K finally enters the castle.

In December 2003 we went to Ascoli Piceno with Fabio to apply for our Permesso di Soggiorno, the document required of all foreigners resident in Italy. In March 2004 the carabinieri arrived to present us with it. It was valid for five years. In 2007 new regulations came into force: EU citizens who had been resident in Italy for five years could apply to their comune for permanent resident status. In January we duly applied to the Comune only to discover to our horror that our permesso had expired not, as we had expected, five years after we’d received it but five years after we’d applied for it. In other words it had lapsed and we would have to begin applying for residence all over again, as though we had only just arrived in the country. Only after another five years would we be able to apply for permanent residency. This morning, Pat received a phone call from the Comune. I went over to the municipio to find that the problem had been miraculously resolved and we’d received our permanent residency after all. If you haven’t lived in Italy you’ll probably shrug your shoulders and say ‘So what? Big deal’. If you have lived in Italy you know that describing Italian bureaucracy as kafkaesque is a monumental understatement. What happened today was a minor miracle: rendiamo grazie a Dio.