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Mailing Mishaps and More

25 Apr

After almost two months, I finally received the second box of items I had mailed to me here in Altea Spain after I had gotten a permanent apartment. As I previously detailed, in preparation of the move from California’s Central Coast to Spain, I sold my large house and all its contents, with the exception of family keepsakes, a few travel souvenirs, and my most cherished kitchen items. It is not worth shipping most things, but I am quite attached to certain pans, my kitchen knives and the wooden block that holds them. To that end, before coming to Spain, I packed two boxes; I brought two large suitcases with me on the plane. That was all.

 

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Marie Sharp’s

Before the second box was packed, I decided to purchase spices and condiments I could not find here in Altea. Most of these were Asian, like fish sauce, black bean garlic sauce, sriracha, sambal, and surprisingly, crushed red chili flakes. Spanish food is seldom spicy, and I crave that taste profile so much that I carry a small bottle of the world’s most delicious hot sauce, Belizean Marie Sharp’s habanero pepper sauce in my purse.

 

Besides the outrageous shipping rate for mailing my box, (over $300), after several weeks, I feared it was lost as I had heard nothing, and the first box had come quicker, (not quick, mind you.) When the first box arrived, it was gaping open and the postal worker asked me to help carry the box as it was heavy. What??!! A few items were broken and missing-I now only have three of the “big five” animals from my collection from my safari in Africa. Given the shape of the box, I was surprised more items weren’t broken.

 

With regard to the second box, I finally received a letter from the Spanish post office demanding I download forms from their website, fill them out regarding the exact contents of the box, and provide receipts for the items. In Spanish, I tried to explain that most items were personal and old, with the exceptions of the condiments I could not get here. I subsequently received a demand of about 55€ for tax and other fees to get the box released. That is about the same cost of the condiments. If I had taken off the seals, I may have avoided this fiasco, but I had been worried, they might think I was transporting contents other than what was listed on the bottles. If they were opened, they would spoil, so I left the seals intact so as not to raise any suspicions. After a few more weeks after paying the fee, I received notice my box was now being sent to customs. So I paid the fees, but could still have customs deny my delivery? Such are the frustrations of adjusting to the Spanish bureaucracy.

 

Taxed condiment and spices

The box finally arrived yesterday. Once again, the postal worker asked me to help carry it. No dolly in sight. The box had been resealed, but once open it was evident the contents had been randomly thrown into it. Even the knives were not put back into their wooden block, protruding every which way. And since I am accident prone, it was inevitable that I would get cut. At least it wasn’t too deep. Once the bleeding stopped, I was able to unpack the contents, wash the dishes as well as the Provençal style napkins and hot pads, and Williams Sonoma t-towels. I experienced the simple joy at having those cheerful Provençal bright blue backgrounds punctuated by vibrant yellow lemons, as well as the thick, quality t-towels.

 

Now inspired to cook, I decided to make a Caesar salad, as I now had anchovy paste (which I find easier than fresh anchovies) and my immersion blender. I mashed together the garlic, anchovy paste, mustard, egg yolk, and then prepared to gradually blend in the oil. When I turned on the blender, I heard an electrical cracking sound from the outlet, and the blender would not work. That wasn’t all. There was no electricity in my apartment at all. I had used other American appliances with electrical converters without any problems until now. I only hoped I could figure out how to get the electricity back working. I remembered during one of my apartment tours that when the electricity wasn’t working, the realtor went to a small metal box on the wall near the entry door to turn on the electricity. I repeated what I had seen her do, and after flipping all the switches to the same direction, electricity was restored. In every house I have ever owned in California, whether old or new, all the electricity circuit breakers are located outside at very inconvenient spots outside and in the back of the house, making for difficulty in locating or fixing when it is dark or inclement weather. I think the Americans could take a lesson from the Spanish…at least in this regard.

 

I had difficulty getting the salad dressing to thoroughly blend without the assistance of the hand blender, but it still was tasty, along with the perfectly cooked boiled and peeled eggs, with their perfect soft bright golden orange yolks, with nary a trace of green around them. I am still surprised when I go to a restaurant, and egg yolks are covered with an unappetizing green outer layer. It is incredibly easy to make them without that hideous green. If you don’t know how, let me know, and I will post it. Hint: the key is bringing the water to a boil, shutting heat off, then adding the eggs and covering for the time needed to cook them to your liking.

 

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Altea

The arrival on the second box allowed me to get my piso (apartment) up and running in full. I had already covered the gold velour couch and two matching chairs with fundas de sofa (couch and chair covers blue with a little background gold keeping with the Provençal and Spanish color theme) and I covered the pink shellacked side board with Provençal table cloths, blue with lemons, of course.) The same pink shellacked headboard and bedside desks “adorned” my bedroom, so I bought neutral sheets and comforter, and bedcover with a touch of pink to bring the room together. The mattress provided was not to my liking, and given how much time is spent sleeping, I splurged and bought a mattress from an upscale hotel chain, on whose beds I have always slept well. It was well worth it. My apartment here in Altea does not begin to compare with the home or furnishings California, but I am quite content here. The neighborhood, views and people can’t be beat.

 

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Pepper: local celebrity

And now Pepper and I am heading out to buy a new immersion blender in the hopes of rehabilitating my pathetic Caesar dressing, and then heading to the beach for the beautiful weather and view, a tasty two course menu del dia, and later cavorting with friends.

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Challenges and Affirmations on Moving to Spain

15 Apr
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View from my window of husband tying his wife’s shoe

Of course it rained today. As I said in an earlier post, since I no longer have a car on which to rain after I wash it, it seems like whenever I wash my laundry and hang it out to dry, it rains. On a positive note, the rain gives me a head start on cleaning the black window grates that adorn my windows. While cleaning them, I observed a husband lovingly tying his wife’s shoe.

The rain reminds me of a puzzling observation. Here in Altea (Spain), many of the newer sidewalks are mad of lovely, shiny white tiles, but when it rains, everyone walks in the streets because they are as slick as ice. When growing up in Nebraska, while it seemed everyone else would glide for fun along the icy sidewalks, I would walk with extreme caution yet was the only one who fell. So I am not taking any chances here.

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My now clean black ornamental window grate

The rain seemed to reflect my most recent mood in dealing with what I thought would be the simple task of paying for my cell phone/internet/television channels. Initially, I could not get service because I did not have a Spanish bank account, even though I had credit cards and a local residential residency card. The local “Movistar” representative spent several weeks trying to get me service. Just after the service was finally confirmed, the installers arrived within a two hours and very quickly and efficiently got all three services up and running. I didn’t get a bill for almost two months, and when I did, I went to the local Movistar office to pay the bill. I couldn’t pay there; I had to either pay at the bank (huge line) or the post office, yes, the post office. I successfully paid the first meager bill of 6.24 Euros, and was surprised at how easily it went at the post office.

Just afterwards, I started getting text and phone messages on my cell that service would be suspended if I did not make a payment of 30 some Euros. I had not received a bill, so I went to the Movistar office and was advised to go to the post office or bank to pay. Long story short, without a bill, I did not have the account number to pay it, as it seems that there are different account numbers for the cell and internet/tv. So today the whole of my day will be devoted to trying to find an account number for the latter. Frustrated, I realized there was nothing more that I could do today, especially given the approaching close of the banks and post office and the close of businesses for the three hour siesta.

I decided to head for a locals café for an inexpensive menu del dia, only 8 Euros, where they place a newly opened bottle of wine on your table from which one can drink as much as one wants. En route, I heard a man addressing me. When I turned around, he handed me the 55 Euros and prior Movistar bill, which had fallen out of my pocket, where I had stuffed it after leaving the bank in frustration. This act of kindness caused my mood to suddenly improve.

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Newly arrived National Geographic World map

Then, as I type this, I had a serendipitous delivery of the 125th National Geographic world map I ordered from Amazon in Spain. I admit I am a nerdy “cartophile.” All three of my adult sons are similarly disposed. Before ordering, I checked to make sure it was current by looking for the youngest country, South Sudan, on the map. This delivery and the anticipation of spending time with my new map has temporarily eased my bill paying distress. Living in Spain, it seems best to order from a Spanish company as I learned when I asked my son to add some condiments and spices to one of the two boxes I had shipped here from California. These were items that I have been unable to find where I live in Altea, like red chili flakes, Vietnamese fish sauce, tamari, etc. I thought it best to leave them sealed so as not to cause any suspicion about their contents, but that assumption ran afoul when I received a demand to provide a detailed list of the contents with a receipt for the value so they could tax me on the imported items. I did not have a receipt, so estimated the cost to be 2 to 3 Euros for about 15 to 20 items. I do not understand why, but I had to pay a total fee of over 50 Euros to get them to deliver my package, but almost two months since it was mailed, I have yet to see it.

U.S. taxes are due today. I have been unsuccessful at having my son forward my 1099s needed for filing my taxes, but found out that if living overseas, one is granted an automatic 60 day extension. I only hope I read that right.

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The sun comes out to shine on the iconic Altea church

However, these challenges and pleasures are all part and parcel of transitioning to a new country. They are lessons is patience, humility, and thankfulness. And the rain just stopped.

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Household Challenges In Altea Spain

29 Mar
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Typical garden display on patio

Most people who know me well will say I am a good home cook and was a good parent to my three sons (no comments, boys), but I have had no luck with plants, whether indoors or outdoors. And it isn’t for wont of trying. I dutifully planted pallets of colorful pansies, poppies and many other varieties of flowers every spring, only to have them all die. I had similarly bad “luck” with my attempts at growing house plants, even managing to kill numerous cacti. One time, from a high-end mail-order garden company, I ordered a monthly flower which was to be delivered in a ready to bloom, but I managed to kill every one of them. Most never even bloomed. They were guaranteed, but I doubted the company would believe that not one had survived.

So when I moved to Spain, I decided I would take another stab (perhaps the wrong word) at growing plants. The windows of my “piso” (apartment) and many homes here have large marble ledges covered by black ornamental grates where people often put plants. I also have a long, narrow outdoor patio, and people here often hang plants from the metal fence enclosure. The verdant displays of plants and the colorful cascading flowers were inspiring. After buying supplies for my new apartment, I had been given two free plants from a local sundry store. Since the plants were still alive after a month, I bought some potting soil, a single hanging wire basket for my balcony railing and a plastic pot in which to put one plant and the other to go in the pot on my windowsill. I was not going to invest the time and money to buy the long plant holders, which hold multiple plants until I had some success. Mother Nature smited me by sending howling wind and rain the night after I had planted and hung the balcony. When I went the next morning to hang my laundry (more about that challenge in a moment), my poor little plant was uprooted, laying on its side after all the soil in which it was buried blew all over my porch and the street and cars below my second floor balcony. I did repot it, but the dirt is still evident on its leaves as I fear touching the plant any more than absolutely necessary.

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Laundry drying off my outdoor patio (sans undergarments)

Now on to the unexpected laundry challenges. When I first arrived in Spain, I learned that few people have dryers, and instead hang their laundry either on lines off their balconies or windows, or on a standing metal folding stand which can be opened to hang laundry indoors or on the street outside one’s first floor dwelling. Wash machines are typically in the kitchen, but I scored and have mine in a small separate utility room. Before getting my apartment, I rented several vacation apartments, so I have had the opportunity, if you can call it that, to use a variety of wash machines; they are all small and take an incredibly long-time to complete a wash cycle, two to three hours. Nonetheless, the first couple of times I did laundry, I found hanging the laundry on the portable metal stand quaint, reminiscent of a simpler time. I remembered the heady fresh smell of sheets I had once hung outside to dry when I was a teen-ager and was looking forward to revisit that experience. The first couple of times went well, just enough to lull me into complacency and cause me to fail to anticipate the problems that could and did arise, or should I say fall. In fact, at first the laundry seemed to dry quicker outside than in a mechanical dryer.

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The small “sidewalk” to the right of the plant was where I had to put the laundry stand to dry my clothes in my first apartment.

My first vacation rental was on the first floor on a busy street, so the laundry rack was placed on the incredibly narrow uneven, cobblestone “sidewalk.” Both the uneven surface and wind, on different days, were the culprits in the toppling of my laundry. Wet clothes laying on a street where there are many cars, pedestrians and dogs does not bode well for having clean clothes. When I got my own apartment, there was both a metal laundry rack on the patio and laundry lines hanging off my balcony, both rusted. We are on the Mediterranean, after all. I purchased a small roll of metal line covered with plastic that looked perfect for the job of stringing new clothesline. The seemingly simple task of changing the laundry line was anything but. I had difficulty getting the old rusted line off, and sadly, it took me hours just to string the five new clotheslines. I should have paid more attention in Boy Scouts as to how to tie a secure knot. Wait, I wasn’t in Boy Scouts. Maybe that was my problem. Long story short, I inconsistently strung up each one trying to make them as taunt as possible, but ultimately was only marginally successful. But I was proud that I had accomplished that task. I soon found out there were other unanticipated laundry challenges, such as getting used to your underwear hanging outside for everyone to see, wind blowing your laundry off the line on the street below, unexpected rain saturating your clothes, and trying to accurately predict how long it would take to complete a wash cycle (it seems variable) so as to get the clothes hung before leaving, and anticipating how long would be needed to get things dry before night. On one occasion, the sheets were on the line when the weather suddenly turned foul, causing me to quickly bring them inside and try to dry them in front of a small space heater. At close to midnight, they were dry so I could make the bed. I felt a small sense of success over Mother Nature who, since I sold my car can no longer rain on it, instead seems to make it rain every time I hang laundry out to dry.

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Central Coast Bandit in My Rearview Mirror

27 Aug

Looking in my car’s rearview mirror, I suddenly see multiple flashing blue and red police lights giving chase to a vehicle about a half mile behind me. Working with law enforcement for over 25 years, I immediately realized that the two law enforcement vehicles (combination of California Highway Patrol, County Sherriff, or local Atascadero Police) I had seen waiting on the on each of the last three freeway entrance ramps must have been waiting for a specific car. After I passed the San Anselmo freeway exit, I saw the vehicle being pursued was quickly approaching my car in the fast lane.  At that moment, I was the only vehicle in front of it. I took my foot off my accelerator, intentionally causing my car to slow, in the hopes of slowing the car being pursued. Once that car came very close to the back of mine, in my rearview mirror, I clearly saw a woman with curly hair who I estimated to be in her 50s. She then started to try to go around by pulling into the median, so I moved into the right lane. Multiple law enforcement units continued pursuit.

When I got to my destination in Paso Robles five minutes later, I called 911 to inquire if they wanted a statement. I was told they had a woman in custody, and they would call me if they wanted to talk to me. My assumption that this was the notorious female “Central Coast Bandit” turned out to be correct. She was wanted for bank robberies in Modesto, Monterey County, and four in San Luis Obispo County.

I later learned that just before the chase, she had gone into a bank in San Luis Obispo where the clerk became suspicious and notified law enforcement. The woman drove north on Highway 101, eventually being pursued by law enforcement. She crashed in Paso Robles and was taken into custody.

After being told by law enforcement they would not be taking a statement from me and that I was free to share the information, I am doing so here. Not my usual travel story, but a story of  how unusual things can occur in the most unexpected places.

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KENYAN CONNECTION

4 Aug
Mother and baby elephant in Tsavo

Mother and baby elephant in Tsavo

Almost everyone who has been to Africa describes it as among his or her favorite travel destinations. I am no different. When as a single mother, I took my 11 year-old son by myself to Kenya, some wondered about that decision, especially as it was shortly after the 1998 Kenyan bombings.

After a couple of unmemorable days in Nairobi (perhaps I shouldn’t elaborate), we headed toward the Tsavo National Park, one of the largest and oldest game reserves in Kenya. Because it was only the two of us, our driver, whose name we later learned was Muguro, picked us up in a smaller van rather than the usual larger Landcruiser. As we headed down what they call a “major road” or highway, we were wide-eyed with clenched fists as he navigated the road’s huge craters. Littered along the road were many overturned trucks and other vehicles sacrificed by the perilous road, but we relaxed as Muguro deftly maneuvered the van.

