Everything is ready for article 50 to be triggered... time to apply for Permanent Residence!

Since the day after Brexit I have had mixed thoughts about what might happen to us EU citizens in Great Britain.

I obviously cannot imagine EU citizens being "deported" back to their country, despite many "brexiteers" (those who voted in favour of Brexit) or "kippers" (UKIP voters) possibly wishing for that...
Despite everything that is happening at the moment in this country and in this crazy world (did you say Trump?), I cannot possibly imagine a country like the UK, doing anything like that.
Also this was confirmed today by David Davis (http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/david-davis-says-uk-will-not-deport-eu-citizens-after-brexit_uk_58c6cb1fe4b054a0ea6c4831)... not that I trust him or anything! 

However, Theresa May and her government seem very firm on their position not to unilaterally guarantee the rights of EU citizens in the UK and this is creating discomfort to many (https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/18/eu-citizens-right-to-stay-britain-chaos).

Last week the Lords voted in favour of guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens, but today, the decision was pushed back by the House of Commons, who rejected both the amendments to the Brexit bill suggested by the House of Lords.

As a result, I think it is now time for EU citizens who have been here long enough to start thinking of applying for Permanent residence.
I see many people are against it in principle, as they think they already have the right to be here and do not want to lower their head and start the "lengthy" process.
However I strongly recommend people do look into it as, while deportation might not happen, we do not know how our rights will be affected after Brexit. Will we still have access to free heath? What about pensions, will anything change in that regard?

While a Permanent Residency card does not guarantee rights forever (when the Uk leaves the UE, some of those rights might stop being applicable to EU citizens in the UK), in the short-medium term this is what everyone should be doing.

I keep reading everywhere that the process is very long and complicated, involving an 85 page form (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/eu-citizens-rights-uk-brexit-application-permanent-residency-form-85-pages-european-union-a7613991.html) and the submission of a very long list of documents. However, in my experience if one has been working for the entire period they have been in the country, the process is much shorter. I will soon write a brief post about this, as I want to help as many EU citizens as possible apply and get permanent residence.

A new era for this blog - Brexit Britain

I have not written on this blog for a long time.
Last time I wrote I was relatively still new to the country and my posts were quite happygolucky, mainly on the differences between Italy and the UK.

Despite being geographically in Europe and part of the EU, I realised straight away that this country was very different from Italy, my homeland, as well as from the rest of Europe.
The idea of the blog was to share some of the funny thoughts going through my head as I observed these differences.

Despite the country being still geographically in Europe, in June 2016 the people of the United Kingdom have voted to leave the EU.
I must admit that the day after the referendum I cried. I cried while on the phone with my parents as I tried to explain why the news had upset me.
The only thing that made me feel better was to learn that many other Europeans cried as well in the Brexit aftermath. We suddenly did not feel so welcome anymore. Something was about to change.

I have always believed in the EU. I took full advantage of it when I participated in the Erasmus project many years ago. And once again when I moved here at the end of 2011. No need of a visa, I just applied for a job from Italy, got it and came over here. But I could have equally come here without a job and stayed as long as I wanted if needed. I loved that concept of free movement.

But now Brexit is indeed happening. And we must deal with it.

I will try to occasionally keep posting about fun facts, but I fear the majority are going to be focussed on Brexit and how it affects the life of us Europeans living in this country.

Cultural differences 5 - trainers and suit!

I remember the first time I spotted "one of them" on  my way to the office.
I was a bit surprised, but then again, "this is London", I thought. "Nothing is too strange in this city".
I had just moved to London and I was aware that this is the city where people can wear whatever they want without  much fear of being judged.

Then I spotted another one. And a few more.
At that point I started to realise that it wasn't so unusual in this city to walk around in your business attire, with running shoes at your feet! 

In a sense it is smart. Running shoes, or trainers, like they are called here, are a lot more comfortable than work/elegant shoes and by wearing them to go to the office you don't have to spend money having to replace the hill of your expensive elegant pair. Once you get to the office you can then quickly change into your  smart shoes and there you go, you have a look more suitable for the office.

