You're in Italy Now

So said a woman who spoke English at one of Rome's PostItalienne branches today, as the four of us struggled to fill out paperwork to get formal permission to stay from Italy.  The procedure so far has rather Byzantine in character, made worse by the fact that the whole process has changed since it was done for the last group.  So far, we've had to get a hospitality form from the friars, get registered at the Quaestura, make copies in triplicate of most things only to find out they now want single copies, and fill out other forms that will be mailed to the Quaestura, which will then call to make an appointment so we can get approved.  Today's headaches involved finding out we had to make copies of every page in our passport, that one form couldn't be filled out in blue ink, and that we had to pay over 70 Euro just to mail the forms to the Quaestura (30 in the form of a tariff, 27.50 to pay for a form, and 14.63 for postage).  We started out for the Post at just after 1, and didn't get out of there until nearly 4:30.

After that, it was time to head for home, since the whole experience was rather draining.  I got a bit of a laugh looking at the past marks in my passport from 2001's journey, since the stamp from Heathrow that I got at the airport merely granted a 6 month stay without any fuss or money, while this 4 month stay in Italy is neither simple nor cheap to get approved.