New Chapter: Italy

So it's been almost a year since I last updated this blog. Life kinda got in the way. :)

Right after Noah's 2nd birthday in December we decided to move to Italy. I mean why not? Sure there are plenty of reasons, but for us the time was right. Noah is now talking and understands Italian perfectly. We wanted to get him to Italy to be completely immersed to solidify the language acquisition. The process of getting our house ready to sell and then getting ourselves to Italy definitely took much more work than we originally expected, but we made it...barely...but we made it with Jeff becoming Dr. Kilpatrick to boot.

As of March 11th, we left an empty house up for sale and boarded a plane with our toddler and 2 pups. The dogs did incredibly well and were hardly even noticed. Customs in Toronto (stopover) made us show all our documents and triple-checked everything, but then our arrival into Rome was hilarious. Truly Italian. We pulled up to the Customs window and the guy took a bite of his apple and waved us through! He didn't even open one passport!

We took 3 trains to get to Piacenza (1 hr south of Milan) and then a taxi to the one dog-friendly hotel here. That was Friday night and we've been here since while searching for an apartment. Today is Tuesday. Part of the problem is that we arrived Friday night. Things are only open here Saturdays until noon and then not again until Monday after 9am. We found a place right away Sat morning but have been cutting through red tape since and only just worked it all out about an hour ago. Every other place said no to dogs which cracks me up because dogs are a plenty here, are quite loved, and are allowed to go pretty much everywhere in Italy...on the bus, in the stores, cafes, etc, but apartment owners all say no.

So here's a taste of red tape in non-touristic Italy (I say this because when a city is used to having lots of foreigners it's quite easy to do things under the table and forgo all the ridiculous steps that we are encountering now):

In order to have the realtor PROPOSE our offer to rent an apartment to the owner we needed to provide a guarantee to the agency meaning a person who lives here who will not only vouch for us, but send in his/her own documents and then come and sign the future contract for us.

We need to have a codice fiscale which is kind of like a social security number. I actually have one of these BUT I forgot the documentation at home which is now in a file cabinet in storage. So what does that mean? I had to go to a special office out of town and have them reprint my number for me. BUT the lady there refused to search the system using my maiden name since my passport has it listed as my middle name. Eventually we convinced her to try and she found it but then said she could not print it out unless I changed my name in the system. And then when she went to do that she said no that wouldn't be possible since I don't have a permesso di soggiorno which is a permit to stay here. She said she would print the form as long as I gave at least the request form to get the permesso, but in order to do even that I needed to go to another office which is only open in the mornings. So I left empty-handed and today went to go apply for my permit. I waited forever and then when it was my turn the lady opened my passport and said she couldn't let me apply because my passport wasn't stamped at customs! And why wasn't it stamped? Because the officer was eating his apple! ha ha ha! So then she told me that I had to get our hotel to sign a declaration of our arrival at the hotel and then bring 2 pictures of me plus a photocopy of my passport. I left there and wiped my hands of it all. Instead I headed over to Fede's and we typed my information into some crazy system online to get an online codice fiscale which is only partly official. What?! Hey, but if it works it works. Now I have a number to sign a contract and by tomorrow we will be in an apartment. So that's where we are now.

Outside of apartment issues we are REALLY happy with our decision to come to Piacenza. The city is great...super cute and very livable and everyone is really friendly and talkative. They LOVE the dogs. We've heard no English since we've arrived.

We headed over to Fede's parents' house Saturday after everything closed not expecting anyone to be there and lo and behold Mr. Fava was there and then Mrs. Fava came home from work within a minute after our arrival and then Fede drove up from the airport (was in Berlin for work) as we were standing there. Great timing. They made us lunch Italian style and we ate and drank like Italian kings. We hung out with Ciacci for the rest of the day and then had dinner with them and got back to our hotel after 11pm. It was a great first day. Noah is already calling Fede's dad Nonno (grandpa) and is calling Fede "Zio" (uncle) and "Re Ciacci" (King Ciacci). Too funny.

Noah's Italian has sky-rocketed in the 4 days that we've been here which helps us feel like we made the right choice...in addition to the other great things. He's repeating a ton of words and is playing the game "I say 'again' and you say 'ancora'" Today he told me he went to the parco giochi (playground) with Babbo while I was dealing with the red tape. I'm not going to translate all the words here, but will make a list to keep track for our own records:

passegino
parco giochi
ancora
più
acqua
vino
biscotti
autobus
pullman
panino
pomodori
zio