While living in Italy, as soon as you make peace with the fact that your bills will make as much sense as a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest, you can surrender to all the tasks you will be subjected to.

For example, I have been receiving a monthly water bill of around €55 a month, which is a bit excessive if you ask me for a family of 4. But then I received a water bill for a period of 8 months, from January till the end of August. It was €160, however, I paid for April, May, and June with individual bills for those months. I am fine if I am sent a monthly bill or even two bills a year. But I don’t understand why they would charge me monthly and yearly. So I looked online for the water department hours, they only take ‘walk-ins’ on Mondays and Wednesdays. So Monday morning after school drop-offs I walked all the way to the water department. I expressed my concern about being double billed, I was instructed that I was paying an “estimate” of what they imagine “might” be my bill, that then the bi-yearly ones would come, and if I have ‘overpaid’ it would just go towards a credit for a future bill. The gentleman helping me asked if we were residents of Arezzo, I explained that we were, and he went on to tell me that if we were residents we were eligible for a major discount. He pulled out a form and asked me to fill it out, then he wanted me to go home and find the documents proving that we were residents and find the EXACT date of when we changed our residency to the city center, which would determine the kind of discount that could be applied to our account. The account is in my husband’s name so I would have to also have copies of his documents. I would also need to go out onto the street, pull the manhole cover-up, and take photos of the water meter for an exact reading. 

I ran home and found the documents showing our residency change, our contract for our apartment, and copies of identification documents of my husband. All was going great and I thought I could run back to the office and turn it in and have it off my hands. WRONG… there was a car parked over the manhole… 

The car was there for over 24 hours! I decided to go to the garage and bring home a few winter items for the kids, which is quite the trek in and of itself. I came back from the garage, the car is still there! 

Tuesday afternoon the car is gone! Here is my chance to check the meter…. 

Documents, check! Photos of the meter, check! So come Wednesday morning after drop off I can go back to the water department and get this three-day chore out of the way that should have been a one-day chore. 

I waited in line and wanted to go to the gentleman that had helped me on Monday but he was knee-deep helping a different client. I went to the next available person after having been patiently waiting for 35 minutes. The woman saw the document I had filled out and just said “ah yes proof of residency…” She didn’t even look at the other documents I had strained to find… if I had not found these documents I would have been going down to the town hall to get copies and they are open weird hours or won’t even let you come without an appointment and appointments are two weeks out… 

Crisis averted. Except for the gentleman who helped me, Monday assured me he could apply these discounts immediately as soon as I brought all the forms and the reading of the meter. The woman who was currently helping me did not want to give me the same deal… she wanted me to pay the bill and anything I pay over that would be applied to a future bill. I literally have no extra money hanging around to have a credit for the future… a little pissed off about it, but life goes on. 

On my way home, I stopped by the bookstore where I ordered my son’s school books for this year. I placed the order last Monday, and was told to check on Tuesday of this week. Busy doing other ‘easy’ chores I wasn’t able to stop by until this morning after my second trip to the water department. I walked in and asked about the books and their status. The young man jumped behind the computer and started typing my child’s name, nothing. He typed our last name, nothing. He typed his first name, nothing. He asked if I had the piece of paper of the book order on me, I did not. I had to walk all the way home to find this piece of paper and walk all the way back. If I haven’t mentioned, I live on the top of a hill, and all the streets are made of cobblestone. Without a doubt, I live in the highest point of Arezzo. The inclines alone are ridiculous and I avoid them at all costs especially when I have the stroller.

As a rule of thumb, anytime you must do anything bureaucratic, bring a book, accept that you will be sent away for not having all of your proper documents, and don’t be in a hurry. This is a different form of mastery, if you can get through doing these Italian chores without seeing red you have reached another level of zen.