Troubles

All this said I love it and cannot imagine living anywhere else.

Bank queues

Hello Spain. Did you know you could have more than one cashier available? No. Need to go to the bank? Be ready to lose 30 minutes or more of your life. Used to be an hour each time so things have improved apparently!

Bureaucracy

Nearly always the simplest things can be so hard (but not the internet installation which was 2 days and way better than the UK). Even signing for a parcel or piece of furniture they ask you to give them your ID number – NIE or passport number. To open my Sabadell bank account (which is great by the way, did not require a NIE and although there is a small monthly fee there are no fees for transferring money from UK in etc) took some 15 signatures on different bits of paper!!!

To get the legally required identification number for foreigners (the NIE) or if staying over three months the residencia, one is advised to queue up 90 mins before the police station opens at 9am else you could queue 4 hours and be turned away when they close. And what are you queueing for? Just to be give a form and an appointment to come back to a fresh hell when you won’t be seen at the given time and will have to queue once more. I am told getting a social security number is well and truly hellish with surly unfriendly staff. This short comic film (with English subtitles) is sadly nearly accurate – The Legendary Bureaucrats of Spain. You’d also think that in the department that deals with foreigners they would employ people who spoke English etc.!

On the subject of getting a NIE/residence at the Malaga Police Station (open 9am to 2pm for this purpose) reports from the Expats in Malaga facebook group vary as follows:

“The first time I went was around 11 am and I had to wait for four hours. The office was closing but as we had all been waiting there for so long, they decided to stay open until 3 pm” (note is unusual they stayed open longer)

“For my first appointment, I got there at about 07:30! And that only put me third in line. It meant I could get in and out in about twenty minutes, as I had a lot to do that day. There were maybe about forty or so people in line that morning.” that was from Leighton who also told us “The social security people seemed worse! The woman who saw me was the most stony-faced person in the history of stony-faced people. She could see how hard I was trying to communicate with her in my limited Spanish; how much I was struggling with parts of the paperwork. But she didn’t even try to meet me halfway, pitch in with the form, or even crack a smile. Oh, and she copied my passport number down incorrectly on the form, meaning I had to go back and get her to do it again. If I were that bad at my job, I’d be unemployed.”

“I went a couple of days ago with a Spanish local who knew everyone. There was a queue about a mile long, we walked straight to the front, straight in, to the front of another queue, up to the desk and was out with my residential in about 10 mins! It’s not what you know it’s what you know it’s who you know! LOL”

What everyone agreed on is this rite of passage is totally worth it to live in this fab place.

Conversation and commerce

Don’t be surprised if you walk into a hair salon as my friend did and get ignored for fifteen minutes while three hairdressers have a very important conversation about what to write on a record card.

I am going to buy a portable aircon unit. I am told to wait until June when they will have offers on them. Only Spain has discounts during peak demand time.

You will be glad you have reached your turn at the checkout but then the cashier leaves to go outside for ten minutes to talk to her friend who is outside the shop with her new baby.

You will be driving when the car in front stops to talk to someone for ten minutes who was driving in the opposite direction. Everyone waits until they finish without hooting for at least five or ten minutes.

Dogs

Dog poo is a horrible blight on Malaga. Not only can many owners not pick up after their dogs but they cannot feed them properly either so expect runny puddles of stinky dog poo too. All you can do is watch where you are walking. In Plaza Merced having a late lunch a dog running free sat in the middle of the tables outside and did a poo. I saw where it ran back to and led the waiter to the dog so he could ask the owner to come pick it up. Was a right wet steaming one too. Funny how she let it off the least yet when it had done its business, was back on the leash. She thought she had got away with it.

Farm yard

No need to miss el campo. There is corn growing outside my house and my neighbour pastures his hens and their chicks on the square in front of my house. Really not keen on his cockerel crowing in the morning nor his noisy homing pigeons when they fly back. Am I really living in a city?

Update: he now has rabbits and asks that I give him all my vegetable peelings and old bread. Yes rabbits should not be eating bread but hey.

Parking

Parking is a nightmare beyond nightmare in the city and in Pedregalejo area. I have friends with cars living outside of the city who after driving an hour have given up on their night out in Malaga and gone home.  If a special event is on the paid car parks are full. If you want to live in the city and have a car you need to rent a parking space or find a place to live that comes with a spot in the garage. If you don’t need a car then is a walker’s heaven. I am in the centre near Plaza de la Merced so can walk everywhere which keeps me fit and I love it including not having the hassle of car ownership.

Plagues – ants, cockroaches, mosquitos and don’t forget the floods

Some days you feel as if your problems are biblical. Even in the winter I was killing a dozen mozzies a night where I lived on Calle Lagunillas plus when the heavy rain came in so did the mice! My crazy flat mate decided to use glue to deal with the mice and I then had months of stepping on glue, getting it on my hands or in my hair while opening cupboards and it proved impossible to clean off them too. Probably the most dumb idea yet I have seen for tackling such a problem. I will never forget the sound of them screaming when he would pick up the piece of cardboard they were glued to, before throwing them out the window! I then bought a mouse/rat trap that electrocutes them quickly when they enter. I am still a bit scarred from that mouse and glue experience.

