Moving to Paris 3

Well, I made it! And so did 4 out of my 5 boxes, in only 2 days. I would be able to track where the other one was on the internet except that the link to the tracking page is broken.

I'm going to keep posting here about my exploits in Italy (i'm not finished there yet!) but stories about my new life in France can be found at http://parisatmyfeet.blogspot.com. Enjoy!

Moving to Paris 2: Last Night in Milan

After the ordeal of sending my parcels yesterday, my cleaning schedule was about six hours out. This was a problem, as Italian landlords generally expect you to do a very thorough job before you leave, sometimes going as far as repainting the walls. I didn't manage that, but I did stay up until 2 am cleaning the oven, washing the floor and trying to get a reading from the gas meter, which is cunningly positioned so that you can only read it if you have a head no bigger than a Barbie doll's. I did, however, take a couple of hours off for aperitivo in the lovely Brera district, one of the few parts of Milan that is actually beautiful, with J. and L.. We found a great bar with friendly staff and a huge and varied buffet. It's on the corner near Lanza metro station and is called, ironically, 'The Old Post Office'.

Moving to Paris 1: The Post Office

This post comes to you from Artesia train 9242 'Alexandre Dumas' from Milano Centrale to Paris Gare de Lyon. I am sitting in a comfortable seat with a view of the French Alps outside the window. I have a small bag under my seat and a suitcase and a rucksack sitting neatly in the luggage rack at the end of the carriage. That accounts for around a quarter of my personal possessions. The rest are … somewhere else, and, courtesy of the Poste Italiane, I have no idea when I'm likely to see them again.

The Post Office in Italy is almost legendary. In the UK, people pop into the post office for a few minutes in their lunch break, or maybe allow half an hour or so to complete a complicated transaction. In Italy, you take the morning off work to go.

Knowing that sending my things from Italy to France was never going to be simple, I started doing my research months ago. Most of my friends were away from Milan for the summer, so I was expecting to be on my own. Companies like DHL and FedEx were expensive and posed the unusual but awkward problem of being able to get my stuff to Paris faster than I could get there myself, so I decided to use a service provided by the Post Office called Paccocelere that would ship the things in around 2 days. After reading about it on the internet, I went to the main post office in my area to check that it was indeed the service I wanted.

Alarm bells should perhaps have started ringing when the man behind the counter had never heard of Paccocelere and had to check the post office website himself to find out what it was. However, he confirmed that I could use it to send “personal effects” such as clothes and books and gave me a large bundle of forms to fill out so that I could prepare my shipment in advance, and I went home to book my trip to Scotland and my train to France based on a timescale of 2 days and allowing a few extra days in case things got held up. I wasn't able to leave any more time because I need to go back to Italy at the beginning of August to work at summer camp, but I figured that was pretty reasonable.

I was expecting to have to take the boxes to the post office in a taxi because nobody I knew who was still in Milan had a car but luckily (perhaps the only lucky part of the whole story) my friend S. came back for the weekend and offered to take me in her car. We planned to go to the post office about eleven and meet another friend, J., for lunch around one, allowing what seemed like a very sensible two hours to complete the process, but we got held up by S. sleeping in and me running out of parcel tape and taking over an hour to fill out the three forms that had to accompany each of the five boxes in triplicate. As instructed by Mr Post Office Man, I wrote “effetti personali” on the customs declaration and S. said I could use her address as the return address on the ominous part that said “In case of failed delivery a) return the shipment to me at my expense or b) abandon the shipment.”

We decided to go for lunch first and then tackle the post office, and poor J. innocently offered to help. So, around 2.30, we headed to the post office and between the three of us, managed to pile up the boxes in a small space by the door. I took a number from the machine and, after a surprisingly short wait, was called to the counter and explained what I wanted to do.

The woman, who we will call Ms Slightly Too Efficient, looked at the customs declaration.

“You can't just put 'effetti personali'. You have to be specific. What's in the boxes?”

Confident that I was not attempting to ship grappa, explosives or child ponography, I replied, “Just clothes, books and some kitchen equipment. I'm moving house.”

“Let me just check that for you.” She typed a few things into the computer. “You can't use Paccocelere to send these things.”

