Category Archives: Legal stuff

Summer’s here!

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We have finally gotten to summer after a long, cool, wet spring. Events are planned in the Piazza. The old men play briscola all afternoon at the tables at Bar Mary. Evenings lately are boistrous affairs with the European Soccer championship going on. Lots of cheering from the Piazza as people crowd around the TV provided by Mary and Irene.
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We have recently said goodbye to Luther’s brother Jeff and family who were visiting Italy for the first time and managed to find a few days to visit us here. It was nice to catch up and get to know his children Aaron and Allie. We visited Perugia, had a great dinner in Montone and they all took a cooking class at Agriturismo Calagrana. It was pouring rain that day!

We made a trip to Gubbio where a talented artisan makes beautiful reproductions of Byzantine and Roman friezes etc. I had wanted to buy one for a long time. Here is the one I chose.
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As for bureaucratic things, we applied WAY back in January to renew our Permessi to stay and we finally got our appointment to pick them up in JULY! Of course our old Permessi expired in June making a gap. We visited the Large Lady who handles the health insurance with our receipts and the phone text with the appointment time. She was appalled at how long it had taken. She still couldn’t give us our new cards to last until the end of the year. So she just gave us until July 30. I was concerned that we have it in force for our upcoming trip to Poland.

I have not reported on our efforts to get our Italian driving licenses. Since we have valid German ones we tried to have them transferred to Italian. Anything to avoid having to go to driving school and take the test in Italian! We have not been successful, alas. We were making good progress until the woman noticed that on the German license it gives our place of birth as our STATE and on our Italian documents our CITY where we were born was listed. Oh NO! So we brought our passports and our birth certificates to them which show BOTH city and state of our birth. They refused us. We will have to formulate a Plan B I guess. It is always something.

So in just over a week we are off our our road trip to Poland, making stops in Slovenia, Slovakia, and Austria along the way. I hope it’s not too hot! We have found some Americans who wanted to come to Italy and offered to house/cat sit while we are gone. That is a nice thing for both them, us and the boyz.

Odd food

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Yesterday we went for our interview at the Questera to renew our Permessi. These police are in charge of immigration. They are based in Citta di Castello. They are generally very friendly. For this I am grateful because I’ve heard some are awful. After we got our fingerprints taken and had handed in all of our photocopies and passport sized pictures we thought we’d broach the subject of our Italian Culture class.

More explanation about this is called for. We had to sign an agreement to stay in Italy. The letter we signed is an agreement between us and the “State, in the person of the Prefect of PERUGIA”. We agreed to attend this class and pass the A2 Italian proficiency test. There is a point system. The letter clearly states that we get 16 points up front. If we do not take the class we LOSE 15 points. We need a total of 30 points after two years. I should mention that they did not give us this agreement until AFTER our scheduled class date. We believe they forgot to give it to us when we went in for our initial fingerprinting etc. They told us not to worry at the time. Since then we have been trying to figure out how to take this class with no luck. The two year date for our agreement to expire is September 4 of this year and it says it gets reviewed and we’ll get a letter if we are not compliant and they extend the agreement one more year. Then if we still don’t pass muster they deport us. This week, when we asked the officer about how we can take the class, she said it is not mandatory and not to worry about it. I can’t understand why the Questura told us this when this paper is quite clear. I am sure we have not heard the last of this. Sigh.

Last Sunday we decided to invite our friend Vera and her husband and two little girls over for pranzo (lunch). I made sure she was OK with something ethnic and she said she was. I made tortilla soup with added toppings of crisp corn tortillas, avocado, lime and cheese. Then we had a burrito with chicken with golden raisin sauce and sour cream. Next we had do-it-yourself tortillas. We had a tequila pork sausage with additional condiments of avocado, grilled onions, dressed cilantro, limes, tomatoes, with a mole sauce on flour tortillas. Everyone seemed happy to make their own. Graziano, Vera’s husband, was very adventurous for an Italian. Maja and Desiree who are 6 and 10 ate everything with gusto! And of course Vera, coming from Bosnia and Slovenia was excited to try all the new tastes. She also brought me the biggest chicken I’ve ever seen! And a bottle of Vin Santo as gifts. I should say it was all Italian spoken and I was ok with that. We had a lot of fun. Here we are at the table. Vera was taking the picture.

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The chicken… Maybe tomorrow’s dinner?IMG_0680

This week our weather has been very changeable. Lots of storms, blustery winds, sleet and rain. One morning we even had a rainbow across the valley.
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Today is the Saturday market. We have noticed that both the Wednesday and Saturday markets were very small this week. The big Wednesday one had probably a third of the normal vendors. I had mentioned in a previous post that I wanted to try the gobbi. I have a recipe which sounds pretty good and good for you. Here is the product I bought this morning.DSC05253
You have to trim the crap out of it. It is a relative of the artichoke family and has some spines that need trimming. I also removed most of the outer leaves. Like celery it has coarse threads that need to be removed. Once trimmed and chopped it looks like this.
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Now I need to blanch it until fork tender. The recipe says this removes the bitterness. If you like it bitter boil it less. Once cooked you sautéed some cherry tomatoes in olive oil and add some garlic. Put the gobbo in the pot and sauté until done. Here is a picture of the finished product. The taste was…forgettable. Not worth the trouble.
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Finally I bought something I’ve always wanted to have…a lemon tree! Apparently they do well here and can be left out except for a hard freeze which doesn’t happen often. It will flourish in the sun on the terrace. And it flowers and fruits all year. See how pretty!
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Permesso di Soggiorno applied for!

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A quiet Sunday. A picture of the Piazza on a Sunday afternoon. Very quiet.

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Here are our boys on Neighborhood watch Italian style!

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And a pretty balcony in the Piazza.

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We did our construction homework from Emanuele today and went through the house carefully noting anything that we would want changed or fixed. I emailed that list off to him.

We also worked on the paperwork for our Permesso and got ready to make copies on Monday morning. Since we don’t have a printer/scanner/copier yet we went to the Tabacchi which is a shop that sells all sorts of useful things. They make copies, they sell tax stamps called Marca da Bolla, they sell train and bus tickets, lottery tickets and sundry other things depending on the shop. We had to make copies of all the documents that we took when we got our visa. Also had to make copies of EVERY page of our passports! We purchase our Marca da Bolla which is necessary for the Soggiorno.

We then went to the post office with all of our paperwork, 4 passport photos, copies of everything, and our Marca da Bolla. We had a bit of trouble figuring out which button to push to get our number in the waiting line but after reading closer it was clear that we needed the “P” line. There didn’t seem to be any lines servicing “P”s but we kept waiting and finally one came up. We probably had to wait at least an hour but we got everything done, got a receipt that we had applied, got an appointment at the Questura (police) for July 27 in Citta di Castello the next town north of us. We have to take copies of nearly everything to the police as well as our photos etc and get fingerprinted etc. It takes a few months to get the final Permesso.

Next step is to see if we can get our carta di identita or Identity card. The rule, we are told, is that you have to have your residency to buy a car or a TV set. And you can’t get that until you have your Permesso finished. SOME have said you can use the RECEIPT you receive from the post office and buy a car. I am not sure how to find out whether this is true. But we have our car rented for 3 months so have some time to figure it out.

So today was yet another hurdle managed. Baby steps. Things get done as they will. Tomorrow we visit Emanuele about getting our estimates for the construction work.