
SH 6:14  
That's so true. And false. You had four kids under her and I love in your book, you're writing about being in the grind of the urban modern life and the endless to do lists and the fights about technology, to you know, pack lunches and molasses trying to get
KL  6:31  
out of that grind. It's a lot. And I also hasten to make clear in the book that I'm not complaining, and I know it's my choice, but that doesn't mean it's not a massive, massive amount of work. There really relentless work and to do it, well. Not many people set out to do it poorly, I imagine but to do it well, is a life of sacrifice. And just to do the basics of looking after a family let alone the Incursions from the outside world, just that to contact your school, you've got to into something called a portal, what are they trying to do to us?
KL  7:14  
You know, so, and with four children, of course, there's all the attendance sport, and it was a lot. And we were ground down by it, even though we have a beautiful life and a life like a lot of other Australian families have a busy life and a fulfilling life. But there was a sense for me and Peter, that we wanted something other than exhaustion at the end of the day, hugely successful radio career with huge the 18 years together, you guys, so amazing. And in your book, you're right that we were busy, busy, busy. And then we met cancer leukemia for Lewis and four years of treatment. And I cried in bed, but I was reading about that period for you guys. Do your husband must have loved me.
SH 8:07  
It's just so sad. And the fact that your mother in law, Marie sort of picked up that something wasn't quite right.
KL Which the nurses at the hospital told us is often the grand mother's because mothers are busy and mothers alike, you just operate on the thing of like, you don't know, you assume that it's the thing that happens. And they'll get better and better. Of course, grandmother's have seen nearly everything. And Marie was like this is not right.
KL  8:35  
And had an argument with the doctor. That the time luckily, it was her who took Lewis back to the doctor, I'd already taken him twice. We'd had antibiotics that hadn't done anything. And I was going back and Murray said I'll take him and she had an argument with the doctor. And the doctor said, If you don't like what I'm saying, why don't you go to the Children's Hospital. And Marie said I will. And that night were in the Children's Cancer Center. That had been my doctor the whole time I'd been in Melbourne. She'd been my doctor.
KL  9:10  
And I do appreciate that a GP is not going to see mercifully many cases of childhood cancer. However, I could never go back to her as my doctor. And that was four years of treatment. Yes. And you know, we had a good outcome, you know, which not everyone has. So that kind of changes the context of what happened with our lives beyond that, and I'm very appreciative and when you're in the Children's Cancer Center, you're in there with the other families as well. And when some of the other children fall, it hurts everybody, you know, of course, that it destroys the parents. But you know, we came out of that cautiously at first because you're so used to not there's so much she can't do and then I
KL  10:00  
As Lewis got stronger, and we all got stronger, we all kind of recovered from it. I mean, we probably still are recovering, I guess. Yeah. But we seize the opportunity. Whenever it presented to do something that was joyous or adventurous. You sort of kept it quite private. But you had Peter Hellyer, and Mick Malloy, and lovely friends who were so quick to jump in. And yes, you know, take your radio shift, if you could leave the hospital or leave home, I was doing know the breakfast in Melbourne. And with you and with easy, and I mean, it was well known within our fraternity of showbiz people. And there were people in the media who knew about it, who kept it private, as well, which I really appreciate, which is not the not the template No, now that's for sure. And nor was that the template for then then really, it was quite amazing. And then you write that, but you couldn't leave on a holiday when Lewis was sick, of course, obviously, but the ultimate sign of his wellness was being able to go on a family adventure. So is this essentially the catalyst as well as breaking away from that grind of being parents to go to Italy? Well, I guess it is that the reason I hesitate is because my husband, Pedro, who kindly hooked us up for this conversation. Bless Peter, he doesn't think there's such a true line. But I don't know if you know this step, but women intend to be highly interpretive. And
KL  11:25  
you know, for me, I thought it that made perfect sense that that was part of what made us go, let's go live initially, but Petey was just like, I thought we just loved it.
KL  11:39  
I'm like, yes, yes. Like I think we both right, you know, yeah, maybe not as black and white. No, and it wasn't like like I had some internal alarm Lewis's Well, now we must go live in Italy. It wasn't let Yeah, obvious a motivation. But for me it cancers like lockdown. You know, if you don't come out of that, and I've had some self reflection, there's really no hope for you. And so I guess as part of it, even though we still barely had time, because we still had four little kids. But I think I did think consciously or subconsciously about the life that I wanted to leave when we had the idea. Like we knew it was a huge idea. But we didn't really realize how huge it was until we started telling people. And when we told people, they their reactions conveyed to us how huge in undertaking it was and how strange it was how strange it seemed to so many people that I would leave my job, especially that job where I was doing Dr. National drive radio, and that we would take our children out of their schools.
