I spoke too soon last time. I am still not a legal immigrant! Apparently, they can approve your paperwork at the Questura, take your pictures, fingerprints and eyescan, and THEN deny your visa.
I went back to the Questura to collect my immigration card, thinking that all I had to do was collect a piece of paper and leave. WRONG! After waiting for three hours, I asked the guard what was taking so long. I was told that the papers weren't printed yet (two weeks after being fingerprinted and scanned and TWO MONTHS after all my papers were accepted and processed) and that the Questura was waiting for the Division Head to arrive (at noon?) to sign the documents. I questioned this, as I had been waiting so long and everything was approved so long ago. His response was to yell at me that he had once waited for tickets at L.A.X airport for five hours....
Not a good beginning. Then I was referred back to Lurch, my least-favorite immigration officer (the one who insisted that my lucky husband somehow has three wives with the same birthdate, each of whom having a different child with him and the first name of Rachel) who kept screaming at me that my documents were no longer valid and I needed new documents. When I asked him to stop yelling and to speak slower, he refused to speak English anymore and proceeded to yell at me in Italian.
When I told him I don't speak Italian and needed a translater, he pointed to a woman who told me she was too busy to speak to me as she had 70 other people to talk to, so I should sit down. Of course at that point, Andrew, who just turned three and is now potty trained, needed to use the porta potty in the parking lot. (And I was right about the Porta Potties!) More screaming ensued because I walked away from a guard who told me to sit down, etc. etc. etc.
And of course, hubby's company felt that it was okay to send a woman and toddler, neither of whom speak the language, to a run-down part of town ON THEIR OWN to collect legal documents from corrupt officials. Thank you SO much!
Again, this entire exercise is proof that A) England actually does bureacracy the best of all the Europeans and B) Italians are so desperate for job security that they contradict eachother professionally in order to appear busy to "higher-ups" and thus guarantee their own positions.
A friend here (as she works for the Embassy in a senior position, I'll call her "B") told me last weekend that Rome is an investment: you spend the first year hating it and fighting against it until you realize you're swimming against the tide and need to go with the flow. And it's a difficult investment, because B found Egypt and post war-Serbia easier to live in, even after she decided to go with the flow. Who knew?
Other than than!!!
We are about to leave the Castle. It has been decided on several levels that if we are going to remain in Rome for a longer period of time, the Castle is too expensive, both in rent and utilities (gas usage to date: 7500 Euros and counting!) So we have been left on our own to find a new place, which is more difficult than it sounds.
Again, the language barrier is an issue. But beyond that, there is no Multiple Listing Service in Rome and realtors/ estate agents are territorial: they only know their own neighborhoods and can't tell you about other places you should be looking.
So the search goes something like this: Find a 4 bedroom house or apartment. Find out if it has a garden. Nope, start over. Find another 4 bedroom apartment. It has a garden! Does the children's school bus pick them up there? No. Try to negotiate with company for them to provide a car. Realize that 5 kilometers equals two hours of driving in morning rush hour. Start over. Find a 3 bedroom apartment. Garden? Yes! Call school. It has picked up in that neighborhood in the past, but won't pick up Andrew for pre-school next year: children riding the bus must be at least 5 years old. Hmm. Go look at apartment anyway. It could work. Start negotiations, only to find that security deposits in Rome are 3 months rent plus realtors fees. Negotiate with company to advance 25,000 EUROS for this purpose. Start looking at alternative preschools. Wait for answer from other realtor as to whether the property owner will accept our lease-offer. Wait more. Wait more. Find out property owner can take up to 12 business days to make a decision. Drink wine and repeat.
And of course, the above process takes place only with the help of an Italian/English dictionary, human resources in Sicily and America, and Bill's personal assistant, who is on part-time pre-maternity leave. Aghhh! Drink wine and repeat.
Add to that the fact that I need to pack up everything in the castle before June 25, then head back to America to pack things there and you have a tired lady. And that's before the sick dog (poor old Maggie is hanging in there, but she is almost 13and had a stroke) and living in temporary housing in Sicily in August...Aghh!
But please don't take this as a complaint. I am actually laughing as I write this. This is not so bad. It's not like the time I had a three month old and Bill's old company gave us four days to move to England. THAT was stress. This is inconvenience and a funny story to go with it.
So here's the story: Andrew turned three over the weekend. As a treat, we went boating on the lake in Villa Borghese, before we took the children to the zoo in Villa Borghese. All was well until we were walking back to the train. We were in the middle of Villa Borghese, which is a 400 acre park, when the birthday boy announced that he needed to Go Potty.
There are no restrooms in the park, other than in the zoo or in an art museum and we weren't near any of those. Now usually, Potty in number 1 (and not number 2) and having no personal experience in peeing standing up, I summoned Bill to help his son. Of course, for once, Potty meant number 2: Andrew pooped behind a bush in the middle of Villa Borghese on his birthday.
Now there's a story for the wedding dinner!
But I do need to take this moment to announce that Bill and I have come up with a new expression: M.I.I = CRAP. This means Made In Italy equals CRAP or, Completely Replace a Product.
We are now on corkscrew number 6. Yes, 6 corkscrews in 6 months, which even I consider excessive. And all but one, which was 5 years old and brought from home, were stamped Made In Italy.
Perhaps it is the plastic corks that many wine bottles now feature, because it tends to be those corks which are wedged so tightly in the bottle that the corkscrew snaps off while wedged in the cork, which is still firmly in the bottle; or even worse, snaps the neck of the bottle off entirely. But even one traditional cork recently broke our latest corkscrew, so it can not be entirely that.
However we have noticed that in durable products like clocks, silverware, pots and pans, can openers and similar products which should last a few years, if an item says Made in Italy, be prepared to replace it soon. In fact, have a back up on hand at all times.
The exceptions are products which are meant to be used in full, like chocolate, wine, or...I can't think of anything else. Perhaps shoes. I really like the shoes here.
I digress though. Attention wine companies: Plastic corks are CRAP! They are not biodegradeable, so tourists and desperate Americans in Rome are filling countless landfills with PLASTIC CORKS!!! Please go back to using real corks and do your part to save the environment. And my corkscrew.
