Week 1

Week 1

Thursday 21 January

After a good night’s rest at Casa Barranca and a lovely breakfast, Mirjam and I had to go to the next town to meet with the bank and 2 hours later sign the deed to the house at the notary. Our lawyer was at the bank too so she could translate. We were there at the agreed time of 10:00, but had to wait while our lawyer was finishing up with her 09:30 appointment. While we were waiting our lawyer received a call to cancel the appointment with the notary, because the notary and his wife had gone into quarantine after contracting Covid19. How to proceed now? The movers were coming with all our things the next day. After speaking with the sellers, it was agreed that we would pay them that day and we would get the keys. Signing the deed could be done another day.

When we finally got called to the desk at 11:00, it took a total of 4.5 hours (!) and 50 signatures to open the account in our name, get us internet access and do six transfers. For the six transfers the bank wanted to charge us €600 in commissions. We think it is a tactical move to throw this little curve ball after numbing you for 4 hours. But we were still awake enough not to agree and get it all the hell over with. Instead we asked how we could avoid these commissions and that turned out to be quite simple. There were three conditions: 1) open a savings account and transfer an amount to it, 2) use the bankcards, 3) have an income of at least €600 deposited on the current account. We could easily comply with these conditions and poof, gone was the €600 commissions charge.

Meanwhile, Karim was back at the B&B with the cats and worked on his laptop, doing what he does best. We didn’t get back until 16:00 hrs. We collected Karim and went to the house for the inspection and to show it to Karim. Seeing the house in empty state made it look even bigger. It is a lovely house, with lovely grounds. Mark – the seller – was there and showed us around, explaining things. When he left we had another walk through and then went back to Casa Barranca to celebrate and have dinner.

Despite our excitement, we slept like a log. Tomorrow we would move into our new house.

Friday 22 January

Mirjam woke up with the brilliant idea of asking the hosts at Casa Barranca if the cats could stay at the apartment until the movers had left. The cats seemed to be comfortable there and at the house, they would just be in the way, or would need to be locked in a room or garage. Elaine very kindly allowed the cats to stay. Such a relief.

It was 08:30 and we went to the house to greet the movers. The truck arrived at 09:00 as agreed. It was huge and the driver told us he had more stuff waiting at a parking lot just off the freeway.

Unfortunately, the local hands hadn’t arrived yet and the driver had a hard time reaching them by phone. When he finally did, it turned out they had misunderstood the rendez-vous time and place. But they got there quickly while Mirjam used that time to label each room. Then the unloading could begin. Fifty cubic meters of stuff. Karim and I helped with the unloading and Mirjam stayed with the truck to explain to the movers which room each item was supposed to go in. One of the locals had lived in Holland for 20 years, which made communicating with these guys so much easier.

There was a fierce wind, which caused the electricity to go off. Usually not so bad, but it meant no coffee. When it came back on for a few minutes, Mirjam managed to make 3 cups of coffee, which we gave to the movers. Karim, Mirjam and I had to wait for the next time the power came on.

It took us 6 hours to unload everything and put it in the right rooms. Then, quite unexpectedly, but as agreed, the internet man arrived to hook us up. It took him 15 minutes and we were live. We had internet and a wifi network. Whoohoo!

Then we went to fetch the cats and pay for the extra day, but Elaine wouldn’t accept any money. So kind.

Karim, Mirjam and I spent the next hours making sure our we had a table to sit at, that we had lights and that the bedrooms were in order, with made up beds, night table lights and towels.

While we were busy, we saw, from the kitchen window one of the three neighbors from up the street pass by, with a flock of sheep. That’s the kind of thing we can expect to happen here.

Somehow, Mirjam managed to fix dinner and after unpacking a few more boxes, we decided to call it a day. You’d think we would have been too excited to sleep, but we slept like babies, exhausted, not just from the physical labor, but also because there is so much to think of.

Saturday and Sunday, we spent unpacking, putting things together, hanging things up, moving boxes that had ended up in the wrong room, etc. It was so good to have Karim there to help us those first days.

When we woke up on Sunday, we noticed the most wonderful sunrise, which we went to enjoy from the balcony.

On Monday Karim had to go back. Driving back by himself he didn’t have the luxury of switching drivers, so we made sure he did no more than 8 hours a day. We got him food for the three days and two nights and made reservations for him in Girona and Dijon. We kept in contact a lot and as much as we could, we made sure he was as comfortable as possible. We felt bad having to make him drive back by himself, we felt sad seeing him go, we felt grateful for his help.

Tuesday was the day we finally got to the notary to sign the deed. We now officially owned the house! We also had to go back to the bank to pick up our bank cards. While there we found out that because we have a savings account, the bank gives us back 10% of every bill paid by direct debit. That was a nice surprise and compensated some of the agony of the 4.5 hours we had spent there on Thursday.

Now that we could prove we owned a house in town, we needed to go and register as residents. Off to the townhall we went.

The kind lady spoke English with us and after a short 30 minutes, she handed us a document and told us all was done. Great!

Next stop, the employment office. We were met by a guard who told us we needed to make an appointment first and gave us a number to call and a website to visit.

Back at the house, we were unable to get through to that number he gave us. Making an appointment on the website was only possible if you could enter a Spanish phone number, which we didn’t have yet. That was something to take care of the next day.

Wednesday we found a place where they sell phone plans of the provider the sellers (now our neighbors, because they temporarily moved into the house next door) told us has best reception at the house. The young lady behind the desk was very kind and helpful and it ‘only’ took 1.5 hours to get a contract. But then she told us there was a problem with the provider’s website and that she was told that it could take up to 2 days to fix it and get the numbers activated. There was a slight chance it was going to be fixed that same day, in which case she would call or message us. We went home rather disappointed and hoped she would call. She didn’t.

The rest of the daywas spent unpacking more and giving things a new place. Mirjam even managed to bake some bread!

More in the next blog!