how foreigners parcel things from italy

this is what you do if you don't want to pay an arm or a leg and go through DHL or fedex to post things:

1. try to find the post office that will actually send off bulky parcels. eg. in Milan the one on via cordusio 4. there are a lot of post offices around Italy. most of them only exist so you can pay bills and send envelopes. most of them don't know what you are talking about when you tell them in broken English "PARCEL? PARCEL? BOX? ITALY TO AUSTRALIA?!?"

2. find a box that fits all your crap in. this is actually way harder than it sounds. you ask the guy at the post office for boxes (scatole). they go "si! box?" and then when you tell them you want a huge box to fit all your clothes and shoes they give you a funny look or they say "no finito" and direct you to the next post office down the road to ask for boxes. next minute you have gone through 5 different post offices and they've given you all the same answer.

3. if you already have a box you can skip this step. but this step is all about how to get boxes. which is hard or easy depending on luck. go to a back of a restaurant or shopping center where they pack stuff. look for people who are chucking out cardboard boxes. ask them for a cardboard box. either they think you are crazy and tell you to go away or they will give you cardboard boxes.

4. you found the cardboard box and hopefully also tape to tape up the boxes. go to the post office and box your stuff. write the address of the place you want to send your box on the box.  then give it to the guy who weighs it for you.

5. he will give you a form to fill. you place the return address at the top of the form. you place the address you want to send your box to at the bottom. then there is a list on the right of the form. this is where you put what crap you have in the box.

5. give the form to the guy, he puts it on the computer, you sign the form, you pay the money and then you go. just as a reference it costed me 33 euro to send around 7kg of a box.

moral of the story; don't post from Italy if you're a tourist. really.