The way to 'Heaven'

I spoke too early. Almost everything that could have gone wrong on Friday (17 Sept) did. The plan was to pick up my translated documents from the translation agency in Stuttgart first thing in the morning then go to the the Italian Embassy to get it legalised. First, the agency charged much more for the translation (about 5 times more!) than what the agency initially said. Then at the Embassy, the old Italian lady said the translation cannot be recognised by the Embassy in Stuttgart because the translator was not one from the region of Baden-Württemberg, even if she is a certified translator. I think devastated was a good description of how I felt when I heard her say that.

Steffen had helped me along the whole process of all the idiotic bureaucracy, in the brginning with emotional support and now with calling all the translators in the Tuebingen and Stuttgart region and drove me all the way to Stuttgart to the agency then to the Embassy. Without his help and support, I would have given up on this a long long long time ago. One of the only 2 English-Italian translators we found in the region is too busy to do the translation and the other is away on holiday.

It was decided to use the agency for the translation because we couldn't find another person who could do it and the original price they quoted is quite cheap. He also told them a few times that we need this document for the Embassy so it has to be certified translators and if they could do that. They said definitely and we could then breathe a sigh of relief. But it turned out that that was not the case when we went to the Italian Consulate in Stuttgart. We had to then find the lady in Stuttgart who is certified (she was too busy to do the translation for us) and begged her to put her stamp and sign it again for us. We then called her and went to her address stated in the list of the embassy, but didn't see her name on the mailbox. We rang the bell, hoping someone might be home, tried calling her (but there was no answer) and waited fruitlessly outside her door until a thought occurred to us that with my luck (or rather the non-existence of it), she might have moved recently and didn't have her address on the list updated yet. True enough, when we checked her signature at the end of her email correspondence, it was a different address. Luckily, she didn't move too far away (her new address was 'Im Himmel' which in german meant 'in heaven') and after some wrong turns and asking around, we found our way to 'Heaven'. The envelope was dropped in her mailbox and we left, crossing our fingers that nothing else would go wrong. Thankfully, she rang later in the day and said we could pick it up the next day when we had time.

The next day, we made our way again to 'Heaven' and picked up my documents. I was to go on my own the next Monday to Stuttgart again to hand in the documents at the Consulate. The dreaded Monday came and Steffen's dad was kind enough to drive with me to Stuttgart to face the Italians. Amazingly after some discussion, the Italian lady said it's ok for now and she will send my documents over to Italy (I had to provide an envelope with the required postage) when it's done.

The next few days was packing up and cleaning out my stuff before leaving the land of wurst and bier for the coffee, pasta and pizza country.