LitskiLite: Life In Spain: Return Of The Smiles

EARNING AND LEARNING. YEARNING...? NO!

It was the last day in August. Our holiday in Peñíscola was almost over, but first we had to go to sign the contract for our new apartment at the beach. The signing appointment took place in the offices of Mercedes’ employer, a large complex of offices located in what seemed to be a former factory, then an entertainment venue, before settling on being a huge co-working space. It looked like a drive-in dance hall at 10 in the morning after the cleaners had been. I would also consider having my offices there, but there wasn’t a window except in the ceiling, and when it’s sunny outside, the last thing I want to do is not be able to see it.

When we arrived, Kirsten took the children to the playground across the street, and I went inside in my summer shorts and short-sleeved shirt – it was still our holiday for another night, at least. Our future proprietor, a sprightly lady in her nineties, was wearing full business dress and sitting next to her carer, a classy South American woman equally as elegant. Mercedes came in in her work suit carrying her papers and a massive smile. I felt like a rancid residue of flatulence in a small metal box on wires that transports people to different floors.

Anyhow, everyone ignored the fact there was a slice of half-eaten cheese amongst all the exotic salad, and had a cosy chat to get to know each other. Our new landlady was a very interesting and experienced person, and it seemed little could faze her. Which was fortunate, as I felt so underdressed, that even I disapproved of me.

Then Mercedes said that Kirsten had to sign as well. Which would mean all three of the children would have to come in. And the owner of the apartment would see them and they might start a fight or set off the water sprinklers or go to the toilet on an upholstered armchair. In the end my ridiculous misgivings were unfounded – the owner was delighted to meet the children, and they were well-behaved. Silly Daddy!

We were due to remain in the apartment for ten months until the end of June, with the intention of selling our house in Saarburg and buying a new one with the proceeds. Time will tell if that does happen, but as of 24 September, there have been about 14 separate visitors to the house. If by early spring there is no movement, I will start making contingency plans for the summer.

Further plans have included renting a container in the next town that we will fill with our furniture and belongings when we find transport. If things go well, the idea will be that we will start preparing our new house while we still live in the apartment, so that when we move in, everything will be in place. It’s a tall order, but I have hope.

After signing, I drove us all to Mestalla to a restaurant I visited earlier in the summer called El Rinconet, a special place in one of the many courtyards containing a children’s playground and shops surrounded by apartments. Their menu shows off the most Spanish foods you can find, although it’s run by a Hungarian with his sons and a Polish maîtresse d’hôtes. However, that’s beside the point – the excellent dinner we had truly rounded off our holiday, and we headed back to Peñíscola for one last night.

The following morning, we packed up the car and headed to town for a final breakfast before taking the scenic route to our new lives. The true sign of how your children are going to cope with the new setting is in their initial reaction, and when they saw the beach, the swimming pool, the ice cream bar and café, the private playground, and then the actual apartment, all three of them were whooping for joy like Texans at a barbecue. The second way you can tell if your children are going to cope or not is if they start asking when they’re going “home” again. 62 days we’ve been there at the time of writing, still no mention of the old place.

It was a Friday, and the following Monday they had to start their new school. I was intrigued to know how Livia was going to get on, now her lessons would be in English and her siblings would be in other classrooms in the same place. But first, we needed to settle in and enjoy the final weekend of their summer holiday, which until the last two weeks had been rather miserable due to their parents spending most days packing up their belongings and throwing away everything that they hadn’t used in a while.

The weekend weather was sadly very windy and cloudy, so I took us all to the Carrefour hypermarket to buy provisions and see a little bit of the area. I made us patatas fritas en aceite (chips in olive oil) and some steak.

Then on the Monday, there was an open day where we could all meet the various teachers for each child. They were charming, efficient, friendly, caring and motivated – quite a refreshing change. The school itself is between a hairdresser and a supermarket on Avinguda Cardenal Benlloch, one of the many bustling thoroughfares slicing their way through Valencia. Its façade is unrecognisable as a school, as it looks like one of the other shop fronts that line the street, but when you walk in, it’s a child’s dream. The walls are white, the tiled floors spotlessly clean, the rooms ordered and equipped for each different year.

We were greeted by the teachers for each class at various times of the day, and given a presentation on the different activities planned throughout the school year. It seemed ambitious and exciting: learning to read, appointing one of the children as superhelper for a day, and giving the children plenty of exercise in the courtyard inside the cluster of buildings.

The next day, we had to implement our new daily routine, which was totally different from the one in Luxembourg, as you will see shortly. But now that the children were in school, we could look for an office. At the very first try, we found one at a coworking centre situated about 5 minutes’ walk from the beach in the Cabanyal district of the city.

