TestaRossa

Does your post office have the ticket machines with 4 different ticket options?? People get really ratty when they see what they think are only certain letters moving! Gets quite amusing in the local PO.

Lorna at Vicenza

We only have 2!

Letters and packages.

Bills and accounts.


There is screened off help desk too for info about Po accounts and bancomats and suchlike but I never see anybody behind it.

TestaRossa

We have P and C - letters and Packages, bills. Then A and something else I have never used. We have to get a different ticket to do special deliveries rather than just postage although they will do parcels fast with a normal ticket. Dead exciting this isn't it?? Must be a holiday weekend!!

indiebird

In my town there are two desks: one for letters and parcels and one for paying bills and doing god only knows what that seems to take elderly people 45minutes AND they are the ones that are waiting outside the post office at 8.25 when I try and be first in order to pay my huge gas bill and get home again. I am certain it is the same ones waiting outside the doctors on consultation days!! In Cirié which is a bigger town they have that ticket system which I prefer. There is a smaller post office in the tiny frazione where my daughter goes to nursery that seems to open when he feels like and has shut down inexplicably at 8.35am and chucked a whole queue-full of people out on 3 out of the 5 occasions I have been in there. I am not convinced he enjoys his job, and he is so rude even i have stopped using that particular office. My fave is the one in my local post office whom literally throws your change at you... I can only hope to be that rude at some point in my future

I have given up trying to fit in, I figured a little while ago that it ain't gonna happen and so I do my thang, glare the other mothers down and speak when spoken to. I don't think you can please everyone all the time and so I've given up trying. I do have a few friends who have been really helpful, mostly old ladies and southerners oh and a couple of dads that really seems to annoy some of the other mothers!!! Don't get me wrong, I do like it here really and think the kids have a much better quality of life and it is beautiful but it is the day to day stuff that can be wearing. Oh and explaining to the teachers ad nauseum that I am not psychic and I do not know that I am supposed to sign every single tick in my son's schoolbooks and therefore their sarcastic note in his diary questioning my intelligence upset me a little. Can you tell that i am beginning to settle in?? Rosalindann I would love to meet up when you get back. I have heard of a few brits but they must be hiding!!

Patty

Indiebird - just to tell you - we have a small post office - and quite often we have had rude staff. Well my friend (who is also not italian) had just had enough and so she has taken to complaining to the main office in the bigger town nearby and they have so far sent 2 replacements - so sometimes things are worth complaining about. Maybe these people stay in place cos no-one says anything - but its about time they realised that they are supposed to know the 2 most important words........Customer Service

ps: I know what you mean about schools/diaries and all that. My youngest is in his last year at junior school and I STILL havent got the hang of it all - and I'm way past caring

Lorna at Vicenza

Ah Indie -------- forget right away trying to fit in.
You will in some ways and one day you won't even think about it.

In others you never will - especially in smaller places where foreigners are not common place or tourists.

I live in a place where no tourist would stop off and I'm the only English in the village.

I used to be the only the "straniera" in the village but with the influx of many other foreigners to the place, I'm now classed as more Italian than them. I have white skin and I speak Italian. Please note this is not me saying it ....... but I do have white skin and speak Italian and I don't wear a head scarf.

I don't personally give a shit but I have noticed the shift in trend. I am less of a foreigner these days and more a European ...... especially because I can speak Italian- I have learnt Italian - I made the effort - I didn't close myself off in my own African clique group or whatever and I tried to fit in.

It makes a difference to a lot of Italians here. Yes - I talk to the doctor differently - and the school teachers - and I even say hello to the lollypop lady... and I give them all "tu" these days. That just makes me a bit more special ......... and even the school teachers have come to realise that I'm not just a loud mouth because I'm the only one that actually says something on parent night. I have something valid to say and only open my mouth when it is valid and I don't spout all the crap that they are used to listening to and indeed ignoring.

This was my mantra as my kids were growing a bit ............. take the good stuff and ignore the crap. It's the only way to get by here and still keep some integrity. And as life goes on, some Italian folks will even think you are doing something right !!!!

indiebird

So much compfort girls, thanksxxxxxx

I have had the suspicious looks and being asked if i am Romanian or Polish. People seem happier when I say English and I am still a long way off being fluent but I always try and make an effort to speak Italian and now go to see the teachers myself on parent's evening now. My son didn't settle in easily at all, but I hope we are getting there now. We are going to be here another 2yrs at least and there seems to be some alarm that he will start scuola media here from the teachers... but teachers in the Uk are a bit institutionalised too and I think it is just this that turns everything into a crisis. I would like to have him home for GCSE's i suppose.... there are a few foreigners here but I am the newest with the seemingly naughtiest child in the whole school (except that he is not but i am the parent who takes the most action and goes in and listens to all the horrible things the teachers say and therefore I am good entertainment!! ) I am slowly growing a thicker skin, slowly learning better Italian and also how things work. Lorna, I too always say 'thankyou' to the vigili when we cross the road (they have guns!!) which other kids find entertaining. In fact I say hello to an awful lot of people really!! I have realised that I am actually rather stubborn really and they arn't going to get rid of us that easily!!

