Spanish Road Trippin’
I have another trip surprise…
Right now we are in the car for a very long day of driving. About 9 hours of driving. And from where we live, we could get to any number of places in 9 hours, but this time, we’re on official business: put an end to our illegal immigration status.
In order to do this, we have to go to a US Naval Base in the south of Spain. They’ll take our passports from us for the week, process us, and give us the wonderful little stamp that allows us to be here. We have been laying low over the holidays since the police are very quick to pull over anyone at night to breathalyze them/check their papers. So with our newly attained SOFA (Service Of Forces Agreement) status, we will be able to once again leave the house without fear of being pulled over and being locked up abroad.
But just because we’re on official business doesn’t mean we won’t be making the most of this trip! We get two days of travel down to Rota, where the Naval Base is. Tonight, we’re stopping in Sevilla for the night. Tomorrow, we’ll head into Gibraltar and check it out before going on to our hotel.
Our hotel in Sevilla–hopefully it really does look this cool in real life!
Our hotel in Rota, where we’ll be staying for the week.
The week won’t be too busy for us, but we do have to take Spanish driving tests! It’s a written test, thank goodness, and it’ll be in English since many of the men and women at the Navy Base need their license. We get a little review session before the test…I hope I pass! It’s certainly been awhile since I’ve taken a driving test.
Other than that, we’re going to explore the Cadiz area and relax! We’re excited to explore yet another area of Spain, and I get to add another country to the places I’ve been–we’re spending all day driving through Portugal!
Oh, and I almost forgot–one of the parts I’m the most excited for!! On the Naval Base, there is an American grocery store where we can get some of our favorites from home that we’ve been missing. I’m looking forward to marshmallows and reese’s cups!
Wish us luck on our Spanish driving tests!
My Big Important Dreams in 2012
As I lay in bed last night thinking about the new year, I realized that I want to look back on 2012 as a time of growth & achievement.
I’m 25 years old and I’m starting to realize that all of the Big Important Dreams I’ve had will only come true if I work really, really hard at them. And honestly? I haven’t been doing such a great job at that. I always assumed that “things would work out” in my favor, but unless I work at it, that may not be the case.
My Big Important Dreams have been changing dramatically over the last few years. Instead of a luxurious home with fame, fortune, designer labels and summer homes, my Big Important Dreams have actually become Modest Important Dreams. I’ve grown up and realized what’s really, truly important to me.
My Big Important Dreams:
- Be my own boss
- If I can’t be my own boss, work for a company with ideals and philosophies that match my own
- Do something creative and inspire others
- Have the ability to stay/work at home with my children in their early years, work around their schedule as they grow
- Despite working around my children’s schedule, have a satisfying and personally fulfilling career
- Live near a city I love
- Bring extra money into the household that will allow us more comfort and stability
- Travel and appreciate the world around me
Now that I’m in Spain and have no career, I have a lot of self-reflection time. I know that the perfect career for me won’t just drop into my lap, and if I ever want to be my own boss, I will have to make that happen for myself. If I want the freedom and flexibility to raise a family the way I want, then I have to start working toward that now, before I even have children. If I want to have it all, I have to work at it myself. I have to act.
I don’t want to be one of those people with Big Important Dreams but don’t have the Big Important Work Ethic to achieve them. I don’t want to blame circumstances or other people or anything for not going for what I want in life. Here I am with all of the time in the world to pursue my Big Important Dreams, and so 2012 will be the year that I lay the groundwork.
I have some projects that I’m working on that have excited me and made me happy. I have both long and short-term goals. I have a plan A and a plan B, both of which I think are realistic to achieve if I work hard. I have a supportive husband, I have the time, and I (think) I have the money to try.
So here’s to 2012. I hope that it is an inspiring year. I hope that it’s a year that I try a lot harder than I did in 2011. I hope that it’s a year that I can look back on and be proud of myself.
How are you adjusting your dreams as you get older?
