Spent most of today chasing bureaucrats, so to speak. I went to open a bank account, finally having decided that I have learnt sufficient Italian to do this, where everything was going well until it turned out my tax number doesn't map correctly to the name printed on my passport. This is because my passport has my middle name on, but it wasn't written on my form for a tax number. This was sufficient to screw the whole process up, despite there being no doubts about my identity. Anyway, they opened an account provisionally, but I have had to apply for another tax number. I don't get bank card until I have been paid, I then have to go back to the bank and apply for it and wait for it to come in the post. So I could be in the amusing situation of having all my pay in the bank and no way of getting at it. Oh, and you have to pay to keep an account here, and you can only use that bank's cash machines. They're stuck in the 80s.

Added to this is the fact that Alessandro, the professor I'm working with, apparently doesn't actually have the money to pay me yet. This is purely a paperwork problem, but means more waiting and form filling before I get any cash. I've been here almost a month now.

While I was in the swing of it, I also wrote a letter in German to my landlady in Karlsruhe, who still hasn't paid me back my € 600+ deposit a month after I left the flat impeccably clean - a lot cleaner than it was when I moved in..

Grr. Will have to buy some more ham to remain calm. I'm sure that's what the Italians do.