Residency Certificate

 

For the last two mornings, that is today and yesterday we have spent time chasing paper trails, not that unusual occurrence in Italy as the wheels of bureaucracy do often seem to move slowly. Domani, domani, tomorrow, tomorrow what is the rush?

When we moved house last year we transferred from Vetralla comune/council to Viterbo , yes technically we do not even live in Marta but right on the furthest possible outreaches of Viterbo.  Last year we were advised, although now I cannot recall who by, that before we were able to register with a doctor at ASL/ offices for Italian Health system for this area, we would need an up to date residency certificate for our new and current address.

This is a completely different document from our Carta d'identita/ID Card which also shows the Vetralla address. There was a debate as to whether these would also need changing so we decided to visit the Anagrafe/Registry Office and make official enquiries and applications.

We duly did this on October 1st 2009, a fairly lengthy but straight forward process. We filled out the forms, purchased the bolletino(stamps that are purchased for all official comune documents)from the local tobacconist, had the forms stamped and handed them in to set the process in motion.

This is all to prove that we have actually moved to where we say we have, within the same region but to a different comune. We were warned that the entire process was a slow one by the Anagrafe and that it would be months before our new residency certificate could be issued. Firstly Viterbo comune had to contact Vetralla comune to make sure we had not left the town leaving any unpaid comune debts! you will be pleased to know that we were cleared on that point. also we would have to wait for the Polizia Municipale to confirm with the Anagrafe that we are actually living at the address we have given them.

We were also told last October that although our Carta d'identita are actually valid until next year they think we should mayber be issued with new ones. On close inspection it appears that Vetralla comune have listed us as of Italian Nationality!

See pictures!  Three interesting errors, besides my nationality can you spot the other two?

 

The Polizia Municipale  eventually made the visit to check us out on January 14th 2010, at 8am, I had to rush out of the shower! Then just last Thursday am they called by with the piece of paper that we trailed around Viterbo with yesterday morning.  Unfortunately we were out at the market and it was left under the front door (remember no post box at the house).

A very faded piece of paper and no verbal message meant that although we had correctly translated that we were required to present ourselves with the document at the Anagrafe , we had not realised that we needed an additional piece of paper to present with it! Presenting ourselves at the office in Viterbo yesterday morning we were told that the document we had was insufficient to prove that we had been police checked. We were told we needed to go to the offices of the Polizia Municipale on the other side of town and ask them for further verification!

Off we went immediately, thank goodness we have a car, Viterbo is a large city and it was way out in the suburbs a good ten minutes drive from the centre. Not walking distance so I suppose those without their own transport would have to take a bus!  Arriving there to find it was not open was frustrating, why could we not have been told opening times by the other office. No that would have been way too simple! Anyway we were advised to return at 12.30pm when the office we required would be open, so we went off and did some shopping, returning at 12.30pm to find it still closed. This time we were told by someone else that the office for residency confirmation would not be open for another hour.

We retreated to the nearest bar to draw breath and have some lunch and debate the fact that we had spent many happy hours on bureaucracy since living here.  We have always been lucky in that at least everyone has always been friendly towards us.

After lunch we returned to the offices of the Polizia Municipale and were dealt with in a very friendly manner both speedily and efficiently. Having presented our by now much handled piece of paper, we were presented with another document to sign in return for another document to take away with us, along with the original one we started out with.

By now of course the Anagrafe office back in the centro storico/city centre was closed for the day, as it is only open in the morning on most days of the week, so we planned to return today for the conclusion.

Return we did but not for the conclusion. There were many more people at the Anagrafe office this morning and it took over an hour for us to be seen, then when we handed in with bated breath what we hoped was our final document, it was only to be told that we must return on Monday when our residency certificate will be ready for collection.

We shall wait and see what happens next week then, as we still have no idea what they have decided to do about our Carta d'identia.