She turned the computer screen towards me and sure enough, there it was in bold red letters. You are not allowed to send your own used clothes into France using Paccocelere.
Another post office worker, who we will call Ms Know It All, confirmed that this was indeed the case.

I started to panic. Was I not allowed to take any clothes to France at all? Would I have to arrive with nothing but the clothes on my back and kit myself out with an immediate trip to the Rue de Rivoli? It turned out, however, that you can send used clothes by road freight but not by air.

The mind boggles as to what spectacular fusion of French and Italian bureaucracy might have produced that rule. (A friend later told me that Germany has an equally bizarre rule that says that you can't send anything wrapped in polystyrene into Germany for environmental reasons, despite the fact that the Germans are perfectly at liberty to manufacture and export polystyrene themselves.) Road freight, however, was not enough to solve my problem by itself, however, because by the time the stuff arrived, I would be gone. Nevertheless, I collected another pile of forms to fill in and went to talk to my friends about what to do. J. lives outside of Milan and S. was going away on holiday again that night, so there wasn't a lot they could do to help, but S. suggested going into school to phone my landlord in France and see if I could send the shipment to his address instead of mine.

So we left poor J. at the post office guarding the boxes and S. and I went to school. I spoke to the landlord, but he was going on holiday. I phoned FedEx to see if they could store the things for me for a day but they couldn't. Another friend, M., offered to send a FedEx shipment from the school for me once I was gone, so I phoned them again but they couldn't do a pick up at the right time. Time was running out. School was closing and J. had been at the post office for almost an hour. The only solution was for my landlord to ask one of my neighbours to help me after I arrived. So I decided to send my worldly goods off into the blue.

By 4 o'clock, we were back at the post office. My three extremely tolerant and understanding friends helped me to fill out the new forms in record time, all three of them scribbling away around a tiny table, and eventually I was once again called to the counter. To Mr Post Office Man Number One. He almost told me to send the shipment using Paccocelere, which I would have willingly taken the risk and done (rules are flexible in Italy) but then I was directed to another counter where Mr Post Office Man 2 was waiting. He too almost let me use Paccocelere, and without the customs declaration too, but Ms Know It All was looking over his shoulder and said accusingly, “These are the people who wanted to use Paccocelere before but they can't because there are old clothes in the boxes.” So the ironically named “Quick Pack” road-freight service it was. (Perhaps tellingly, Mr POM2 had no idea what “Quick Pack” actually meant.)

The computer system was down so he had to write my receipts himself with a pen that J. lent him because why would a post office supply their staff with pens? Halfway through the transaction, he told me that, despite the fact that this was a large Post Office operating a banking service, I couldn't pay with my debit card. Having heard this before, I had had the presence of mind to bring my cheque book. Nope, no cheques either. Only cash or a Post Office bank card. Which would have been OK if the cash machine had been working when I went to the bank in the morning, but it wasn't. And only my own bank would let me take out enough money at once to pay for the shipment.

But once again, S. was there to save me. “I'll pay. I've got cash,” she said.

“Have you really? “ I said in disbelief."It's going to be about 500 euros." But she did. Italy being a third world country that has somehow managed to slip its way into the EU and the G8*, she had received her child benefit in cash that morning.

There was one last hurdle to overcome. When all the boxes were finally weighed, labelled, customs declared and paid for, Mr POM2 gave me a handful of “receipts”. Being the bottom carbon copy of three from a top copy that had been written by hand, they were almost illegible and certainly didn't look like anything I could hand to my new employer to claim as expenses. I politely asked him if it was possible to have a receipt for the total amount that somebody with less than second sight would be able to read. Instead of either giving me one or politely saying “no,” he decided to take this as an insinuation that he hadn't done his job properly, was planning to steal my money and was consigning the packets to the fires of hell. Sally and Maggie being fluent in Italian, the whole very Italian experience ended with a loud argument before we said our polite goodbyes and headed to the bar.

So I am cursing my foolish decision to put any trust in the Italian post office, but feeling eternally grateful to my wonderful friends who gave up their whole afternoon to help me out. And please, hold your thumbs, cross your fingers or pray that my boxes get there, preferably by the end of the week, but if not, the middle of August will do. Thank you.

*Harsh, but under the circumstances, also quite fair.