When we walked in off the street to take a theoretical look at the place, we were greeted by Cristina, the owner and director, another of the long line of very accomplished businesswomen that we have encountered here. Human and energetic, fun and patient, she runs the place without breaking sweat. This is due to the efficient team behind her, who keep the place thriving. We made some general enquiries about the possibility of becoming members, and asked if there were any spare private offices.

Coincidentally, someone had just vacated the only free office available, and upon viewing it, we took it immediately. From only the fifth day of being in our new location, we had a beachside apartment, a school for the children, and a place to go to work. Here is our routine:

07.30 – wake up, have breakfast

08.00 – get washed and dressed

08.35 – leave the house

08.55 – arrive, park and get out of the car

09.00 – doors open, children are welcomed in the lobby

09.05 – we go for coffee across the street at one of the cafés

09.30 – we drive to our office

09.45 – I drop Kirsten off and go to park the car before joining her

13.20 – we head out for lunch at one of the countless eateries in the area

14.30 – we return to the office for a couple more hours

16.40 – we go to the car and drive to the school

16.55 – we park, pick up the children and hear reports of their day from their teachers

17.05 – we go to a café for drinks and a treat

After this, we might go to the playground, just behind the main road in a square. It is massive, and teeming with kids from all the other local schools. There are often birthday parties in there, and all the kids, even those not invited, are welcome to take a piece of cake or have a drink of juice. The community atmosphere and feeling of safety is tangible. Children just pick up toys or scooters from other kids and play with them, parents go around and pick up their stuff once they’re ready to go home. This would be unthinkable in the previous place we lived – where was that, again…?!

We would then go to the supermarket to get what we might need – breakfast cereal, bread, cheese, juice, then head home. With the evening still ahead of us, the children might play with some Duplo or watch some cartoons on RTVE’s children’s channel, called Clan. It’s a perfectly prepared recipe of animations that cater for various age groups getting older as the evening wears on. We have a few slices of bread, some cheese, mortadella, chocolate spread, or butter, and then wind down a little. At bedtime, they get ready and head to their rooms with barely a complaint, having had a full day’s activity.

The change in lifestyle, diet, climate, culture, and things to do has been extreme. Every day is different, every weekend packed with action. I worked out we have a minimum of 2, maximum 3 and a half more hours a day to enjoy our lives. In the old place, I would need an hour, sometimes an hour and a half to get to the school and then another 30 minutes to get to the office. The same on the way home. And if there was traffic, forget that.

September wore on. We were keen to know how Livia was coping in class, and how she was adapting to her learning. In the beginning, it was evident she was still behind the rest. She was not helped by her own inhibitions: her hypermobility made it difficult to do some simple things; her lack of self-confidence partly due to that prevented her from trying out some new things right away; and she was still disrupting some of the class activities.

But as the weeks went by, we noticed some positive changes: she was doing a lot more talking, recognising numbers, expanding her vocabulary, and helping with minor chores. There were also a lot of tantrums, refusals, scratching, pushing, knocking and general mayhem, but the gradual reduction in these transgressions gives us hope that she will settle down quite soon.

On 20 September, Livia was designated Superhelper for the day. How would she cope? We were intrigued to know. At the end of the day, at the report, the teacher said she did really well, even telling one of her classmates not to mess with the equipment. We had a budding responsible citizen, and we were ready to nurture this.

I would like to tell you a little about Valencia. It is the most energetic and exciting city I have lived in since I left London in 2001, and probably the best city I have ever visited, let alone had the joy of being a resident of. Before we decided where to move to, I was worried about being somewhere far from the places we frequent the most. The fact of the matter is Valencia has it all: there is architecture and culture here that reminds us of Copenhagen, London, Prague, Brussels, Liverpool.

There is the sea, there are mountains half an hour away, there are forests, and there are the airport and the ports. The food at lunchtime is so good and so cheap that I have cooked barely four times since we got here. The pedestrian streets are paved with marble, there are ancient trees standing majestically in every corner of the city, you can find museums that will entertain your family for weeks without going to the same one, a children’s recreation area is no longer than a five-minute walk from whichever part of the city you live in. It’s not Barcelona or Madrid, and we are all thankful for that. It still feels like a city that should host an Olympic Games or an Expo, but will probably be overlooked in favour of the other two. However, it is European Green Capital 2024, so that’s something.