Christmas in Spain
Christmas has come and gone another year. It felt a bit sad and too short and bittersweet without family to celebrate with. Two of the three boxes of gifts my parents sent me are being held up in customs, and won’t be released to us until we give our residency numbers. The problem? We’re officially in the country illegally for another two weeks until our paperwork is processed.
Bah humbug.
And it’s not really the gifts that I’m mad about, it’s just the fact that my parents spent so much money shipping that stuff to us only to have it held up.
But despite the bummer when it came to our gifts, we really did have a nice Christmas. We had to wait until 4pm our time until we started our video chat with my parents and my sister and BIL. We still got to spend time with everyone and participate in the festivities, even if it was through a screen.
I probably should have taken a screenshot, but Mike took a photo of us in the screen instead.
What we looked like from their side!
The day after Christmas, my parents hooked us up at Grandma’s house so we could see and chat with the extended family. It was so wonderful and it felt like we were almost there.
Almost.
I miss my family and wish like crazy that we could have spent time with them this holiday season. Last year we were unable to make Christmas in the Midwest because our honeymoon had eaten all of my vacation days.
There is no way that we’re missing Christmas next year. I don’t care where we are on this planet–we’re going to make it home for Christmas.
We have a lot to look forward to in the new year though, so we’re trying to keep our chins up and look forward to everything exciting we have going on here.
Our blue christmas tree!
Have you ever spent a Christmas away from family? How did you connect with them over the holidays despite the distance?
Neuschwanstein Castle & Liechtenstein
Rounding out our winter vacation, we made a stop at Neuschwanstein Castle and Liechtenstein before heading back to the Milan airport to fly home.
Our driving day to Neuschwanstein Castle (heretofore represented as NC because I can’t keep typing that out) was foggy. Not just a little foggy, it was foggy to the extreme of not being able to see 50 feet in front of you, which isn’t the best way to be driving on the German Autobahn.
The Autobahn is almost as terrifying as I pictured it–people will fly by at speeds of 200 kph or more. Our tiny little rented Peugeot could not top 144 kph (90 mph) though we sure tried. I felt like the car was going to come apart at the seams at that speed, so we didn’t try to maintain it. It was fun to see how fast we could go, but we preferred to keep it safe. When we did pass some slower cars, we had to be especially careful about cars coming up behind us. They could go incredibly fast and would NOT slow down for anything. There were a few close calls which prompted screaming and nervous fits of giggles after the cars passed. Our tip–if you don’t have a big enough engine to handle it, stay out of the left lane. We learned our lesson.
When we got to NC, the fog hadn’t lifted. It was enormously disappointing because I was picturing this:
Instead, we got this:
Boooo. So we couldn’t see it from the outside, and we weren’t allowed to take pictures from the inside. I was sad that I wouldn’t have much to show for the whole thing.
Here are some photos that I did capture despite the fog.
This smaller castle was below the fog, but we did not choose to tour and visit this one.
Kinda blah, right?? We overheard some of the workers saying that it was the worst fog they’d seen in the area for awhile. Lucky us!
Despite it being ridiculously foggy outside, inside the castle was just plain ridiculous.
The paintings, the details, the carvings, the walls…EVERYTHING in this castle was incredible. It was so incredibly intricate that I kept saying to myself “This is just stupid. That’s STUPID!” I didn’t mean stupid in that I didn’t like it or that it wasn’t worthy to see…it was stupid in that it was so absolutely mind bogglingly ridiculously incredible that I didn’t have any other words for it. It was beautiful. It was amazing. It was worth seeing just because you can’t believe something like this exists in the world and that it was created for one man (who died before he could even live in it).
Of course, since it was so incredibly stupidly awesome, it attracted busloads of people, so it was very very commercialized. Of course they led you through three different gift shops on the short tour. Of course you were stuck with a group of 100 other tourists to bump into in tiny spaces. But sometimes, you just have to deal with the tourists and the commercialism to see something amazing. I wish it hadn’t been so foggy that day so we could have gotten an even more full experience.
After our tour, we packed up and headed into Liechtenstein, where the fog never let up. We arrived at night, too late to take pictures. The next morning, the fog persisted until after breakfast when we could finally see what the fog hid from our hotel view:
Beautiful, beautiful mountains.
We couldn’t stay long to admire them though…we had a long day of driving through the mountains ahead of us in order to catch our flight that evening. The views on the way to the airport were fascinating and breathtaking. I truly, truly feel like I could be a mountain girl after this vacation because I couldn’t get enough of the stunning landscape.
I have a feeling that we’ll find our way back to these parts of the world multiple times in our lives. I felt so happy on this vacation, seeing the many wonderful things we saw. I highly recommend going near Christmastime if you can because the cheer in the air was very worth the chilly temps and rainy/snowy/foggy weather.
Now that we’re back home in Spain, it feels good to be next to our Christmas tree with our pups, but we’re already planning our next trip for early January! More on that later!
Munich
We spent three days in Munich on our trip, and it was wonderful! I’d heard fabulous things about Munich, but wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of its size. It was a much larger city than I had anticipated, but the public transportation was FANTASTIC. We could get anywhere we wanted through public transportation, and the hotel we stayed at even included a pass for all trains with our room.
Mike and I didn’t waste a lot of time when we got in…we headed straight for (you guessed it) the nearest glühwein booth!
The glühwein mugs kept getting nicer and nicer as our trip progressed, but since we were in Germany, we couldn’t go the whole trip without making the rounds to some bierhalls!
I will be forever partial to weissbiers…I don’t care if it makes me “such a girl.” Because I am. So hmph!
As evening fell, we decided to stuff ourselves silly on streetfood instead of going for a balanced meal at a restaurant. This is mostly what we did throughout the trip to keep costs down on the meals inbetween our Michelin-star restaurant excursions. More on that in a bit.
Now, it was all really the same from market to market. There weren’t a ton of differences besides the amount of people milling around and the mug that they were serving the glühwein in. But even though each market was largely the same, I really, really, really loved all of them. Having so much Christmas spirit in the air made me extremely happy, as did all of the sweets and foods that were delicious and cheap. Everyone that we came across in Munich spoke English as well, so it was also a very accessible city for tourists.
The other days that we were in Munich, it rained, so I didn’t take photos of their incredible day market, where there was produce galore. I could definitely see myself living happily in Munich, with the great public transportation, the shopping, the food, and the markets that were definitely superior to the little ones we have in our area of Spain.
We also went to Tantris, a 2-Michelin star restaurant with fabulous 70′s-era decor. Seriously, “orange carpet on the ceiling” type of fabulous.
In all honesty, we were a little disappointed in Tantris. It makes me feel like the snob-of-all-snobs saying that a 2-Michelin star restaurant wasn’t up to snuff, but there were a few dishes that left us less than impressed, which isn’t exactly what you want when you’re shelling out that kind of dough. Overall, I thought that it wasn’t worth the money or the rating. We had a good meal, but it wasn’t as special as we had hoped.
The other restaurant we went to while in Munich was called Terrine. It’s a one-Michelin star restaurant, and it was HARD TO FIND. We were about 35 minutes late to our reservation because we could not find where it was located. Oh, and it was raining. We were terrified of being charged as no-shows, but we made it and settled in.
Since this was the last restaurant we had planned for our trip, we decided to go all out for it and order the full, 10-course meal with wine pairings for each course. It. was. wonderful.
I won’t post pictures of this experience since the lighting was bad and my Photoshop skills just aren’t good enough to do it justice. Instead, I’ll let the menu speak for itself.
king crab and scallops in lime vinaigrette
tahiti vanilla, air “pata negra”
carpaccio of venison
kohlrabi, black truffle
lobster with squash and watercress
crispy calf’s head
john dory in clear bean-tea
seafood & red bell peppers
wild duck with black pudding and sauerkraut
cassis fruits
red mullet
cauliflower wonton, spinach, curry
chicken breast and leg
beetroots, artichokes, treviso
roquefort creme
grape granité, dark chocolate
cinnamon cake, orange, basil sorbet
warm chocolate espuma, rum banana, kafir lime ice cream
Some of it may sound odd or strange or not super appetizing, but it was amazing. It was a wonderful meal with all of the flavors adding something to the experience. The wine pairings with each meal were especially appetizing and we had a few very, very memorable wines. The service was all wonderful and we learned new things about cooking techniques and different wineries. While the meal was one of our most expensive on the trip, it was definitely worth it.
Munich was, in a word, magical. I loved so much about the city and I can definitely see myself revisiting. The bierhalls were fun, the dining was wonderful, the streetfood and markets were amazing.
Next, I’ll take you to Neuschwanstein Castle and Liechtenstein to round out our Winter Vacation!
Salzburg, Austria
After two days in Innsbruck, we drove about 2 hours to Salzburg to spend two days here! Unfortunately, the weather was not as cooperative in Salzburg as it was in Innsbruck and it rained the whole time we were here! I suppose that’s what you risk when you take a winter vacation, so we didn’t let it faze us. It snowed a bit as well, but it was the big wet flakes that immediately melted instead of accumulating to a pretty white blanket.
Despite the weather, we still had a WONDERFUL time in Salzburg. It’s larger and more expensive than Innsbruck, but it has even more designer shops if you’re looking to spend money on shopping. We mostly stuck around the glühwein and Christmas booths on day one!
The Christmas ornaments and decorations seem nicer here, but I’m way too nervous to take these gorgeous ornaments back on the plane with us to go home to Spain! I’m happy window shopping though 
That evening, we went to Carpe Diem, Finest Finger Food. It’s a one-Michelin star restaurant that had a lot of choices when it came to what to choose for dinner. We could have gone with a number of small fingerfoods that are served creatively in cones, we could choose a prix-fixe winter menu with 5 courses, or a full, 7-course meal. We chose the full menu with 7 courses and were very pleased with our dishes.
As you can see, the lighting was a nightmare to photograph the food in, so I didn’t take too many photos. We did stay at the restaurant for almost four hours though, and had a wonderful evening listening to a band play Christmas music.
The next day in Salzburg, we slept in and went shopping in the morning. For lunch, we went to Ikarus, another one-Michelin star restaurant. This was the restaurant that I was looking forward to the most on our trip since it was such a cool concept-the restaurant invites the best chefs from all around the world to cook for a month. During our visit, the featured chefs were from Sao Paolo, Brazil, so our menu had Brazilian influences in the flavors. The restaurant is located in an airport hangar, which provided an incredible atmosphere.
The restaurant and decor were beautiful. I was even a little intimidated to walk in since there were only 8 tables in the whole restaurant! You always hope that you don’t stick out like a sore thumb in these kinds of places, you know? We started out with some sparkling wines, which were very good. There was a drink pairing available for our meal at €95/person, but since we were already spending so much on the meal, we decided to go for a bottle of wine instead. We went with one of the cheapest red wines on the menu and milked that sucker throughout the 12 different plates we received.
Our Menu:
Snacks:
Tomato, burrata and basil
Bonbon of foie gras and guava
Gillardeau oyster with cucumber and lychee
“Waldorf salad”
with Atlantic lobster and gorgonzola emulsion
***
Pot-roasted char
with Bacuri-vanilla oil and char caviar
***
Gnocchi of sweet potatoes
with Osietra caviar and tucupi
***
One-hour egg
with palm heart foam and white truffle
***
“Feijoada” Brazilian bean stew
***
Rice with slowly cooked cudgel of duck,
pequi and coriander
***
Braised cheek of beef with mashed potatoes,
crosne and black truffle
***
“Acai” Muscovado sugar, strawberry granite and guarana jelly
***
Assorted dessert tray
Our favorite dishes were the Waldorf salad, the pot-roasted char and the one-hour egg with generous slices of white truffle. It was all about a dream come true…I couldn’t believe all of the different flavors and the beautiful way each dish was plated. We had an amazing afternoon at Ikarus and if we ever find our way back to Salzburg, we’d go back in a heartbeat to see what that month’s chef had in store.
