Alicante !

08 October 2016

Hi!

I’m having another adventure and am going to tell YOU all about it in the form of this blog, welcome aboard!

So this time I’m living in Alicante, Spain. Yes, it’s a tourist trap, but well I’ve now been here for a week and it’s been 28 degrees and sunny every day, so who cares! Plus there are palm trees, yay! I’m here for an internship of one year at the former OHIM, the trademarks and designs office of the European Union (nowadays called the EUIPO). I’m starting on Tuesday next week. I’m now writing in English because I am the first ever former student of Turku university to do this internship and I promised my faculty that I’d write in English so that also the international students there will understand.

I’m really happy, I already arrived a week ago because there have been quite a few matters to take care of and it’s good that I’ve now done most of them before I begin at work. And for someone, who is used to things being organised, logical and user-friendly, this place is a total chaos, so some extra time to get myself from the state of extreme confusion to the level of only intermediate confusion comes in handy :)

First of all, I had to find a place to live. Luckily, I could already get started with that in Finland by looking at announcements on the web and when I arrived, I had meetings with landlords for two apartments. I was lucky to find both of the places really nice! I was scared that in Spain the rental apartments would be in rather bad shape but for at least these two, I saw, this wasn’t the case at all. Thus, I decided to live in one of these two apartments and here I am now, a happy tenant of a huge shared apartment with four bedrooms in the very heart of Alicante. At the moment, I’m still alone and waiting for some roommates, it’s rather lonely with those three bedrooms empty!

Even though this place is really nice, last night I had to experience something not so pleasant: Namely, I discovered some insects, in the cupboards.. ..PANTRY MOTHS, Yuck! I got scared and disgusted and let my landlord know. He told me not to worry and I guess these types of pests are rather common here.. ..but I come from Finland where everything is super clean and insects like these would probably cause the entire building to be evacuated and chemically treated. But not here.. Nah, mañana, you know :) So my landlord told me to take it easy and simply to wash off the maggots in the ceiling (yes they encapsulate themselves in the ceiling until they reach their adult phase and then fly around). Guess if I took it easy? ..Nope..! ..so I washed of the maggots, emptied all of the like a hundred cupboards, threw all opened packages of food away, vacuumed the cupboards, washed them, dried them, washed all of the packages of food that I didn’t throw away (like about a hundred jars of spices), dried them, washed all of the containers in the cupboards and then put them and the food back in the cupboards. Then I went to the supermarket and got about a hundred traps for these little guys and some insecticide, sprayed the whole place with that and set the traps and some lemon scented anti-insect thingies all around the apartment. Then I could take it easy and sleep in peace and now I’m quite confident that I got rid of the bastards for good. Quite a hassle but on the bright side, it’s the first time I get to use in real life one of my favourite Kummeli quotes: “Määhän ne myrkytin!!” ;)  

So what practical matters have I taken care of this far, other than moths? Firstly, it makes your life easier in Spain if you have a foreigner’s registration number, the so called N.I.E. Getting it takes a lot of time and energy. ..Yes bureaucracy.. You’ll have to find out how to fill in a lot of forms in Spanish and you have to go to the bank and pay an amount that is not stated anywhere and no one is going to tell it to you and the bank staff will tell you, they will not call the immigration office to find out but you just have to somehow discover the amount…?! Then you’ll have to go through an internet form in Spanish to make an appointment to the immigration office and then you will just really hope that you’ve done everything correctly when you go to your appointment. I now have an appointment for Monday so I’m in the really hoping phase.

One thing I didn’t expect to be so difficult here is the public transport. Going to the EUIPO, I only have a few options for buses to get there on time in the mornings and the information regarding timetables and bus stops are made really complicated. The routes and the timetables of the buses are different depending on the season and the hour of the day (for example, for this one line, I’m most likely going to take to work, only two buses in the mornings, and three in the afternoon stop at the EUIPO) and this information is not easily accessible. For example, the routes and timetables are different for winter season than for summer but you won’t be able to find out when winter season begins because it is not stated anywhere.. Thus I made some test runs with the buses to see how to get to the EUIPO. First time didn’t go quite as planned and well I was standing on a wrong bus stop and missed the whole thing.. Luckily that was a test run and not my first day at work.

Apart from the bureaucracy and the crazy bus arrangements, it seems that life here is really easy. The weather is the same for every day, nice and warm, no need for an umbrella or a jacket, there are cute restaurants and supermarkets everywhere and the prices are reasonable. Also great from the perspective of someone only coming for a year is that the rental apartments are fully furnished and equipped so I didn’t have to buy anything. Although, even if the climate is so nice, I think I still need some time to get used to it. Namely, with the days being so warm and the nights a bit chilly and with not very well insulated windows, I guess there’s always a draft in my bedroom and therefore every morning I wake up with a sore throat. I’m hoping to get used to this and I now bought a blanket to not get cold in the nights, let’s hope, this solves the problem.

I guess that’s all for now, I’ll write about my first days at work when I begin my internship!

With love,

Noora

Typical view out of a Spanish apartment's window (this is not my place though :) ).