Como Again

I couldn't leave Milan without one last trip to the lakes, so on Friday J and I packed a picnic and got on a train to Como. From Como, we got the boat up the lake to Argegno, where there is a lakeside lido where you can sit on the grass and jump into the lake. When we got there, though, we discovered that the lido was closed and there was nowhere else that was really suitable for swimming. We sat in the sun, which was so hot we were dripping with sweat just sitting still, and ate our picnic, but after that we could take no more and went into the bar to ask if they could recommend a place to swim. They told us that there was nowhere else in Argegno, but suggested that we took the bus up the road to Grianta, and it turned out to be a very good piece of advice. Grianta is a gorgeous town just down the lakeside from Menaggio, where scenery starts to get even more dramatic and there are great views across the lake to Bellaggio and the mountains. On the edge of the town there are all these incredibly luxurious looking villas with private swimming pools, but normal people like us could go to the small stony beach to swim in the lake.

We didn't get there until about three o'clock, so after our swim there was just time to dry off and get chatted up by the local old men, who were shocked that we were spending the summer in Milan and offered to pick us up and bring us to the lake the next day too (if they had been about thirty years younger it might have been an attractive proposition), before it was time to go and get the bus. We decided to get the bus all the way back to Como so that we had more time at the beach, and it turned out to be a good choice, because the road back was spectacular and you actually see more from the bus than you do from the boat. The man in the bar that sold the bus tickets very kindly exchanged them for us and pointed us in the right direction. I find people in Milan pretty friendly most of the time, but once you get outside the city, the locals put their urban neighbours to shame! My guide book doesn't even mention Grianta as a place to visit and it's hard to find information about the buses up and down the lake without actually being there, so it was entirely thanks to them that we found the place and didn't melt into little pools of sweat for want of a place to swim.

Lido di Milano

One sweltering hot day last week, my friend J and I finally made it to the Lido di Milano, which is at Piazza Lotto on the red metro line. After you pay at the gate, you walk through changing rooms which reminded me ominously of school swimming lessons in the 1980s, but you come outside to trees, flowers and an enormous outdoor pool. (It looks at least Olympic-sized, although it's a bit of a funny shape. There's a bar and picnic area and water chutes and games for kids, and you can hire a sun lounger for 4 euros or pay 11 euros to sit in the VIP area and be gently sprayed with cold water, but we just sat at the edge of the pool on our towels, along with most other people, and went in for a swim every time it got too hot. Highly recommended, and much more spacious than the My Island “beach”!

Choose Life

...but which one?

I had a fantastic time at home last week seeing Mum and Dad, catching up with all my friends and appreciating the oasis of cool tranquillity that is the UK after the experience of summer in Milan. I indulged in endless hours in chain coffee shops drinking ersatz Italian coffee and delighted in the concept of putting these coffee shops in bookshops so that you can be tempted by cake and literature at the same time. I breathed in the fresh air and the smell of grass and hedgerows after a summer shower and I drove on well signposted roads where people respect the speed limit.

I also began to look forward to going to Paris. I found out more information about my job and got excited about furnishing my flat on Ikea online. I discovered that one of my French friends is moving back there in September and I started to plan all the things that I want to do when I get to Paris.

Then I came back to Italy and sat in the park in the sunshine and watched the well dressed people go by and went to the Lido with my friend and remembered all the wonderful things about Italy.

As it happens, my choice is made. In a way, it was made for me. But if I had completely free choice, which would I choose?

Vodafone Passport

Ever since I destroyed my internet connection and my boyfriend went back to England for the summer, I've been suffering from communication technology withdrawal. After a week at home where I socialised with my friends all day every day and abused my parents' broadband, I was a little sad to be coming back to Italy and my 50 cent per minute international mobile calls.

So when I arrived at the airport and saw an advert for Vodafone's summer promotion, my heart leapt. I have an O2 phone in the UK, but Vodafone have abolished roaming charges in Europe for July and August and are giving away a free sim card when you buy £15 worth of credit. Because I bought my phone from the Carphone Warehouse, where most of the phones are not network-locked, all I needed to do was put in my new sim and activate Vodafone passport and I was ready to go. From Italy, or anywhere else in Europe, I can now phone home for no more than it would cost me to make the call in the UK.

