#27: Real Estate Agents and the Questura
Ciao from Lucca!
It's been a big week for us over here.
We've had all sorts of fun experiences, including some truly Mambo Italiano moments. We've finally had to run the gauntlet of the local questura (immigration office), we've been negotiating a new rental lease, and we've spent a weekend with friends in Florence. Also David left on Monday morning for a fortnight in Australia, so it's me and the kids holding down the fort here.
It was unavoidable that at some point we were going to have to join the depressingly long queue outside the questura to progress our right to stay legally here in Italy. Luckily we have the ultimate secret weapon (aka Tony the Fixer) and so the experience was as smooth as I think it could have possibly been.
The most frustrating part was how few of the many, many documents I'd gathered for the appointment were actually required. Obviously this is a better outcome than the opposite, where I didn't have something to hand that was requested. In this instance, you risk being sent to the back of the queue to start again. And the queue is about eight months long...
This appointment was to process our application for a permesso di soggiorno (for me and the bimbi) which is really only relevant for as long as our citizenship application takes to be concluded. If our citizenship is recognised tomorrow, all permesso di soggiorno requirements disappear entirely. Which would be amazing, but I am absolutely not holding my breath. While there are no problems according to anyone we ask, the pace of progress could really only be described as glacial.
I think one day I will be able to write a book about the journey of claiming citizenship by descent.
We've also been in the process of negotiating with our real estate agent about our lease, which expires in a few months. This has been a learning experience, as this time we have not used an intermediary service to act on our behalf. I really like our agent. Despite the fact that we don't share a common language, we seem to be managing surprisingly well. I speak a mix of broken Italian and English, and he speaks very, very slowly and clearly as if I was a toddler.
He even went into bat for us when the husband of our landlord tried to remove the car park from the lease, so that his friend could use the space when the soccer was on at the nearby stadium!
It seems as though the rental real estate industry in Italy (like so many service industries here) is far more professional than back home. Certainly if I compare our experiences here with the absolutely atrocious experience we are having with our agents in Australia, Italy is leagues ahead. But the Australian experience is a story for another time...
We spent a fabulous weekend in Florence with friends that we've made here through my yoga studio. While Firenze is always magical, it was even better with locals. Nothing beats it, especially with kids in the mix. Raffy had an absolute ball with their five year old daughter, and they were only marginally more insperarable than Leo and their gorgeous blonde labradoodle. Leo was obsessed, and the dog was very happy to endure his squeals of delight whenever he saw him.
Finally, a driving update. Last night I executed my first successful handbrake start! I was under significant pressure, as I was forced to stop on the hill coming out of a rail underpass. It was during evening peak hour, and I had the two kids in the back. We were driving home from Raffy's ballet class.
Of course the person behind me stopped right up my backside. I had about an inch of space, so any backwards rolling was not an option. Somehow I managed it, and I may have cheered a bit - mostly out of sheer relief. Raffy and Leo were not very impressed though, so it was a solo celebration.
All my love and kisses.
Kate
