I've been trying to get my driving licence since last October. Bureaucracy is way beyond nightmare here. In order to get a driving licence you need to pass a theory test which you can only answer incorrectly 3 of 30 questions (which is plagued of tricky questions). But let's say that is ok, are the rules to be "idoneous" at driving.
In order to actually sit down for this test (which it only takes 20 minutes in front of the computer) you need to first make an appointment, then go to the motor vehicle department and THEN there make the real appointment for the test. For the first appointment there can be 1 or 2 months wait. To sit down in the computer 2 or 3 months.
No one ever will answer the telephone, as a matter of fact all the contacts in the official website are incorrect (the mail address does not exist and the phone number is actually missing a digit). If you show up at the department, no one would actually talk to you if you do not have an appointment, even if the office is empty. If you actually manage to talk to someone they will say that they can't do anything, that everything is with appointment from the website and refuse to help you, they might even treat you rudely as if you were the cause of the problem.
To make any appointment, you need to log in in a crappy site and manually click each day in the calendar until you get lucky and find a day that is free for selection. So if from today two months in time there is an empty slot, you need to click 60 times the calendar.
If you have read "The Trial" by Kafka, this is 100 times worst.
One last thing that goes beyond comprehension. If you come from Argentina (like I do) and you have a valid driver's licence you can get the Italian one by some paperwork only before you get residency but not AFTER. If you want the licence after getting residency, you need to go through this hell.
That's why Italians don't to this directly. We go to an "autoscuola" (driving school) which not only teaches us how to drive, but also handles the bureaucracy for us. They book the exams and stuff.
If you own a car in Italy, you have to locate the nearest autoscuola/ufficio pratiche auto (literally "car bureaucracy office") and get in friendly terms with them. They do all sort of car-related stuff for relatively small fees (the only one I remember is the 1€ fee for paying the car tax).
I don't know your economy but 250€ to send me a PDF to my mailbox with all the material and not a face-to-face course for me is a ripoff (they started to get this advantage with the COVID pandemic). Autoscuolas are a ripoff, is a business mounted on a bureaucratic fault. Why do I need to pay someone else for the right to drive a vehicle when in fact I already know how to do it? I do understand that if I want to get things smoothly I have to do it this way, but this is not the root of the issue.
> One last thing that goes beyond comprehension. If you come from Argentina (like I do) and you have a valid driver's licence you can get the Italian one by some paperwork only before you get residency but not AFTER. If you want the licence after getting residency, you need to go through this hell.
Hola Lucas, unless something changed recently (or maybe motorizzazione of your city has different rules - I don't think so) this part is not correct. You can convert your license after having your residency, I'd be surprised of the opposite to be honest.
I know because I did it 2 years ago. The only requisite is that your argentinian license has not expired.
> I know because I did it 2 years ago. The only requisite is that your argentinian license has not expired.
Yes, I forgot to mention that little detail. Mine is expired :-( which I'm regretting so much (Gracias por la sugerencia Ramiro, seguro que a alguien que este en situacion similar a la mia le sirve de ayuda!).
The first part, about the questions, partly applies to Romania too, only that in here you need to answer correctly at least 22 out of 26 of those questions.
Maybe it helps you, and I don't know if that's the case for Italy, but here in Romania there are a couple of websites to which you can temporarily subscribe ("temporarily" meaning 7 to 10 days, can't remember exactly) and then you can train yourself on those test questions like you're during the exam itself. After 3 or 4 days of going through those tests again and again you're pretty much guaranteed to pass the police test itself, even if you haven't read the actual road legislation.
As for the bureaucracy I cannot offer any good advice, but maybe there are also some companies who can help you with that? (after paying them, of course).
I've already failed one time the test, and not for not studying. Hell I studied a hefty book (don't know how many times I read it cover to cover) and done a ton of quiz questions. Why did I fail? I don't know. But what I can recall from the time I sat down that almost 8 out of 30 persons failed it and I refuse to believe that almost 1/3 (including myself) are stupid persons that don't know basic driving rules. I was warned by some italians themselves that is not easy to pass the theoretical test. So I can only keep reading things over again and keep doing random questions or get it (legally) elsewhere.
You're right, it's not believable that only 1/3 don't know the rules, most likely it's 2/3 of people that don't know the rules, given how people drive.
You can know all the rules to the letter and ace a driving quiz, and that's a guarantee of basically nothing. That's why I believe studying and sitting down for a driving exam is pointless.
