The working life

I break my longest silence ever to let you know that I am doing fine.
I am working at the power plant where I stayed 6 months to write my thesis, but I wasn't hired. I am just doing an internship, which means that I am not under a proper job contract and I am not adding years of work for retirement purpose.

Here in Italy, a part of the money of your wage is deducted to pay taxes and your retirement. Once you collect a certain years of work AND you reach a certain age, you can retire. You can even stay longer at job and have a higher retirement. It's not like in the US where you have to think about yourself since day 1.
For this reason I am very upset: the salary is low and I have no sick days, no holidays, no retirement, no nothing.
Unfortunately this is a very common situation in Italy. For me - to tell the truth - it is not a huge problem: I still live with my mother and I work 15 km from home - I get there by car in 15-20 mins. I am 25 y.o. and just finished to study, I have no boyfriend or family dream whatsoever. I just need money for my personal stuff.

But there are people 30-something that have to live (or should we say "survive"?) with €1000 gross per month - roughly $1500 gross a month. Given that monthly rents are no lower than €400 in the country and €800 in the city, you can easily understand why Italians live with their parents until they get married.
House sharing is not very common here, also because very few people move to another city when they start working. Most of them have always lived with parents and going to work does not change things a lot. Also, part time jobs were introduced only recently and are not suitable for certain positions. So, it's not really easy to find a job here AND study.
In my case, I have to say that both I and my moms work all day long, so we just meet each other for 3 hours in the evening and on weekends.

On the Friday show of "Le iene", a satyrical program with smart questions, they sent one of their man to act as a 33 y.o. employeé that earns €1000 a month and wants to buy his first house.
First, he went to the bank to get a financing. He told them he had a full time job and earnt about €1000 a months. Given that, he was told they could not give him more than €60.000, as the monthly payment was €346 (which is more than 1/3 of his wage).

Believe me, €60.000 is the price of a nice Mercedes, but not of a house. I think that for that money you could buy a wall in the country.
Well, back to the show.... the man of the program went to a real estate agency to look for a place. He went to 3 places, where he was told that the minimum price for a 1bedroom apartment is €100.000, €150.000, €80.000 - even out of city!

So he asked them "what can I buy with €60.000?"
clerk: "A car box"
man: "A box?! Then I'll buy a car box"
clerk: "But you cannot live in a garage!"

The end of this service showed the man eating canned beans in a car box.

You can watch the service in full HERE.