No matter how smart it is, however, I thought I'd never do it myself. 

Because it just looks wrong, unclassy. Only those barbarians would do such a thing!

You would never see anyone in Italy in a suite wearing running shoes. We are too concerned with how we look, at all times. We want to look as smart on the train or in our private car commuting to work as when we are at the office.
Back home people are concerned with their look even when going to the local shop to buy the milk.

A few months ago, however, I started doing it. My work shoes were feeling so uncomfortable that day and I had just bought a nice pair of dark trainers.

"They are not as bad as the fluorescent kind that seems to be so popular among commenters", I thought..

I'm not going to lie, I have been doing it almost every day since then.

Oh London, what are you doing to me?

Update 13-04-2017
It looks like I finally came to my senses... Despite being a lot less comfortable, I went back to my black leather shoes shortly after writing the article... I am Italian after all!

Rome "international" airport

He snapped his fingers to call for our attention and then, with a very thick roman accent added "dddde qua", meaning "over to this side".
Hard to believe but that is how a policeman working at the passport control area of an international airport addressed a bunch of international travellers to inform them that they could move to his side as he had just opened an additional booth.

Large international airports are normally cold and impersonal. Sometimes it feels like you could be in any city in the world as they all have a similar feel to them. They could be in London, Amsterdam or New York, with the precise location not so apparent to a traveller based on just queuing to go through security checks or when ordering your breakfast at a cafe.

While the above applies to most airports, there are certainly exceptions. One of these is the "Aeroporto Internazionale di Fiumicino" (Rome international airport). While officially an international airport, it is, in my opinion, among the most "provincial" ones that I have been to.

In any respectable international airport the personnel are professional and respectful. They act in such a way that shows that they care about their job and in providing a decent service. And even if they don't care, they nonetheless carry out their duties to a certain standard so that this is not evident to the passenger.

In Rome instead, many airport workers act as if working there is the last thing they want to be doing. Their interaction with travellers is sometimes border line rude and it seems like even the smallest task is done as a favour to the passenger, rather than expected by their job. 
This can apply to all levels of staff, from the people working at the cafeteria to even the police!

In what other international airport would you find a police officer playing with or watching videos on his iPhone between passports? It's almost as if checking the passport (his work responsibility) is interrupting whatever else he is busy with. Yes, this has actually happened, and not just once or twice!

It seems like all airport staff in Rome for some reason appear to be friends. If travellers understand Italian they would hear them commenting on the new restaurant that has just opened or talking about the new club they need to go to together. They would equally hear the dismissive comments addressed to the poor travellers.
What I despise the most, in fact, is their bad attitude towards foreign travellers. Many act as if they are inferior beings, not worth their time.

I once heard a guy working at a take away restaurant ask a foreign passenger if he needed cutlery. Maybe the passenger simply didn't hear him or, not understanding Italian, he disregarded the question and was about to leave after having paid his bill. At that point the worker tried to get his attention by shouting in Italian (well, in Roman slang), with a mocking and arrogant tone, if he was going to eat his meal with his hands. The worst part was seeing the reaction of his colleagues: they all just laughed as if they were all part of a street gang.

I often struggle to understand how the airport (and businesses operating there) can't find people with a professional attitude and a decent knowledge of the English language... Or at least with one or the two.

A few weeks ago, coming back from Rome, I was lucky enough to see another great display of respect and great service towards an Indian-looking passenger at an airport restaurant.
"Only pizza? What about a drink?", the girl working at the restaurant asked. "A juice", he replied.
After a long minute of silence she finally understood what he meant by "juice" (specifically it was an orange juice that he wanted). At that point, wanting to know what kind of orange juice he wanted, she asked him if he wanted a bottle or "spremuta", expecting a non-Italian speaker to know that the latter means "freshly squeezed". Maybe not to disappoint her, or simply scared by her aggressive tone and look, he humbly went for the more familiar bottle.

