The move to Tuscany : Is it bedtime yet?

Bedtime can't come quickly enough today - yesterday's exertions took more of a toll on us than we expected, and despite the cats giving us a good night's sleep until 6:30am, we both woke up feeling frazzled.

Helen still crawled out of bed to exercise while I, on the other hand, went straight back to sleep, the cats having been fed and downstairs leaving me in peace. Before I knew it, Helen was coming back in after her early morning spin on the turbo trainer so it was my turn to drag myself out of bed.

After breakfast, we both headed into the office - Helen for more wordsmith-ing, and me to try to get my head around this residency issue. I don't like being at the mercy of other people, and if the language barrier is going to remain an obstacle, then I wanted to make sure that not having the correct documents is not going to be another one. I can easily see this process taking months, if allowed, and that's something we really want to avoid if at all possible. We therefore want to be as prepared as possible so that we at least know we've done all we can and haven't given any bureaucrats any excuses to drag their heels more than they already might do - we have deadlines to work to now, and if we miss them, it will cost us money.

So, after nearly three hours of going round and round in circles on the internet, translating pages of information into English and trying to weed out the rubbish and make a definitive list of what it is we need, I was ready for lunch. Needless to say, I've only made a small dent in the problem after all of that, but I do at least feel that I have some sort of handle on it, and have started making a list of what we need, where we need to present it and in what order. We would have looked into this in more depth before coming over here except for the fact that until you scratch some way beyond the surface, it all seems fairly straightforward - and with 1001 other things to consider, we didn't feel the need to scratch any further. The whole process is made all the more complicated by the fact that it all has implications on registering for healthcare and being able to work legally.

Anyway, we ate lunch under a hazy but scorching sky, then promptly hopped into the car to head in the direction of the post office - we needed to send a signed form to Bristol so that it could be combined with a newly ordered copy of Helen's birth certificate (courtesy of Mother and Father-in-law) so that the birth certificate could then be sent off to be 'apostilled', or legalized, before making its way to us in Italy again (as one of the documents we understand we are required to present as part of the residency process).

At the post office, we pressed the usual button to get our ticket, and were immediately called to the counter, upon which we tried to post the aforementioned document. 'Do you want it sent normally or registered?' we were asked, to which we replied 'fast', and the man countered 'expensive', to which we said 'that's fine'. And then began the seemingly incredibly complicated process of sending mail to the UK the fast way (although they still said it would take three days). The process involved taking photocopies of Helen's passport and fiscal code card, all of which were stuck into plastic bags that were then stuck to the envelope, as well as writing Helen's fiscal code and address and telephone number on the back of the envelope, and adding Mike and Jill's telephone number underneath their address on the front of the envelope! It must all have taken at least 10 minutes for the chap to get the process finished (along with the help of a colleague), at the end of which he thanked us for our pazienza (patience) - new word of the day.

So, €30 lighter for our troubles (we had been expecting maybe something more in the €10-€15 range!), we headed to the other, hidden away post office in town to see if we could find my mysterious parcel that the postman had told me he would leave at the post office. We found the post office itself down a small side street having identified it by the post office vehicles parked outside. As we walked in, the lady was giggling, so was clearly in a good mood - a good sign, so I hit her with 'il postino mi chiamato di Giovedi, lui dire lasciare a l'ufficio postale, e qui?' Not perfect, but good enough for her not to squint throughout my delivery, and she asked for our address and my name (which I opted to write down rather than spell out - it seems the names Stuart and Smith cause a little confusion here, whereas Helen is less of a jump from Italian names, anyway, I digress).

The lady disappeared and came back with... a parcel! VICTORY was ours!

While she was away though, the chap struck up a conversation with us, which definitely involved saying something about our letter box being too small for parcels, but other than that we couldn't figure out what he was telling us. The lady also joined in when she returned, but with neither of them having a word of English, and our Italian comprehension limited to recognising the word 'postman' and 'post box', they quickly gave up and waved us cheerily on our way.

From there, we went to Mercatone Uno again to ask (again) where our kitchen was. I felt mean pushing a tired Helen into the breach at customer services with the paperwork in hand, but it was for the best and she dealt with it admirably. The lady at the desk immediately punched away on her computer, and then spoke to someone on the phone, and from what we can gather, the kitchen is now at the warehouse, but the oven is still missing, meaning that the complete kitchen won't be at the store until the second week of July! It will then be up to three days after that that we will receive delivery - we think she either said that we should phone them, or that they will phone us to arrange delivery then. Nothing like a bit of pressure is there?! IF it does all happen according to that schedule, then that should leave me about a week to build the units, fit them, plumb in the sink and oven, and tile the splashback before our first guests arrive. Gulp. I can see some long days and nights ahead of me, but our guests arrive on the 26th so we'll have to pull out all the stops.

Once that was cleared up, we went to find out how long the lead time was for delivery of the sofa bed we had our eye on for the apartment - if it was going to be another 30-day window, we might need to rethink our plans.

The shop is all based on the IKEA model: flat-packed furniture, and a store you have to walk around in a certain direction viewing room displays, before you reach a 'market' at the end. It's like IKEA in every way except for the hordes of people. You have to be selective with what you buy from there though, as some of Mercatone's stuff is blatantly poorer in quality, and some much more expensive than IKEA - so price comparison is the name of the game. The sofa bed we liked the look of seemed not only well built and quite stylish, but was a much better price than anything the Swedes were offering, so we walked around the entire store trying to find a staff member to try our Italian on and see if we could find out how long to expect to wait for said sofa bed.

