True! I work with Americans and Canadians to have their Italian citizenship by descent recognized in Sicily. I absolutely can agree with the folder 📁. We show up with a big binder filled with documents, photos, photocopies of everything and the comuni employees love it. I’ve never had trouble with the bureaucracy in Italy employing the folder method.
And of course, making sure we are prepared by having everything they could possibly ask for in the folder. It helps to know the process and laws, but I’ve never found the Italians to be that difficult to work with.
I praise them for their accuracy- US on the other hand, what a mess. It’s the only country I know of that will let people pick and choose their name for legal documents, it’s a mess trying to reconcile 100 years of made up names and changes just because someone decided they wanted to be called Jim instead of James on their marriage license.
I’ll take Italian bureaucracy over the U.S. any day. And definitely over Spain - lived there for 2 years and got my driver’s license there, what a pain.
Had a little fall and bumped my head while living in Shanghai. Turns out I fractured my skull and tore my dura membrane causing a CSF leak. I had private insurance so I went the nicest route, new international hospital for treatment over the next 3 months. They could not find the dura membrane tear location that was causing the CSF leak. After 3 months of circles, they sent me the Military hospital in Shanghai because my little fall caused an injury normally seen in combat. 5 minutes with the Military hospital doctor and they were checking me in and telling me to call a loved one because they were going to go exploratory surgery on my skull to find the holes in the dura membrane. Hell no! I was not letting anyone cut open my skull and fish around looking for tiny holes. So I spent 5 days in the hospital fighting with the doctors to figure out a different solution. Turns out the solution was an emergency flight back to the U.S. for a ridiculously expensive surgery through my face holes because they quickly found the holes with a proper MRI and CT scan.