Parking While English

I thought that I would add on to what Mary has said about a few things.

The Euro 80 / $120 parking ticket was a clear example of "parking while English".  We had no idea as to what we had done wrongly...the ticket was all in Italian (of course) and there was just a set of about 100 boxes to check, and #40 had been checked.  All we knew was that we'd parked exactly where other cars had parked, and that there were lots of other cars around us without tickets.

We had just checked on the car on our way into town.  We continued into town, and as we're walking along the main street, we see two Polizia, and Mary suggests that we ask them what "#40" means when you get a ticket. Since we did not have the ticket with us, this seemed like it would be quite a challenging task.  As we start talking to the Polizia, the male of the two quickly realizes that we're English, and he'd ticketed an English car, even to the extent of remembering it was a Vauxhall Zafira (which we have seen only one other in Italy).   Apparently "#40" means that you parked "in a crossroads" or intersection.  As you can see from the photo, we're parked with an English car.


What are the chances that you'd actually talk to the Polizia that gave you the ticket?  And then what are the chances that his partner would realize he'd been really ticketing unreasonably and want to straighten it out for us??


The next day it was pretty easy to find the same Polizia, as they are in a specific place in the center of town, it turns out, at a certain time of day.  We walk up to the two Plolizia (the lady is the same, the man different) and she asks if I have the ticket.  I pull it out and she quickly asks me to put it away, and follow her "to the office".  So we walk to the office...it's about 5 minutes away. 

Inside the office is a much older man sitting behind a desk.  It looks nothing like a police office, more like a lawyer's office.  The older man welcomes us.  The lady police officer asks me for the ticket, and I give it to her.  She takes it, puts it on the desk with a pile of other papers and says "done". 
Since this did not seem "done", we ask if that is all, and she says it is.

 What a great way to do business.

Cheers, David