KL 12:54  
And that we would leave a place we knew to go to a place where we didn't know anyone and we didn't speak the language. And I mean, when I put it to you now it does sound odd.
KL  13:06  
But you know what? It doesn't to me but it but I know people would find it, find it odd and also I get it. People don't like you to change their life. So are slaving would leave a hole in our friends. So they were like don't do that. So they but then no one says don't do that. They think of reasons why you can't do it. Like what about their kids school? Or oh, you know, what are your mum and dad sound like they hated.
KL 13:33  
They hated and I'm doing it anyway. Because we just kind of had to, we just felt the pool once we had the idea we couldn't under have it. And even though my husband was said to me, I don't think you'll be able to give up work. I was so certain that I could and I would. And you did. And I did. Although I did work for the first six months that I was there. That was my mediation with EWZ who of course was devastated and confused. Like any man is when they wife leaves them and they have a happy marriage.
KL 14:11  
I think he's he has his own beautiful wife, Holly wife, who I adore. But I was his work wife for sure. And we had a great on a marriage.
SH I mean, my husband and I we've left jobs at Channel Seven sunrise and gone to Africa for a year and I totally get it. I haven't done it with four kids. But I would.
KL14:30  
But I understand. I understand people questioning it. What do people say when you go to Africa? 
SH Well, I remember my boss Adam Boland at the time. I remember him saying, but what if it doesn't work? Yeah. And I was like, What do you mean? He goes, Well, what if what if it doesn't work? And he's being really friendly about it thing when he kind of? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, Ah, I don't know. You'll be right. It'll just, it'll be fine. And it was the best year ever. 
KL Peter and I, I would say all the time if we don't like it we could just come back, like Australia is still going to be here, which may sound a bit frivolous given that they're still Australia's trying to get back to Australia now, but we didn't know that in 2019. 
SH I will say though, learning Italian is bloody hard. I've learnt Italian from from kindergarten at school, or through primary school, a little bit in high school. And then when we're in Florence, I did some studying there as well when I was older, but I still speak like a six year old. KL While I speak like a two year old. It's hard. It's really hard and particularly because you know, every word ends in a vowel and then when they speak, they drop all the valves in between. So now I can read I can make my way through reading comprehension, and fantastic in a restaurant. Whatever you want steak, in a restaurant, whatever you want. When our Italian friends would start to speak in that rapid fire attack, we would just pay it is quite good. Now he's persisted with his lessons but because I was finishing the book, I mean, I've always got excuse for why don't my lessons
SH  16:11  
I love it. No, it's It's bloody hard. Well in the book, you take us through all the beautiful parts of Italy. So Bologna, where you're based in Florence and Venice, and it's a real love story about each Italy and I I love Italy. I love bologna and Romania, but a good mate who lives in a remote area. Yeah, so my brother and I and my husband and I, we visited that friend. She's my best friend's friend, Laura. In remedy so I know that area and it's so underrated.
KL Rimini is where he got stung by the bee. One of our first outings after locked down, were obviously we were very frisky and so with the bees, and it was the only time I'm happy to say that we ended up in an Italian hospital. But yeah, remedies, remedies gorgeous. And be strange to Australians with the sea of umbrellas and the deck chairs. But how stunning that wherever you've been whatever beach you go to in Italy has a restaurant right there. You could starve to death on an Australian beach. Never in Italy never
SH  17:25  
How did you feel being an Aussie in Italy, my Italian mates think that we ate too much red meat. We ate too many eggs, and that we put Parmesan on everything including seafood dishes.