Then moving into a house delighted that I had no mozzies or mice, but ants and cockroaches aplenty [sigh]. I’m now trying the gels for both as have been told that works a treat. I also seriously love my cleaner who opens up under the kitchen cabinet to kill the cockroaches. When I saw the first one I screamed and opened the front door and he calmly walked out. I called him Colin. The next one wasn’t as obedient and killing it freaked me out because of the fat crunchy texture of them. Was shell shocked for hours. Since I have got over it and killing them is drama free-ish. Looking forward to not having any more to deal with. Even considered getting a cat to remedy it or moving to a top floor flat (although they sometimes get up to those too). The plugin thing I bought was rubbish.

Now the ants saga – just awful and took a while for the Nippon ant bait I had sent to me from the UK to work. The stuff sold here at the Chinos does not work. At times I was in my bathroom thinking I was in the middle of the  opening ceremony for the ant olympics. I don’t know if they died or just moved upstairs but I hope the gel works faster. At one point I also was spraying vinegar and putting lemon slices all over as am pro natural solutions rather than chemicals because of the effects they have on our bodies, but neither really worked although they did make their way around them. Oh what a mess and a stink!

As if there were anything left of my nerves to be tested, I heard a strange gentle hissing sound from my bathroom basin but made the mistake of thinking it was coming from my neighbours using their tap. Two hours later I realised the noise was louder and found the start of a swimming pool on the bathroom floor. A tap had rusted right through and disintegrated. Non of the strange tap head operated water shut offs in the patio worked to shut off the water and I had not been given a key to the main shut off point behind a small door at the front of the house. A dear friend came to my rescue (mum and I were barely keeping up with getting containers of water emptied and the floor mopped while trying to fathom how to shut off the water) and we prized open the door to be able to shut it off.

My bathroom shower pipe is rusty and I am concerned now that will rust through and create its own spontaneous shower – all my landlord has done is to paint over the rust with metallic paint. My terraza roof was leaking and I was told by him it is meant for sun and not rain!!! However the handy man squirted in some sealant foam stuff and that now seems okay.

Latest issue is front door expands when in the hot morning sun and then I cannot get it open or shut without a fight. Oh I am really having fun in the sun as you can see.

Planning

The Spanish are indeed a spontaneous bunch and after a few months of living here you learn why making plans can be a complete waste of time:

• All my furniture and possessions moved down three floors with no lift, which nearly killed us, ready for Spanish van man to turn up at Saturday 11:30am to take it to my new place, except no sign of him and when he finally calls me back is moving someone else and suggests Monday!!! Fortunately my Spanish friend knew someone with a van who came from Alhaurin to do it. Phew!
• On Saturday you go especially to check restaurant is open on the Monday evening and until what time, because you are organising a birthday party and you tell 40 people to meet you there. You turn up to find the shutters nearly down and that they have decided to close! They did at least give us some cardboard and tape so we could stick a sign up saying where we were.
• At your yoga retreat you go to hall at 7pm as scheduled for meditation but the hotel has decided to let someone giving a massage use it. Still ending up chanting om at the top of a mountain instead was pretty cool.

Walking

In Malaga one has to develop a new way of walking. In most countries people step out of each other’s way deftly subtlety but in Malaga the Spanish make a bee line for a point and you must get out of the way.  You have to treat every Spaniard coming towards you like oncoming traffic.

Weather extremes

A lot of rain? Expect flooding. You rarely see rain but when it rains is monsoon like more often than not. Often raining incredibly hard at night when it does. You might get gale force winds out of nowhere too. They don’t seem to have built for anything other than sunny days. Can someone please tell them that winter happens every year like clockwork and insulation also helps keep building cool in summer. That said despite the moaning about roasting in summer and freezing on winter nights nobody I know here would live anywhere else. When it goes cold after a baking hot spell I want the heat back. It’s April as I write this and I am cold in bed – need bed socks still :-). I am a friolera (cold feeling person) though. Come the summer I will barely be able to stand having a thin sheet covering me. All the sunshine is pretty constant save for spells of grey days. From June 2014 to September 2014 I think it only rained twice if I recall correctly.

Websites

The internet in Spain is in the dark ages of early 1990s with awful colours and abysmal usability found on many sites, especially independent estate agents. When buying fancy dress costume I was most surprised I made an order without paying and got a confirmation and then another email shortly after inviting me to pay. They do like to entertain bureaucracy and extra steps.

Workmen

My post on a facebook group says it all: “Please help me. Does anyone know a good handy man (and/or painter n decorator) in centre of Malaga that actually fixes things so they do not break again, doesn’t fill your shoes with plaster dust, doesn’t do plastering next to a black sofa without covering/moving it and doesn’t re-grout around the bath leaving a bumpy 2 inch wide grout trail all around it. I honestly prefer to pay for repairs myself than have the landlord send the gorilla round again.”

Ah hoc

The trouble with being British