shopping

April 2004
Shopping is driving us nuts! – trying to locate what we need and at a reasonable price has been a steep learning curve (and we are still learning), however, most of the resident ex pats have been really helpful. We try to go out all prepared having gone through our massive Spanish/English dictionary, however, language is still a problem and prices are often in pesetas or non existent. It seems that when Spain went into the Euro, many used it as an excuse to hike the prices. This said, we have managed to find most of what we want within Ruté, only going to Lucena, Archidona and Málaga when all else fails.

We are getting all of our food in the local supermarket which stocks most things and we use the local baker and greengrocer for the rest. Food prices are generally one Euro cost where it would be a Pound in the UK  i.e. 70% (unless you like HP Brown sauce which is twice the price).

We got our first telephone bill – if you thought a BT bill was complicated, you should try a Telefonica bill – not only do they list the calls by number instead of date, the whole thing is not surprisingly in Spanish!! However, I was able to ring customer services and get an English speaking person to ‘walk’ me through it which is not something you would get in the UK if you were Spanish.

July 2004
We have unfortunately come across the practice of the ‘Spanish’ price and the ‘English Price’ – we now only use one ferretaria in Rute who has prices marked on all his goods. We are reasonably happy with the suppliers we have found so far for all the tiles, plumbing bits, wiring and lights but we did at one point drive all the way to Marbella to a shop called Leroy Merlin – it really was worthwhile as it was DIY heaven – we managed to spend 400 euros.

We felt that as our 90 days on the green card was coming to an end, it was time to sort out a left hand drive car and some insurance. We went out looking for a second hand car – this is not easy – no cars have prices on them – virtually everyone we spoke to who had bought a second hand car felt cheated – most cars it seems are ‘clocked’. It also seems impossible to tell how old a car is. In the end, we chickened out and went down to the coast where we bought a new car from an English-speaking chap in a Peugeot garage. We paid our deposit with a debit card, however, they wanted a bankers draft for the rest – we visited our bank and requested said cheque and were told it would cost us 140 euros – we said ‘ OK, we’ll draw it in cash’ they then offered the cheque for 60 euros but we still went for the cash. You just would not dream of it in the UK. They did not have enough money, so we went to the café across the street until the security van with the money turned up.

When we test drove our Peugeot, it showed 40 kilometres on the clock – when we went back to collect it 4 days later, it only showed 33 ! – It was at this point that the salesman’s English failed him – no surprise there – we just shrugged and had to accept it. After all, it was the car we wanted and we certainly do not have enough Spanish to enter into the subtleties of an argument about the technology of an electronic speedometer.

June 2005
We have lots of shopping successes! Steve got a trailer for the car. We have discovered supplies of tiles called ‘economicos’ (cheap). This enabled us to buy the floor tiles for the bedroom for just over 4 euros a square metre and the floor tiles for the rest of the house for around 6 euros. Curtain material comes in widths of 280cm and semi sheer with beautiful embroidered patterns was bought in the market for 8 euros a metre. A couple of day’s hard work and 24 euros got me a pair of tab top curtains in the bedroom.

We furnished the entire bedroom (3 door wardrobe, bed, 4 drawer chest of drawers and 2 bed side cabinets) for only 800 euros finished in cherry, delivered and assembled. We wanted a small coffee table for the sitting room and they don’t seem to have such a thing in Spain – we did find a large foot stool with a removable cushion – so we removed the cushion, took it the marble man and asked him to make a marble top to fit it – he charged us 8 euros for a piece of marble about 40 by 30cms with rounded corners to fit the frame perfectly.

We bought some excellent old feria prints at Granada airport, we took them to the cristaleria (glass man), chose a rustic wood finish and he framed them for 10 euros each.

I was unlucky enough to break 2 teeth and a crown just before Christmas – got the lot crowned for 180 euros each. They are such marvelous quality, they make my English crowns look shabby – they fit beautifully and the dentist who doesn't speak any English, by the end of the course of treatment had learnt ‘pain’ ‘open’ ‘good’ and ‘rinse’. We managed with the help of my trusty little dictionary.

We mentioned to some friends that we needed a van type vehicle for the farm to lug materials about as there are bound to be days when Steve needs to go to the farm and I have stuff to do in town. Our criteria was cheap and multi-purpose. They introduced us to a Spanish chap and he showed us a Lada Niva. As my brother said ‘someone has to buy them’. But, it is 12 years old, has tyres like a tractor, is a 4x4 which is a bonus, it works, was a bargain at 900 euros, plus the cost of getting it re-registered to us and 3 new tyres and whatever it will cost to get it through its ITV (the Spanish equivalent of the MOT), which is due May.

Insurance has been arranged for third party and fire only on the principle that the only reason anyone would want to break into it would be to deposit some rubbish...