After our wonderful afternoon there, we walked around the hangar for a bit, then headed back to the hotel to relax before our evening at an Austrian Christmas play.
We had a wonderful time at the show. There were cute, talented kids and great talented musicians. While we couldn’t understand a lot of the dialogue (even with context clues it was often difficult), it was still incredibly enjoyable to listen to the music. Plus, it was awesome to see that the Austrian theatre-goers were all dressed up in very traditional dirndls and trachten.
It’s safe to say that we’re having a wonderful time on this vacation so far and feel so lucky to have the opportunity to do and see so much. While I wish it had been nicer weather in Salzburg so we could enjoy the markets a bit more, we still trekked out and made sure we saw as much as we could! Tomorrow, we head to Munich!
Have you eaten at a Michelin-star restaurant? Would you want to, or would you save your money for another part of the vacation?
Innsbruck, Austria
There’s just something about mountain towns that I adore. Maybe it’s because my first European vacation featured mountains and beautiful scenery. Maybe it’s because I like the crisp, clean air. Maybe it’s because I got engaged at the top of a mountain in Europe. Whatever it is, I am so, so happy in the mountains.
Innsbruck, Austria is no exception. Innsbruck is a wonderful mountain town on the smaller side with all of the class and sophistication of a larger city. And oh! It’s been PERFECT for us since the Christmas market is open and there are so many things to see and do!
I won’t drone on and on too much…I’ll let the pictures do the talking!
Since it was a Sunday, there were people everywhere! The shops in the old town were all open, but most of the rest of the city was shut down. It was busy, it was exciting, and the booths were all filled with delicious or beautiful things! Everyone at the booths spoke English, so even though we tried to speak a little German, the workers were all very nice about speaking English.
After meandering around the market for a bit, we decided to hike up to the Alpenzoo, which is a zoo of creatures all local to the Alpines. It was wonderful since I hadn’t seen some of those animals before!
The wolves were a particular favorite of mine. Part of me felt terrible that they were enclosed at the zoo, but another part of me was so happy that I could get so close to them.
Then there were barnyard animals, which I’m not usually super gung-ho about, but there were baby piglets!! How could you not aww at them??
They were SO cute. Mike liked the big horned lamb and they kept making faces at each other. True love.
Oh, and see this picture?
See the tiny buildings on the ground? Yeah, we walked up here from down there. Mike said it was a “short walk” and it ended up being a “short mountain hike.” We took the bus back down to save our legs for the rest of the trip.
After the zoo, we headed back to the Christmas market for some more glühwein (hot mulled wine) and other treats!
Our second day here was more dedicated to shopping since we don’t have any Christmas gifts for each other. We both got new winter coats, and Mike got a few other needed items at a department store that was very nice. Really, all of the stores in Innsbruck were high-quality, classy stores that we could find any number of items that we loved. Innsbruck had some great shopping!
After shopping, we hit the Christmas market back up for more food and glühwein (I’m telling you, this stuff is amazing).
All in all, I LOVED Innsbruck. Going during this time while the Christmas Market was open was a wonderful decision. The weather wasn’t too terribly cold, and when it did get chilly, there were plenty of places to duck in and warm up. We also didn’t spend too much money here on food since the street vendors were so accessible and cheap. You can see our new coats in the above photos, and while they weren’t exactly cheap, they were good, necessary buys. Plus, doesn’t Mike look so dashing in his new scarf? I’m obsessed with it.
The first two days of our vacation have been so wonderful! I’m excited to see what Salzburg has in store for us. We’ll be driving there tomorrow, so stay tuned!!
