I.iv. Alma Mater Studiorum

“In Italy under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love; they had five hundred years of democracy and what did that produce? The Cuckoo Clock.”
- Orson Welles

Today I enrolled at the University of Bologna. I think. As I am coming to understand, most things in Italy take time and effort, but remain definitely within the realm of attainability. Take this afternoon, for instance. As instructed in a series of emails from the University of Bologna’s general office, I undertook to present myself at the Segreteria di Studenti di Lettere e Philosophia, the nearest equivalent to a faculty of arts and letters, where I was to enrol as a single year, non-degree student. With the help of my Swiss passport and the legalised documents I had obtained at great inconvenience in Toronto, this was a supposedly easy task. Today, Thursday, the Segreteria was open from 2:30 to 3:30, shorter than their Monday-Wednesday-Friday hours of 9:15 to 11:15, but open nonetheless. Thinking wisely, I got to the place half an hour before it opened, just to be sure. I was greeted by a hoard of other, wiser students who had gotten there even earlier, and were now engaged in serious cell phone chatter and cigarette smoking. With tuition as cheap as it is in Italy, talk-time and nicotine are easily affordable by all.
   When 2:30 came the doors opened, and there was a steady rush into the building. Steady because it was regulated by the number dispensing machine, another great Italian stand-by (they even have them in bakeries), that printed one ticket at a time, then waited a requisite few seconds, then printed another. When my turn came around I received number 133, which was discouraging when I looked up and saw the agonizingly slow pace of the electronic display that indicated what number was being served. I was never going to be able to enrol in the next hour before the office closed! Discouraged, I walked towards the door where I noticed written in fine print that the Segreteria was open either for one hour, or for 150 numbers served, whichever came last. A sort of institutional mileage versus months car warranty. Now I would finally be able to make use of those troublesome documents I had to have translated and legalized at the Italian consulate in Toronto, at great emotional cost…

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    “Mr. Herman, are you listening Mr. Herman?” the voice on the phone said, “You must bring in these documents of enrolment from the University of Toronto, embossed with an official seal. Do you understand me, Mr. Herman? Embossed. So that it can be felt under the fingertips, yes?”
    “Yes, alright, I understand. Can I make an appointment?”
    “Yes Mr. Herman. When will you be leaving for Bologna?”
    “Monday.”
    “Monday? You must be joking Mr. Herman. These things cannot be done in a matter of days. Monday I do not work. Very well, come in to the consulate tomorrow and I shall prepare your documents. I am Spedicato, and I shall be waiting for you at ten o’clock.”
   Spedicato was waiting for me, along with additional reminders of my last name, and a large Tupperware contained on her desk filled with various sized consular stamps, almost all of which she applied to the various official documents I had obtained from the University of Toronto, not without troubles all their own. But Spedicato, a short, forceful Italian woman in her sixties who had learned her English from an even older Italian, was expedient, and these documents, laden with ink, signatures, and everything short of a papal Bulla, did their trick in Bologna.

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   So finally, after going for a coffee and doing some shopping, I returned to enrol despite the slightly bizarre modus operandi at the Segreteria. I even received what I think is a student card, that is to say a photocopy of my passport (stamped of course) stapled to a photo of myself. Of course, the Segreteria is practically a 24/7 establishment when you compare its hours to those of the Quaestura, the municipal police headquarters where all visitors of more than three months must go to register themselves and get a permesso di soggiorno, or residence permit. This was my next task, though getting to the tiny, fetid little office is only half the battle. First one has to phone the “Call Center”, Monday, Wednesday, Friday from 13:30-18:30 or Saturday from 8:30-13:30. Having done this, my appointment has been fixed for Tuesday morning. My name is to be announced by an officer at the door, who has the task of reading out the names of those with appointments amidst the sea of recently arrived individuals who, rather blamelessly, perhaps thought that one could go to the Quaestura without calling to make an appointment earlier. After all, the plethora of documents needed even to apply for a residence permit would surely weed out any fraudulent applicants.
   Nevertheless, for my purposes, the permesso di soggiorno is essential. Without it, one cannot be given a codice fiscale, a prerequisite for everything from bank accounts to cellular phone contracts. Luckily I haven’t been caught in any circles of red tape yet, something I had been warned about at the consulate in Toronto. I was even able to buy health insurance for the year at the post office, which is naturally the place where one would buy health insurance, and I am even pondering a trip to Ikea in the next few days lest my apartment not appear well enough grounded in the principles of Scandinavian design. So in the end these things get done, and all the cogs turn together, and I have promised myself that after all that is banal, ridiculous, and important I will get on with the business of Italy the Beautiful.



The Department of Visual Arts at the University of Bologna


The Department of Archaeology