Tossie Lochner, Italië

Tossie Lochner lives in Italy with her partner Martin Snyman and a dog named Tossie. For more than 30 years she has been the voice of Afrikaans radio in Italy, ending each report with "Tossie Lochner, Italië". She hopes to return to South Africa soon. Tossie was born in Wolseley and attended high school in Heidelberg, Western Cape. After graduating from teacher's college in Wellington, she studied speech therapy at UCT and took drama lessons from Babs Laker. She spent 10 years as a speech therapist in Bellville and then applied to work for Satour who were opening offices overseas. She was accepted. To learn Italian quickly, Tossie moved to Aulla in Tuscany, for three months. While there she met Roberto Vegnuti, who went to South Africa with Tossie and they married a year later. The Satour work was never taken up and they moved back to Italy. The marriage did not go well but there was no possibility of divorce. Tossie had two children, Sara (now 34) and Leonardo (now 31), who spoke Italian and Afrikaans from the beginning. Roberto passed away last year. Sara is married with a son and lives in Italy. Leonardo is a businessman in Boksburg. During a visit to Cape Town, Tossie met up with an old friend from the SABC and that is how she landed up on radio. During another visit to South Africa in 2004, she met Martin through a friend. For the past four years, Tossie has run the tourist bureau in her Italian village.