Subito, Presto, Dopo, Mai

Life in Italy can be a waiting game

The annual explosion of wisteria (glicine) in Italy is one thing worth waiting for. Photo mine.

Cari amici,

A while back, on a social media site, I saw a meme that gave humorous translations of time-related Italian words. For example, if someone says they’ll do something presto (soon), they really mean “when I get around to it”; a promise to leave subito (immediately) might mean in an hour. You get the drift. As funny as that meme was, it was also pretty much true. (Btw, the dopo in the title means after, and mai, never.)

Lately the amount of time I’m spending waiting for one thing or another is off the charts. La dolce vita? Sure, sometimes. But then there’s this, my current list of time-related woes. I promise I’m not exaggerating.

Chilling out in hopes of keeping cool

You may know that I live in a 15th-century ex-convent. It’s a historical building of some significance, registered with the Soprintendenza Archeologia, Belle Arti, e Paesaggio dell’Umbria, which basically means if you want to modify any part of the building, inside or out, you need a special permit. When I bought my apartment, I knew about these limits but didn’t foresee any problems. This is where you shake your head and think, “Oh no, I know what’s coming.” Yes, you do.

Two years ago, formerly comfortably-hot-in-summer Perugia became a freaking inferno, and suddenly I had a problem. There were no more perfect summer mornings, no evening cool-offs to make the heat bearable. My dog spent day after day sprawled on the floor panting, and I was useless, made lazy and incapable of coherent thought by the stultifying heat. This happened again the next summer and is probably, sadly, our new normal.

Suddenly, despite not wanting AC, I needed it. When I bought my house, I’d brushed off the fact that installing traditional “split” air conditioning units, which have interior and exterior units, wouldn’t be permitted because there’s nowhere to hide the external unit, a necessity with a building of this historic status. In desperation I bought a portable unit (often called a pinguino, or penguin, derived from one brand name) for the living room. I have to seal off a window in order to vent the damn machine, hang a dark curtain to keep direct sunlight off it, and live, basically, in a cave all summer. This is not my idea of fun.

I endured two summers with the pinguino before I learned about another option, a system without an external unit (which is, of course, phenomenally more expensive). However, these units, which must be placed on an exterior wall, require two 6-inch ventilation holes. Uh-oh. Here’s where my failure to imagine ever needing AC comes back to bite me in the butt.

In January I began the process of inquiring about a permit. First up: a trip to the Soprintendenza offices, where I was advised to email the particular architect who deals with such things. I sent her a very, very, very polite and formal explanation of what I wanted to do, along with the specs from a contractor and a photo of the exterior wall showing where the vents would go. Miracle of miracles, she responded quickly. After specifying the placement of and material for the vents, she said I could go ahead with an authorization request. Great!

But how? The incredibly detailed Soprintendenza website lists labyrinthine sequences of processes and rules that yielded no answers. So after consulting with my contractor, I wrote back to the Soprintendenza architect to ask what I should do next. Her reply: hire an architect and file a proposal.

It is now mid-April. Architects are very busy people, and mine had to figure out what the proposal includes, and the Soprintendenza has something like 120 days to issue a permit or not. Four months into this process—silly me for thinking that was a long-enough lead—I’m now fairly certain the pinguino and I will be keeping company again this summer.

Another year, another signature

Once a year I have to go to a notaio (notary) to have my signature authorized on a financial document. It’s a stupid form—I mean, they know who I am and they have my signature on file—but them’s the rules. The first time I had to do it, I drummed up a very nice notaio who gave me an appointment in no time and didn’t charge me for the 30 seconds it took him to watch me sign the doc and give it his stamp of approval. After that, I’d call each year and get a quick appointment, he’d authenticate my signature while we laughed at the absurdity of this annual ritual, and I’d be on my way with a cheery “See you next year!”

Until this year. You’d think doing the same thing with the same person would get easier each time, wouldn’t you? You would be wrong. This time getting a signature authorized took ten days, three phone calls, one email, and several explanations to people who seemed to have forgotten they’d done this exact same thing three times already.

