It's been a long weekend studying but it paid off. On Friday my husband and I took a 2 hours driver's course on driving in Italy. Today we took our test and both of us passed with a 100%. We had 25 multiple choice questions, 25 true/false questions and then had to identify 50 signs. There are triangle signs with red that indicate danger, there are round red signs that indicate prohibitary moves, round blue signs that mean mandatory moves, and then there are square blue signs that are information signs. Once you have that down pat, you need to know how to decipher them. For instance, there is one with a guarded railroad (a picture of a railroad track) and the other one is an unguarded railroad (with a picture of Thomas the train). Then you have yield signs, yiled right of way, and oncoming traffic yield signs. It can be pretty confusing. And there are few traffic signals here, so they used roundabouts about every 50 ft. You have to be careful in those things because as you approach them, there are about 4-6 signs telling you 5 different things, another 4 signs while you are in the roundabout telling you the direction of a city and then you have to merge off the roundabout maintaining your speed before you get run over by a crazy Italian moped. I tell you these people are scary. While I have my driver's license, I am damn scared to drive! Not to mention that the carbaneiri target us (remember my license plate screams American) so now I'm really scared. But hey, it's either this, ride my bike or walk and it's too damn humid here to keep walking in this heat. So i better man up and drive the car.
Getting your car out of hock as my husband says was a trip and a half. The other day we went and reserved our plates and called the insurance company to overnight our insurance policy. (It's a pretty standard service they do and thank God the USAA operator knew what I was talking about when I called.) Then we had to take the driver's course and at least one of us had to pass the test. Once we got our license, our wonderful sponsor drove us to the location to get my car. We walked in and registered the car, this process took about 20 minutes or so. A little shorter time period than the DMV at home, but I'm not done yet. Once the car was registered, we had to get it inspected at the car place. They had to make sure that everything on the paper from our shipping documents reflected what was in front of them. Then they put the plates on the car and reminded us of the items we needed in our car to past inspection on post. Once we got this done, we returned to post to get the couple of things we needed, head to the on post inspection site, and then got our slip, thankfully we passed, that said we could now get our gas coupons. You see, when you ship the car over via boat, you have to have 1/4 of a tank or less. I know we are not the only ones having this problem, but this whole process of inspection, then drive to post for another inspection, drive back to the car port section for coupons and then back to base to get the coupons, to only drive off post to get gas, can be very stressful. Italy is the last place I want to run out of gas on the side of the road in 90 + degree heat.At any rate, we took our ceritificate back to the registration folks, got our ok to get gas coupons, then headed back to post get our coupons. The only problem at this point, the gas station was on it's afternoon break, which meant they were not open until 3pm. Yes, these shops and gas stations close every day from 1:00pm-3pm for lunch and rest! In addition to the afternoon break, the gas station is only open to take your coupons for 1/2day on Saturday and well on Sunday, you better pray you don't need gas because they are closed. There is no 24 hour gas stop here, you need a plan and you need to stick to it that is for sure. Oh and you better know how to do your metric conversions because you'll need to know how much gas in liters you will need. Luckily, when I was trying to compute the amount I needed, which is about 4L to a gallon, I found the answer in my owner's manual, in liters no less! The Gods must have been shining down on me at that moment!
Needless to say, it's been an experience but I almost feel as if everything is being rushed and I am scared we are overlooking something. Tomorrow we move into our new house and I hope to get internet up and running there soon. Our unaccompanied baggage should arrive on Wednesday and then the rest of our shipment should be there in a few weeks. Until then, we have the temporary furniture arriving as well as the items we will be using from the lending closet. All this stuff to remember. I hope it goes smoothly. Wish us luck!
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