"Piso Hunting"

Welcome to the adventure we have dubbed "piso hunting"...

We spent the last two days looking for an apartment in Linares – ‘exhausting’ would be an understatement!  Before arriving, we had researched a couple places online.  Now that we were in Linares, we spent a lot time on the streets calling numbers for rental signs posted in the windows, searching on the internet again, and even picked up a local magazine advertising available apartments.  After 48 hours of intense searching we have no doubt that we have seen every type of place imaginable in this town.  Through our search, we definitely learned a lot about the features and characteristics of a "typical" apartment in Spain... and it's fair to say we didn't like any of them.  We visited countless, disappointing, 20 year-old apartments with stale air, dim lighting and very antiquated home decorations.  The majority of apartments included multiple old and worn pictures of the crucifixion, the Virgin Mary, or other heavily emphasized Catholic prints – Todd mentioned the worst part of moving in to one of these places would be the guilt we would feel if we ever wanted to replace some of the older décor.  The picture frames and prints were quite outdated and “intense”, in short, they didn’t do much to create the uplifting and fresh apartment we were hoping to find.  I mean, who would actually be bold enough to take down a picture of Jesus or the crucifixion and stuff it in the closet for the next year?  I don't think we were ready for that 'authentic' of an apartment.

The search was physically and mentally exhausting.  Not only were we walking all around the town of Linares on foot with the temperature in mid 90’s, it was very difficult to communicate exactly what we were hoping to find.  My enjoyment of the day came from watching Todd attempt several phone calls to different numbers we found in a local magazine.  Speaking Spanish when you are rusty is difficult.  Understanding Spanish in Linares with their accent is very difficult.  Attempting a phone conversation in Spanish, in Linares, is down-right impossible.  Here we are sitting in a restaurant cold-calling these poor citizens in our broken Spanish attempting to communicate our apartment characteristic wish-list.  The highlight, as Todd retold to me, was him trying to talk to a very elderly Spanish women whom Todd could not seem to understand her when trying to provide her address to him.  It resorted to this elderly lady literally screaming the individual letters of her street to Todd.  Each letter was lasting about 3 seconds and Todd says these were very loud screams.  Literally, his ear was hurting.  I think he now has a new respect for “senoras” in Linares.  We were laughing, but a little traumatized by this experience, we never did followed up with this boisterous Spanish lady.

After looking at almost 20 apartments and only coming across maybe 2 that would have been somewhat acceptable, we finally resigned to using the services of a rental agency, well, 3 rental agencies by the end of our search.  We were hoping to avoid this option, since it would be more expensive and even with them it was difficult to express exactly what type of place we were looking for, but we finally found that the key word that would ultimately unlock the maze that was 'Linares apatments'.  What word was that, you ask?  Well, it was "moderno".  Kind of anti-climatic, but can you guess what that means?  Modern, of course.  (Can’t you see we are going to be great teachers!)

There were some places in Linares that were built more recently, but they were few and far between and very difficult to find.  Finally, at the end of our second day, we found one.  It was incredible -- a “piso” with two-floors in a new building, with new furniture (from IKEA that included the same black side-table that Nancy had purchased a few years ago), a flat screen TV, clean bathrooms, and enough bedrooms (and closets) for everyone to come visit!  Todd's only requirement was an outdoor terrace/patio and this place has not one, but three!  A small one overlooking the street in the front of the building (off the living room), a larger one in the back off the kitchen and our favorite terrace that is upstairs which has an unbelievable view of the surrounding countryside and the Sierra Morenas mountains!  Todd did a little negotiating on the price, it was more than what we originally wanted to pay, but we felt it would be make our experience over the next year that much more enjoyable.

We are meeting with the owner tomorrow and the real estate agent for a final walk-through and to sign papers, keep your fingers crossed and please, say a little prayer for us. :) 

Our 'hunt' has been a challenging process, especially trying to do all of this while speaking rusty Spanish (since rarely does anyone even attempt to speak English), it has made everything much more difficult with the heavy accent spoken in Linares.  The last letter (or last few letters) of each word are usually dropped off, and the letter "s" is usually never pronounced if it's at the end of the word.  For example, the number 3, normally pronounced "tres" is pronounced "tre" – "dos" has become "do" --  "seis" has become "sei".  It has been quite interesting at times, especially when we’re talking about phone numbers, streets, and addresses.  It would have definitely made for entertaining television!


We included some of the challenges because we wanted to offer an accurate description of our time here, and despite some initial frustrations, we are both really excited about living here in Linares and enjoying the journey along the way...

In fact, we’ve already begun to appreciate the charms of this small town.  Linares is a truly authentic Spanish town in Andalucia, where siestas are a custom not to be disrupted and tapas (food) are gratis (free) when you order una cerveza o vino (beer or wine) – what could be better, right? 

Jamón - A tapas bar that was recommended to us by a few different people we have met.  Quickly one of our favorites we've tried so far!