A trip to an Italian Post Office is not to be taken lightly; in fact, it’s something best avoided if at all possible. But if you must go, it’s definitely an undertaking that requires planning and aforethought. And even with that, you can never be really sure of the challenges that will await when you step through that door.

From time to time we put together a small box of things we’ve collected during our travels – fridge magnets, T-shirts, glow-in-the-dark Vatican snow globes – and pack them up to send home. But as you can imagine, what in Australia would be a straight forward procedure, is quite a different matter here.

The first issue is weight. Experience dictates that you want to make sure the box is less than five kilograms – more than that and the despatch cost increases by an amount that would keep us in pizza and gelato for a year. So our plan this time was to leave the box open until after it was weighed, adjust the contents if necessary, then tape up the top.

It’s fair to say most Post Office staff don’t like dealing with tourists who come bearing boxes. ‘It’s no good’ was this week’s welcome greeting as we stepped up to the counter.
‘Yes. Hello, we have a parcel to send to Australia.’
‘It’s no good.’
‘That’s right. Australia.’ Sometimes, when faced with opposition, it works just to press on. Not in this case.
‘You can’t send it like that. It must be properly closed.’
‘Ah, yes. We understand. We have everything here with us,’ (pulling tape and scissors from the bag), ‘but first we just want to check the weight.’

Eventually – and with a lot of dramatic sighing and muttering – the lady took the box and balanced it on a corner of the kitchen-sized scales on the desk (without first removing the couple of envelopes already on there). Then, not bothering to look at the displayed weight, she announced ‘It’s too heavy.’
‘Really? It’s more than five kilos?’
Thrusting the box back over the counter towards us. ‘Yes.’
The trick here was not to take back the box – last one to touch it and all that. ‘How much more?’

It went on like that for another minute (an eternity in Italian Post Office stand-off time) until, with a final exclamation that required no translation, our customer service officer stood up and carried the box around to the large, fit-for-purpose scales. As the box landed on the scales, and with an off-handed gesture towards one of her colleagues, she offered us a final piece of advice. ‘You go to him’. And with that, she walked away.

It turned out the weight was 200 grams over, so we whipped out a couple of postcards and an I heart Rome cap, taped down the lid, took another number and were ready to go. But not so fast.

‘Passport?’ Hand extended, eye contact obviously not required.
‘You need a passport? Really? The three completed forms, including one in triplicate, aren’t enough this time?’
‘No. I need to see the passport.’
‘But we’ve never needed it before and we didn’t bring it today.’ Shrug, but with eye contact which was nice. We tried again. ‘Really?’ No response. Clearly a player with plenty of experience in the game of Post Office stand-off. Time to admit defeat. ‘Okay.’ Our turn to sigh. ‘We’ll get the passport and come back this afternoon.’ And suddenly there it was – full attention, eye contact and a friendly smile. Jackpot!
‘Better hurry – we close at 1.30.’