How to Get the Italian Codice Fiscale?

You can obtain your Codice Fiscale at the provincial tax office in Florence:

Direzione Provinciale
Via Santa Caterina D'Alessandria, 23
Phone: 055/505141
Email: dp.firenze.utfirenze1@agenziaentrate.it
Hours: Monday-Friday 8:40 - 12:40; Tuesday and Thursday also 2:20 - 3:40

Tessera Sanitaria

The Italian health insurance card is a personal card which has replaced the Italian fiscal code card for all citizens entitled to benefits of the Italian National Health Service and fitted with tax code. Its rear side acts as European health insurance card. The Italian health insurance card was issued for Italian citizens by the Italian Ministry of Economy and Finance in cooperation with the Italian Agency of Revenue in accordance with Article 50 of dl 269/2003, converted, with amendments, by law 326/2003. The objective of the Italian health insurance card, is to improve the social security services through expenditure control and performance, and to optimize the use health services to citizens.

Carta d' Identita

Carta d'Identita

In Italy, by law everyone is required to carry at all times an official identity document. And you often have to show it - like when you check into a hotel. You can always carry around your passport if you like, but it is (relatively) bulky and can be quite difficult to replace.

So the solution is to get an Italian identity card or "carta di identità", in Indonesia it’s kind of like KTP (Kartu Tanda Penduduk), which looks like this :

Do you know that Chuck Norris is actually an Italiano ?

The Night I Met Beautiful Barbara

How I Met Barbara

That evening I went by myself on an evening bike ride to Piazza Santa Maria Novella, it was hip on the piazza, a DJ played loud music, young people hanged around with bottles of Moretti in their hands. It was an intro and a counting down to the upcoming big event, an MTv Italy Award in Florence! So I stayed longer than I intended to, until dawn and the sky turned dark. The music got harder and more crowds joined in whilst shaking their bodies along with the music. I stood there among the crowd, was taking photo of the DJ and he seemed friendly. Youngsters starred at me, and I wondered why. I thought maybe it was strange that a “young” girl like me being there alone and did not even move by the music.

The 3rd Meeting of Indonesian Community in Florence

Introducing Jeanny.

I was thrilled when I received this email from Zyra a.k.a. Jeanny. She wrote me to express her interest to meet up with another Indonesian women in Florence. Later I found out she lives in Bari, from Florence it's way down South of Italy. Like myself, she was longing to be able to joke and chat in our own mother tongue language. So excited that she would find ways to go to Florence and meet us.

The Adventure of The Real Man's Wallet

Jos’ wallet was somehow left in the car of Alex, his friend, who gave us a nice ride to Italy and to Switzerland.  In short, Alex went back to Holland the next early morning while we were still sleeping and the wallet was also gone all the way back to Holland with him. We both just realized that before noon, when we were getting ready to walk in and around the village called Oberdiessbach near Thun. The wallet made us down a bit, kind of blaming ourselves or a bit of blaming each other for not checking the front seats of the car when we arrived and stepped out of the car last midnight. However, we still fortunate as God let us surrounded by good people and friends who helped us generously. So even though we had no cash on hand, somehow we still managed to enjoy our holiday and paid our spending. The wallet was also mailed from Utrecht to Florence by Alex, and it was arranged to arrive in Florence on a day or two after our arrival.

We got a series of numbers, a code from PostNL to trace the package. Guess what? It’s been two weeks since we arrived and yet we haven’t got the package, and sadly, we or it was more I, began to worry. It was a period of test of my patient endurance. Checked on PostNL site and asked the package under the code number at PosteItalia were also not helping. I prayed that night for God’s help to find the wallet coz I believe He knows where it is exactly. That day when Jos has his 1^st day meeting at school and I was home alone, browsing the site of PostNL, wondering why the package was remained untraced. Finally, I found the customer service number and gave the number to Jos when he came back home. Jos spoke with one of the customer service shortly after that, and got a new Italian code number to trace the package in Italy. He was also informed that instead of handled by PosteItalia, the package was handled by an Italian Int’l Courier Service called DPD.

We were so happy with the information, immediately googled for DPD site to find their phone number. The next challenge was when Jos calling the phone number and a female voice on the other side said,”Pronto…..bla…bla…bla….” all in Italian, and we both looked at each other’s face, confused, and started to giggled as we both understood NONE of what she just said.  

Italian Hospitality?

Diusir Pemilik Toko

Pagi ini suamiku sudah bertekad berangkat pagi ke kantor pos (PosteItalia) di tengah kota, dengan harapan staff kantor pos dapat membantu menemukan paket penting kiriman dari Belanda. Setelah selesai sarapan, dia langsung berangkat dengan sepedanya. Hari ini suhu di Florence 38 °C, lumayan dibanding kemaren yang 40°C.

Sayang sekali, setelah petugas kantor pos memeriksa kode kiriman paket, ternyata dinyatakan kode paket  tidak dikenal. Alhasil PosteItalia tidak dapat membantu menemukan paket tersebut. Dengan kecewa suamiku meninggalkan kantor pos dengan tangan kosong. Saat berjalan gontai, matanya tertumbuk pada etalase salah satu toko dasi, dompet dan asesoris pria lainnya yang menawarkan diskon. Suamiku langsung tertarik pada beberapa dasi yang ditawarkan, maka masuklah ia ke toko tersebut dan mulai memilih dasi.

Talk Like Italians

Talk Not Fight!

It’s a hot day in Florence that day, I checked my weather online gadget and it was 40°C! I was sitting behind my desk, trying to focus myself to learn and memorize some more new Italian vocabularies which until now are so hard to get into my old rusted brain.

Suddenly I heard cars engine stopped, car doors slammed, then men’s voices talked almost yelled to each other. Caused we lived on 2^nd floor of apartment building here in Italy, I could just popped my head out from the window behind me and looked down to the road in front of our place. Curious of what’s going on, that exactly what I did. I thought in a hot day like today, in the summer time in Italy, no wonder if most Italian is very temperamental. So I thought again, here they are, screaming and fighting right in front of our house. Great!