Living, or Surviving the Italian Dream?: May 2008

So you think you would like to live in Italy

This is our story, warts an' all. We have come this far since May 2004 and survived the bureaucracy, a freezing cold winter, a landslip and a diminishing money pot. Share our experiences, believe me the good ones far outweigh the bad and if you want to ask a question and we know the answer, we'll tell it like it is.

I found this little phrase in a Collins Italian Phrase Book published in 1963 ~ "passa ogni limite" pahs'sah ohn'yee lee'mee-tay which means: That's the giddy limit. Useful if there's anybody out there that quaint!!

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

DogBlog May

DOG ENDS

Full of good intentions. When we acquired our dogs, we determined to train them the ‘Cesar Millan’ way and we have been fairly disciplined about it. Cesar supports the ‘all humans are the pack leaders’ logic and as such we should maintain a ‘calm assertive’ stance at all times, and dogs should be encouraged to be ‘calm submissive’. If you have ever tried to teach a pup (no, to be precise, two pups) to be calm submissive you will know just how trying that can be. I’m sure we’ll get there in the end ~ speriamo. Another philosophy of Cesar is that it is normal for dogs as pack animals to sleep together so for those of you who allow your dogs to sleep with you this is perfectly acceptable, so long as they have a given space, i.e. at the bottom of the bed or on the floor. Not for us though the bed sharing thing, volume being the problem. They take up more space than us if you count the wieldiness of their legs and Monte snores to boot. So, our ‘pack time’ is the evening when the dogs are allowed into our living space but, until now, not on the sofa. In a moment of weakness we allowed Giorgio to climb up next to us. Within an hour the sofa was ‘taken over’ and has now become a dog domain. No clean living human being would sit on it again. And so the dogs have gained a bed; it will be moved down into the cowshed (the dog den) and will take pride of place amongst the gnawed toys and the chewed collection of sticks nicked from the log pile. But they are not pampered!

They may be big, they may be cumbersome but Blacky, the cat is fearless. He will make a nuisance of himself until one of the dogs gives up his bed for him. Surprisingly, they always do.

The boys made a bid for freedom again this week and surprised us all not least the builders who were working on the new house. They may not be Italian (coming as they do from Kosovo) but they are born with the same fear the Italians have of large dogs. It’s not unusual to hear a bit of unrecognisable banter between them (remember they are all brothers bar one, who is a cousin and in my experience family conflicts are the loudest) and sometimes it can become rather heated. I was in the garden plucking out some herbs when I heard a rather different tone, a good deal more emphatic than the usual raillery. Whilst I was wondering what sort of dilemma could have brought on such an outburst, Giorgio appeared behind me looking very pleased with himself for having found me. Oops ~ the dogs are out! I should add at this point that the dogs are not dangerous; it’s just that they are big boys and an excitable nudge from one of them could topple Samson added to the fact that their sense of adventure is stronger than their desire to ‘come’ even for a sausage. Monte is the chief troublemaker and if he decides to go AWOL Giorgio will follow. Giorgio on this occasion followed me back to the house but where was Monte? Ah, he’d found the builders. The Brothers immobilised by fear at the sight of Monte gallivanting around the garden appeared to be following all the rules of what to do when confronted by a wild animal. Stand absolutely still, face the aggressor, do not make any sudden moves and avoid eye contact. Maybe they stopped breathing for a while or was the grey pallor just cement dust? An amusing sight. I was very impressed with Monte as a guard dog; he pretended he didn’t know they were there at all!!! Anyway dog retrieved, brows wiped, back to work.

THE FAN CLUB

Meet William, the boys' youngest fan so far. He doesn't stand nearly as tall as them yet but is clearly delighted to be with them. All young pups together!

See pics of all fans in DogBlog February.

Local Heros?....er Noooooooo

Now I could have shown some discretion and just deleted the content below starting with 'Fabrizio Ermini' but this is a blog and by all accounts an honest one (did I not mention 'warts an' all' in my leader?) so having had the blinkers wrenched from my eyes, I'm duty bound to reveal the nasty truth. I got involved with him!! Only in a business sense, capisci. Not that Fabrizio is not attractive to women, his wallet says he is, he’s just not my cup of cappuccino!! We had a little arrangement ~ I would market his house for rental and he would pay me 10% of the rental income. A bitter war raged between us throughout the summer, on my part in defence of the guests and on his in defence of his wallet and I don’t think it serves any purpose to lay bare all the grimy details but can someone explain how 10% commission translates into:- rental income minus 10% commission payable = balance of rental income on which 10% commission is paid??? Err......what? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Fabrizio Ermini. Sandblaster, Builder, Property Developer, Entrepreneur, Man of Means. Ask him for a quote and he arrives the same day if not, the following, gives you a quote at the time, commences and finishes works on the due dates, expects to be paid when the job is done. Dear God, what's so difficult about that? I hope people like him all grow fat on foreign money; in my book, economic implications aside, they deserve to. Bravo Fabrizio!

