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Conquering Madrid’s customs

January 31st, 2010 | Posted by Courtney in Courtney | Customs [Aduanas] - (16 Comments)

About 2 weeks after we moved into our new apartment Madrid was hit with a cold front in mid-September.  That caused me to slightly panic – not quite knowing what Madrid’s Fall weather was like, I wasn’t sure if I was going to be in the cold for the long haul.  If this was perhaps the case it was not good news as our boxes had not yet arrived from the USA – in these boxes were ALL our winter clothing.  Then a few days later we got the call we’d been waiting for …our things had arrived in Madrid.

I won’t bore you with the rip-your-hair-out details of first figuring out who called, why they called, what they wanted, what they needed (vs what they said they needed) and how/when we could get our things…no no, I’ll spare those gory details.  I’ll simply tell you what we [over a very long period of time] figured out so that you might one day receive a package and have it in your home in lightning speed to enjoy.

Customs [Aduanas]

Once your items arrive, you will be contacted and then provided a form from Aduanas (one per box) to fill out.  The first order of business was to verify all the shipment information – receiver name, sender name, tracking number, contents…ah contents…we were told to list all the items in the boxes.  Basically they had to determine if our items were being sent to us for resale here.  While that may be seemingly clear – my advice is still to remove/have removed any new price tags on items and perhaps separate bulk items (once you see the costs of basics over here you may want items sent regularly).  Once this information is gathered and filled out – fax it back to Aduanas (Fax: 91 747 10 83).  Make sure you keep the form as you will also need to take it to Aduanas where they will hopefully have your goods and then hopefully hand them over.  You will have to pay an import tax which for each of our [20 - 30 lb] boxes was about €4.

Much of the headache in obtaining our things was in simply reaching someone – anyone – to help find our things.  Given their short office hours, inability to pick up a phone, or leave a message when phoning (with proper call back number) combined with basic disorganization meant once we discovered our items were in fact in Spain, it still took nearly 3 weeks to get them home.

In September of 2009 we dealt with Silvia (postales@speedtrans-int.com) who could speak very basic English.  She was very kind and patient with us.  However, she was not easy to reach.  If she is still working there – try to reach her.

The most difficult thing for us with Aduanas was figuring out their open hours and then locating them.  So here you go – a walking map from Metro Alameda de Osuna (end of the 5 Line).  Their hours are from 9-2pm, Monday – Thursday.  Note that Aduanas is in a Correos building which you will instantly see once crossing the highway.  And for all your mailing needs, The Spanish Post - Correos.

Aduanas in the office of Correos de Madrid Barajas, sita en la Calle Trespaderne s/n C.P. 28042 de Madrid.  Information Tel: 91 833 10 00.

To this day I can not explain why 2 of our boxes were at Aduanas for declaring and pick up (at separate times) and the third was delivered right to our door.  I suppose it will just be one of life’s little mysteries that I must simply live with.

Moving house in Madrid – granny flat to urban apartment

January 30th, 2010 | Posted by jodiehop in House Hunting | Jodie - (4 Comments)

I hadn’t had a great start to moving to Madrid and I realised that I needed to reflect and get things into perspective – why wasn’t I enjoying this amazing city? I needed to change things that weren’t making me happy (and I wasn’t ready to give up on my boyfriend just yet) so I decide next in line was the Granny apartment. I really hated it. Sitting in there every day on my own I decided that my happiness was more important that not offending my boyfriends choice of apartment, and thus justified a move to a nice apartment.

And it wasn’t just the apartment. I didn’t really like the area. Avenida de America is great for transport but that is about it. Madrid is a small city and I knew I should be able to find somewhere that was near the business school for John, but also in walking distance from the city for me. I started asking my new IE friends about where they lived and after a couple of local walking tours, I found a place I wanted to be: Plaza Olavide.

When I mentioned the lack of taste in decor, I really am not joking. What is it with wood panelling and cork board flooring in this country? Trust me, I am not stylish but this went even beyond me. I searched the two main websites: idealista.es and fotocasa.es, setting up searches on both so that I knew immediately as something was posted (beware though, I haven’t figured out how to stop the idealista emails!) I wasn’t aware of the English speaking agency D’Flat that Courtney used, that could have been helpful.