The place was deserted - just three other shoppers and us, and while retracing our steps around the store in reverse (the route in reverse, not us) to try and find someone to ask, we spotted a selection of three other sofa beds that we hadn't seen before. We sat, we pondered, and we found a new favourite, so I took a picture of it on my phone to show to a sales assistant if we could ever find one.

That's the photo from the website, not the one I took on my phone.

It was now 3pm, and we were bemused at the lack of staff - on previous visits to the shop we've remarked on the fact that almost around every corner there has been a sales assistant who has given us a bright and cheery 'buongiorno/buona serra' (depending on what time of day we've visited) - but today, the place was so bereft of sales assistants that we even started to wonder if the shop was actually closed and we'd somehow come in on a viewing-but-no-buying afternoon. Anyway, just as we were about to give up, a guy appeared out of a staff door, looking like he'd just finished lunch. We duly accosted him, fed him some ropey Italian, and showed him the photo on my phone of the sofa. He dragged us (not literally, my Italian wasn't that bad) to his desk and, in Mercatone Uno style, punched his keys and picked up the phone. He then asked us if this Saturday would be OK for delivery as they had one left in the warehouse! Another victory in an otherwise rather flat day.

After paying a portion of the bill by way of deposit and agreeing to pay the delivery driver the balance in cash (can you believe it?) we headed home ... and back to the office.

Another three hours of the same frustrating research as this morning ensued, except this time I was distracted by the fact my email was refusing to send anything - no idea why, but then that's how it seems to go. I scratched my head a bit, messed with the settings until I was dizzy, and thankfully the phone rang. I guessed it would be Richard, so off I went to answer it.

It wasn't Richard. It was an Italian lady from Vodafone. Immediately, I assumed it was something to do with our new pay-as-you-go phones/contracts. I tried to remember back to when we has acquired the SIM cards as to whether, along with photocopies of our passports, fiscal codes and my inside trouser leg measurement, we'd also given them our landline number. I couldn't remember, and decided I should probably try to listen to what she was saying and work out what it was she wanted. She didn't stick around for long once she realised I was English, and instead went to find an English-speaking colleague - how helpful, I thought. It soon became clear as to why she was so keen to find someone to talk to me, although it still took about five minutes of discussion: the new Vodafone lady's English was as bad/good as my Italian, which put us on a level playing field.

My poor Italian let me down for the first time in a way that I hadn't anticipated - back in Blighty, in my native tongue, anyone trying to sell me something would have at best one sentence before I worked out they were trying to sell something, after which they'd get short shrift and the call would be ended. Here, it took about fifteen minutes!! By then, I had missed that small window-closing opportunity by some distance, so had to see the discussion through to its conclusion.

I have to say it was great fun struggling to communicate, mainly because it was all so light hearted. Vodafone lady frequently broke out into fits of laughter, not only at my poor pronunciation, but also at her own pathetic attempts at English. During the half-hour phone call (yes, HALF HOUR!) I deduced they were offering landline packages for a fixed €20 a month, which included calls all over Europe and America, and since I had a Vodafone mobile, this would be reduced to €17. I remember that, weeks ago, we were looking at the cost of Telecom Italia's packages (which is who our landline is with currently), and we thought they were pretty pricey, so I felt fairly happy to go along with what she was proposing. and give the service the 10-day free trial she was offering. She also explained that after the first month of being with Telecom Italia there would be costs involved in leaving (since we have only just officially bought the house the Telecom Italia account is only now being transferred to our name) - who knows, but free calls to the UK seemed great at that fixed price (fixed forever, she said).

So once again, I had to give her my fiscal code, passport number, email address and bank account details. All of these were extremely lengthy, and all seemed to involve the half of the alphabet I'd forgotten how to pronounce in Italian. It was a comical half hour, but we got there in the end - all I had to do was to call 187 to ask Telecom Italia for our 'secret code'. I assume this is something like the PUK code that you need to move your mobile number to a different operator in the UK. You won't be surprised to hear that when I called Telecom Italia to ask, in broken Italian, for the secret code to leave, the lady was considerably less than helpful - she understood my question, but hit me with a short sharp question. Despite saying I didn't understand and asking her to repeat the question more slowly, she didn't - so I gave up, as this was clearly going nowhere.

When my new friend from Vodafone called back to get the code from me, she seemed surprised that I had failed to get it and asked why. I told her my Italian was too bad, and that nobody there spoke English (they probably did, but they were not about to make life easy for me). She asked if I knew a friend who could call. Simply to buy myself some time, I told her that my friend was in England until Friday and thus chalked my up my first lie in Italian - can't being too badly then, can I?

She subsequently said she would try and get the code herself and that a contract would be arriving at the end of the week by courier. If it's the kind of contract that needs signing on the spot then he could have a long wait while we try to decipher it, we might need to invite him in for a cup of tea!

So that was our day, a touch more varied than yesterday, and much less physical, so I'm looking forward to another solid sleep and feeling on better form tomorrow.

I'll leave you with a vegetable patch update: