Advertisement
Published: January 9th 2017
Edit Blog Post
Happy New Year
I hope that 2017 brings you good health and happiness.
Chris went back to the UK for a visit in December and I was quite happy on my own, having a car makes getting around so much easier. I did the usual things gym, school etc and also joined in a Christmas meal in Mula with a group of people who run a local charity shop.
I needed to get an NIE
Número de Identidad de Extranjero so that I can open a bank account and move forward with the work on the house so decided to drive to Lorca, about 45 minutes away thinking it would be less busy than in Murcia City.It took about half an hour to find the office which is a hut at the end of a derelict car park. However I couldn’t do my application there and needed to go to Murcia!! It wasn’t a wasted trip as I bought a folding table for the house and collected some stuff that Chris had left in the motor home. On Friday 16
th it started to rain about midday and it didn’t stop until about 8am on 19
th December. It
was so bad I drove down to the shop, a 3 minute walk!! I had three buckets in the garage to collect water where places were leaking. Some of the picture people posted were amazing as water is usually so scare here. Now, for my friends in the UK who have rain regularly it probably was a fraction of the rain that they get but in two days we had six months worth of rain. A whole town on the coast, Los Alcazares, was devastated with flooding. Some friends were stranded in San Javier airport and had to sleep overnight.
Luckily by the time I had to drive to Alicante to collect Chris it had subsided a bit but it did mean the children’s concert in Mula was postponed from Monday to Wednesday. The children did two lovely Christmas songs. On Thursday Chris joined our walking group and I stayed in the village as it was the last day of school and there was a winter festival at school. We had biscuits and chocolate and then they did a reprise of their songs and then the nativity story. At the end Santa Claus visited and I got a beautiful
scarf from his sack and then a basket full of wine and Christmas goodies. I feel very humbled as I love my time at school.
Afterwards some of the families went up to the Hospederia for an end of term meal and they invited me. The food was lovely and the views are stunning. It was my first visit, we had a selection of starters and then the main course was a type of paella. It was a traditional dish from the Mar Menor, when times were hard small fish and shellfish shells were boiled up to make a strong stock and then added to rice and vegetables to give the impression that there was fish. Our version did have small pieces of sepia. It was good to feel part of the village but six hours of speaking just Spanish, and trying to understand the conversation was hard work and I was pretty tired.
The next day Chris drove up to Alicante to pick up his aunt and son who were visiting for Christmas. We had a lovely time with them although I was ill for a couple of days with this cold virus that is doing the rounds; I had been ill while Chris was away and again last week. We had hoped to eat in the village on Christmas Eve, the traditional Christmas meal but the salon was closed for the family who run it to eat there.
We did eat out at the salon on Christmas Day with four friends Tony, Sue, Mike and Maureen and we had a table for eight. It was very busy and the food was delicious, we had a whole range of starters and then main course, desert and coffee and cake. It is my first ever Christmas day out and it was so nice to relax and have other people do the work. I chatted to the girls back in the UK, although Imogen and Keith were ill and when everyone got together on Boxing Day Amy and Rob were also struggling, as was their dad. Apparently the house was a bit like an episode of ER! On Boxing Day Chris went down to the coast with Adam and Pat but I stayed in bed most of the day.
We took them back to the airport and then I went to the
oficinas de extranjeros in Murciato apply for my NIE. Nothing in Spain is easy as well as the forms you have to get another form from the office and take it to the bank to pay, the latter took about an hour, all for €9.45. Why they can’t have a place for you to pay in the office, who knows!! Eventually I got my copy and a cursory, “come back in five days”.
That was Round one of Spanish bureaucracy. Round 2 Chris realised that his council tax hadn’t been paid and the bank confirmed that it hadn’t been requested. So we had to yomp to the top of Mula to ask what the problem was. We got a story about someone looking at whether our house was correctly assessed. “Come back in March and don’t worry”
Round 3, a visit to the abogado to sort out the paperwork to change ownership of the property and there were two outstanding pieces of paper, my NIE and the council tax receipt for 2016. We then visited a different office in Mula and a very helpful lady said it was marked as waiting and had been suspended but that it was the same amount as 2015, so she couldn’t see what the problem was. Back up to the Agencia office and a different tack, I said we want to pay so we can sell the house and after a quick phone call, some printing and a trip to the bank TAX PAID!!
Round 4, five days later I went back to collect my NIE and having waited about 20 minutes in the queue there was no trace of my application. The guy behind the counter took me off to another office, still no sign of the paperwork. Luckily I had taken my passport so he took another copy and they used my copy of the paperwork to issue an NIE, result. PHEW !!
On the positive side we now have a contract with the architects and they are working on the project plan. Hopefully tomorrow the process can start for the joint ownership of the house.
We had New Year’s Eve at the salon but I was pretty ropey and doped up with flu stuff and we spent a pretty quiet 1
st January. We joined to locals for the arrival of the Kings on 5
th January and enjoyed the traditional Roscon and fizz.
So what next ?
On Tuesday we set off in the train for Madrid and then on Wednesday we fly to Cairo for a three and a half week trip to Egypt. We will do all of the cultural stuff and have a week on the coast for diving, snorkelling and chilling. Then hopefully when we get back we might have some idea of when the changes to the house might happen!
Norma x
Advertisement
Tot: 0.202s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 8; qc: 53; dbt: 0.0732s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb