While all of our preparations are coming along great for our “big move,” we still expect a certain amount of culture shock when we arrive in Florence.

One of the things we know will be challenging is the paperwork required by the city and country for our “extended” stay retirement visas. We read other blogs of those expats who have made the journey before us and know that we will face long lines, take a number and wait three hours only to find that we do not have the correct documents with us so we must start the process anew the following day. We expect this, we have planned for this and we are hoping that we are prepared each time we undertake such an excursion.

We have put together a binder with all of our most important documents, photocopies of our documents and are even planning to have many extra copies of passport style photos that we already know are required for different types of ID cards and such.

However, as life-long students in higher education as well as employees of the same, we know that things often change so even the well-prepared, pre-planned and organized fall victims to bureaucracy.

That’s were movie history comes in. Historical fantasies like Arthur (the Romans at Hadrian’s Wall, not the rich drunk) and Troy will serve in shaping our destiny a wee bit. You see we’ve noticed that warrior’s in the movies have “battle cries” to encourage their men and whip them into a frenzy of patriotism to face an impossible-to-win battle and come out victorious.

Our battle cry: “. . . in Italia!”  The reminder that no matter how daunting the bureaucracy becomes, no matter how tedious the requests, no matter the number of hours spent waiting only to come back the very next day . . . we’re doing it “in Italia!”