It should be as simple as go to for 3 or 4hs rule driving course by the government (or authorized government authority), then sign a document declaring that you have assisted the course and you are aware of driving rules and allow you to do supervised driving before taking the driving exam.
Every single time I'm walking on the streets I particularly pay attention to car drivers when going to the supermarket. Do you know what a lot of people are doing? Looking at mobile phone screens.
Given the fact that statistically almost everyone has a mobile phone I'm inclined to think that distraction due to mobile screen can be as dangerous (or even more) as being drunk while driving. This is also why I believe that displays in cars should be completely banned and driving instruments should be old school.
Wow. I just did my license here in the Czech Republic (after driving semi-illegally for 15 years with no issies lol) and it was dodgey but painless. I paid a dude $500 bucks to drive with me for an hour and rubber stamp my ability, and then for the written test, I had a "translator" provided, despite me speaking Czech. She basically told me all the answers as we went through thr test hah!
Did you have a US license? We’re moving to Czechia this year and I’m trying to figure out what I can do about driving. What made you finally get a license there?
Also was thinking of getting a motorcycle license in the US so I can use it there for a while (since the moto license school is $1200usd vs 250 for a class in the us).
I'm actually considering getting it elsewhere in the EU and end this shitty thing, so if anyone has any suggestions, they are welcome. The funny thing is that I already know how to drive, so my problem is purely theoretical and bureaucratic.
Knowing how to drive is not 100% the same as knowing every little local rule and exception. Believe it or not, it is still practically useful to know who has priority when entering roundabouts and it can differ from country to country.
So this is still a thing? The Czech police arrested multiple criminal rings around driving schools that provided those sorts of "services" for foreigners.
Italian bureaucracy is very hard for everyone in Italy, sadly no politician really want to change it, many jobs are at stake.
Public departments don't talk each other so people must transfer data theirself by hand. IT ignorance is a thing: happened to me, courthouse asked paper copy of a document when I provided a signed electronic one I got from Internal Affairs Ministry website because, as far as they told me, they didn't know how to verify its legitimacy.
My former wife stayed at home when pregnant becase of illness caused by pregnancy, but due to complex laws no one knew if it was plain sickness or early motherhood period (they have very different consequences for the job after child birth), but we had to file a request stating the reason to stay at home. Public office people just told us "try something and let's see".
In places where the bureaucracy is bad people find ways around it since nothing is properly enforced. You end up with a corrupt system which doesn't work as advertised and you simply need to learn how to operate within the informalities.
Note that at least thelocal.dk, the Danish equivalent, is nowhere near representative of the actual country. Hard pass on thelocal.it as any true source
As someone who's casually browsed the local for different countries before, I'm interested if you could expand on how they're not representative? Are there better English language equivalents you know of?
> I'm interested if you could expand on how they're not representative?
This is going to be very hard to explain, but basically imagine when you read something written by a Chinese newspaper about your country, it's just off, like focusing on the wrong issue that isin't really seem as a problem, or interviewing people that aren't really important.
> Public departments don't talk each other so people must transfer data theirself by hand.
I experienced this first hand when my one of my brother's citizenship documents issued by the Italian consulate was sent to the Udine comune with a wrong/missing electronic signature. We had to call and talk to them, they explicitly told us to talk again with the Italian consulate in Argentina to get things fixed. For about two weeks we were talking to both parties until we fixed the problem in a completely different way. Unbelievable.
I'm an Italian citizen and my wife is American. Getting the necessary paperwork to be married in Rome was a considerable pain. We were dealing with an especially officious dignitary in at the consulate in London.
However something wonderful happened when one of the comune we were dealing with in Italy attempted to frustrate the actions of the consulate bureaucrat. The London official, who had previously been our nemesis, suddenly flipped allegiance, and we were transported effortlessly towards our goal, surfing on a tide of paper-pushing vengeance as she sought to stamp her authority over her counterparts in the provinces.
"Germany (52nd) does very badly in the Digital Life (48th), Housing (47th), and Language (49th) Subcategories. Expats are unhappy with the ease of getting high-speed internet access at home (24% vs. 11% globally) and the lack of cashless payment options (27% vs. 8% globally). Moreover, housing is both hard to afford (59% unhappy vs. 43% globally) and to find (56% unhappy vs. 27% globally). “It may take up to three months to find even a temporary accommodation,” says an expat from Poland. And everyday life is anything but easy if you don’t speak the language (46% unhappy vs. 32% globally)."