Setting a thief to catch a thief? ~ Using a Commercialista

When we lived in England my husband picked up a little phrase “one of the forty thieves” which refers to anybody in the ‘charge-what-you-like-because-you-can-and-people-will- pay-it’ professions, like accountants, lawyers, vets etc.and racing towards inclusion, emergency plumbers. Maybe a bit unkind to the truly honest and caring professionals but it didn’t become a popular phrase without reason. In Italy, with the exception of veterinary services you can bump up the list to include almost anybody who provides a service to the public. There is one price for an Italian customer and then a ‘finger in the air’ price for stranieri (foreigners). In short, more often than not, foreigners are prone to being ‘ripped off’. If you are self-employed and intending to work in Italy then you will need a commercialista.

Since my husband has registered to be able to work in Italy (he was a registered building contractor in England) we have employed the services of a commercialista, an accountant with business management expertise. She handles the whole of the registration, the registration for VAT, your tax affairs and any dealings with the Chamber of Commerce, everything you need to be able to work in Italy. She will help you cut a swathe through the nightmare of red tape but it’s a laborious swathe even for her. Whilst you are paying (I’ll come to the cost later) for the services of a commercialista they are likely to help you with any other niggly little nasties, like extricating you from a number of telephone contracts you never knew you agreed to and anything else requiring a native tongue to sort out. You can get yourself into a lot of bother playing the independent card and trying ‘to do your best’. It’s not so much about knowing what to say but about what not to say. (I was fined 1,500 euros by a gas company for saying too much, but that's another story.) Being a decent and honest person doesn’t always pay in Italy. It may sound cynical but before you agree to anything check it out with someone official in the know. Our commercialista knows a thing or two about Italian law but more importantly the Italian mindset. She plays it by the book but never gives away too much information and bends a bit of it to suit. Just what you need but what does it cost?

The following costs are applicable to our circumstances only and are given solely as a guide. The situation with my husband is unusual in that he has registered for work as a builder for the sole purpose of completing the build works for our own project. This allows him to carry out general build works himself on our properties and to act as a main contractor to employ people as necessary to assist with the works.

Costs per annum = 5,000 euros:

1,000 euros Commercialista fees
3,000 euros to INPS (the national social security institute which manages the contributions of your pension, a form of national insurance)
1,000 euros to INAIL (the national institute for industrial accidents and diseases)

You must pay these fees whether or not you receive any income and we have yet to test our entitlement for INPS and INAIL. We gain because, by doing a lot of the work ourselves we reduce the majority of the labour and profit costs, which is far, far in excess of 5,000 euros per annum.

Truckers Strike ~ 12/12/2007

There is currently a dispute over rising fuel costs and working conditions and the truckers are on strike. Ferocious lot these truckers but I do think their action carries a lot of weight in Italy. We encountered a bit of their fervour when we found ourselves in the middle of a protest at a major roundabout which leads into a commercial park. It was a typical scene of groups of men huddled around roaring braziers. Lorries had parked along the verges of all access roads, toe to tail and had formed a blockade across the exit roads to the commercial park leaving only an extremely narrow space for cars to slip through. The camionisti (truckers) amassed around these narrow exits to ensure that nothing capable of carrying merchandise to the shops could sneak through undetected. We had taken the van (a large hi-top) since we were shopping for building materials and plumbing bits. Innocence, blissful ignorance, call it what you will, we made to slip through one of the narrow exit roads and were immediately encircled by a bristling mob, fists and voices raised indicating that we should turn around and go back. (I seem to remember passing a gaggle of Carabinieri on the way through and hoped they were within earshot). Anyway, the immediate shock of all the attention sent us scurrying off back onto the roundabout away from the angry gestures and verbal bellowing. We quickly gathered our thoughts and got some sort of perspective on what had just happened by which time a sense of indignation had kicked in. Fight or flight? We decided there and then to circle the roundabout, make for our exit, again, and forge a way through. A mind fueled by adrenalin and screaming Geronimo! is not one in retreat. The human barricade is still there and we are bearing down on them. Vrrrrooommmm! They all noticed we were coming back and they huddled together even tighter , even more angry and even more gesticulating. You begin to think, well, maybe if we went home we could have a cup of tea and anyway it's not our place to interfere with their riots er... disputes and in any event we support them. Too late, we were upon them, there was no turning back. My husband saved the day, he leapt out of the van, wrestled his way to the back and opened the doors. I could hear shouts of "e' vuoto" (it's empty) and the fracas seemed to subside. A camionista said that he had thought my husband was "un furbo" (a cunning person) trying to slip merchandise passed a picket using an English registered van. It made his day!