On April 2, I called the notaio’s office for an appointment. The office person said she’d look into it and call me back in the afternoon. She didn’t. I called again the next day and was told to email the document to the office. Many questions were asked and answered. The idea of an appointment that Friday afternoon was floated, but she’d have to check on that. I’d get a call back later that day. I didn’t. After a reasonable wait, I called again, explaining that the form had a deadline that was now not far off. Boom, an appointment. Whew!

The office always schedules me for 3pm, which is right after the pausa; that way the notaio can zip in and sign my form before tending to his afternoon clients. Not this time. At 3pm, as he disappeared into an office with a young couple, the office person smiled at me and said, reassuringly, “Ten minutes.” Yeah, right. Italians like to talk. Half an hour at least, I estimated. An hour later I discovered I was right about the “at least” part.

Fortunately, the waiting area has several enormous pieces of weird, disturbing art that are always worth contemplating. The silver lining: once again, I paid nothing.

The wrought iron loveseat that’s rusting in place

When I first moved to Perugia I bought a small loveseat in painted-white ferro battuto at an antiques market. It has served me well, but I no longer have space for it, so last winter I asked the vendor I bought it from (who’s become a friend) if he’d resell it. He said he would, but he wanted to wait until spring. With help, I managed to wrestle the thing downstairs into the ex-baptistry, which I use as a guest room, where it would be out of the way for a few months.

In March, hoping to reclaim the pleasantly cool ex-battistero for summer use, I messaged the vendor with a hopeful “how about now?” He said he’d pick it up before the next Perugia antiques market at the end of the month. He didn’t. So every week I message him again and he promises to pick it up “this week.” Yesterday—maybe because I added a string of praying hands to my hopeful message—he got a little more specific and said he’d come by on Thursday or Friday. We shall see.

Residence permit roulette

If you live in Italy courtesy of a visa, each year¹ you have to renew your permesso di soggiorno (residence permit), which the questura (state police/immigration office) by law has to do within 20 days. [Cue hysterical laughter, because that has never, ever, in the past 15 years, happened to anyone I know.] Since Covid, this process has become a farce, often leaving foreigners without a valid permit for a year or more (which means, effectively, they never have one). The whole thing is a complicated mess that causes problems such as travel limitations and hassles with health care (though now that the backups are so crippling, the national healthcare office in Perugia ignores its own rule that subscribers must have a valid permesso).

Here's a sample process: apply for renewal in November 2022 for a permesso that expires in May 2023. Receive an appointment for fingerprinting/identity verification on June 20 (whoops, already late!). Go to appointment and be informed that an SMS message will arrive when the permesso is ready for pickup. Wait.

It’s now mid-April, two weeks before the May expiration date. No SMS has arrived, and the online portal to track a permesso’s status always says “in progress.” There are phone numbers you can supposedly call, but no one ever answers. WhatsApp messages go unanswered, despite a poster on the questura wall specifically offering this form of communication. Ditto for emails. Unlike other towns, Perugia doesn’t offer walk-in hours, and if you show up at the gate without an appointment and beg for entry, you will be turned away. (Yes, we try.)  If or when the permesso arrives, it will have already expired or will do so imminently. Then the whole process begins again.

What’s most maddening about all this, for me, is that I wouldn’t need a permesso at all if my citizenship-recognition process hadn’t been delayed five years (so far.) This is a stellar example of Italy’s waiting game, but I’ll save that one for when the damn thing is finally resolved.

Now’s a good time to quote a John Mayer song: “So we keep waiting (on the world to change)”

Anyone have some bushels of patience they don’t need? I’ll pay top dollar.

Tante belle cose, alla prossima—

Cheryl

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Poem of the week:

• “I Am Waiting” by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

P.S. My book! Which you can buy here or on the usual sites, or, better yet, order it from your local bookstore. Another fab option is to ask your library to stock it. If you read it and like it, please tell your friends and/or leave a few lines of praise on any bookish site. You’d be surprised how much a rating or review helps authors. Baci!

1. There is a long-stay (essentially permanent) permit available to those who have been resident taxpayers for five years, but you have to apply within 60 days of your current permit’s expiration. That’s hard to do if you never have a valid permit and/or it arrives later than 60 days after expiration. And some of the required documents expire after six months, so good luck trying to have everything ready to go if the opportunity arises.