Revisiting Italy’s Unwritten Rulebook

‘Tranquillo’: Lessons on Mondays, meatballs, ossobuco, and the Olympics

I was on time for my first appointment with the Italian bureaucracy, but it was too late.

The line for first-time applicants for a permesso di soggiorno snaked through the lobby and out into the street, and it wasn’t moving fast. I stopped a passing staffer and asked in halting Italian if it was worth joining the line at that point.

“No, no, don’t get in …