I have the same promotion on my Italian phone but that only lets me call Italy when I'm away. Vodafone Italia also has a promotion called One Nation that lets you make cheap international calls on your Italian mobile in Italy, but after I activated it and accidentally spent a fortune calling Britain and France, I found out that it doesn't apply to European countries. (Why???)

At the moment, the Vodafone promotion is only for July and August, but I'm hoping that, seeing as it seems a great way for them to get ahead of the competition, they'll continue the promotion for at least as long as it takes for me to get broadband and Skype in my new flat. And, knowing France, that could be a long time!

Racism

I often find myself wondering in this country whether the statement “Italians are racist” is, in itself, something of a racist, or at least prejudiced statement. It is definitely fair to say, however, that racist attitudes are much more socially and politically acceptable here than in the UK or France. Not only is the Lega Nord, which has policies that are so racist they don't even like Italians from the wrong part of the country, one of the major political parties, but politicians from the so-called “centrist” parties make openly racist statements too.

Yesterday, with a whole day entirely by myself to fill, I spent some time reading the back issues of the newspapers which I tend to buy, read the magazine section and fail to finish the news and I came across an article where Berlusconi and other politicians were claiming that Milan is in danger of becoming “an African city” and criticising the fact that there are so many black faces on its street. It's hard to imagine mainstream politicians in the UK getting away with making that kind of statement, but even the Corriere della Sera, which is one of the more enlightened Italian papers, could only manage a tone of mild criticism of their attitudes. To put the statement into perspective, around 13% of the population of Milan is made up of “foreigners”. That includes the fashion designers who create the clothes of the rich and famous, and the international footballers that Berlusconi himself pays a fortune to import for his team. It includes people like me, who come to give Italian children the education in English that their parents covet and the Filippinos that they trust to look after these children while they go out to more attractive employment.

Where the anti-immigrant voices of Italy often go wrong, deliberately or otherwise, is in failing to make a distinction between immigrants and illegal immigrants, which makes it easier for them to make the presence of foreigners seem like a threat and therefore makes all racism seem more acceptable. “Of course that black man is not to be trusted,” the thinking goes, “because he is almost certainly cheating the system and stealing my country's resources.” (Never mind that the best people at cheating the system in Italy are the Italians themselves.) And perhaps what makes these foreign faces so supposedly prevalent on the streets of Milan is the fact that these racist attitudes make it very difficult for the “wrong” kind of foreigner to get a job that will take them off the streets and into a job that is more profitable than selling crummy plastic toys in the metro station.

Why Don't We Have That at Home?

Three of my favourite inventions that make life in Italy that little bit easier:

Dividers at the checkouts in the supermarkets. When the checkout person has scanned your stuff and you've paid, they can push your stuff into one section and start scanning the next customer's things so that you don't have to worry about taking your time over packing your bags and holding everyone else up.

My dish-drying cupboard. The perfect invention for people who are too proud to have dishes on show and too lazy to dry them with a dish towel.

Bidets. When it's hot and dusty they're good for all kinds of washing, but especially your feet. And when it's cold, you can revert to British traveller mode and dump the washing in them.

Parli Italiolo?

After my mum left last week, my friend R. and her boyfriend P. came to stay. R. is Scottish, but she lives in Seville, and P. is Spanish. As I know about twenty words in Spanish, most of which make up bizarre curses which R. taught me when we were flatmates at uni, and P. only spoke a little bit of English, we spent the next three days testing the theory that Spanish and Italian are mutually comprehensible languages (that is, that Italian speakers can understand Spanish and vice versa). I came to the conclusion that this theory is exaggerated. While the two languages, like Italian and French, are very similar grammatically and many of their words have the same origins, differences in pronunciation and in many very common words mean that, while it may be very easy for an Italian speaker to learn Spanish, just as it was easy for me to learn Italian after learning French, everyday communication is not that easy. Interestingly, I found it easier to understand P's views on bull fighting and opening the market for illegal drugs than to figure out what he wanted for breakfast, but that may have had something to do with the amount of wine we both drank before the first two conversations started. At one point, though, P. and R. got into a very animated conversation about cock-fighting (la pelea de gallos) and I found myself wondering what people from Wales (el pais de Gales) had done to upset them.