KL Well, you never be accused of eating too much red meat if you're anywhere near Florence. And bologna was closer now. A sticker. Yeah, like Peter and I would often go How are their bowel motions because in Bologna, they eat a lot of I mean, it's called the city of fat. They pride themselves on their mortadella and the procedure and blah, blah, blah. But we really did not eat a lot of vegetables when we ate out. And in fact, our Italian friends, one set in particular were very an Italian they would have a savory breakfast, they would have eggs for breakfast, very unusual, and they ate a lot of vegetables. And when we go to their place for dinner they always had at apertivo they had like just little containers of sticks of carrots and celery and whatever, which you would eat with giant chunks of Parmesan. I mean they're not animals. But other friends was just always like I loved it because I love meat. I fell in love with mortadella which I wasn't expecting to do. And then when we'd go to Florence we'd have a fear emptiness state the big that it's a big, it's a giant mind boggling, like you could share it with a family of six one stack, but sometimes you'd see Italians like determinedly soaring their way through it in that Italian man or someone being at lunch on their own or just and we then we go guy guys constantly having lunch together in Italy or dinner. And I love that you describe Italians as mahogany skinned beauties, like Donna says they're just they are beautiful, beautiful. I think the first year we went to Sicily, and the sun is so different to our sun
KL  19:23  
so that it's very mild but it's still sun. You know, it's still it's still my enemy. But I because I was so swept away by the Italians. Literally on the beach. You would see them pouring olive oil on each other olive oil. Stay still at the seventh year. Yeah, they put sunblock on the children sometimes, but that grownups are just like they bask in it all day. They turn their chairs to face the sun, where it's where all like squinty and freckled and pink. Anyway, I said to Peter, I can't be bothered with sunblock. I'm going to do what the Italians do. And so at the end of summer, I was so well baked, and I felt beautiful and healthy and glorious. And then we went back to Bologna. And the seasons kind of changed just a little bit. And I looked in the mirror and I realized what I thought was bronzed and beautiful was actually the head of a croissant. And I was that golden color Sure, but it was kind of crispy and flaky and buttery. It wasn't right. It wasn't right. But they are the Italians of sunflowers. You know, they worship the sun and they turn to face the sun and the sun loves absolutely they're beautiful and the shoes the the outfits the hair. It's stunning. So it's all going along beautifully pretty well. Rory actually brilliantly, especially once I stopped work after the first six months. 
SH So you've done your six months you've been hanging out with Jacobo, the guy loves with these little doily Yes, coffee. Beautiful, beautiful silent Jacobo COVID hits Italy, the entire nation of each release and shutdown your shutdown with it. From Australia we saw Wuhan as the first place lockdown and then next it was us Lombardia. How was it? 
KL 21:31 
I guess like the seven stages of grief or whatever they are. There's probably the seven stages of how we felt about you know Coronavirus arriving. Disbelief like what? This can't be. Right. No. And then there was the remember, it was only going to be a two week lockdown. Flatten the curve, right? Yeah.
KL 21:55  
And then there was some fear factor. I was very conscious of food. Because, you know, we're in a city, we're in a medieval city. Yeah. There's not even a blade of grass in Bologna, you have to go to the outskirts, you know. And so I was like, what happens if we have food issues?
SH  22:17  
Security, like, food? 
KL  22:22  
Yeah, but you know, if they can shut you in your house, and because we'd seen those horror stories from Wuhan, as well, you know, them welding the gate shut...but then I realized that food was okay.
KL  22:34  
And I stopped railing like I had this internal block, I think a lot of us had that this is an injustice being waged against me to be homeschooling, like who's even heard of such a thing. But once I stopped railing against it and sort of surrendered, like, it's like yoga, isn't it? You know, you're like, I can't hold it, I can't hold it. And then at some point, you just, you do it, and it's okay. We ended up having a quite a brilliant lockdown. Because I was like, this is time that I've never had before.
KL 23:14  
And it's time that we will never get with our family again. And once I got past the quite large hurdle of the fact that I was cooking for six people three times a day, plus net, and shopping and only one person was allowed to go shopping. So it was it. That was a huge job and washing. God, I hate washing so much. But luckily when we're in lockdown, there was less washing.
SH 23:42  
It's true, we're not out and about.
KL  23:45  
And then once I went kids, there's no more changing of sheets, that that those days are done. It ended up being surprisingly a nourishing kind of time. But mate, I was very happy the first time we stepped out. 
SH
We had locked down here. But we could we could see the tidal wave coming, I guess from Australia, which can also be really terrifying. It can sometimes be worse, maybe you can see what's happening around the world. 
KL I think it's worse to see it coming because we didn't even have time to process anything or anticipate or we just were in it. Suddenly we're in it to say the tidal wave coming- that's scary. And it was like a girlfriend of mine who lives in Sydney, she goes you're like a profit from three weeks in the future.
KL 24:38  
Kind of was like that, because then of course, we know the domino effect around the world.
