#56: Tellaro & Round Three with Italian Medicare
Ciao Nonni!
I hope all is well back home in Melbourne. Are you surviving the footy finals fever? A bit easier to do when both the teams are non-Victorian...!
We've just returned from a magical three days at my favourite seaside escape in Liguria. Tellaro is really something special. I've mentioned it before a few times, but it truly does look exactly like one of the towns in the Cinque Terre, only without the thousands upon thousands of tourists.
We stayed in the same hotel as last year - a few minutes walk up the road from the old town, which has its own private little cove beach.
The hotel itself is great. Very Italian, in a Fawlty Towers kind of way. The staff on reception treat everyone incredibly poorly at check in, as if the very act is an insult - not a core function of their role. But if you can make it through this process somewhat intact, they warm up very quickly afterwards. When they don't have to actually do anything anymore.
The hotel is built into the side of a cliff, so there are many stairs. At the top (at the level of the road) is the reception and the rooms, which leads down to the breakfast area which has the most amazing view across the bay. Down you go then to the tiny beach bar, before finally arriving at the beach itself. This is where you can sit on a sun lounger, with your feet in the gentle lapping water, and ponder whether there might be anywhere better on the planet.
The water itself is crystal clear (a nice change from Viareggio!) and calm. The hotel has a couple of kayaks which we had an amazing time exploring the bay in. One morning, Raffy and I paddled all the way from the hotel beach around to the old town and beyond to an incredible stretch of totally uninhabited rocky coastline.
Last year, I learnt about the fantastic tale of how Tellaro was once saved from a pirate attack by a giant octopus.
I told Raffy the story, and she was completely mesmerised. What followed was three days of all sorts of questions about octopuses and pirates, as well as about four thousand requests to retell the tale. I reckon I had to recount it at least five times a day to keep her happy.
Each time I told it, we added some more details of our own, until what was originally a one minute story had turned into an epic adventure. I've since written it down, and she is illustrating it. I'll send you a copy!
Back in Lucca now, and back to reality of a most Italian nature.
I received a call yesterday from Leo's paediatrician, saying that he needs to come in for another round of vaccinations, but that we appear to have dropped off the SSN (Italian Medicare). She advised me to go back to the administration office at the local hospital to re-enrol. Again.
This is the second time our enrolment has expired, and I've had to go and reactivate it. Last time was borderline traumatic, with the woman behind the desk yelling at me for presenting her with a case that was not completely straightforward. So I was not very excited about the prospect.
With some trepidation, I set off this morning.
I took with me my Bureaucracy Folder (huge compendium of originals and photocopies of absolutely every document I could possibly be asked for in any kind of bureaucratic setting). It's an incontrovertible fact of Italian bureaucracy that if you have everything, they won't ask for a single thing beyond your passport or ID card. But if you are missing anything, no matter how seemingly irrelevant, that will be the document you ABSOLUTELY CANNOT PROCEED WITHOUT.
I took a number in the packed waiting room, and settled in with a book. After a seemingly short time, it was my turn at sportello numero sei. We started off better than last time, in that the woman serving didn't immediately start shouting at me.
I managed to stutter out my request, that our accounts had expired and we needed to be re-enrolled. She took our healthcare cards and ID cards and began to examine them.
This is where the confusion began.
Our ID cards say that we are Italian, but our healthcare cards say that we are Australians on a special permit to stay for people who are awaiting recognition of Italian citizenship.
She asked to see my permit to stay (permesso di soggiorno). I explained that I am Italian, I do not have a permesso. She repeated that her system showed that we were on this particular permit, and so she needed to see it. I tried (in terrible Italian) to explain that we were on that permit, but that our citizenship had been recognised earlier in the year. And that now we are Italian. Which supersedes all previous permits.
At this point she went and fetched a supervisor.
The supervisor then started to ask whether I was a dual citizen, and maybe we should have to pay a subscription fee to access the public health system. At this I sensed major danger about how off course this was heading, and decided now was the moment to really be Italian.
Some foreign residents are now required to pay up to 2000 euro annually to access the health system, and I have heard horror stories about some people being forced to pay this when technically they should have been included for free.
No! I said, we are Italian. Look at our ID cards. We are Italian. We are residents here. There is nothing else to know. It is enough!
At least, I think that’s what I said…
I stopped short of banging the desk, like a true Italian would - but it still seemed to have the desired effect.
The supervisor and the woman looked at each other, and then the supervisor shrugged and walked off. The woman uttered that fabulous Italian word allora and went about setting us back up. Phew.
Ten minutes later I emerged into the bright sunshine, victorious! New healthcare subscription in hand, this one valid until 2034. May I not have to set foot back in that office a minute before this day in ten years time.
I'll leave you with the most recent Leo-ism. His new thing is to add right now to the end of any (and every) request. This morning he tried to drag me away from making breakfast, saying "Mummy come and count cars ... RIGHT NOW!"
No idea where he could have picked up such impatience and bossiness...
All my love,
Kate