Germany is a leading industry nation with a marked 10-15% population drop (birth rates) in the 1990, which resulted in said drop in school and high school diplomas in the 2010s, and now the same drop in academics available to the job market. this lack of workforce is exacerbated markedly by a massive drop out of qualified elders into retirement.
and brains, brains with hands, are _the_ #1 ressource of an industrialized high tech nation.
too bad immigration offices are understaffed, and foreigner-FUD is omnipresent outside big cities. and too bad some lobbies convinced rural areas that fibre optics and cell phone radiation are bad for them. I really can't be but sarcastic. sorry for the rant.
If you are in Germany and are complaining about the cashless options, you're in the wrong place. That is a cultural thing for them. [Less so since in the last few years]
Also, it's hard to complain that the difficultly for getting DeutscheKabel, DT, or 1&1 off their rear ins is a mark against the country.
When I settled in 20 years ago, it was even worse, at least now shops and supermarkets do keep open after 6pm, and afternoons on Saturdays, on bigger cities.
And like every expat, I had to at a given point having friends as "hostage" on the restaurant while hunting for an ATM, or been the "hostage" for others not yet used to the culture. Naturally we could have paid the bill and settled it later, but that is yet another matter regarding on the how to pay culture.
The fact Germany seems to be resistant to use electronic payment options is specially interesting given the neighbours to the North, specially Sweden, are probably the most cashless societies anywhere.
> It’s an anti-surveilance thing. Between the Nazis and the GDR’s Stasi we have some concerns there.
And that's one of the things I love your country for. It's the acceptance of personal consensual relationships/hedonism, and respect for the privacy/wellbeing. It's rather unfortunate at how you arrived at the understanding of that need.
I'm a native German, and I agree with all those points, even when speaking the language perfectly. Add high taxes and a surprisingly corrupt government when you pull back the curtains and I'm thinking about leaving again.
Our current chancellor had, when he was still mayor of Hamburg, a private meeting with bankers after which his tax office decided not to pursue that bank's criminal tax fraud, his party received significant donations from said bank, and hundreds of thousands of Euros were mysteriously found in his right hand man's safety deposit box.
It's a different Germany. Scholz just can't remember, because his brain resets after each crime. And it's not just Scholz, it's wherever you look when the curtain is drawn back. Remember RBB?
Bureaucracy in Italy is bad. Why? Public workers have zero incentive in making anything even slightly better. You are told to do one thing one way, and invest nothing in even understanding the thing, let alone making it better.
It is like this in the public, and in the semi-public as well. Once the wage comes in, interest dies.
For the same reason, firing a public employee who is under performing is almost impossible. We just move them around.
This kind of bureaucracy and the mentality of public sector employees is more of a southern European phenomenon, not just Italian. I've spent most of my life living between Italy and Greece (being 50% both in heritage) and the past 7 years in Portugal, and it's all the same down here. It feels like the public sector is holding those states hostages in the 1970s. This is of course in stark contrast to the experience that I've had while I was living in the UK for a few years in the late 2010s.
I do not know if it is the same in other countries, but in Italy public sector has been used for decades by bad politicians for paying political favors, "if you bring me votes of you family I'll manage to find a job to your son", the result is an oversized apparatus of people that do not like their work, work badly (if they work at all) and try to spent time in order to arrive to payslip day. In Italy the bureaucracy is become a monster that try to justify its existence creating other bureaucracy. At least half of italian bureaucracy workers are redundant. And I'm not a supporter of the private sector at all.
Interesting that you mention Portugal here. I was born and raised there, and though not great, I don't remember it being as bad as the horror stories I'm reading about Italy from other comments.
More common for whom? This is an example of the kind of bias I'm trying to point to. They're not mutually exclusive, and so neither is more important than the other. That's why we call them generally "civil liberties".
In some of the TOP 10 countries, having the wrong religion (or none) can be just as life-threatening as being gay. And in others, good luck even walking outside to sort out your papers if you're a woman without an escort or a trans person.
Sure, if you aren't in these groups you have the luxury of completely freaking ignoring it.
I'm bisexual all the time. Transfolks are trans all the time. All queer folks are queer all the time even if you can't tell they are queer. So yes, everything is about it as much as you are always gonna be whatever nationality you are (even if you aren't legally a citizen), you'll always have your basic skin color, and so on.
Any multifactorial ranking needs some way of ranking the relative importance of different metrics, and obviously not everyone will agree on these rankings. One reasonable approach would be to weight factors by the prevalence of individuals who would be affected by it, ergo, something that harms women (50% of the population) would be of greater importance in the ranking than something that harms transgender people to a similar degree.
