Montessori Stamp

The italian postal service issued a commemorative stamp on the centenary of Maria Montessori's first school in 1907, in the neighborhood of San Lorenzo in Rome. The stamp was issued on the end of January of 2007. I happened to travel to Rome just a few weeks later, and someone I knew whose kids go to the Pittsburgh Public School's Montessori school asked me to mail an envelope with that stamp as postage to the school as a memento.

Well, it turned out to be an arduous mission.

Walking by a huge post office in Via Marmorata in the Testaccio neighborhood, I suddenly remembered of my promise, and stopped in to buy that one stamp. There are stamp selling machines, and queues of people. The machines only sell generic stamps, and the queues are for paying utility bills only. Asking around, I got the word that for mail delivery I must exit the building and re-enter from its side entrance, where parcels are accepted. The queues are no longer a staple of italian post offices, now being replaced by people waiting on chairs for their "number" to come up. Ticket-issuing machines are placed at the entrance. One presses a button, and a printout like 'D007" is produced. Then, you wait, reading the electronic board hanging from the ceiling, that informs the next available teller window. I ended up waiting some 15 minutes. It turned out that in the meantime, one guy couldn't find the teller window, so the office worker got impatient, and pressed his "next" button. So, two customers showed up at the window, but the teller would only serve the one with the later-issued number, because that is what "officially" his window is allowed to serve. So, the guy that got "skipped" started complaining. Soon, all the other customers waiting on the chairs started chanting complaints and disapproval of such a Kafkian system, supposedly created to help avoiding physical queues and aggravation, it instead shifted the aggravation from one of physical nature to one of psychological nature.
Finally, it was my turn. "I only need one stamp", I declared politely and quietly. I explained I needed the Montessori stamp that was just issued a few weeks earlier in the year. The employee explained that she didn't have it, and only "philatelic services" could provide it. I then asked where is such an office. She didn't know. It was a strange request to come in and ask for one stamp. Only one. She was caught off-guard, used to complaining pensioners that can't read numbers or count change, and here I am, asking politely for one stamp, and have to leave empty handed. So she called her boss. An elderly figure, he was amazed by my request, and took it in great admiration. Signaled me to step aside, and spoke to me as an elder statement, explaining that such a request could only be done at the Central Post Office in Via della Vite.

I had one more question: how much postage is required for sending a letter to the United States. The employee said it depends on the weight. I said, an envelope with nothing in it. She said she could not tell me without the actual envelope, because to get the amount information, she must place it on a weighting machine that computes and displays the postage needed. So I tell her to place any envelope or sheet of paper she has around, as I was planning to mail an empty envelope. She gets up, borrows an envelope from the employee next to her, and weights it. It's 0.85 Euros, "if weight is less than 20 grams", she would quickly later qualify, as getting the last word on the matter. I was having it way too easy...

Wasn't sure whether all this trouble was worth it, but I figured that since I hadn't seen at the Spanish Steps yet, might as well check 'em out, and in the meantime, shoot two ducks with one bullet and pick up the stamps in nearby Via della Vite. So I used my only remaining urban transportation ticket for the metro ride to "Spagna" station, got off, checked out the tourists at the Steps, and then walked confidently to the post office to get that stamp.

The weird thing is, nowdays, some young social-ladder-climbing consultant in the italian business-ocracy must have decided that, to be cool, one must have an MBA-ish word in the "new" italian postal service. So, here I am, trying to figure out where to go to buy stamps, and from all the signs, directions, arrows, and tableaux on the walls, I finally get it: I must go to a department called "PT Business" window. Yes, "Business", that word is in english. Just like Don Corleone says in The Godfather, "Tis Buziness".

Pressed the button on the ticket machine, got my number, went to the "sportello" appropriate for that service, and, wow! there she was, a young and attractive postal employee with no queue. This is going to be a breeze, I think....

I show her my ticket, and tell her I want this stamp, the Montessori stamp. "Oh, you must go to Philatelic Services". Looks like she's not it. To get there, I must exit from the front entrance in Piazza S. Silvestro, make a left, and it is the first door on the left.

So, it turns out, the guy at the first post office was "almost" right. Via della Vite is the back entrance of the Main Post Office. The front entrance is in Piazza S. Silvestro. But for philatelic collectors and hobbists, the post office has created a separate entrance, that takes directly to a mezzanine floor with wood-decorated walls and carpeted floors.

Inside, several senior citizens discuss the value of stamps when a few of the "teeth" bordering a stamp are damaged. I got bigger fishes to fry... There is hardly anyone. I ask for my stamp. Sure, she replies. Only one? yes, only one. I get my stamp. It's 0.60 Euro. To send the envelope to the US, I need 0.25 Euro more. I ask if she can give me postage stamps that can total 0.25 Euro. She doesn't have any.

So I go back to the PT Business teller, tell her "hey, I'm back", and ask her for 0.25 Euro of postage stamps. She replies: "E se non ce li ho?" [trans: "and if I don't have it?"]. Sounded like joke, but it was real. I said: "then give me the next one up: 0.30, or 0.35". Hey, whatever is closest to 0.85, a few cents extra didn't hurt my budget for this endeavor. Obviously, I am missing something here: she is the designated teller that sells stamps, but she sounded so obvious when she said "what if I don't have any". There must be some secret story behind this. I don't try to think too much. Maybe, someday, when I am older, I'll figure what is really cooking here...

She says she must go to the back room to get them. She takes my coins, goes in the back room, returns 5 minutes later, and hands me the a 0.10, another 0.10, and a 0.05 in stamps.

I lick them on the envelope, and mail it.

Angela, hope you got it.