Mike and Mandy’s Winterurlaub 2011!!!
I’ve kept something very exciting from you guys…Mike and I are going on a winter vacation tomorrow and will be gone for 10 days!
Where are we going, you ask?
- Flying from Santiago to Milan
- Driving from Milan to Innsbruck, Austria
- Innsbruck to Salzburg, Austria
- Salzburch to Munich, Germany
- Munich to the Neuschwanstein Castle
- The Neuschwanstein Castle to Liechtenstein
- Liechtenstein back to the airport near Milan
- Flying back to Santiago, Spain
Crazy, right?? We’re so excited for this trip!
Some things we plan on doing:
Go Christmas shopping around the Christmas markets:
Perhaps go on a Sound of Music tour??
Visit the Neuschwanstein Castle (aka: the castle that inspired the Disney Castle):
AND EAT!!
Mike lined up quite a few impressive restaurants for us to visit, including:
Tantris: A 2-Star Michelin Restaurant near Munich
Terrine: a 1-Star Michelin Restaurant near Munich (and yes, I do believe those are shaved black truffles in the above photo
Carpe Diem, Finest Finger Food: a 1-Star Michelin Restaurant in Salzburg, Austria
And lastly, the one I’m looking forward to the most:
Ikaru: a 1-Star Michelin Restaurant in Salzburg, Austria. Ikaru is unique in that it does not have a single chef heading the restaurant. Rather, every month it invites guest chefs from around the world to plan and cook their own menu that month. When we are going to be here, the chefs are from Sao Paulo, Brazil. Their menu looks incredible.
I think it’s safe to say that the most exciting thing about travel to us is getting to eat and taste a bit of the best around the world. I’m not sure how our travel style will change once kids enter the picture, but for now we’re going to live it up by doing as much of this kind of stuff as we can. We’re also going bonkers over the thought of pretty Christmas markets nestled in the mountains. Talk about picturesque!
So while we’re gone, posting may be a bit infrequent, but I’ll still try to write when I can. Have any of you been to these cities? Any suggestions on where we might want to go?
Hasta Luego! Ciao! Auf Wiedersehen! See ya!
Coruña
This past Saturday was a gorgeous day. We decided to head into La Coruña, which is about 30 minutes away from us. It’s the 19th largest city in Spain and has a nickname of A cidade de cristal (The Glass City). Most of the buildings in the city are covered in windows, and when the sun reflects off of them, they give a beautiful affect to the city.
But first, we headed to the Tower of Hercules, which is an ancient Roman Lighthouse as old as the 2nd century! It has been declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and the surrounding area is full of bike and walking paths, as well as a golf course and a beautiful coastline.
We walked around the tower for a bit…
(it’s a soldier with a gun)
And then we went inside!
It was pretty cool walking in and seeing the ruins of what the tower was before renovations. The ceilings were so low at first, I was a little scared we’d have to duck the whole way! But once we got climbing the stairs, there was plenty of headroom. We climbed the tower (242 steps) and got a very rewarding view at the top!
From this view, you can see all of the space for the bike trails, and you can also see the city of Coruña in the last photo.
After we went down all 242 steps, we walked around the trails a bit.
Beautiful, right?? We decided that this would be an awesome place for a picnic, so we might just have to do that sometime soon!
After the Tower of Hercules, we went into the city of Coruña. We’ve been a couple of other times, but mostly at night after everything but the bars had closed. Of course, we got into the city right at seista, which is 2-4pm in this area of Spain. Um…I didn’t know people seista’d on Saturdays, but whatevs. Some shops were open and we had a nice time window shopping.
In that last picture, you get an idea of why it’s nicknamed the city of glass!
Mike and I feel great that there’s a city so close to us that we can explore on Saturdays (everything is closed on Sunday). It’s definitely not Philadelphia…the cuisine here is still all very traditional to the area and there isn’t a lot of ethnic cuisine, but there are some highly rated restaurants here that we’d like to check out! We already found one place called Abica that we truly love and I know we’ll be going back soon!