I don't entirely agree with this wholly utilitarian approach, but if we're just talking about stupid and pointless rankings, as opposed to judicial philosophy, I don't know, seems fine for a general audience and people who aren't a general audience should seek publications and rankings that are more targeting towards their specific circumstances.
For instance, I don't have kids. If I read a list about 10 awesome things to do at Disney world I wouldn't grumble that it's all about family activities and wonder why there isn't more in there for singles. I'd look elsewhere than the inflight magazine for what single people should do at Disneyworld.
Your example is not a reasonable approach. Also, why the need to introduce relative importance between "metrics"?
Let's circle back to the context of the article, which is about how easy it is for a foreigner to settle in a foreign country. The article doesn't specify who is this foreigner, and so the only reasonable approach is to assume it must apply to every single human being.
> Sure, if you aren't in these groups you have the luxury of completely freaking ignoring it.
Of course! This is such a strange point to make in my opinion, I assure you even though you are a bisexual you are ignoring all kinds of things that don't affect you directly as you are only human. :)
It is a big complicated world filled with problems, everything can't possibly be equally urgent in equal proportions to every single person. If anything it is a good way to drive yourself into a depression and in-action, what good is impotent emoting really?
You're right that it's a big and complicated world, which happens to be crawling with humans. So, as long as we treat each other with respect and dignity, equally, none of the above would be a problem.
To get there is not easy and instead of driving oneself into depression, one could also proactively attempt to improve their community for everyone. e.g. The author of the article, could have included a more inclusive perspective. It would have made for a better article - imagine the plot-twist: sometimes, as a foreigner, it may be easier to move into a country with a little bit more bureaucracy in exchange for a more stable and happier life.
> one could also proactively attempt to improve their community for everyone.
Sure. I'm just saying attempt effectively. And don't forget everyone is not everyone you like/agree with.
> The author of the article, could have included a more inclusive preselective
Eh? You want the article to better reflect that bisexsual dudes might want to think twice about moving to Saudi Arabia? One would assume that is common knowledge or at least the responsibility of the reader to further research. By the same token, some of the readers are conservative muslims. How does one simultaneously editorialize the article to be more inclusive/cater to them?
I hope my point is clear. I don't believe a more inclusive preselective is logically possible in every situation, the broader the subject the less chance you have of pleasing every possible reader.
Consider not spending your inclusivity tokens on every single thing you encounter simply because you'll run out. Spend wisely. :)
Well said. It's such a sad situation that nearly everyone who is not queer doesn't give a fuck about being queer. Wonder if their mind would change if they ever found out they weren't cishet. But just in general I wish people would care about groups they're not a part of. Selfishness is part of nature but it's so disheartening to see it on this scale.
We let queer folks die of aids in the 80s, though. I'm in my 40s, I remember that.
Folks stopped talking to me my 8th grade year because I "was lesbian". The next 2 years, people would go up to my friends and ask why they were even friends with me. "She's a lesbian, you know..." My school didn't let folks go to proms with a queer lover: Someone I knew got suspended for wearing a kilt-like skirt, and I know that at least a few admin didn't like hiring gay teachers because they thought they made kids gay. I graduated high school in 96, by the way.
When I started working, I could be fired for being queer. The military still had the Don't Ask, Don't tell, which basically meant that being queer was OK as long as you didn't act queer, say anything queer, or have a queer relationship.
In the 2000s, it became trendy to be bisexual. If you were female, that is. My sexuality was a fashion accessory. I was told I did it to attract men. Yay.
Queer folks couldn't marry someone of the same sex until after I moved out of the US. This is in the last 10 years.
Today, the most ill-supported group are transfolks. There definitely isn't support for all queer folks - have you seen the legislation?
Western countries aren't supportive enough to speak out against anti-queer groups or countries that would sentence folks like me to death in some cases.
Is it better than in the recent past? Sure, sometimes. But folks have died for that and still are.
> You gotta be kidding, the Western world has immense support for queer people, especially recently.
A lot of it is tokenism and PR. Don't get me wrong, I know there are tons of people out there who support queer people! It's just that there's also tons of people who don't, which makes me sad.
Based on the number of people who use "You're a man!" as an argument against being trans, I'm convinced that a lot of people must think "being a woman" is a part of the "minority" of being queer. Even more hilarious when said people are women themselves.
