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 line now,” he said. “There’s no way they’ll get to everyone already here.”
I looked at my watch: Friday, 9 a.m., the offices at the Questura had only been open for half an hour. The staffer told me that on most days the only ones sure to be seen were those who’d been in line by the time the doors opened.
The next Monday I arrived before 8, first in line, paperwork in a manila folder, book in hand, and a thermos of hot tea to keep me warm. By the time the doors opened, 20 or 30 others had queued up behind me. I led the line of extracomunitari through the lobby and into a badly-lit hallway, where we stopped at a closed door.
A few minutes later, a weary-looking man with wire-rimmed glasses and a rumpled jacket appeared, a thick and colorful stack of papers tucked under one arm and a ring of keys in his hand. The line went silent, but the man didn’t notice. He stepped inside and closed the door. The line started murmuring again.
After a few minutes, I politely knocked on the door.
From the other side: “Un momento!”
I waited a bit, then knocked again.
“Si?!” The voice was sharp.
“Lei sei pronto?” I asked. I’d been practicing the phrase in my head.
I heard some shuffling inside, and then the door swung open. “Ma tu non sei Italiano, vero?” the angry rumpled jacket man said loudly -- “Wait, you’re not Italian, are you?”
I should have asked how he figured that out. Was it my bad Italian? Or the fact that I was in line to apply for a foreigner’s residence permit? But I just shook my head.
“I knew you weren’t Italian,” he declared, “because no Italian man would disturb another Italian man on Monday morning while he’s reading the soccer scores in La Gazzetta dello Sport!”
I count that day as my introduction to the deep Italian tradition of regole non scritte -- unwritten rules.