The flight fiascoes we faced en route to Nairobi won’t be revisited here, but suffice it to say we missed our original flight, arriving late sans luggage.  While staying in Nairobi and waiting for our luggage to arrive, we purchased one spare set of clothes each and the most basic toiletries. The suitcases had not arrived by the time we left for the safari.  As we travelled the potholed road, it quickly became evident our luggage would never make it to the safari site. That actually turned out to be a freeing experience-in the morning, we hung our dirty clothing outside our hotel room door to be washed by the staff, and donned our clean apparel-no decisions to be made about clothing or other grooming.

While driving toward Tsavo, Muguro pointed out wildlife in the hills or on the distant horizon.  Asking how he spotted them, he said you look for movement or a change in color. That lesson has helped me be far more vigilant in spotting wildlife, whether in Africa, home or other places.

Muguro was a quiet, dignified man, speaking only those things that needed to be said.  As he took us on our dawn and dusk safari rides with the backdrop of Mt. Kilimanjaro, we gradually got to know him a little better. Besides his excellent skills at sighting wildlife on land, he was keen at identifying the many different birds.  He also explained there were about 40 tribes in Kenya, each which had its own language, with most Kenyans speaking English and Swahili.  He taught us some Swahili; my favorite word was “twiga” which fittingly means giraffe. Muguro related there were good relationships between the tribes and various minorities at that time.

We asked what area he was from, and he told us the Mt. Kenya area. Knowing the Mt. Kenya Safari Club was a popular big game safari and celebrity destination, I asked if he led big game safaris. When he affirmed he had, I asked if he had any interesting memories. By this time, we had been with him for five days, so he was somewhat less reserved, and related that he used to take William Holden on safari. Though not particularly impressed by celebrities, I asked him how those ventures went. He replied that Mr. Holden had sat around and in the tent all day drinking.

We loved our twice daily drives with Muguro, his beautiful countenance and incredible skills at spotting and tracking animals. We learned he was a loving father and husband. It was with sadness that we said our good-byes when he returned us to Nairobi. When we were at the Nairobi airport, as we were ready to depart, my son spotted Muguro and ran to give him a hug; Muguro smiled and hugged him in return.

Last letter from Muguro

Last letter from Muguro

We had already exchanged addresses, and kept in touch, receiving a last letter from him in 2003. Sadly, the next letter I sent came back as undeliverable, and I have never been able to contact him again. Near my home, I recently spotted a camouflaged fox traversing the landscape-a fond reminder our special time with Muguro.

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WATCHING BALLET FROM A BATHTUB IN PARIS’ OPERA HOUSE

29 Jul
Paris Opera House: Palais Garnier

Paris Opera House:
Palais Garnier

Always excited at the prospect of watching world-class ballet performed in a historic, opulent opera house, I quickly became perplexed and frustrated when the translated Paris’ Palais Garnier website offered seating in the “bathtub.” My French is limited to the most important things-ordering food and wine. The Parisian Opera House did not allow any outside assistance, such a ticketing agency or concierge assistance, so I was left to my own designs  to figure out the seating on my own, (which was further hampered by my wanting technological skills.)

I finally found a feature that, when clicked on, showed the view of the stage from those chosen seats, or at least that is what I hoped. Left with no other choice, I clicked the “purchase” button and nervously hoped for the best.

Le Grand Foyer

Le Grand Foyer

When we eventually arrived at the grand venue of the Opera House a few months later, we sipped the obligatory champagne, admired the elegant beaux-arts design, and then proceeded up the stairs to see what awaited us. We entered a private door into a vestibule where we left our wraps, and then proceeded to the red velvet splendor of our private seating area.

As I eventually learned, the bagnoire translates into English, not only to bathtub, but also to the lowest seats in a small box seating area at an opera house.  Relieved, we had a good laugh, another glass of champagne, and settled into our “bathtub”  to enjoy the ethereal, mesmerizing ballet.

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