Life continues, in comfort in our rental home with its stupendous views. The sky and the light here are unreal. Every day is different, and sometimes I feel like I’m looking at a Lord of the Rings or a Roger Dean picture – surreal cloud formations, shards of light piercing the silver and grey layers and highlighting a hill or a house or a field, blues and yellows and golds, and the ever-changing shades of green on the rolling landscape. It strikes me every time, and I remind myself how fortunate I am.
Some good and some frustrating to report, but mostly good.
First – the renovations to our house are scheduled to start in the next 2 weeks! We inked a contract with the builder last Friday, and he’s committed to be done before June 30th, otherwise a penalty kicks in. Turns out he’s the cousin of one of our neighbours … such is life and its connections here. This is one huge cloud lifted.
The night before this momentous event, I completed my application for residence, and this past Monday I got my residence identity card. This, it seems is the equivalent of having arrived – I am now official! And an amazing thing happened – my residence was granted the same day I made the application! Non-plussed, I was … but ever so grateful.
And to cap an eventful week, we bought a car – a second-hand Honda 4X4 to help us negotiate the winter roads and the mountain passes when we get up there to explore and go camping (next year).
Unfortunately, however, the vagaries with the Italian service industry continue. First, the postal service.
Item # 1 – Maria sent a small package to our part-time neighbours in Bari in the south of Italy. Four days after sending it, I just happened to intercept the postman trying to deliver it … to us! They had ignored the large-as-life bold address on the front, and instead focused on the minute address on the back, added at the last minute at the request of the postal service clerk who took the package. I managed to explain his/their (incomprehensible) error, which, unbelievably, it took him a while to recognize. But he took the parcel away again, and … lo and behold … it arrived in Bari 2 days later, quicker than it took to get 10 km from Tolentino to Regnano!
Item # 2 is a letter I sent to a friend in the US, containing a check, part of which was meant to go towards my SA Passport renewal application. Disappeared. No sign of it. This is now a month ago. Nothing I can do either – like a trusting idiot, having had one envelope make its way safely over there, I did not register it.
On the semi-positive side, unbelievably two of the boxes that were ostensibly sent back to the US showed up. The third is still MIA – it hasn’t been received back in the US, and they have no record of it in the post office here. Of course, it’s also the one with all the books I really need and want, and, frustratingly but by now not surprisingly, there’s just nothing that can be done.
It doesn’t get much better if you use UPS either. We had to have a cheque reissued (a refund from our movers) because it got lost in posteitaliano. So they sent it UPS. 3 weeks later, no sign of it. Contact moving company. UPS says our address doesn’t exist. Call them (UPS in Marche) – they need a phone number. Give it to them, but unfortunately incorrectly. Call them back to correct – no, don’t need it, they’re going to deliver tomorrow. 3 days later, call back – can’t deliver, the phone number’s wrong. Give them the right one, they’ll deliver tomorrow. Call from Tolentino – we don’t know where Regnano is (and are too lazy to find out). OK, we’ve had enough of this, leave it at the bar just outside the bridge into the city. Finally pick it up yesterday.
Don’t know what we’re going to do about this postal thing. Maybe get a PO Box in Tolentino.
On the phone and internet side, still no call from telecomm Italia since they put the phone down in the middle of one of Maria’s complaint calls. Turns out there’s a web site dedicated to complaints about telecomm Italia from English-speaking people in Italy. Now that makes me feel better…
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment