SISYPHUS AIN’T GOT NUTHIN’ ON US (Or, on trying to get your car registered in Bella Italia)

  

I actually wrote this just for myself this morning while still happily in bed, but I am also going to foist it on friends who have had to listen to all our moaning and groaning about our misadventures while under the illusion we could learn to negotiate the Italian bureaucracy. HA! 

 

Kudos to James for coming up with the first part of this title: 

SISYPHUS AIN’T GOT NUTHIN’ ON US. And be thankful that what you’re getting here is the expurgated version of the story. In the interest of fairness to all, the profanity and yelling that might have accompanied this tale are not here, but please feel free to imagine where they would be. Here goes:

 

I don’t usually think about the literal meaning of “buongiorno,” but it’s already a great day because we don’t have to think about whether we’ll get a message from the Motor Vehicle people about coming to Viterbo to bring yet more documents for our car registration. 

 

Yesterday we even turned in the car we rented for the 11 weeks of this journey. I had already painstakingly composed 33 letters to the anonymous Kafka-esque powers-that-be who managed to never answer our questions, as each time we naively thought we were doing everything they wanted, only for them to pull a rabbit out of a hat and require something else they had neglected to mention.🤯🤬😡😱

Waiting for Godot...

But yesterday, after Jim wrote our accountant to see about getting back the thousand euros it turns out that we didn’t need to pay, maybe I won’t have to write any more obsequious letters in Italian to people who do not want to hear from me. I don’t think they had ever encountered people like us, and my guess is that they’re as glad to see the back of us as we are of them.

😉👏👍

 

With people dying everywhere from a deadly pandemic, we certainly have nothing to complain about. Never mind the 7 useless 2-hour trips to the motor vehicle bureau with hour-long waits on line, 5 to the local tax office, 1 to another city to get our signature notarized, and yesterday’s to the, by contrast, well-organized Automobile Club of Italy after the Viterbo guy finally gave us our license plate but not before ominously saying “You haven’t finished yet.” (Of course there was more to do, but we are lucky and we know it!) BTW, I don’t usually write such interminable sentences; I prefer to leave that to my Men of Letters like Proust, André Aciman, or Flaubert. But their influence on me is permanent, and this is a case where form and function seem made for each other.

 

Even though there’s a week of rain on the horizon and I need to steel myself for our looming departure, it’s going to be a good day. Thanks to everyone who bore with us during the past months, especially our aging Peugeot who was getting so nostalgic for France that when we finally got permission to drive her, she flashed her red engine warning light—you know, the one that says SERVICE! and displays the icon of a bomb about to explode. Our appointment with the mechanic is for Tuesday. 

 

With Sisyphus as our admired role model, we continue to love our adopted country.🇮🇹