On Wednesday night, I introduced them to aperitivo and Milanese cocktails and we had an evening of complicated but great fun conversation with two of my friends from work. On Thursday, they went sightseeing in town and on Friday we went to the beach. In Milan.

Technically, the “beach” in Milan, which can be found in Piazza Carlo Magno next to the Fiera Milano City, is My Island, an outdoor swimming pool surrounded by sand, artificial grass and sun loungers, which has been created in the middle of what would otherwise look like a building site. The pool is not enormous and it was full of children when we were there, and the bar staff were a bit grumpy, but in a city that has so little outdoor space where you can laze around in the sunshine, it was a nice place to spend an afternoon. As well as the pool, there are tennis and volleyball courts and the whole venue turns into a bar/club at night. Even the DVD of waves crashing on a beach that was projected onto a screen above the pool was quite nice...



until the credits started to roll!

Stresa

Mum came to Italy with one wish: to see the Italian lakes. Our walk on Thursday was lovely but we weren't high enough in up in the mountains to actually catch a glimpse of the sparkling waters of Lake Como, so on Saturday we went to Stresa for the weekend.

Stresa, like Como, is only about an hour from Milan on the train, but the trains aren't all that frequent, so we had to get up early on Saturday morning. When we arrived, the first thing we needed to do was find a hotel. After walking along the lakefront and admiring the Astoria, the Regina Palace, and the impossibly beautiful Grand Hotel des Iles Borrmomées, we eventually settled for the Hotel Elena on Piazza Cadorna in the centre of town. It didn't have a swimming pool or live music and dancing on the terrace in the evening, but we had a balcony, the staff were friendly, and who needs a swimming pool with Lake Maggiore on their doorstep?

In the afternoon, we went to see an example of luxury that surpassed even the Regina Palace Hotel: the villa on the Isola Bella. The Isola Bella is one of three islands that are only a short boat trip from Stresa (and if you go with one of the unofficial ferry companies, it can be a short and exciting trip as you bounce along the waves created by the much larger official boats). On the island is a huge villa built by a member of the Borromeo family in the 17th century. The scale of the baroque architecture would put many churches to shame and as well as the (at least relatively) tastefully decorated rooms upstairs, there is a spectacularly hideous series of artificial underground grottoes on the lower floor of the villa which house everything from a collection of marionettes to a canoe dug out of a nearby peat bog.

My favourite bit of the villa, however, was the gardens. A series of terraces stacked up from the lake level and populated with specially imported white peacocks leads to an enormous centrepiece decorated with statues and fountains. While some of it verges on being over the top, the flowers, the sunshine and the way that the land is shaped to take best advantage of its position in the middle of the lake are beautiful and if I were a 17th century countess, I certainly wouldn't be offended if my husband built me a garden like that.

On Sunday, we got the cable car from the Lido in Stesa to Mottorone, a mountain behind the town. At the top, you get amazing views over the lake, across the mountains, and down to the Lago d'Orta on the other side. There are several waymarked hiking trails, of which we did one lasting about 2 hours, or you can go to the small dry ski centre or just have a picnic. About half way up the mountain, at one of the cable car stops, there is an alpine garden. There weren't many flowers out when we were there but it might have been more interesting at a different time of year.

Both nights in Stresa, we ate at the Osteria degli Amici, which is not far from Piazza Cadorna. The first night I had grilled trout from the lake and an amaretto mousse for pudding and the second night we both had pasta with saffron, bacon, courgettes and prawns. I left my umbrella under the table on the first night and not only did they remember me and give it back on the second night, they reminded me to take it away again when we left the second time. So different from the Milanese and their umbrella-stealing ways!

On Monday, we walked along the lake front to the gardens and zoo just outside of town. The zoo wasn't very big, but it had some very cute little goats and deer, some llamas, a zebra and an aviary. Most of the zoo was nice enough, but seeing this toucan with his bright colours in a dull empty cage made me feel a little bit sad.

We sat in the gardens for a couple of hours, mostly because I was in the middle of reading The Savage Garden, which is a mystery novel set in a villa with a large garden in Italy, and I couldn't have found a more appropriate setting to finish it in. After that, we walked back into Stresa and had a swim in the lake before catching the train back to Milan.

Hiking in the Triangolo Lariano

Mum arrived for her visit on Tuesday night. On Wednesday, I sent her off to Bergamo while I did boring but useful things like going to the bank and shifting boxes with Mr. A. On Thursday, however, I decided it was time to join her on holiday and we went for a hike in the Triangolo Lariano, which is the bit of land between Lake Como and Lake Lecco.

You get the train there from Cadorna station in Milan and get off at Canzo station. Just outside the village, there are lots of marked walking trails up into the mountains beyond. A friend had recommended the area to me, but unfortunately I only vaguely remembered the directions she had given me and it took us about an hour to find the tourist office and get out of the village. It's just on the left as you walk up the hill from the train station into the centre of town, but we managed to miss it and did a couple of circuits of the village, asking three passers-by where it might be. The last person we asked was an old man sitting on a bench outside the bar who had probably seen us go past twice and very kindly took pity on us and actually led us to the door of the comune, where the office was housed. That door turned out not to be the actual door for the tourist office, but the woman was incredibly kind and went and got all kinds of maps for me, including one that she gave me for free but I'm sure I should have paid for. She must have realised that somebody who was looking for tourist information in the anagrafe office, which deals with things like residency and taxes, was clearly in need of a map.

Once we had the maps, it took us another couple of circuits of the town to find the right way out. There are 5 or 6 routes, all signposted with the traditional red and white striped markers, and we weren't quite smart enough to remember the number of the path that we wanted to take, which led to us taking another detour, this time up a very steep hill, but eventually we got ourselves on the right one and were heading for the Tre Alpi.

The walk up to the Primo Alpe was steep but not too difficult. The path was shaded by trees and we saw lots of pretty orange butterflies. At the top, there's an education centre and a picnic area. The Secondo and Terzo Alpi turned out to be very close to the first one and the path flattened out, so that part of the walk was easy. On the way, there is a chapel of St Miro, who apparently brought rain to the area during a long drought, and at the top there's an agritourismo. It was a bit late for lunch by the time we got there, but we had a drink, admired the farm tools and the corns hanging from the walls and the ceiling and watched the owners chasing the goats out of the house.

We wanted to go down by a different route, but it wasn't signposted and after our experiences in the morning, we decided it was safer to follow the main path, especially as the thunder was starting to rumble. We made it back to the village just as the raindrops were becoming really big, and were just in time for a train back to Milan.

Bureaucracy with a Smile

Over the past few months I have been developing a theory about bureaucracy. In the UK, at least compared to other countries I've lived in, paperwork is kept to a minimum and is generally relatively easy to complete. As a result, people who administer it are generally pleasant and efficient, but rarely anything more than that. In Italy, on the other hand, bureaucracy is a crazy, incomprehensible mess that can only be confronted three days a week between the hours of 10.30 and 11.15 in an office on the other side of town from where you thought you had to be. As a result, the people who administer it feel the need, every so often, to be incredibly helpful, just to remind themselves that they are still human beings and that all this paper has nothing to do with the real world.

Because I work with children, I needed to get a certificate from the police before I left the country stating that I had no criminal record in Italy. The first part of this process is astonishingly simple. You fill out an online form and send it off, and a few days later you get an email telling you that you can collect the certificate, in my case from the Casellario Giudiziale di Milano.

This was where the fun started. At 11.30, after doing another little job in town, Mr A. and I set out to look for this building. Our search was somewhat hindered by the fact that my map of Milan, published by the ATM (which runs all the public transport) has an index that doesn't correspond to where the streets actually are on the map. As Mr A. kindly pointed out, if I had acquired a little less Italian inefficiency, or was less Scottish and less mean, I would have bought a new map by now, but seeing as I am clearly one or both of the above, we ended up wandering around for half an hour before sneaking a look at a street plan in the Mondadori bookshop. We found correct entrance to the Casellario Giudiziale, walked through the metal detector, surrendered our cameras to security and asked for directions for where to go.

And let me tell you, that place is massive. As well as what looked like court rooms and hundreds of offices, it also had its own bank and post office. The man who gave us the directions waved vaguely to the right, muttered something about “on the left” and sent us off on our way. It took us a good ten minutes to find the office number 500, which was not particularly near 500 bis, or where it appeared to be on the maps of the building. By this time, it was about 12.40 and the office workers were getting hungry and disinclined to work. I handed my piece of paper to the man behind the desk, along with my passport, and hoped for the best.

