Mysteries

I’m so confused here in this strange land called Italy. Not every minute, but a lot of the minutes. I have many, many questions and I’m sure some of them have answers and but I’m also sure that some do not. Here are a few that have come up in these first few weeks of living here that have got me scratching my head.

1. Why is this post office so big?

Within 8 days of getting here we had to file our paperwork for getting our permesso di soggiorno, which allows us to stay in the country. It’s a similar process to the visa, with many of the same documents. The application has to be filled out in black pen and NO corrections are allowed. If you make a mistake you have to drive to another town and get a new application. Then you have to go to the tabacchi (cigarette store that also sells whatever else you are looking for) and buy a special stamp. But you can’t go to the tabacchi right next door, you have to go to the other one down the street. But not the one at the end of the street, duh, the one in the middle. Then you take your applications, all your papers, and your stamps to the post office along with the right envelopes and payment method in order to get an appointment for an interview with the police. No, you idiot, not that post office, and not that one either. The other one.

You find the right post office, and parking, and the door to get in, all of which are a bit challenging. And the place is HUGE. No one else is there so you go up to the window and are told you need to get a number from the machine (Even if you are the only one there? Yes.) You spend five minutes trying to figure out how the machine works. It asks questions about the reason you are there and none of the options is your reason. You select “to pay a bill” because you know there will be money involved in this transaction. You wait on a bench and then your number pops up pretty quickly. Because you are the only one there. You go to the window and say what you need to do. You are told that this is the wrong kind of number and to go back to the machine. So you go back and select “mail a package” as your option. You sit on the bench and wait for your number. This time they will help you! All goes smoothly and you get an appointment to be fingerprinted by the police in 5 months. This is fantastic. You also get a very important receipt that you’d better not lose because it says you are allowed here. But even after all that, the lingering question is why the hell is this post office so big? This is in a town of 42,000 people. For those of you in Washington State, that’s a town the size of Edmonds or Puyallup.

Do you see Felix and I? We are the tiny specks on the right hand side of the picture.

2. Why is it so hard to pay property taxes?

I knew I owed some back property taxes, and I knew I needed to pay the water bill. I have done these things before (with help) so I figured I could navigate it on my own. I went to the town hall, during one one of the two mornings a week that the bill paying window is open. I talked to a man and explained what I needed to do. He gave me a stack of things to fill out and sent me to take a picture of my water meter so they can calculate how much I owe. Fine. I did that and went back. He crossed out a bunch of stuff on the forms I had filled out and wrote some new things. Then he asked who owned our two apartments before us. I told him. Then he said he needed to see the property deed. This would make sense if I had just purchased these places but I did not, I have paid these bills before without showing the deed, but okay, whatever. So I went home and emailed him the info and I have heard nothing. A week later I asked my friend B to have a coffee with me and then come with me to help translate and get things sorted. B has lived in town for years and is fluent in both the language and the way things are done around here. He explained that I might be able to pay, or I might not. A lot of the time the people at the town hall can’t be bothered to calculate how much you owe so you just need to keep going in from time to time, and save your emails so that when they decide they actually do want you to pay, you don’t get a fine for being late. We had coffee but we did not go to the town hall. Instead, someone in the cafe bought us a glass of wine because it was his daughter’s birthday. (The daughter was not there, and he did not join us for the wine. This was another mystery for me but B was unfazed.) By that time the town hall was closed and wouldn’t be open again until who knows when. So “paying property taxes” looks like this in my world right now. Not too shabby.

3. Do you sell cars or should we just have a beer?

Buying a car here is difficult as a foreigner. Impossible if you don’t live here full time. I knew that and was prepared, but it is still surprising to me the way these things work. Without going into the boring details of it all, you need to be an official resident to get a car. Usually you need to have your permesso di soggiorno (see question 1 above) in order to get residency. It will be at least 7 months before we get that, probably more. But thanks to some friends and a really nice man in charge of bending the rules here in town, we were given residency a week after we got here. I’ve got another very valuable piece of paper that says we belong. (We belong! We belong!) What I don’t have is a residency card, which will come, hmm, I don’t know, at some point in the future I’d guess. According to some interpretations of the law, and more importantly, other people’s first hand experience, we can buy a car. This is great because rental cars are really pricy. Robert and I started shopping for a vehicle with optimism before he had to go back to the US to take care of a few things. We thought, no problem, we will be easy customers, and they will want our money. The first dealership seemed great but also left us with the third mystery in this post. Our salesman, Fabio, offered us coffee, water or beer at 11:30 a.m. While we were shopping for a car. Is this normal? We said yes to water because we are kinda boring like that. We drove a car, we liked it fine, we agreed on a price, and then after a few days of rigamarole, Fabio told us they won’t actually sell it to us because of our paperwork situation.

It was discouraging. But if Italy has taught me anything it is that if you don’t like the answer you get, ask someone else. Robert left to go take care of non Italian things, but I was determined to earn my independent woman badge and have a car by the time he got back. I went to six car dealerships and three of them said they would sell to me. The other three said it’s impossible, in no way can it be done. Unfortunately, the amenable ones had nothing I wanted. But today, after weeks of texts and emails, much bad Italian speaking, and hours of internet research, I got to pick up this little Peugeot. The man who sold her to me said it was the first time he’d sold a car to an American and I said, well, it’s the first time I’ve bought a car from an Italian. We were both pleased with ourselves.

I think her name is Bianca.

4. Why do I feel so good here?

This is the really real mystery. Why is it that this funky place vibrates in harmony with me? Why is it that I find the frustrations humorous instead of just aggravating? Why do I still feel deeply content when I have so many reasons to feel unsure and insecure? Why have I not been run out of town yet? It’s not that all my problems have gone away. I have cried and worried over the last five weeks. I’ve had guilt and a heavy heart. I’ve stressed over parking spots and Italian tutors and bad maps. And I’ve missed my people back in the US, of course. But it’s a different woman who wakes up here in the morning and I like her better than the pervious version. For one thing, she has a badge.