Un Permesso per Piacere!

Since we've decided to stay another year in Italia and my spousal Visa expired in May, I'm required to obtain a Permesso di Soggiorno (the Italian equivalent of a green card). As a non-citizen, this document allows me to reside and work here legally until my dual citizenship application is accepted ("estimated processing time: 2.5 years").

Having finally obtained my Permesso, I can say without reservation that the best gift we as parents could ever bestow upon our children is not a signed original of the Articles of Confederation happened upon at a roadside flea market, a mortgage-free country house or even a well-diversified stock portfolio, but a European Union passport. For it is indisputably the latter that will broaden their world-view by offering countless opportunities for travel, learning and global friendships. The benefits are legion really, and extend far beyond exponentially improving Giovanni and my chances of ending up with a decent view and palatable meals when we're consigned to a long-term care facility in our dotage.

Over the course of our kids' lives, an EU passport won't only grant them greater possibilities when it comes to living, working, studying, volunteering, loafing, overindulging, pursuing unlikely affairs and having their hearts broken abroad some day, but it will also confer the distinct advantage of significantly reducing the number of hours they spend standing in long queues and suffering the indignities of airless waiting rooms and the whims of petty bureaucrats. Ultimately -- after all the private lessons, carpool choreography, nutritionally balanced meals and investment in sport camps, safety devices and cognitive and artistic enrichment -- isn't that what every mother desires?

Unfortunately, I'm battle-hardened from my encounters with Italian apparatchiks and the wounds are still fresh so I know of what I speak. You'd think that being married to an Italian citizen, possessing Italian heritage and producing two Italian citizens to help reverse one of the world's lowest birth rates would count for something -- or at least make for a straightforward process. You'd be wrong. After withstanding five trips to the Questura (State Immigration Office) on the industrial outskirts of Rome to obtain my Permesso and resigning myself to countless lost hours and associated indignities, I take no small comfort in the fact that both my kids were instantly granted dual citizenship upon emerging from my womb (aka my "ICI" - Italian citizen incubator). Thus they will never have to endure the misery, emotional scarring and lost productivity of their forebears.

This ominous mid 1970s-era miltary bunker surrounded by barbed wire and porta potties and lacking in sidewalks inspires both fear and dread to all who dare approach (the Questura that is, not my womb) and reaching the imposing entry gate alone requires a good amount of nerve as you have to share the main road with oncoming traffic, successfully dodge all the trucks hurtling by and hold on to all 17 varieties of paperwork en route that might or might not be required that day.

As if this wasn't enough to make one reconsider submitting to the process for any presumed greater benefits, there's a lonely, sun-baked bus stop out front that affords an unobstructed view of the sprawling, corrugated metal-and-tarp shantytown across the street where desperate denizens (presumably those denied their Permesso) demarcate their hovels with makeshift laundry lines and broken appliances and start casing any cars as soon as they're parked. No wonder most everyone waiting for their number to appear on the illuminated board inside is agitated -- they know that by the time it's called, their vehicle may well be stripped of anything valuable and they'll have to sit even longer to take the bus home. Everyone else just has that distinct look of resignation endemic to the human spirit being systematically crushed.

However grim or exaggerated it may sound, this is Rome's current version of a welcome mat for those interested in staying in Italy longer than three months, regardless of purpose. And don't count on things getting easier or more hospitable for foreigners of any particular stripe while waves of fleeing Libyans continue to wash up daily on southern shores and prime minister Silvio Burlesque-oni spends what little remains of his mandate trying to change the law only so he can avoid prosecution.

And make no mistake, the government wants you to give up when you're informed by an epauletted official that five additional forms are required by the following week and then are told upon your return by a disheveled guy in an old T-shirt that three of the documents you spent a dozen additional hours to obtain are irrelevant and that four more have to be submitted within a 10-day window (with official stamp) or your application will be considered null and void and you'll be forced to start all over again. Don't give in to the temptation to lash out, cry, assume the fetal position and start rocking, resort to sarcasm or create anything ressembling a scene -- no matter how frustrated or despondent you become. Flying into a rage might be extremely satisfying in the moment but will mark you as among the weak and unworthy and, at minimum, result in several more unecessary trips. Persevere.