But then I found something perfect. It had white walls, a modern kitchen (I had no oven previously, a common occurence in Madrid), even a wood burning stove. It had the necessary two bedrooms, plus a kind of open loft that would be fine for guests to sleep in for a weekend.

Knowing that half the people just about to start the course (that’s 200 people) were looking for one and two bed apartments within walking distance of the school, I virtually stalked the landlord until I could get to see it. I fell in love with it – it had recently been refurbished, the landlord was willing to provide some furniture, it was in the right area, and it was the right price. Whopeeee

Being Spain, not everything can go that smoothly. The landlord wanted to do things semi officially. Understandably he was a little nervous about just renting it to people he didn’t know, yet neither of us particularly wanted to pay agents fees (yes, you both pay for the privilege). There is a great scheme set up by the government for this situation. It is called MuniMadrid and they effectively act as the agent. They draw up the contract and inventory for signing, and of course  check your credentials. Where we ran into problem number 2.

As part of the scheme, you have to prove a certain level of income – it’s basically to ensure the rent isn’t more than one-third of your salary and can therefore afford it. You must be able to prove this income within Spain, for at least the last three months. Or, we found out that you can have a guarantor within Spain who needs to do the same, only they must have more income to ensure they can pay both their and your rent (IE students note that the school won’t do this). This posed an enormous problem – John didn’t have a job anymore, I wasn’t paid in Spain and we didn’t know anyone in Spain that we could ask.

However, it turns out that there is another governmental organisation out there which is part of La Corte de Arbitraje. This organisation takes three month deposit, asks you to sign a couple of simple forms and then if for any reason rent isn’t paid in any given month, they evict you and the landlord gets the money. Maybe not that simply but effectively that’s what happens. I don’t have, and hope not to have, any experience of this.

So, for me that was one month’s deposit on the apartment (usual ware and tear type deposit, paid back when you move out providing that the apartment is in decent shape), plus three months deposit for not having a guarantor. Four months total, plus the first month’s rent does seem a lot BUT I have heard that some (one person being a Spanish teacher at IE) that they can ask up to eight months! So come prepared.

It took a while, and a lot of paperwork but I feel happier that it is a government scheme that works for both the landlord and tenant. And I LOVE my apartment. Really, for the first two months, I barely left it except to the go the gym which I equally love (more on that in the next post).

Some key points:

  • Language: alquiler (to rent); el depósito (the deposit); amueblado (furnished); desamueblado (unfurnished)
  • Websites: Idealista and Fotocasa

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Obtaining a Student Visa for Spain (from US)

January 28th, 2010 | Posted by swidner in Stephanie | Visas - (19 Comments)

If you read my previous post, Landing in Madrid, you will remember that I mentioned how is was more difficult for us to obtain our student visas than to sell our house or all of our possessions.  Part of the difficulty was being located in Hawaii and having to contact the Spanish Consulate in San Francisco during their narrow window when they take calls.  If you look at the Spanish consulate site at www.maec.es, it will direct you to your nearest Consulate in the US.  Then, on the specific city’s website it will tell you the necessary documentation you will need to bring with you for your in person interview.  One such document is a certified police record from the local police.  I guess this was an unusual request for the Honolulu Police Department, because what should have taken a couple of days to complete took almost a month to have returned to us.   Then, we had to get an Apostille from our Lieutenant Governor to certify our police record.  After no response from the their office, my husband and I went down to his office and waited till it was signed.  We even ended up getting fingerprints to send to the FBI to verify that we didn’t have a criminal record, which was a recommendation from the school because they had a student that went to the Consulate in Los Angeles, and discovered that they request this.  Also, you can apply for your visa no more than 90 days in advance of when you plan to enter Spain, and you must have the Visa in hand 30 days prior to entering Spain.  Plus, once you submit the paperwork it could take 4 to 6 weeks, especially if you are applying for a visa in the summer months. (ours arrived in 4 wks)

Here’s a list of the required documents that we presented to the Consulate’s office:

