Today was the final trip to the Questura to pick up my Permesso id Soggiorno card...my one true souvenir of Italy. It took exactly six months but I now have it. It was an interesting afternoon as the card pick was usually during the after noon on a Thursday. There were the usual 100-200 foreigners all excited to finally become legal. I was told to go for noon and I am happy I heeded that advice. I stood in line outside for about an hour and then they began to let batches of people in. Of course again I was the only single white female amongst a sea of every nationality known to mankind. As I watched and listened to the different language spoken and the tone and volume of each culture, I began to think that Florence has become very multi-cultural although I did read in the local paper last week that they had ordered an asian grocerateria to close its doors.
I was finally herded into a small cordoned off area just outside the main area where they call you by number. Three batches of names later I finally get called...Ankika...now that is an interesting name and I smiled and moved forward to obtain the number F055...and pondered on how great this guard was at pronouncing names (except for mine). He must have a zillion names to have called and I must say for an Italian he was pretty good. So I sat for another 2 hours to wait for the 'F's to appear on the screen. In the meantime I helped save a man who decided to lean back on the bench to an empty space as I figured he hadn't noticed this bench's back was broken off. So as three of us gently grabbed his legs as he projected backwards...he smiled with a sigh of relief he was saved and didn't crack his head open on the concrete post.
I decided to move from bench to bench as I noticed these foreigners have adopted the Italian volume for speech. Why do they need to talk so loud?
When my number flashed on the screen...I breathed a sigh of relief to finally be out of that noise. Hope you all had a fabulous day. Ciao.
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