And as for the people here, they are so easy to relate to: you can talk to strangers without them feeling like you’re weird. It is so safe, people of all ages walk the streets at any time of day or night, and there are little things that make you happy, like when the neighbour took the lift this morning. I heard him getting in it and going downstairs, but he obviously heard us getting ready to leave the apartment, because when we did, the empty lift was waiting for us there. He had evidently sent it back for us. These minor gestures are what make this place what it is. Since we arrived, I have also noticed how much more freely the children interact with kind strangers (always in our presence, of course).

They are no longer shy to say hello or hold a conversation with someone new. They are not frowned upon for shouting or screaming in a public place – most people just laugh or roll their eyes sympathetically, rather than come over to us when they’ve had enough and question our parenting skills. In restaurants, nobody has bat an eyelid when Milda has screamed her lungs out. When Livia threw one of her fits in a supermarket, several people became concerned and helped us calm her down, rather than ignore us or worse, complain to the manager. Because we have always believed in freedom of expression for our kids, we had always felt inhibited, or even reluctant to go out in public in the former place, but here, there’s no reason to – in fact, quite the opposite. We have done more in the two months we have been here than in the six years prior.

So you see, in the end, it was fate.

For that reason, I would like to thank the director of Livia’s previous school for not having the nerve to tell us in February that they were not going to take her, and instead waited until he could pluck up the courage at the end of June to inform us. If it wasn’t for his cowardice and procrastination, we would still be in the other place, rotting away slowly without realising why. We wanted to change places, but I think we just didn’t have the energy for it, so when he dropped his bombshell, it gave us a kick up the backside that led us to re-arrange our lives for the better.

On Friday 20 October, I took a brief trip back to our previous house to check on it, pick up some important documents, and make some arrangements for the shipping of our belongings. I flew into Luxembourg airport and hired a car to drive back to Saarburg. Upon arriving at my previous home, I felt a disconnect, a lack of attachment to the place, except for the garden. And when I viewed our belongings, I also thought “well, let’s just get rid of them, and start all over again!”

I stayed in a hotel the first night while I came to terms with the fact that I had lived in that house for 13 years until 22 August 2023, but also because the heating was off. I also remember how bored I was there. The whole time I lived there, I did a lot of irrational and unconventional things, just to keep myself distracted from the dullness all around. I look back with some horror on a few of the dark thoughts I had. Luckily, I have no more time for them, and so much more to live for.

After a weekend that included having to stay in a hotel the first night due to the heating being off, having to go for a midnight drive and walk in order to make it easier to sleep but being wired until 5 am due to being spooked out, having a massive headache due to lack of sleep, not being able to hold in my food after eating a dodgy kebab the night before, scraping the hire car against a concrete flower pot, and suffering from the miserable cold and fog, I arrived at Luxembourg airport 3 hours before I was supposed to, just to make myself psychologically aware that I was getting the hell out of the place and burying the ghosts along with it. In the end, the flight was delayed so I spent 5 hours in the airport, but I didn’t mind – it had finally stopped the sentiment of regret that we had not left on our own terms. Instead, I realised it was fate telling us to GTFO and prosper elsewhere.

I don’t mean to say everything was miserable in the old place – definitely not. There are things I miss, such as my perfect little office in Luxembourg and the many kind people I knew there. I also miss the lovely people at Café Nordbo, the Scandinavian café and the ScanShop attached to it – I felt like a friend there, not a customer. I miss the river Saar and the green trees that line it. I miss being able to pop over to France or Belgium for a short trip or for dinner. And I miss my beautiful garden and all the things I had planted in there – there are over 30 trees and some extraordinary shrubs.

But these are offset by the new life we have here. I was so happy to be back in Valencia, that I woke the kids up when I got home to give them hugs and have a little cry. The day after, Tuesday 24 October, despite a late arrival and the feeling of being wired and tired, I was so disoriented by the entire experience, and by the fact there was the sun in the sky, that by the end of the morning, I had another two car accidents to go alongside the one I had in Luxembourg. Luckily damage was minimal, and nobody was hurt.

Then, in the greatest coincidence of all time, I was involved in a fourth road accident in the evening when a car reversed into me (this time not my fault). How utterly bizarre is that? There must be an ancient pagan rule of providence somewhere that can explain why I went for four years without a single accident, to having four in the space of about 27 hours…

To conclude this, I wanted to highlight several things with these three articles:

It is important to make proper life choices and never to hesitate in changing if necessary.

Once you have kids, you don’t matter any more – it’s about assuring their future.

If something is making you miserable or doesn’t feel right, don’t put it to the back of your mind and make excuses; don't say it's too hard, or it's not the right moment, because you're just wasting time; take action.

Below are some photos of our experiences so far: