Another Lost in Translation moment
Trip Start
Jan 28, 2008
1
34
83
Trip End
Sep 18, 2008
Alicante,
Spain and Canary Islands
Sunday, April 20, 2008
So, my sister went to the enormous trouble of buying us a new iPod and loading all our music and audio books on. This took her most of Easter weekend. My Mum then spent a ridiculous amount of money at Australia Post to send our replacement iPod (plus a few other items like my new AMEX and driver´s licence) to us in Alicante, Spain. She insured the package too, which is always a good idea...one would think.
Cameron and I recieved a small notice via the Correos (Spanish Postal Service) the first Friday of our 4 week language course
White and Yellow Pages are international
. It was in Spanish of course. I asked the receptionist at our school to read it to me: ¨You have to take this letter with you to the main Correos to collect your parcel¨. Hmm, I thought, that is annoying, it should come straight to us. Anyway, excited about getting my music again, I then went to the tourist info shop to find out which bus route would take me to the Postal Office, and got the great news that they were open on Saturdays too!Saturday morning I was up out of bed at the crack of dawn. We found bus number 3, and headed out of town to the postal depo. It was a hike from the bus stop, but we got there without getting lost.At the Correos we were greeted by a security guard. Smiling, we showed her the collection notice. Frowning, she shook her head. We were confused. Remeber at this point no one is speaking a common language. She went and found another staff member who knew a few English-sounding Spanish words, like "import" and "taxes". After a strained conversation, we had figured that we needed to see a different department of the postal service called Aduana, that only operated weekdays.
Very annoyed, we refused to pay another €2.20 for the bus and walked home.
Time travel to Monday...
At Enforex, I asked the receptionist to again read our notice, more carefully. This time she explained that we needed to see Customs (Aduana). If only she'd said this in the first bloody place! There was a phone number, which she did try to ring for us several times, but it just rang out.
Armed with at least some more information, I rushed out to catch the bus again (this time a different number that dropped me right at the door) to see the Customs department and the postal depo. Optimistically, I greeted the security guard again who again shook her head at me. "Now What?" I asked. She pointed to my collection notice. At the bottom, written in words (not numerals). Lunes a Viernes (Monday to Friday), Neuve a Trece Hora. Now, I thought Trece was 3, but it was 13. Aka 1pm. It was now 1:30pm.
You could probably tell by now I was absolutely furious. Who writes their opening and closing times in words, and in 24 hour time no less! Trying to stay calm, I popped my head into the regular postal office next door. At least the guy there gave me a "secret" phone number for the Aduana section. Apparantly they never answer the other number. (BTW in case someone reads this because they are needing help with Alicante Aduana, ring 965134321 and on the first tone dial 62766).
By Tuesday, we had also figured out that we needed a copy of our iPod receipt. This was why customs had our parcel. You can't import electronic goods into Spain (or Europe) without paying duty tax. It doesn't matter if it is old, new or a gift. And of course, because Mum insured our parcel, she had to declare iPod on the front, which was like a red-light to Aduana. Anyway, Mum scanned and emailed our reciept to us, which we had printed, and in our pockets the THIRD time we went to the postal depo.
This time, we were within the hours of operation, and the security guard signed us in and showed us the way to the Aduana office. It was down in the basement, in a sunlight-less office. Like a dungeon really. After giving them our receipt, they STILL wouldn't give us our mail. I absolutely cracked it at the stupid ladies working there. From what I could gather, they needed a third staff member, who was absent that day, to add up the cost of the iPod shown on the reciept and work out the % tax we needed to pay. For god sake, I can't even count without using my fingers and I still could have worked that out! I had only been learning Spanish for a week and a bit, but I think I did pretty well to insult them in both English and Spanish. We were escorted out by two security guards.
Tuesday night I was seriously depressed. I missed my iPod so much! More than that though, I was stunned that I could have such a run of bad luck, with the bag stolen and then the parcel bloked by customs. It was like my dream trip was becoming a series of nightmarish red-tape hurdles. I spent most of the night sleepless, sending bad karma thoughts back to Egypt. I started with the falucca captain, hoping he'd fall off his boat and drown or get Nile River worms. This escalated to dreaming about a giant meteor wiping out the whole country. Not probable, but it made me feel better.
Wednesday afternoon we arrived at the Spanish school where the receptionist gave us a post-it note with a message from Aduana. "They have opened your mail, and say you have illegal medicines in it. You have to ring the Health Department (Sanidad) to get special permission to import these, otherwise we will return or destroy your mail". I was shocked for a moment, racking my brain. No there was definately no medicinces in the mail. Only a tube of Vegemite and a bar of my favourite face soap. Then I realised. The vengeful witches in the dungeon had just done this to spite me and make my life even more difficult. The receptionist must have read my mide because she then added "they also said, if you ever come back, they will call the Police!". Great.
By Friday, our Spanish teacher had heped us write a suck-up letter to the Aduana. (I had tried to ring and apologise, but the same witch hung up on me twice). We thought we could soothe the situation a little. To no avail. By them notifying Sanidad, they had started a process tht could not be reversed. I felt very #$%&ing horrible this week.
So what had I learned from this experience? Well, people look out for themselves first, then their mates, and that's about it, 'cos anyone else they will probably never see again anyway.
Updates...
At the end of April - Ana, our teacher, rang Sanidad and said they would post our mail back to Australia. We waited...
In the middle of May - I rang Sanidad because over 3 weeks later our parcel was still not back home. He said they never had it! I emailed Aduana. They posted it home the next day.
End of May - We have our fingers crossed the mail gets home just in time for Cameron's parents to bring it over with them.