I do like the city though and I think it has a lot to offer! I look forward to knowing it well by the time we leave!
Losing Trust
Since we moved here on account of Mike’s job, it has required us to go through about a million and a half people for each step in the process. First, there was the person who held all of the information about the job but who didn’t post it when she said she would (over and over again). There have been HR people who promised us things they didn’t deliver on. There have been managers who are unresponsive. There was the promotion Mike was promised, oh, LAST NOVEMBER that those in charge dragged their feet on and haven’t responded to inquiries on the subject. There were the people in charge of getting our visa paperwork that had us running around for months to get everything in order, only to then say that we apparently WOULDN’T be getting visas. Instead, we’d be entering the country under a military agreement called “SOFA Status.”
Except…we still don’t have SOFA status. In fact, in a couple of weeks, we will officially be in this country illegally if the paperwork is not in order by that time. We’re trying to get the company to make some “suggestions” for what we might do if our legal status expires before our paperwork is in order. I’m really hoping that their answer isn’t “it’ll be fiiiine” but my hopes aren’t really that high.
And then we tried to purchase a car. Two people who were hired to help us relocate told us that we could purchase a car in this country and it would take a few extra steps, but it was possible. A day before we were supposed to purchase a car, it turned out that we wouldn’t be allowed to get insurance on the car (after at LEAST 6 or 7 emails confirming we could get insurance and two months of discussing it). A week later, they found an insurance company that WOULD insure us. So in order to pay for the car in cash, we cashed in some of our stocks and investments and spent weeks transferring the money into cash, incurring regular fees along the way for ATM transactions and whatnot.
So we found a car. We paid in cash for the car. We were supposed to pick it up a few days later. Mike returned his rental car, took a taxi to the dealership, and lo and behold, there was a problem. We can’t buy a car!! Shocker. So Mike was without a car and had no way of getting back home. The dealership lent him a car while we got other arrangements together.
There have been SO many fails on SO many people’s parts during this whole process. We cashed in thousands and thousands of dollars of our investments, incurred fees converting it to Euros in cash. We lost money on a deal that never should have happened in the first place. That money could still be sitting in an account, accruing money for our future children instead. Somewhere along the way, SOMEONE should have told us that no, it isn’t possible to buy a car. That we HAVE to rent even though it’s more expensive than purchasing.
We still don’t have all of our items from home, either. Our big items like our beds and our christmas tree aren’t here. We’ve been told for weeks that it would be “soon.” We’re trying to schedule the delivery for this week since we’re going out of town next week. I can’t imagine what people do if they buy an unfurnished place and wait for their furniture for months before it arrives.
At the risk of sounding dramatic, we just don’t trust people anymore. We just don’t. We don’t trust that anyone will do what they say they will. We don’t trust that people who assure us of something they “know” actually know anything at all. We don’t trust that people who are paid to help us will help us at all.
I had no idea when we took this job that I would lose faith in so much of humanity. We’ve always been prepared to the extreme…sending 3 or 4 confirmation emails to people on things just to be sure the status hasn’t changed, that we will be good to go. The fact that so many emails have gone back and forth telling us false information or misleading information is so, so disheartening.
I don’t trust that we’ll be “just fiiiine” if our legal status here expires before our paperwork is ready. I don’t think it’s fair of anyone to ask us to be here illegally because someone else didn’t do their job properly. In fact, I think it’s…um…illegal for someone to ask that of us. Personally, I’d rather spend Christmas back at home instead of in a Spanish jail cell if we’re caught.
It’s sad that an experience like this that was supposed to be fun and exciting has made us so much more cautious of everything and everyone. It’s sad that people who have our lives in their hands have misled us on numerous occasions. It’s sad that we used to want to travel and live abroad beyond our time here in Spain, but now we have to seriously, seriously reconsider that dream.
Welcome!
I'm Mandy!
I'm also Mrs. Socks on Weddingbee!
