8.8 The trip up the A1 from Sarteano was pretty harrowing. Since it’s a freeway, the speed limit for most of it is 130 kph. The trucks mostly go about 110; the speed demons crawl up on your tail if you’re going a mere 5 kph over the limit, then cut you off as soon as they can whip around. Add to this that the road goes over the Apennines, and it’s a bit  nerve-wracking. Then Anna aanounced that there was an accident 60 km ahead and we needed to take a detour. Short form, we got lost. But happily, getting unlost involved finding an IperCoop! We love the IperCoop. Coop is a supermarket chain, and when Italians say “supermarket,” they mean “a store that carries about 80 items, sometimes 2 brands of each.” IperCoop, on the other hand (iper, of course, = hyper), makes your local Wal-Mart look somewhat undersized and understocked. This particular IperCoop had with it a mall with food and bank, both of which were needed. We had a surprisingly good fast food (Italian fast food – pizza and pasta and veggies and all manner of stuff!), ice cream, got money, and by the time we were back on the road, the accident had cleared and Anna was willing to go up the freeway.

Got as far as Fidenza without incident, then had to figure out how to get to Beso since Anna doesn’t acknowledge that any such place exists. Finally connected with Frank at the bar with the Vespa on the roof. Well, it IS rather a landmark! Turns out getting to Beso from there is very easy, since one just stays on the main road until just before reaching the village. But it’s 20km, and mostly 50 kph speed limit. FOR A REASON. Twisty turny doesn’t begin to describe it. I can’t WAIT to try to negotiate this in the dark.

9.8 The girls will be deported. Or not. See below.

10.8 I need a professional measurer in order to stay in the country.

So the past week has mostly been taken up with figuring out how we’re going to resolve the girls’ immigration issues. Seems the Italian Consulate in Boston flat-out lied to me when they said the girls didn’t need visas. You plan to stay in country for more than 90 days, you need a visa. End of sentence. I’m especially pissed because I asked twice on the day we were there and once later to be SURE they didn’t need them. But hey, if they had had them everything would have been simple, right? Wrong. We went first to the Questura, the provincial office for governmental shtuff – sort of a provincial federal building. They handle local immigration, passports, traffic stuff, and are the people one needs to register with to get a Permission to Stay. Now, why I need a Permission to Stay when I have a valid visa, that as far as I can tell confers permission to stay for the duration of the visa, I do not know. But there it is. The first person we met at the Questura was a uniformed attendant. She took one look at our passports and said, “The children do not have visas. They must leave in 90 days or be deported.” Uh, WHAT?! She said if we had an issue we could go to the Prefetura (provincial police administration) and take it up with them.

The lady at the Prefetura was much more understanding, and assured me immediately that while this was indeed a problem, it was NOT going to lead to deportation. Fortunately, both girls are still under 14. (If Elise were already 14 it would be a BIG problem.) This means that they cannot, under Italian law, be separated from their mother if the mother is here legally. She sent us to the Information for Foreigners office (Informa dei Stranieri), to a woman named Fulvia Baroni.

Cultural interlude: everything here is back to front. Addresses are not 123 Sesame Street, New York NY 10021, they are Sesame Street, 123, 10021 New York NY. You don’t refer to someone as Mr. Tiziano Fusi, you refer to him as Mr. Fusi Tiziano. I suppose it is more sensible in its way, but it takes some getting used to. So the Prefetura lady sent us to Sra Baroni Fulvia. Fulvia, for those of you not acquainted with the Fulvia of classical times, is a very strong name. She was married to Clodius Pulcher, a mover and shaker in early Caesarian times, and eventually to Marc Antony. After Clodius was murdered in a riot she retained the loyalty of his followers (sometimes referred to as his “thugs” or his “gangs”) and remained very influential. After Caesar’s assassination she raised legions to fight for Antony’s rights in the turmoil that followed, and Plutarch was clearly scared to death of her. When the news of her death was announced in the Senate, some bright spark supposedly said, “Wait, Fulvia can DIE?”

So I had high hopes of Baroni Fulvia. And indeed, she seems to have done all she could for me. The first time we went, she told us that in order to be able to apply for a permesso at all, we were missing some documents, primarily, the official measurement of the square footage of the house, with a sworn statement of how many of us were living there. Yes, the lack of kid visas turns out to be completely secondary to the problem of how big the house is. Furthermore, we can’t just bring the copy of the construction permit that Roisin happens to have, that has all the measurements on it from the provincial records; no no, we must have a new measurement done by the Official Measuring Guy on staff in the Comune. Then she says, oh, and your identity docs are all fine and good, but they have to be sent back to the US to get an official government document attached to them saying that they are official government documents. Shades of freakin’ 1984. So I have to send the birth certs back to CA to get apostilles attached. And then they have to be translated into Italian. In the US. And certified by an Italian Consulate in the US. (At which point I’m thinking, uh, kids, like that’s going to happen. I don’t trust the Consulate employees to put their shoes on the correct feet any more, no way I’m sending anything to them that involves actual thought. Plus I’d have to find some way to get a power of attorney overseas so someone could take it for me, since all this requires personal appearance! My hatred toward the Boston consulate is considerable.)

Now, Fulvia is pretty clear on the concept that none of this is likely to happen. So she gave me a list of things to bring back. Once the Comune had gotten the measurements (and no, no Official Measuring Guy had to come out because they had a copy of the construction permit on file and they just recertified it), I went back to Baroni Fulvia. She looked through what I had and wrote me a lovely letter for the questura saying, essentially, “Ok, the Boston crowd messed with us, so here’s what we have. We’re only here for a year. Please just deal with us and with these versions of all the docs. Thanks.” Once I have the last bit, a new copy of Matthew’s permission for me to come here with the girls, I send it in and automatically get a temporary residence permit just for sending it all in. (Did I mention that I was supposed to register with the police as a resident alien in Naples, even though I wasn’t going to be a resident alien in Naples but here in Beso? Yeah, that turned out to be a problem too. Fortunately, the police in the Comune thought that was stupid and just forged my entry document. Always deal with locals when you can ☺ ).