Learning to act Italian, Part (I assume) 1

Efficiency isn't always efficient

I might be using candles for light and taking cold showers in my Italian apartment, at least for a short while.

My new friend and realtor Giovanni is preparing the apartment for when my arrival Monday afternoon, and contacted me this morning to let me know my tax code doesn’t appear to be valid. The codice fiscale, or CF for short, is a unique identifier you need in Italy if you’re going to carry out any financial transaction, like buying or renting property, opening and account, or — essential to this story — connecting gas and electrical services.

The number — actually a sequence of letters and numbers — is determined from pieces of your name, birthdate, place of birth, gender, etc. If you know that formula, you can generate a CF, and it so happens that Charles, my main contact at UNISG, did that for me quite easily several months ago.

Except Giovanni says it’s not valid.

I’ve been learning through the past few months of applying and obtaining and completing about the Italian Way of doing things, which isn’t very urgent, not always efficient, and perhaps not as organized as life is in other parts of the world.

In fact, at Terra Madre in 2016, I witnessed an Italian man trying to direct a multitude of buses to the right places to pick up attendees and deliver them to their hotel, and heard him say, “This is a tremendous amount of organization to expect from Italians!”

So, I take a breath and don’t panic — I can work with no electricity and cold water, at least for a few days, right? I need to learn to not be stressed, to take things as they come, to not be in a hurry. To learn to be Italian.

But Giovanni is, well, he messages me a form and wants me to sign it and email it to a department somewhere, and he says, “We have to hurry. Sign and send here very fast.” Andweneedtodothisrightaway!

Like we’re not in Italy anymore. But he is trying to get me lights and hot water for next week, which is great.

So of course I sent the form, but I also realize they got it at 2p on Friday afternoon in Italy.

Just to check, I reached out to Charles, who calmly replied, “You can only apply for the official "attribution" of your fiscal code upon your arrival in Italy, as you need to send proof of arrival.” Of course…

Thinking I could get the form all ready for when I do arrive next week — I’m still trying, perhaps too hard, to be efficient — I started to complete it online, and then saw it’s the same form I completed for Giovanni and have already emailed. No mention of proof of arrival.

We shall see.