If you can spot the Matterhorn and Interlaken from these pictures I took while flying over the Alps on Tuesday, then you are a Schweitzerkenner or Connoisseur de Suisse - I'll get back to you on the Italian version of that.
On Marianne’s suggestion, I went to the Comune first thing in the morning. It was a bit of a risky move, but I thought it worth taking. It turns out that Vikas and I are registered with the land registry as of 13 March! In a mere 19 months after committing to buying La Perla, it is now legally registered in our names. There is a title/escrow attorney in Bellinzona I can recommend against without reservation.
The official at the Comune (which is sort of like a town hall) reminded me that they wanted a report on what work we have conducted at La Perla. Then they need to come by to see if we did anything that would have required a permit. Of course I had been asking all the workers if any permit was required and they had all said no – even those whom ultimately I didn’t chose to have do work here. Luckily the Comune guy is not as high strung as many European bureaucrats can be. In fact, he didn’t seem to notice that all that work was done while we clearly before the property was officially registered to us.
So now I was set to get my long-coveted white license plate. As you may recall, if one has residence, one can obtain a white license plate. If one if an interloper with a short term visa (permesso de soggiorno or Aufenhaltsbewilligung), one will receive a plate with a suspicion-provoking red stripe. These turn out to be large liabilities when entering Switzerland, especially with a darker-skinned person in the car. The only trouble was that my grey card (pink slip car title or deed) was in Luciano. Now Hannes and I had put the battery back in Luciano on Tuesday. However, I had asked Hannes to close the garage partly because I have heard one can get ticketed for having a car visible without a license plate. The fact that the car is parked in my garage is somehow irrelevant. I don’t ask questions anymore, I do as I am told. The trouble is that Hannes had mostly closed the garage door and when I tried to open it, I wound up accidentally locking the heavy door. It turns out that I didn’t have the key. My father’s notes (he was keymaster) indicate that only two keys exist. And Hannes had one and was across the lake working on another job. I gambled M&W had the other so I headed over there.
I had barely said hi to Wälle and he wanted to know my potential status with the DMV, which, as you may guess, has at least three names here, none of them being DMV. I think he gets a perverse thrill out of helping me navigate Swiss bureaucracy. With glee he looked up the name of my insurance guy and gave him a call. Signor Scesa said I needed to get a permesso B or F. According to him, if I went back to Comune, they could tell me for which permesso I was eligible and then he could send the relevant insurance information to the DMV. If this sounds suspiciously easy, let me remind you that I have done this four times now with many of the same characters, and your suspicions are prescient. We had some coffee (I watched) with Diego and Nicki and M&W’s houseguest (not sure what her name is), and I hoofed it back to the Comune.
They were a little less sure of what to do with me this time. They said I was fine to get a permesso B (the better one) if I filled out the form, which, in typically Ticinese fashion, seemed obsessively curious about my genealogy. They are more interested in when and where my parents were born and what religion I was than in some sort of social security number. But, they also told me, I need to register with the foreigner police in Locarno as they were the only ones who could really offer me the permesso B. I knew, however, from Wälle that they take several weeks to process their applications. I called Signor Scesa when I got home to report this to him and he said that in this case (which would have seemed immanently predictable – at least to Wälle), I might as well get the old plates with the red stripe. I agreed bearing the scarlet letter would be better than waiting weeks to be able to drive.
But I jump too far forward. As I came home I got into an appreciation session with Signor Rocca, the painter. He drags me around the house and points out bits of his work that were especially difficult. He launches into a long and passionate explanation of what he did, about 10% of which I understand as he gets very technical and then he emphatically asks me to agree with what good work he’s done. And, as far as I can tell, he’s done well; the house looks great!
This session, however, was interrupted by my appointment with Signor Berri, the tree-cutter. Berri explained to me that he was only able to cut the top five braches because that was all Peppino would allow. So that’s what they were jabbering about in Italian last October! I wanted about a 75% tree reduction and I got about a 15% reduction. The view from the top story is improved (at the moment, but remember that spring has yet to spring here), but his efforts don’t impact the other two floors at all. Moreover, by August, the tree will be exactly as big as it was last August – by Berri’s own admission. Berri did, however, outline two remedies. He suggested that at the end of this year he could trim it again and maybe aim for some additional branches. Moreover, he recommended approaching Peppino’s nephew, whom I think I recall M&W referring to, in a not-so-cute way, as a “lunetico.”
Fortunately, it turned out that one of the keys that Wälle gave back to me was, indeed, the garage key, so I was able to save the grey card. After lunch with Marianne and house guest, I borrowed Marianne’s car to go visit the DMV. By now the sun had really warmed up and it was about 23 degrees or 73 F. It’s a bit colder here at night, but otherwise much better weather than SF. I haven’t seen any clouds yet, but there is a lot of snow in the mountains. In fact, from where I sit to write this I can watch a couple ski lifts across the lake while the palms here sway in the tropical spring breeze. After a 45 minute wait, which is the longest I have ever had there, I was able to run out of the DMV with new license plates in hand!
Upon returning her car to Marianne, we started talking about the palm tree and she stood up from their card game and announced to me and house guest that we should go to the biological park. House guest (surprisingly) and I agreed emphatically. Despite Marianne saying that they always take guests to the biological park, they had never taken me there in my 19 year history with Gambarogno. It really is worth seeing. So, this guy named Eisenhut bought a ton of land just downhill from Piazzogna and made it into a biological preserve/nursery. There are trails crisscrossing the hillside with plants from all over the world, all meticulously adorned with signs naming the plants. There are vast greenhouses that would make my grandfather envious, and plants of all sizes for sale. Apparently the original Eisenhut used to have the preserve open to the public and only asked for donations for upkeep. This never worked, so now his son, Otto, who runs the show, charges 5 CHF. We met with Otto and reminded him about my palms and he said he’d come by and look at them. We wandered around the preserve a bit. Many of the plants and trees are just about to burst and it was beautiful. Of course the big lake and snowy peaks in the distance didn’t hurt. We looked at all the different magnolia tress and how they were all at slightly different stages of bloom. Marianne and I speculated about how excited my mother would be to visit here next week.
When I got home I called Peppino. Marianne was very clear that I didn’t want to talk to his nephew, regardless of what Berri might think. Peppino is gone next week but we set up a time for him to visit the following week so we can talk about the land and the tree. I set up a few more meetings for next week and tried to make some progress around the house. When I finally collapsed into bed, I was pretty darn tired.