The requirements are unpredictable (expect them to change with each official you speak to) the volume and variety of paperwork staggering, the unabashed incompetence mind-numbing and the waits legendary, but none of these deliberate obstacles are insurmountable. Becoming legal here is more akin to an intensive course in anger management than an official governmental process any American would recognize, yet you can succeed if you summon all your powers of Zen detachment and patience in the unshaven face of adversity and stare steely eyed into the abyss of state-sanctioned whim and intentional inefficiency.

For those interested in living legally in Italy or applying for citizenship, I've compiled a few essential "Do's" and "Don'ts" below. If you don't feel up to the rigors required and choose to live fuori le regole (outside the rules), be aware that you may be forced to pay an exhorbitant fine and fly home unexpectantly after a routine traffic stop or while crossing the border for a weekend outing. (I can't afford to take such a risk while I'm still responsible for making sure that two of Italy's youngest citizens' teeth are brushed twice daily.) Now that I've got my Permesso (generated on a dot-matrix printer circa 1987), it's good for five years. I sincerely hope that my application for dual citizenship (now languishing for the past year on a desk somewhere at the San Francisco consulate) is accepted before I'm forced to embark on a renewal odyssey in 2016.

In somma...

Questura Do's:

• Do suck up (but don't be too obvious about it or you risk becoming a target for greater abuse).
• Do make the first surly functionary you encounter type up what you need for your next trip on official letterhead so that the next surly official who looks it over will be less inclined to invent an additional non-existent requirement (which happens frequently by the way when a put-upon employee has no idea what's required in your particular case and is simply attempting to save face).
• Do bring water, plenty of snacks, more than 5 hours worth of reading material and toilet paper.
• Above all, do maintain your smile and always be courteous.

Questura Don'ts:

• Don't become sarcastic as a defense mechanism. Just keep all cutting asides to yourself. For example, don't ask out loud why they bothered installing 21 sportelli (numbered help desks) when no more than four are ever operational at any one time. Just start jotting these maddening observations down as the basis for a cathartic blog to help pass the time -- and in case you forgot your reading material in the car).
• Don't try to be helpful by suggesting that the most commonly used forms be evenly distributed to all sportello operators to increase efficiency instead of doled out individually from an office on the third floor.
• Don't be tempted to ask to speak to your assigned malcontented official's superior whenever you reach an impasse.

Following these guidelines might just save you a dozen or more hours and shave your total trips down to under five. But I'd go ahead and pray to your god of choice beforehand to cover your bases if you think it might help. It can't hurt.

Buona fortuna!

Scartoffolaccia!

Say what you will about my increasing irregularity with this blog, I might not be as predictable as the #44 bus in Monteverde Vecchio, but I'm certainly more likely to make an appearance than the mythical #75.

Since my last installment, we've hosted family and friends and partaken in many memorable outings -- the Appia Antica, Colosseum and Palatine Hill here in Rome; Lago di Bracciano, Tivoli and Hadrian's Villa outside the city; the Chianti region of Tuscany; Orvieto in Umbria; the thermal baths near Viterbo; and most recently, the Etruscan necropoli of Cerveteri and Roman ruins of Ostia Antica (the Temple of Ceres pictured) -- many of these jaunts involving illegal picnics with superlative views. Full Disclosure: When it comes to prohibitions pertaining to the breaking of bread amid picturesque and storied surroundings, we are avowed and unapologetic transgressors. As such, we can attest that food tastes best outside and is exceedingly more delicious when you know you are breaking an absurd law.















We've also met dozens of visiting artists and scholars over the past several months, including Kathleen Crowther, the inspirational head of The Cleveland Restoration Society (here in part to persuade the Vatican to preserve some of the shuttered churches and architectural gems of my hometown), photographer Annie Leibovitz (who helped document Giovanni's pasta-making workshop for the AAR community last month while here with her children), and current resident artists poet Derek Walcott and painter Chuck Close. Here's a shot of Annie graciously assisting Giulia out of the Academy aqueduct after one of Giovanni's "family friendly" (aka significantly more raucous than M-Th) Friday night dinners.

Other noteworthy developments include Giulia learning cursive; Giorgio volunteering as Italian translator for a new Canadian girl in his class; Giovanni successfully managing to purchase and register a used car for weekend jaunts (no small feat); and me working as a part time research assistant with a National Science Foundation 3D imaging project. It's only a few hours a week but permits me to spend time milling about the library stacks so that I can take pictures of etchings, paintings and historic photographs. These will ultimately be used to help flesh out an interactive reconstruction of the Roman Forum and Colosseum from approximately 300 BC to the present day. For those so inclined, there's a very good NSF video clip explaining the project here.

