Did I mention a movie today? Silly me. I forgot you can only do one…maybe two things a day here.
We got to the post office and got that paperwork out of the way. Hopped on our subway…got two two stops down and realized we were going the wrong way. Got off, changed direction and off we went the the correct stop. Caught a bus..got off and wandered around a bit, finally finding the correct building to get our tax ID. Take a number…I am #61 and Andy is #62. They are working on the low 30’s. An hour and a half later, our number is called. I get my tax ID paper and will get my card in the mail in a few weeks. But, we have AN OFFICIAL RECEIPT! Andy gets hers, we go for lunch and decide to go home as it is too late to find the theater for the movie. And we might as well go to the market before we go home. We get there at 3pm…and it shut down at 2pm. Oh well, we will go tomorrow. That word is ‘domani’…
Learn it. Trust me!
On our way to the market, we see two more “Stumbling Blocks” on a street. A husband and wife…a couple in their 60’s who were taken to Auswitz and were killed there a couple of weeks later.
We stopped in a movie theater near us and found all the movies there are in Italian, but the people there were kind enough to tell us where a theater in English is near the Spanish Steps. We do well getting there.
On our way back to the apartment, feeling all flush with getting two major things accomplished today, i suggest we go to the Post Office with our new OFFICIAL TAX ID numbers and open the bank account that Andy wants. Take a number. #182 and they are working on 181. We get called and the woman hasn’t got a clue what we are talking about, so she gets the man next to her to help us. He knows just about as much English as I know Italian and we muddle thru. Turns out, we have taken the wrong #, but he isn’t letting us go…he has a chance to practice his English with real English speaking people. He finally gets the gist that we do have all of our OFFICIAL papers and can indeed LEGALLY open a bank account at his post office. He turns us over to a lady in a private office who has Google Translate. No English, just Google Translate. She gets all the paperwork going, making copies, putting info into the computer and then she discovers that the TAX ID office failed to put Andy’s middle name on her OFFICIAL document, so therefore – She is NOT OFFICIAL!! So, tomorrow – remember ‘Domani’ – we go back on the subway, back on the bus…no wandering cause we know where the office is…and please God let it be open…take a number and repeat the process. Unless I know how to insist we go ahead of everyone because THEY made the mistake…but of course I don’t know how to do that in Italian. Maybe I need Google Translate…
We have been washing clothes for two weeks with some clothes washing stuff we got at the store. Not feeling like the clothes were getting really clean. Then we find out it is the Italian equivalent of Woolite…for wools and delicates. We have some new stuff now. Hope it does better!
That’s it for tonight. Until Domani…