473: It was all June's fault!

Is there such a relationship as a cousin-in-law? If there is then I've got one whose name is June. She and my cousin Steve have just celebrated being married 38 years. Quite impressive, although I can beat that by a country mile. Anyway, I was reading June's FB status and got the distinct impression that they were celebrating in their Spanish residence, in an urbanisation not far from Mazarron. She confirmed this and said "come down for a brew". So I did. A bit more than 'a brew'.

Salou to Mazarron by car is 540 kms and takes about 5 hours by car. But I don't have a car (in Spain) so I thought to make an adventure of it by train and bus. Left Salou last Wednesday and returned yesterday (Sunday). Overnight stays in Albacete, Cartagena, with Steve & June, & Murcia.  Lots of fast food because it's available when I want it, rather than having to adjust to Spanish meal times. A lovely BBQ with Steve & June, on their roof terrace.

Let the pictures do the talking:

Albacete (in the autonomous community of Castilla-La Mancha)

Brekkers: croissant with 'mermelada'

Catedral de San Juan Batista

In Parque Lineal. One of a series of impressive displays of the different planets in our solar system. Should we bring in sharia law for graffiti 'artists'?

Carthagena (in the Murcia region)

I'm going to hang a sign round my neck "No me gustan las aceitunas"

Steve & June. On Friday afternoon they took me to the site of a disused fort with 2 enormous guns set up in 1936 to protect Cartagena. A hair-raising drive along narrow twisty-turny roads up the side of a mountain with a car seemingly coming the other way every time we came to a corner. I'm glad Steve was driving and not me.  

made in Sheffield in 1927!

 There are more and better pictures, and an explanation, here.

Murcia

Two pieces of luck on Saturday. Firstly, Steve drove me to the nearest bus stop to them so that I could catch the 09:40 to Mazarron (and then another bus to Cartagenia and yet another to Murcia). The 09:40 didn't turn up and, just as I was about to ask Steve if he would be kind enough to drive me to Mazarron, a bus turned up and took me directly to Murcia. Great. The second piece of luck is that the hotel in Murcia very kindly allowed me to check-in early. Marvellous. Turned out I was on the conference/congress side of town. I'm very pleased I was in the 5-storey Hotal Azarbe rather than the 5-million-storey hotel opposite! 

472: The trials and tribulations of being an expat

 expat (UK informal) = a person who lives outside their native country

The sun must be over the yardarm somewhere so I'm going to have a beer (and some chocolate), to help me calm down.  

I don't think it matters which foreign country you're living in, sooner or later you come across differences in the way people do things as opposed to the way things are done in your own country/system. And you start to wonder WTF are you doing here. Why are the local people doing things in such an illogical way that doesn't make any sense at all. 

The problem with their Spanish logic started for me yesterday and continued today.  I went to the local adult education centre to confirm my registation for year 2 Spanish. Miryam, my teacher from year 1, was sitting in the entrance hall transcribing everybody's details THREE TIMES onto a piece of A4 paper. No wonder there was a queue of people outside waiting to register. 

Miryam is a great teacher. As a language teacher myself I understand how difficult it can be teaching a class of >20 people especially when those people come from many different countries and have different cultures. But, the centre has had all our details from the beginning of summer when we first expressed an interest in the course. Would it really have been so difficult to use IT to append our details to the form and have a form printed off and waiting? Let me assume for the moment that GDDR (General Data Protection Regulation) was the show-stopper, as it is for so many other things. Then perhaps 2 pieces of carbon paper would have obviated the need to write our details 3 times?

The form, that Miryam so adroitly completed for us, in triplicate, was to allow us to pay 84,30 Euros for tuition and materials for the whole of the academic year. Miryam, being a teacher, and not an accountant, couldn't possibly take the money from us. That would be far too simple. We were offered two choices (when it should have been four!): take the form to BBVA bank in Salou and pay there or make an appointment over the telephone to go to the local town hall and pay there. We then had to take the stamped receipt back to the education centre to prove we had paid. The two choice we weren't offered were: one, to take the form to our own bank and arrange the transfer or two, to make an internet transfer from the comfort of our own home. I considered making an internet payment but what proof would I have had?

So, I went to BBVA this morning as it opened at 08:30 to try and get there before any queues built up. Ha ha! As soon as you get inside the door you have to print off a number and you get seen when your number appears on a screen. Fair enough. The trouble was that the first question, before you get your number, is 'are you a customer of the bank?'  As soon as you say no, everybody coming in behind you, who is a customer of the bank, gets served first. I had to wait 30 minutes to get seen. Disgusting. I asked the guy for help with the machine as I walked in and I think that got his back up so he made me wait as long as he possibly could. That's been my experience with Spanish 'officialdom' over the last 4 years - if you annoy them in the slightest they take great delight in messing you about to the maximum extent possible. Because they can. There was only one cash counter open, instead of two, so things moved along half as fast as they might have. It was also 'fun' watching two bank staff sloping off for coffee as soon as the bank opened at 08:30. I saw them coming back at 09:00 as I was leaving. Why couldn't they have gone at 08:00 before customers started to arrive?

One more thing, while I'm in the mood! I landed at Barcelona Terminal 2 on Wednesday evening and decided to take a bus to Salou rather than a series of three trains. The first Plana bus to arrive turned out to be a ticket bus rather than a bus that takes people anywhere. The driver sells you a ticket and you then have to wait for the 'real' bus to come so you can give the driver the ticket you have just bought. Of course you have no idea whether the bus you need is going to arrive on time or not but, having bought a ticket, you are committed and have to wait.

 That was cathartic. I'm feeling better now. Rant over. Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.