I also invested in some new cleats and played in our first inter-Academy soccer match against the Spanish last month. We lost 3-1 and had 6 subs to their none, but were undisputably superior sartorially, if not in terms of skill (see action shot at left). The indignity of being so easily dispatched was blunted by our side's collective rationalization that we were up against several hundred more years of collective and cultural experience with the game. A round of beers with the Iberians thereafter also helped dull the pain. Our next face-off is against the Germans this week and promises to have a more punctual kick off if not a more satisfying result.

Now that it's spring in Rome and the perennials of the Mediterranean have returned en masse to the urban parks and meadows (red poppies, white daisies, purple wisteria, yellow daffodils and unnaturally bronzed male pensioners in form-fitting Lycra® shorts), mothers inevitably turn their thoughts toward reintroducing short sleeves to their brood, incorporating the season's first strawberries into school snacks, stocking up on elastici (Band-Aids), and, in my case, renewing their guest Visas until their dual citizenship application is accepted by the state authorities ("estimated processing time: 2.5 years").

While taxes may not be inescapable here, excessive paperwork is and its proponents ascribe to it a kind of fetishistic power that's unmistakably sadistic in nature. Based on my limited experience and as a non-native unaccustomed to its vagaries of application, I admit to being thoroughly unsettled at the thought of trying to obtain a "simple" extension. I'm not sure there is a word in Italian that adequately captures my overwhelming sense of dread, so I've taken it upon myself to make one up that sounds apt enough:

Scartoffolaccia [scar-toh-foh-LAH-cha]- the fear and/or hatred of seemingly endless paperwork and obscure forms invoked by lesser officials to circumscribe one's freedom (be it with regard to travel, expression, choice of entrée, etc.).

Just saying it out loud can be cathartic. I also find that a sense of blithe resignation can be more rapidly attained/regained if your forceful utterance of the word is accompanied by something resembling a spontaneous and indelicate hand gesture. You can begin practicing and refining these gestures while waiting for the #75 and seeing two alternate buses with the same route number go by at the same time (Exhibit A pictured: two #710s in flagrante delicto. Mating season perhaps?)

The good news is that I need to renew my Visa not only to enjoy our summer vacation tooling around northern Europe in our newly acquired 2005 Renault "Scenic", but to remain at the American Academy another year (for those of you who haven't heard, Giovanni will be stepping up to sous chef in the RSFP kitchen and I'll continue to help as a part time midwife concerned with the healthy delivery of the new AAR website and its postpartum care). While we've logged some highs and lows over the past nine months, we're thrilled to be staying on and look forward to becoming even better aquainted with the eternal city over the next sixteen.

We haven't nailed down the particulars of our summer itinerary yet, but I'm advocating that it involve a smattering of imposingly crenellated, moat-surrounded castles, one or two idyllic alpine farm stays and gallons of perfectly chilled Gewurtztraminer. I'm even willing to entertain a pilgrimage to LegoLand in Denmark or Germany and break my solemn parental vow of avoiding all merchandice-based amusement parks if it'll help get us over the Alps with a minimum of whining. No small sacrifice, but I am bouyed by thoughts of returning to Austria after more than 20 years, resusitating some of my moth-balled Deutsch and introducing Giovanni to die weiter Welt der Wurst.

The bad news is that Daddy believes the kids will only be satisfied if they experience EuroDisney as well. I maintain that the bambini would be just as happy, if not more thrilled, to each receive their own roll of duct tape or a large appliance box so we shouldn't even mention it. Besides, LegoLand should more than suffice. What's becoming clearer with each discussion however, is that it's he who's most eager to visit the "Magic Kingdom". It's still early so I'm hopeful that with the dollar in free fall as I type and Parigi being rather far removed from other collectively agreed-upon targets, circumstances will conspire in my favor. God-willing, I'll be able to "slip the Mickey" at least another year.