Only one problem. I needed a “bollo”. After ten months in Italy, I still don't really know what a “bollo” is for, but it's a little sticker that you can buy that appears on most official paperwork. I knew that I would need one before I went, but I didn't know where to buy it. I asked the man behind the desk and he gave me some more unclear directions. I asked him to clarify. If it was far away or there was a queue, I would never make it back before the office closed at one and would have to come back the next day. The guy said something else, which I didn't understand. I was obviously still looking confused, and he obviously wanted his lunch, because he asked if I had the 3.52 euros and, when I said that I did, reached into his bag, pulled out a stamp, stuck it on the piece of paper and handed me the certificate.

Italian bureaucracy at its best!

At the Garage

After our encounter with the friendly mechanic at the Fiat garage in Via Corsico, Mr A. and I went back on Monday morning to drop "La Punto" off. (Because the word for car in Italian (macchina) is feminine, you use la even when the name of the car is masculine.) We met another mechanic, who was the one who actually ended up servicing the car and sat down to discuss prices with us. I had brushed up on some vocabulary this time and the guy was both very friendly and very professional. He gave us quotes for prices and an estimated time to do the work, remembering that it might take longer to order the parts for a British car, and when he heard that Mr A. was taking the car back to England for her MOT, we had a chat about the differences between the UK and Italian versions of the test. (In Italy, they only check the basics (brakes, lights, tyres etc) whereas in Britain, everything that worked in the car when it was new now has to be in working order to pass the test.) We arranged for the work to be done and when we went back on Tuesday to collect the car we found that he had also very kindly checked the oil and put air in the tyres to prepare the car for her long journey home.

On the way back into Milan we stopped off at a tyre place to get a quote for replacing the two front tyres and had a very different experience. The mechanic who greeted us had a big smile and a loud chuckle and looked unnervingly like a clown in his red overalls. There were no other cars in the garage, only about three other mechanics with nothing to do. The conversation went something like this:

Me: How much will it cost to change the tyres on the car?
Clown: Hmm, let me have a look and see how many need changed. (Something in Italian that I didn't understand.)
Me: I'm sorry, I didn't understand that.
Clown makes a gesture that clearly means, "turn the steering wheel so that I can see the tyres." Mr A. opens the driver's door and turns the wheel. Clown stops peering in the passenger side of the windscreen and starts to laugh.
Clown: Ahahahahahaha! It's an English car! The steering wheel is on the other side! Hahaha!
Clown finally manages to stop laughing. Mr A is beginning to look worried.
Me: So how much will it cost for the tyres?
Clown looks up price list behind the counter.
Clown: Well, you've got Michelin tyres but we're out of these. I could do another make for 220 euros.
Me: Mr A., he says 220 euros.
Mr A. starts to get back into the car.
Mr A.: The guy at the Fiat garage was only 200 euros. Let's go.
Me (to clown) : Thanks, but another garage gave me a better quote. Goodbye.
Clown: Ah, just hold on a minute. I can give you a cheaper offer with another make of tyres. How much did the other garage say?
Me: 150, including labour. (Afterwards, I decided I should have said 100).
Clown: OK. I can do it for 140 euros.
Me: He says 140.
Mr A. (still looking worried): OK, let's go for it.
Clown 1 calls Clown 2 over to get started on the work. Clown 2 gets in the passenger side of the car. He passes me my handbag, which is on the floor, then realises something is wrong and starts to laugh hysterically.
Clown 2: It's an English car! I was wondering where the steering wheel was! Ahahahahah!
Clown 2 eventually stops laughing, gets in the driver's side of the car and starts the engine.
Clown 2: This feels really strange. I don't know if I can drive this thing. Puts his foot on the accelerator. Get out of the way guys, I'M COMING!!!!


3 days later... The car has arrived in England. The tyres are still OK. The new brake pads that they ripped us off by telling us they were selling us 4 instead of 2 seem to still be attached to the car. Mr A's hair is not yet grey. And once again, I got a lot of education and an amusing story out of the experience.