They did warn us [13]
Finally some positive news. No, this is not about a change in the weather. Which is not to be expected until we leave Madrid in one week and a half. At the moment it almost freezes at night. During the day temperatures do not exceed 8 degrees Celsius. A cold and nasty wind blows through the streets and it rains scores of times. This is an advantage because it was far too dry here.
The main part of the positive news came about in the building you see in the picture. It’s a prison. Not for criminals, but for those who try to live in Spain without a genuine permit and got caught. Many people would say that these people are ‘strangers’ or ‘foreigners’, but in these days and ages of Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Amazon, mobile phones, Google, Wikipedia, Snapchat, etc., let’s say the world wide web, there are no ‘strangers’ or ‘foreigners’ anymore. There are just people. You must be a very, very big douchebag if you would not be able to find out everything you wanted to know of somebody. So those that are locked up here just got unlucky.
Back to the positive news. At 08:30 hours this morning, we paid the fees for our NIE number at the bank. Raced to this prison, got the stamps on our forms, and were told to return Monday next week to pick up our number. For those that by now are still unaware of what the NIE number is all about: you need this number to be able to buy anything which requires identification. From a subscription for a mobile phone to a bank number, and if you want to buy a car or a house. The only thing that will keep us awake at night will be the number we will get. Will it be a number that is nice to look at? Or easy to remember? We’ll see.
^tvo