Tummy Trouble-induced Trash Talk

I can assure you, gentle reader, that my lack of timely updates to this blog does not mean I’m not thinking of you on a daily basis (and I do mean the three of you in Saudia Arabia as well as all you loyal Latvians out there making up my fourth largest fan base). I admit I’ve been distracted and blame the many demands associated with ensuring a steady stream of family merriment during the holidays, several small trips (one to Umbria and another to Abruzzo), two separate bouts battling what seemed to be an eternal stomach bug that sapped my will to go on living (despite each lasting only 36 hours), and some new books obtained via Amazon Italy, including the fascinating new Cleopatra biography by Stacy Schiff which includes interesting anecdotes about the young queen living for at least three months right here on the Janiculum Hill (where I like to think she enjoyed the same view as we do and worshipped the ancestors of the Academy's feral cat population between intrigues).

The good news is that I won both rounds with said bug and as a result have lost some pasta-induced kilos (or at least enough that new acquaintances have stopped unabashedly congratulating me on what once appeared to be my incipient pregnancy whenever I wore a tight-fitting top). Through no conscious design of my own, I’m off to a “leaner and meaner” New Year. And meaner insofar as I found it much more difficult to wisecrack while harboring lit matches inside my innards. That and the fact that we've had to cancel family outings over the last two weekends and miss several days of school because each of us has taken multiple turns convalescing with a mal di pancia.

In addition to being buffeted by our first noteworthy waves of seasonal illness, lately the spotty sanitation practices and utter disregard of public space have also played no small part in contributing to my change of spirit. Leaving out the government vs. Mafia standoff contributing to the intractable Neapolitan garbage crisis and the fact that the largest illegal dump in Europe is right here outside Rome in the aptly named locale of Malagrotta, it’s hard to square Italians’ much vaunted love of all things beautiful with their insouciance when it comes to tossing trash everywhere and walking away after their dogs relieve themselves in the middle of the sidewalk.

Six months ago the detritus was somehow more peripheral and easier to overlook and avoid, but now that it's winter it seems to have gotten worse and I'm feeling worn down. For as much as i Italiani are reputed to love children, the majority of dog owners in our neighborhood of Monteverde Vecchio have clearly disavowed the cliché and agreed that the marciapiedi in front of our kids’ school is an especially good location to walk away from nonchalantly after Fido empties his bowels. Apparently the only place deemed inappropriate for creating Rome's next layer are door thresholds and the curb. So much for the social contract.

Discarica, rifiuti, monezza, spazzatura, immondizia, ciarpame, robaccia, porcheria, schifezza, sciocchezza, pezzente... Italians may have as many words for trash as Eskimos have for snow, I really don’t know. While they seem to all but ignore it piling up in the cities, on the beaches and along roadsides, the profusion of terms suggests that garbage is nonetheless very much a part of the collective consciousness.

Assisi proved a salient exception to the glut of refuse in that we saw absolutely no litter of any kind, not even a cigarette butt, and this undeniably contributed to the ancient redoubt’s otherworldly effect (as much as the gorgeous stone edifices, luminous cathedral frescoes, imposing castello and evocative hilltop mist). Nonetheless, I passed on using the public restrooms when I encountered this sign in the Piazza del Commune. Like most wine-loving tourists, I’m happy to pee outside in a pinch (far from public rights of way of course), but when it comes to Medieval facilities I won’t settle for anything less than 5 stars.

Part of the rural/urban contrast in cleanliness is most assuredly one of small towns where inhabitants take more pride in place (and where all women of retirement age are apparently required to stare disapprovingly at passersby out their 2^nd story windows for at least some part of every day in order to continue receiving their state pension) vs. the relative anonymity of cities where such concerns are more easily relegated as “someone else’s problem” (and anyone issuing disapproving looks from high-rises is more easily ignored).

Part of my problem is that I that haven’t lived here long enough to turn a blind eye to the preponderance of trash. I also admit I still harbor a certain amount of “can-do American spirit” when confronted by seemingly overwhelming challenges. I can’t help thinking of potential strategies for deterring the most brazen malefactors over the course of my many trips negotiating fecal landmines with kids in tow -- or plotting my revenge while scraping malodorous shoes before dawn. A live webcam trained on the street in front of our school might do the trick or at least some posted handbills shaming these antisocial, passive-aggressive, poopy practitioners via humor.

When some other expat moms began complaining about the increasing number of dog-bombs outside school last week, I remarked that were we in the U.S. a parent committee would have already formed and distributed multicolored fliers to address the issue. I’m sure if I actually do decide to engage with the system in an attempt to affect positive change, I’ll be humbled soon enough – most likely after the fifth set of forms to be completed in triplicate (what I imagine to be the Rome Sanitation Department equivalent of being kicked to the curb).