SH And was there a time, I mean, I read the book, but there was a time where you looked at the option of coming home, and that was really ended up being a non option because by that point, no airports would let travelers from Italy pass through
KL 25:00  
So we no one would leave us transit. And there is no way of getting back to Australia without transiting through a minimum, one airport and the routes that we were trying to explore at that point, were just crazy crazy. And so the decision was taken away from us. And so and we were ready, like the kids are at school that the schools have pivoted really well into online learning. And we've got the house here, and it's paid till the end of the year. And, you know, we're always I can, it'll finish, it'll finish. So we stay, we had no option and we're always like, let's make the best of whatever is going on. So we ended up actually, as I said, having a lovely lockdown. But then we also stepped out into summer in Italy. We went down south to Pula, and it was like, it had never happened. It was quite remarkable because the south first time around was quite untouched by in COVID. We had such a stunning summer, black beyond, friends from England came over and we went to TNT and other friends came over. We also went to county, there was a lot of TNT. And my husband said, Are you know, because I was like we've slayed that dragon. We've done it. And Peter was like, Ah, I think When autumn comes, we might be back in lockdown. And I'm like, was what?
KL  26:26  
Everyone loves to say I told you so. And he was quite correct. So then we went in and out of lockdowns until we found out that we had a flight back home. But in between, we were still having a great time. You know, we had a big party for all our Italian friends in our apartment and we went on day trips, we went with Mr. Giovanni to his his dad's province, Lamar K, which was just beautiful, like Tuscany, but not quite as Disneyland. We just had a really beautiful time the boys were back playing basketball. And even though parents weren't allowed, you know, all the restrictions was strange. But we still along with the Italians made the most of it. And you look back now and think, what a wonderful opportunity for your family. Yeah, what an amazing adventure highs and lows up and down. But a bit amazing, amazing, even in the first year that we had originally thought was the difficult year 2019 Because, you know, it was resettling in schools and I didn't know my way around, and we didn't speak a word and you know, so we thought that was difficult. In about the march of that first year, we were walking across the Piazza and I said to pay that. And the church bells were ringing, you know, they're always ringing. And I said to pay it out. I'm not going to be ready to go home at the end of the year, because we had originally only set off for one year. Yeah. And Peter said, neither will I. And we will. Let's have a kiss in the cattle in the Piazza.
SH  28:06  
Viva Italia.
SH 28:10  
Writing the book, I know that you've done script writing for neighbors. Did you find pockets of time throughout the year to bang out some chapters? 
KL  28:24  
Well, when I started writing, I started writing properly when we're in lockdown initially. I mean, I'm not a disciplined writer, in terms of, you know, I'm called to the keyboard. But it was a really great opportunity to just have time where you knew that you you know, you weren't forfeiting anything else. There was no sacrifice involved, because there was nothing else to do. And I'm normally very collaborative in my work and writing a book was a very solitary thing. But then when I finished the book, when we came back to Australia, I would say to Peter, oh, I'm just going to spend a couple of hours immediately. And it was actually a very, we were also locked down back here, by the way from most of our time back here at that point, Melbourne. Yeah, in Melbourne. So it was a really beautiful thing to go back to Italy. And it was very vivid, like it was so vivid, but also I wrote in the book that experiences that were vivid. So they both feed each other. You transport the reader so beautifully back to that spot that you're in, you've captured the smells and the feelings and the surroundings really well. Well, I love to hear that from someone who's spent a lot of time there and speaks much better Italian than that. That's a lovely compliment. It made me really longed to be back there. Well, that's the beauty of a book, isn't it? It can take you anywhere. But I was quite surprised and pleased with myself that I had that capacity to do that or to create that because it gave me the feeling. So I'm like if it gives me the feeling. It's going to give other people the feeling unless they're dead inside.
SH 30:00  
I had all the all the feelings. You can have it to give to your kids, your kids have got that Italy experience captured as well that they can take that book forever. 
KL Well, that was the genesis of it originally was because radio has always kind of been like a diary. But it's not when you can ever go back and read, you know? Yeah, yeah. And I said to Peter, I'd love a record of this for our family, because even while we were leaving it, I knew that it was a monumental thing. You know, often you don't realize till afterwards what in what an era was. But even while we were every moment there, we knew that it was incredible, and that it was life changing, that we were so lucky to be there, you know, and that we were so lucky that we've made it happen, because there were 1000 obstacles designed to make you see the wrong way turn back.