An Incredible, Wonderful, So Good, Very Great Day

Wednesday was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day. When we arrived in the country we were not able to register a vehicle in our name because we didn't yet have official residency papers. So we bought, registered, and insured our vehicle in Nonna's name, which is funny when you think of it because she doesn't even have a driver's license. Strangely, that was not a problem. What it was, was expensive. We had to pay 960 euros for 6 months insurance.

Since our insurance was up for renewal Pietro went to work to transfer the title of the van to his name first so that he could start to rebuild his safe driving record for insurance discount. It took a few days to do that, as with everything here, and I don't just mean a few days of waiting. I mean a few days of coming and going from the office 3 times a day and back to back phone calls in between. Oh, and I should mention, the people at this office said this transfer and the 550 euro bill to do it would have been unnecessary if the other office would have put Pietro's name on the registration together with his mom's. Something noone told us was possible at the time.

Anyway... property transfer in hand Pietro went to renew the insurance only to be told that they could not insure a vehicle that was registered in his name because he does not carry a valid Italian driver's license.  Seriously? Apparently. And now? Now we continued  to pray that God would put someone in our path who had the power and the patience to help us get through all the beuracracy and find a solution.

And then today happened. Yesterday we had found a local insurance broker who took on our case and believed he could get our driver's abstract from Canada recognized by one particular company. Indeed, he did manage that, and it ended up bumping Pietro down from a class 16 to a class 9. This saved us about 800 euros a year on insurance. Today he called back and informed us that he was able to do even more. He was able to internally classify Pietro as a class 1 for insurance purposes even though he doesn't hold a valid Italian driver's license. Essentially because it was the last class he held, and it was never penalized or revoked or something like that... we don't know and we don't care we are just SUPER excited that our insurance just dropped from 960 euros for six months to 650 euros for an entire year!

Today Pietro also went to register for autoscuola. These are the classes that you must take in order to have a remote chance of passing your written and driving exams for your license. They cost about 700 euros and take a couple of months. Since the autoscuola in Lesina has not been helpful or dependable Pietro decided to go to San Severo, about a half hour from us. The staff there were SO friendly and helpful and showed such favor for Pietro's case that he came home incredibly relieved. They listened to his whole story, said they had faced cases like this in the past and they were going to do everything in their power to renew his license without him having to retake the exam. For free.

So, yes. It's been an incredible, wonderful, so good, very great day.