Very good description of all the obstacles I avoided while living in Italy from 1989-2005. In the winter of 1987 I'd learned Italian staying with an enologue in Torino and skiing.

For the Italian government I never officially existed, despite having an Italian partner and then wife from 1993-2005, living near Lecco, 50 km north of Milan. I suppose this proves Cavour's aphorism that "governare gli italiani non e impossibile, e inutile" (governing the italians isn't impossible, it's pointless).

While 50% owner of a photography and brochure production business from 1992-2005 with an office in Milan (Via Brioschi 15, if you want to know where). From 1989-1991 I worked as marketing director for Yacht Premiere, an Italian yachting magazine (financed by a Edouardo Longarini, a Christian Democratic politician who went to jail when the tangentopoli (bribesville) investigations blew up the old political system).

As an independent contractor (unknowingly) paid by laundered bribe money, I never had a work permit or visited a government office. My roommate in Milan was my, and later our company tax accountant. The company paid Italian taxes on the rare occasions when it made money from Italian clients.

The magazine's Sicilian editor, who didn't speak hardly any English, needed a salesman who who could talk to the Anglo-American, French, German, Spanish/Catalan and Dutch yachtbuilders in their own language. Italian police in Malpensa and Linate never questioned me once about how many days I'd stayed in Italy. I never counted days or dates.

I loved living in Italy.....until I didn't. The Italy you live in is not the Italy you visit. Disgust at Italian society's craven submission to Mussomini Berlusconi (including my Torinese enologue) played a part and pulled back the curtain on the real, neo-feudal structure of power in Italy. Giulio Andreotti's update of Machiavelli runs Italy: "il potere logora solo chi non ce'l ha" (power exhausts only those who don't have it).

Gerontocrazia all'italiana has turned society into an ossified reverse meritocracy. That's why the best talent leaves and there are so many Italian scientists in the US. Latvia is full of Italians who found more opportunity in Riga than at home. Latvian immigration is a model of customer-oriented efficiency that got me my permanent residence card within 3 months of passing the state language exam. Healthcare is just as good as Italy and costs far less (I have half a dozen surgeries since 2010 to prove it).

But I still love to visit Italy and my skis are still parked in my friend's house in Chiavenna on the Swiss border.

I guess I miss the old, pre-digital inefficient Italy that never knew I was there.