Early-Mid October
Living in TLA on the Support Site is very limiting if you do not have a car. You can basically take the bus over to base (Capodichino) and that's about it as far as I can tell. You can also take any number of ITT/MWR day trips, but that gets expensive quickly.
You can acquire a vehicle one of two ways, you can purchase it from the Lemon Lot/another service member or you can purchase one from an Italian. If you purchase one from a service member, the process is fairly simple - exchange money, fill in paperwork, notify CMVRO (it's like the DMV). This can be done in one day. If you purchase a vehicle from an Italian, it is a minimum of 3 weeks before you can legally drive your car around. There is an initial registration appointment, a two week waiting period for all the police checks (Military, US, and Italian) to make sure the car isn't stolen, and then a second registration appointment. The vehicle also has to pass a rather lackadaisical inspection. At some point money exchanges hands.
Dan investigated and purchased an Italian car. It is a Honda Civic hatchback. It more or less looks like a station wagon. It is also a manual. We were able to take possession of the car before the final paperwork shenanigans were completed. The advantage to this was we could practice driving.
Every night for a week (before the car was legal) Dan and I would take it to an empty parking lot and practice going into first and going into reverse and going into first and going into reverse and going into first and going into reverse. You get the idea. Dan did much better than I did, though I think he actually drove a stick with some regularity at some point. I never have.
Finally after all the paperwork and insurance was figured out, we have a legal car. To celebrate having a car, Dan wants to go to the Amalfi Coast this weekend. He's driving.