Patty

sellymack

So agree with all your comments... I've been in this village for 9 years and am still the only straniera, many still refer to me as la francese, which just goes to show how integrated I am!! I insist on maintaining good manners which are taken for granted back home, but here are scarce to say the least; which is why my children are the only ones who say good morning and thankyou to the school bus driver, vigile, shopkeepers etc... much to the bemusement of all the others mums & kids. I still haven't fitted in, but now have given up trying to, I'll never know when it is permissible to wear sandals and summer clothes, as it seems that being very hot is not a good enough reason and it actually has to be past a certain date on the calendar. When I was expecting my first baby I had a check-up in mid April which that year was particularly hot, so being heavily pregnant and suffering the heat I had gone to the hospital wearing light clothes and .. wait for it... SANDALS!! My gynae actually said to me, and I quote; " Signora, if you are not careful, your baby will be born with a cold!" So, I rest my case, wear what you want, because there's a whole world of hidden rules here that we can never hope to understand.

TestaRossa

Well the nun who sits on the door at Antonia's school has asked me if I'm from a) Umbria b) France c) Spain - I have red/blonde hair, blues eyes and loads of freckles, yeah......

indiebird

So funny and so good to know it isn't just me!! My hubbies collegue is English but has lived here for over 10years with his Italian wife. My son is friends with their neighbours' kids and when I spoke to this mother and said that my husband worked with their neighbour she said 'oh yes the Swiss man.' I told her he wasn't Swiss but English and she asked if I was sure as he has red hair and speaks Italian really well but with a funny accent!! Hmmmmm... They always ask if we are German as my daughter has blonde hair!! Maybe it is being English and the fact that we are such a mish-mash that I don't ever ask anyone where they are from in the UK, even if they do have a funny accent.

This clothes thing is weird too. They seem to totally change over their wardrobes at some point in May don't they. We must stick out, as if it is hot then we wear summer clothes. In fact being frugal, my dd has been known to wear a 'summer' dress with tights and a cardie in the winter. This will somehow give her some sort of 'febbre' but I haven;t worked out quite how these 'febbri' work here and don't work in the UK. Any ideas? oh and why you would need to take a child with a cough and no other symptoms to the pediatrico for some antibiotics....

TestaRossa

Having said all this - and I do scoff too about the way certain clothes can only be worn after a certain date - my dd wore a proper sleeveless cotton frock to a party a couple of weeks ago - the following day she had a temperature and a really bad cold, she even went to bed really early she was that bad. It could be coincindence, but I have also noticed she has a runny nose and scratchy throat if I send her to bed with wet hair.. Maybe there is something in it after all??

Lorna at Vicenza

All mothers here and certainly all of us should have been issued with ear plugs and horsey eye blinkers when we had or brought our kids here.

I never ever got stopped or given so much unwanted and anasked for advice until I started going around with a pram and then a pushchair.

"Tell Mummy you need a hat / socks / scarf /shoes etc" ... Yeah - she's 3 months old - Of course she's gonna tell me !

One old bag even told me off once coz Chloe was slouched down in her pushchair and she told me to pull her up into position and sit her up straight.
I admit that after just saying "si si" most of the time I got mad that day and told the old bag to shove off and mind her own bloody business. She was most upset that I had dared to speak to her that way.

"you dared to give me your unasked for advice first so just think before you start telling people what to do" I screamed at her before stomping off down the street.

I also - more politely - told another lady to just butt out one day when she kept saying "go on - get the lovely kiddies a lollypop."

I told her that she didn't know whether my kids had already had 3 lollypops that day, or an icecream or cake or a bag of sweets so she should just stop insisiting and shut up.

The clothes thing is called cambio di stagione and nearly all of them do it.

I have just looked through the 2 bags of clothes an Italian friend dropped off last week. The clothes are all winter ones so I know she has just done the cambio di stagione. Now I have to store them until November when Alex might fit into them. I'm grateful but need to stick the stuff in one of those under the bed boxes or something.

I don't really bother with the change over. Even in the dead of winter my kids are happier with a t-shirt and a cardi or zip-up fleece over the top so the t-shirts are out all the time. They don't have any big wooly jumpers as I am allergic to it and never buy it and I couldn't be arsed to handwash most of the stuff anyway.

You'll always get questions about where you come from and even when they find out there'll be other assumptions about you.

A priest once stopped me in the street and very nicely asked what langauge was it that I was using with the children.

English.

"ah - Protestant then" he replied.

"catholic actually father" I replied. "Don't assume that all people born in England are protestants just like not all Italians are catholic."

That shut him up.

indiebird

Maybe the Italians project something onto her that then proves their point? On the 3 nice days of the summer in the UK you get your shorts out and you wear them even when the weather is horrible, windy drizzle every other day and we don't all come down with something as a nation do we?? Maybe i am just using my rose-tinted specs again??!! My daughter also caused shock horror at the bar in the swimming pool last week when she asked for a glass of cold milk at 5pm!! You could hear a pin drop. She will come down with stomach flu apparently....

Lorna, how do you say these things?? I need to know some 'Lorna survival phrases'. PLEEEAAAAASSSSSEEEEE!! My daughter went through a phase of agreeing with me on the one hand about things and then waititng til there were Italians around before bursting into tears and telling me (in Italian I might add!!) that she was starving hungry, or wanted some sweets from the shop etc. Highly embarrassing but they all felt sorry for her and the little madam knew that I would most likely give in and give her what she wanted OR someone else would produce a sweetie for the poor starving urchin!! We had to have a few harsh words in the privacy of the house, I can tell you!!

TestaRossa

indiebird - how old is your daughter? If you've already said, apologies! Mine is 5 and I am constantly having words with her! She copies anything her friends do or say, so if they are hungry, so is she even if she has just munched a whole bowl of pasta! It drives me nuts, 'cos then I look neglectful when I tell her she can't have anything! She is a little chubby anyway and I am watchful that this doesn't change into anything more! She also bursts into tears about the silliest things if I am saying no!! Drives me nuts!!