When you believe in things that you don't understand,
Then you suffer,
Superstition ain't the way

-- Stevie Wonder

On the Italian police website, or maybe it was the U.S. embassy web site, they refer to it as the new "biometric" electronic passport. Well, whatever "biometric" was going to be I knew I was ready to be disgusted by it and that I had to show all my disgust to them. So I went to the police station stressed by the task and in a challenging bad mood.
But on the surface, in my country, having your new electronic passport done isn't that painful after all. It doesn't mean you are "biometrically scanned" or anything. I guess they infer some algorithmic data out of the pictures you give in when you apply for the passport, because the procedure is still the good old grumpy italian one.

You wait for your turn standing in a stark corridor with a group of other people, without a number or anything, just waiting for the calling bark from the other side of the door. You step in, reach the counter. Talk to the young distracted policeman who doesn't seem to listen to you at all. Give in all the papers and watch him slowly cut the border of the pictures, fill in the forms, take your signature here, and here, and here, (grumpy mumbled thanks), and behind the picture, (another grumpy mumbled thanks). Have him acknowledge your payment of €44 to the PO, let him slowly cut the quittance and give your half back. Watch him as he attaches the €40 stamp you gave him, and the picture, and the quittance to the forms and as he stamps all over them; Let him slowly interpret the e-ticket you printed out of the email the agency sent you. Try in vain to suggest him to skip the printed headers on the top of the page and check the all capitals instructions at the bottom. Finally watch him highlight the correct departure day on the top of the papers, and attach the e-ticket to it all too; Finally watch him as he invalidates your old passport, stamping "annullato" on every page of it --and take it back.

Everything happens in the quiet Police Station near Corso XXII marzo. The offices are at the ground level, but there is no traffic in the narrow residential street outside. The naked walls welcome all the white light pouring in from the tall windows, and there's a peaceful atmosphere around that maybe depends on the fact that there are no computers, no cameras, no office noises of any sort.
Next to me a couple of tobacconists are applying for a gun license for personal defense and another policeman is instructing them about the bureaucratic procedure. They endured a robbery already so they are qualified.
The police force seems so reasonable, carefree, unaggressive when seen from here.

I always thought that the residual charms of this falling nation were all in its underdeveloped, neglected parts. All the parts which have not been "upgraded" are what makes this country precious --at moments. Exactly the contrary of what most of our politicians usually assume.

I get out of the Police Station with a small piece of paper in hand, cut off a bigger one by the young policeman. There he wrote down to come and get the new passport two days before I leave.
Outside, the sun shines wildly and the bodies of the cars are reflecting the light with their limited range of colors. The avenue down the road is busy with traffic but from where I am standing, in the empty quite street, all that traffic seems so odd, and its frantic pace so distant.