Italian here; for whatever it’s worth, I myself feel more at home in a number of European countries, for example in Spain (especially in Catalonia) and Portugal, but also in Denmark and Sweden…
I would recommend foreigners to move to Italy only if Italy is very strong in their field of interest, for example in fashion, food, wine, art o the opera.
Given the rapidly ageing Italian demographics, this is particularly crazy. Italy needs to make some changes or risk being a defunct nation state before the middle of the century.
The main issue is that old people and young people have very different interests and concerns, and demographics put young people at a disadvantage. Politicians can win elections by just targeting people over 45, which mostly don't care about the housing, wage and employment crisis, and care mostly about paying less taxes on wealth and retirement.
I think you are making the assumption that the capital city is the most diverse and open. This is not the case for Canada, Australia, and the USA just off the top my head. I wouldn’t say that the capitals are close minded, but they shouldn’t be the first option for easiest to integrate into by a foreigner.
I recently moved to the UAE, and Dubai is considered more foreigner friendly than the capital, Abu Dhabi.
IMHO this is also the case in Italy - Milan is more foreigner friendly, compared to Rome. (I grew up in Rome and have visited Milan on many occasions as I have friends who live there).
You’re correct that “the” capital city of those countries is maybe not ideal, but “a” capital city in Australia or Canada could also mean Melbourne/Sydney or Toronto/Vancouver.
I agree with your general point, but I think it’s more about finding large cities that are likely to have an expat community.
The capital of BC is Victoria btw, counter-intuitive yes.. and i can't tell about easy to settle down, but i've seen more ppl from Victoria -> Vancouver, and can't think of a single one the other way around.
I'd assume big heterogenous centres in general are easier, being a capital happens to be a correlation.
You're right. The larger and more diverse cities are what you should look for. I had other, specific countries in mind when I wrote that, where I thought it applied.
This is not the case in Italy. While Rome is probably more accommodating to foreigners than a random 100-people village deep in the Alps, Rome is also the worst mess of a city we have. Milan, Turin and Florence are probably more suited for somebody who doesn't speak the language or understand the bureaucracy. If you can afford to live there, smaller municipalities used to deal with tourists are also a good choice. At least they'll speak English.
I think one of the most important things to keep in mind, if you want to move to Italy, is that Italy is a diverse country. There are places which are very open-minded and welcoming and places where people don't want even other Italians to move in, let alone strangers. Doing some research before moving will help a lot.
Just to see it from another angle. I'm german and moved to italy 1.5 years ago. And the bureaucracy was refreshing for me. Everything was so easy compared to germany. I only visited an office ones, the rest was all with digital signature (including permissions for building a house). And it was also much quicker.
Also getting permissions for building a house was fast (59 days, germany sometimes months).
But yes there is one hard thing: As Non-Schengen-Member you have to speak the language. That is a big barrier for many people. Germany doesn't care and even pays for language courses. As a founder in germany myself, that makes things so much easier. Hiring new people from all over the world, was no issue at all (beside that the foreigner office often does not speak english).
There is another thing, maybe some italians here know that: I'm in north italy, is there maybe a big difference to south italy?
As someone that's lived in Japan for 5 years, I'm surprised to see that Japan is second to last. The article mentions that "70% find it hard to learn" Japanese, which is a completely reasonable complaint, and I can understand why it motivates people to leave. But anecdotally at least, I've had a great experience living here. Many of the civil servants in Tokyo speak English, which makes getting settled pretty easy, and a lot of services have English speaking staff.
In order to actually sit down for this test (which it only takes 20 minutes in front of the computer) you need to first make an appointment, then go to the motor vehicle department and THEN there make the real appointment for the test. For the first appointment there can be 1 or 2 months wait. To sit down in the computer 2 or 3 months.
No one ever will answer the telephone, as a matter of fact all the contacts in the official website are incorrect (the mail address does not exist and the phone number is actually missing a digit). If you show up at the department, no one would actually talk to you if you do not have an appointment, even if the office is empty. If you actually manage to talk to someone they will say that they can't do anything, that everything is with appointment from the website and refuse to help you, they might even treat you rudely as if you were the cause of the problem.
To make any appointment, you need to log in in a crappy site and manually click each day in the calendar until you get lucky and find a day that is free for selection. So if from today two months in time there is an empty slot, you need to click 60 times the calendar.
If you have read "The Trial" by Kafka, this is 100 times worst.
One last thing that goes beyond comprehension. If you come from Argentina (like I do) and you have a valid driver's licence you can get the Italian one by some paperwork only before you get residency but not AFTER. If you want the licence after getting residency, you need to go through this hell.