My first encounter with Irish travellers

I was out with some friends I meet quite regularly, at one of our usual pubs. 

I thought that England-Uruguay is what would make it different from the standard night out. I guess I was wrong...

Walking into the pub, I noticed a big table outside with a number of loud and rough looking blokes. They seemed already drunk at 6:30 pm. 

Very unusual, I thought, given the quiet atmosphere normally experienced at this old English pub near the Barbican. 

Sitting at our table inside we couldn't help but notice the girls at the table next to us. 

Some of them very attractive, wearing kinky clothes, loads of make up and unusually flashy wigs. They looked like they were from a trashy TV show.

"It's a hen do" we thought. But why in this Italian-managed English pub the night of World Cup football?

More and more of them kept coming, giving us a much more interesting show than Gerrard, Rooney & co..

At some point, while at the bar waiting to be served, I could not help but notice that we were surrounded by the above mentioned loud aggressive blokes. 

"English hooligans" I thought. 

Though they did not seem to be following the game at all. 

Not long passed until we started to see that a group of these guys outside were starting to get very rowdy. Excitement turned into something a bit bigger and before we knew it, the manager was on the phone with the police.

No more than five minutes later a police lorry pulled up outside the pub and a few cops came out. And then a few more. And a few more.

Word spread quickly that it was a group of "pikes". I didn't know much about them at that point, other than from what I'd seen on Snatch and My big fat Gypsy wedding.

Before we knew it, the pub was packed with cops, heading towards the above mentioned half naked ladies with their flashy wigs. 

 

It was only at that point that we realised the connection between the two groups. 

The girls were there with those guys that were outside.

They were all a large group of Irish gypsies.

They are very different from the gypsies we get in Southern Europe, Italy included. The ones we have in Italy you would never find in pubs drinking. If anything they would come in to try and steal a wallet or two.

And the women are not dressed anywhere as "fancy" as the Irish gypsies we saw. Can you tell who is who? 

The ones you find in the UK and Ireland  are a very different breed.

Nevertheless they can be trouble. A lot of trouble. I guess that explains the 20+ cops that were sent to escort them out of the pub.

Thanks to an Irish friend (and google) I learnt that they are often referred to as "travellers". Other terms like "tinkers", "itinerants" or, pejoratively, "knackers" are also used. Some of these terms refer to services that were traditionally provided by them.  "Tinkering", for example, being the mending of tinware such as pots and pans, and "knackering" being the acquisition of dead or old horses for slaughter.

Their culture these days consists of having no sources of verifiable income and yet being cash rich, fighting, making youtube callout videos for said fights (one of the many, here http://youtu.be/wL6aDrzs3Fs)... and a bit of more fighting.

It was a very different first half of the game, which I'm sure my English friends appreciated since it distracted us from the game and Suarez's successful attempt at the English goal.

Apparently they wouldn't be let into pubs in Ireland, at least according to my Irish friend. 

I guess after last night there is at least one place in London where they will no longer be welcome!

I heard the manager has just ordered this sign, for outside his pub:

 

Planning an event with friends in London

I have been living in my garden flat since January and although I have had people over and had the occasional BBQ, I have not had a proper party yet. It's a pity since the garden has "BBQ and drinks with friends" written all over it!

So the other day I had a quick chat with my partner, selected a few dates and sent a message with the proposed dates to a group of friends. 

An initial "sounds good" was followed by a "I can't mate, I am off to xxxxx that weekend" and a "cheers but I have plans already".

"But I could on DD/MM if you guys are around then?" one of them added.
After checking my calendar and double checking with my partner, Happy with that new date I proposed it. But this time around somebody else could not make it. So I proposed one more... And an additional one.

When it came to the point that the date I was about to propose would have been more than 2 months away, I got frustrated and gave up, thinking that it was just not meant to happen. 

