Well, you have finally arrived in Siena as a student but have you already decided what to do next to make the experience more promising and to have awesome student years? If not, you are at the right place. This article will list all the cool things in no priority order, that you could probably do as a student in Siena and give you an added advantage over others with an abundance of useful knowledge that we discovered in years of staying at the place.
Your first point of contact – The International Place(IP)
The moment you are in Siena the first place where you go to is The International place which is located via Banchi di Sotto 55, which is very close to the famous Piazza del campo. You could come here and confirm your admission and ask them to get started with the initial proceedings to official student documentation work and clear any of the doubts you may have or even meet your fellow batch students.
Make sure you already have the Codice fiscale(The tax code)
After you confirm your admission in the International place, the next thing is to get the Codice fiscale at Agenzia Delle Entrate located via Europa 69. There they would enter a few details of yours in their system to generate your Codice fiscale and return you a paper with all the details of it. Keep it safe with you forever 😉 . If you already have your address confirmed you could request for the Codice fiscale card to be delivered to your address. Remember, this is the first basic procedure to do after your arrival in Siena.
Having a local telephone number
So you know these days having a mobile number means you have mobile data on the go, which has become almost as important as Oxygen to people nowadays ;). So you need a mobile number, what are the available options? This depends on your need. Generally, the trend goes like this: One person in the group will choose some company and with word of mouth most of the people in that group would follow him blindly. Here I would be explaining all the main service providers you have and a few of the common considerations to check before choosing one.
Main mobile network providers are :
Tim, Fastweb, Wind3, Lyca, Iliad, poste, Vodafone
Selecting one among them is your choice but I would suggest not to go for Poste as they have a cluttered model since they have all kinds of services ranging from bank accounts to broadband Internet connection to mobile network services to postal services and the main thing is if you face problem with any one of their service you have to go to a single point of service that is that main post office of Poste which generally has long queues. Apart from this everything is fine.
Few of the common considerations are :
- Free calling to the home country
- Amount of data with respect to the cost
- Network coverage
Find a good accommodation as per your budget and convinience
We would explore how to find accommodation in Siena in another article, but here I would like to highlight the importance of having good accommodation in Siena. Please stay at any place with a contract, as you would overcome with people providing you accommodation option with lesser cost but without a house contract. While in most cases it would not be a trap but it is better to avoid such a situation. Consider an accommodation single/shared which is closer to your Department of study, close to the center or that has ample public transport to go to the center.
Having a Bank account
Among all the banks I know, I would personally suggest Intesa San Paolo bank located in Piazza Tolomei, 12 to start a bank account for students. As they have free prepaid cards or complete bank accounts for everyone under the age of 35 years. If you already have a rent agreement and Codice fiscale you could go to a proper bank account or in case you just have a Codice fiscale with no rent agreement you could opt for a prepaid card. The difference between the both is you could do all the activities just with a prepaid card as that of a complete bank account but when you try to do a few transactions on online websites sometimes they do not accept the prepaid cards. So, while it’s no harm also just having a prepaid card rather than a bank account, my suggestion is to have a bank account if you can. Moreover, you have the possibility to apply for a bank account here completely online.
Having permesso di soggiorno[The resident permit]
When you come to Italy for studies most probably you would be coming with a 1 year study visa and it does not necessarily mean that you could site back and relax and think about further after an year. Just kidding. 😉 . So when you arrive in Italy for studies you should apply for the resident permit which is called the “permesso di soggiorno” (permit to stay) as early as possible. We would discuss the whole procedure in a different section altogether but just keep in mind about this. Also when you are doing this procedure for the first time be careful to remember the process the general validity would be one year and you need to repeat it every year in order to renew it.
Having ISEE document
This is another important document which would be very much useful for student and mostly the document which many may ignore. With this document you could purchase your bus pass at reduced price and also when you need to pay your Semester fee, you have the chance to reduce it if you have this document with you. You would need to take appointment in CAAF Siena (related particularly to Siena students) located at Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, 45, Siena. The mandatory documents are the Bank statement and the house agreement. Apart from these advantages you would also have many advantages that your local comune provided only if you have this document.
Having carta di identita
This is one another most important document which most students does not have an idea about. The best thing about the document is it would have the validity of 10 years. So when you permesso di soggiorno is under the process of renewal this document could sometime be handy.
Having membership card in corte di miracoli
Corte di Miracoli (The Court of miracles) – This is located very close to Engineering Department in Siena which shares a common entrance with the Engineering Department. It provides a membership option at very nominal cost but has lot of events regarding dance, yoga, music and so on. Students who wish to learn the Italian language could also checkout this place as they offer free Italian courses or sometimes at a reduced fares.
Having a CUS membership
This is related to all the students who are interested in sports activities such as University Gym, Volley ball, Judo, Rugby, Swimming and so on. The list goes on . This membership allows you to access all these activities at a very low costs. Without this card it would be very costly to use these services. I believe you need to have a medical certificate in order to have this membership.
Having tessera sanitaria
This is regarding the health card and if you have this card there would be a doctor assigned to you and its like a health insurance card. If you are a student it would cost you 150 euros/year. Instead if you are a working professional it would be free of cost.
I promised you I would give you abundant information. We have already reached to 11th item in the list 🙂 . Lets end it here and my request to you all is please let us know in the comments if the information provided was useful to you. Or let us know if you want to know about some other topic as well. We are happy to receive your inputs and make our efforts to address them.