Of patience and bureaucracy

Moving always entails a modicum of paperwork and setting up in another country certainly does.  My chosen country being Italy I knew I was in a trying time.  Having been here for a few months now I am surprised how quickly I have gotten used to Italian bureaucracy.  When I first arrived it seemed as if you couldn’t do anything without someone asking to see your i.d.  I wouldn’t have been surprised to be asked for “documento” when entering a public toilet.  Once I had been offered a job I had to get down to the encounters with officialdom that I usually try to avoid.  

The first thing was to get a codice fiscale.  A Google search brought up a page on how to fake the all important number and thus avoid the engagement with Italian bureaucracy.  As tempting as this was I thought it best to do things properly.  To get the number I had to go to the Agenzia delle Entrate, which in Treviso is housed in a large complex of civic buildings that look faintly ominous in a 1984 kind of way.  Finding the correct building amongst its identical siblings was surprisingly easy.  My first triumph was explaining my mission and actually having my Italian understood!  I was given a form and a number and told to wait.  Despite arriving first thing in the morning the offices were already packed with people clutching numbers in the vain hope that they would be out of here sometime soon.  I wondered if many of them had spent the night waiting for their number to be called.  Having had dealings with Italian officialdom in the past I had come prepared with a book and some snacks and happily settled down for the wait.  97 pages in and it was finally my turn.  I headed to my assigned desk to find a bureaucrat slumped in her chair looking like the will to live was ebbing away with each passing minute.  Once again I explained my purpose, handed over my form and after a few questions I found myself successfully codice fiscaled.

Seeing as that had only taken half a day I decided to open a bank account but expecting lighting to strike the same place twice was a bit ambitious.  In Italy you need a work contract to open an account and at that point I didn’t have one.  When you mention that you are going to open a bank account everyone relays horrific stories of the ineptitude and errors of the various Italian banks that I stopped asking for recommendations and just walked into one.  I was quickly ushered to a desk and a lovely lady who photocopied all my documents and filled in a surprisingly large number of online forms.  When she went to get the final forms for me to sign I was dismayed to see her return with a significant portion of Brazilian rainforest.  Looking at my face the bank clerk smiled “don’t worry these aren’t all for you.”  She then peeled two sheets of paper off the pile, handed them to a college and proceeded to get me signing.  At first I carefully read each document making sure that I wasn’t signing away the rights to my first born child or something more serious but then to get me out of there just signed away.  Bank account done!    

The Italian government requires all foreigners to register their stay if they intend to be in Italy for more than three months.  Dreading the next encounter I left it until my three month deadline was approaching before tackling this one.  Getting to the offices of the commune I pushed the button for a number P5, the screen said P1 – I’ll be out a here in no time I thought.  Forty five minutes later the screen still said P1.  I headed over to the P counter (which was empty) and informed the gentleman quietly reading that I was here to fulfil my bureaucratic obligation.  “That’s the H counter today”  I was going to suggest that perhaps a sign may have helped but seeing as I’d already interrupted his peace I feared he might stab me with his biro.  Over at the, also empty, H counter I came across the staring into space bureaucrat and said I wished to fill in the residency forms.  “Do you have a number?” 

“I have this number”

“That’s a P number this is the H counter I need an H number”

“But there’s no one here”

“I need an H number”

Making a mental note to double check if Franz Kafka was Italian, I headed over to get the required H number.  As soon as I had the all important H13 in hand my staring bureaucrat pressed his button H13 to the H counter.  There he had the by now familiar folder and relevant forms.  Once again photocopies were made of all my documentation – rental and work contracts, passport, codice fiscal and the forms filled out.  The next week I had to head out to another office outside of Treviso fill in yet more forms and have yet more copies made of my documents.  There is only a visit from the local police to check I live where I say I live and then my travels in the world of Italian bureaucracy will hopefully be over.

NB Kafka was definitely not Italian but did work for an Italian insurance company.