I'm not saying that all plans in London are unsuccessful like this one, but they are similar in the sense that they require consulting a calendar and they seem like people are trying to schedule a business meeting, not a social event with friends.

Planning an evening with friends in  Rome was quite different. All it took was a text suggesting meeting up the coming weekend (the following weekend at the latest), or even a message the day of.  And if you pulled out a phone to check your calendar when planning a dinner or an evening at the pub, people would make fun of you for months.

Back home the only events which require planning well in advance are weddings, graduation ceremonies, baptisms or holidays. And it makes complete sense. If you want to plan a trip somewhere, then you need to book the flight, the hotel and all sorts of things that require advance planning. But again, these are rare events!

When I first moved to London, since I was new to the city, I was eager to do things and had loads of time on my hands. 

However I noticed right away that even planning a simple night out for a few beers would work out to be a super complex negotiation. 

Initially I thought I would just "play the game", as I couldn't force people to meet me sooner than their busy schedules would permit. But I really intended to try to be as available as possible for "spontaneous evenings", as I was in Rome. 

But then things started to change. I started to meet more and more people... from work, from football, friends of friends, etc. And with all the people came more plans.

I started using the calendar on my phone more and more and before I knew it, I had become one of them... The same ones I initially criticised!

These days I often receive an invitation for the coming weekend and while there are still times when I can go, I have to take a rain check more often than I would like. I really hate it when I have to counter-propose a date that is more than a month away. 

Why does this city change people like this? Is it just because London offers a lot more than most cities? Or because the high concentration of people means that events book up quickly and you need to plan far in advance? Or maybe people in London tend to be more sociable, ending up with multiple groups of friends?

I don't have an answer to this. 

All I know is that although I disapprove of this madness, I ended up adapting to it and, if anything, I'm even contributing to it! Oh London, what have you done to me?

Facciamoli Azzurri!

Thursday's Gazzetta dello Sport was blue in colour (as opposed to the usual pink) and had a fascinating title: "facciamoli azzurri". 

"Facciamoli azzurri" or "let's make them blue" is a play on words which is based on the Italian saying "facciamoli neri" (let's make them black, meaning let's beat them) but replacing the colour black with blue, which is azzurri in Italian, since that's the colour of our football shirts and also the nickname of our national team ("gli azzurri").

Let's make them black could be interpreted as a racist statement, but it is not. It simply refers to making your opponent black with bruises.

Yet, this did not stop Tuttosport, an Italian sports newspaper, from using that same expression in a different contest, after Balotelli's two goal vs Germany in the 2012 European Championship.

We made them black, read the title, with a picture of our world class player Mario Balotelli. 

I remember seeing this on twitter and thinking "Oh my god, this is a fake surely".

In a country like the UK, a title like that would probably lead to people protesting in the streets, the newspaper receiving a massive fine and the top management of the newspaper having to resign. 

Not in Italy though. Here there were some talks, some people thought it was a bit extreme, some labelled it as racist, but overall the reaction was relatively mild.

Is that because Italians are racist then? 

I could write pages and pages on this topic, but in a nutshell I would say that surely there are some who are. But they are a relatively small proportion of the population (at least I want to hope).

Unfortunately those idiots exist everywhere.

We then have another category of people, who are the result of ignorance. People who grew up surrounded solely by other Italians and who had very limited exposure to people of other ethnicities. These kind of people sadly represent a very large part of the country. These are people who simply do not know any better. They grew up in a country where people with a different background are the ones illegally selling you necklaces and bracelets at the beach. The ones who bother you trying to sell you a €1 rose every time to dine out.

Sadly they just live in their small world.

I could be one of them today, if it wasn't for some evolutions in my life which brought me to different places, made me meet very diverse people who opened my eyes and made me a better person.

Part of the reasons why we have the above situation is our lack of colonial history, which didn't make our population diverse enough. However things are slowly changing and more and more foreigners are starting to integrate in our society. Thanks to them, hopefully one day not too distant from now things will change and we will not see such titles in our newspapers and our country will be a lot better!