  • Three application forms downloaded from www.maec.es
  • Original and copy of passport (make sure it hasn’t expired or won’t expire while in Spain)
  • Three passport size photos (we got ours at Costco, or you can go to any AAA office if you’re a member)
  • Acceptance letter (this is from your school usually in Spanish)
  • Planned Itinerary (we reserved our tickets online and printed out the itinerary, also they don’t recommend purchasing the tickets until you have received your visa in the mail)
  • Evidence of funds (we printed out our bank statements, and included a letter from the school regarding my husband’s fellowship, and a letter from our parents saying that they supported us as well)
  • Health insurance (this we didn’t have prior to entering Spain, but in the acceptance letter from the school they explained that we would obtain health insurance from Sanitas, a private insurer)
  • Visa fee $100 USD for US passport holders
  • Self addressed USPS and $18.30 in stamps (as a couple you only need one envelope so they send you your Visa and original paperwork back to you)
  • Absence of Police criminal records (ever state is different for obtaining a local police report in Hawaii it was the Attorney General’s office)
  • Medical Certificate (our doctor’s wrote a letter saying we were in good health on their clinic’s letterhead)
  • Letter of authorization (if under 18)
  • Additional documents-I would highly recommend getting a certified copy of your marriage license, and submit fingerprints to the FBI, the fingerprints we obtained from a local copy who fingerprints everyone who works in the financial sector in Hawaii and then sent them to FBI Criminal Justice Information Services Divison in Clarksburg, W.V 26306)

After this, we finally made our appointment and flew over to meet someone in the Consulate’s office.  After waiting an hour past our appointment we sat down with them, only to learn that we needed to provide a certified copy of our marriage certificate, which they hadn’t mentioned on their website.  I ended up calling by parents in Missouri, where we got married, immediately so that they could overnight the document to the Consulate.

So, we learned a couple of things through this process, always be prepared for anything.  We found that with our consulate that if you have everything, except for one document, then they were willing to make an exception.  Also, while we were there we asked about how difficult it was to obtain a work visa for Spain.  They said that you would need to be sponsored by a Spanish company in order to get an NIE number to work in Spain.(and as we learned later to get a cell phone contract, bank account but more on that later)  The other thing the Consulate’s office went on to tell us is that once you have entered Spain with a student visa it is almost impossible to get a work visa, and we would have to come back to interview in San Francisco.  So, their advice was if at all possible try to get the work visa prior to entering Spain.  I found this to be a catch 22 because most Spanish companies wanted to see that you were already living locally in Spain, before they would even consider giving you an interview.

Details

  • Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Ministerio Evteriones De Asuntos y de Cooperacion)-has information about local Spanish consulates in the World, application for visas as well as Residential Certificates, Marriage Licenses, and Birth Certificates

My Spanish apartment has no oven

January 26th, 2010 | Posted by Courtney in Courtney | House Hunting - (16 Comments)

I am a hostess. I love to cook and I love to entertain. So when I discovered that my new Madrid flat had no oven, I just about passed out. In my first-week-daze I failed to notice such a deficiency as we viewed the apartment, agreed to “take it” and then signed the contract. Damn.

Will and I are planners I must confess. While we technically showed up to Madrid homeless – we had done our research before arrival and had not only scoped out apartments but also the agency options to rent them. We pre-booked a flat for one week near Sol on Calle Barcelona using D’Flat Madrid, the company we would use for our long-term rental as well (D’Flat Housing – for long-term stays).

D’Flat Housing is run by two 2003 Executive MBA IE graduates. They work on a reduced commission basis for IE students. Unlike other rental search companies, who charge a NON-REFUNDABLE full month’s rent as their commission, D’Flat Housing offers a €175 (+16% VAT) = €203 finders fee, which is refundable if you find a renter to take your place when moving out. D’Flat Housing manages a selected portfolio of apartments which Will and I felt were good options for what we were looking for (furnished, 2 bedrooms, good light, short distance from the IE campus and charm). We selected apartments we were interested in viewing, gave D’Flat our wish list and then arranged meeting times at the apartments where someone from D’Flat would meet us and let us in to view.

Using D’Flat had its advantages outside of the geared-towards-IE student approach they take. For instance, as non-EU members, we had a solid two month process ahead of us to get our residency numbers (NIE). These numbers are typically required for obtaining a place to live or in the very least, having basic utilities switched on. In using D’Flat – this was not an obstacle. Another positive was an English speaking staff. Lastly, their website is comprehensive, though a bit difficult to navigate, with true-to-life photographs included.  As a result of this we found an apartment relatively quickly in Barrio Salamanca.

Most of our contact was with Viviana Montoya (info2@dflatmadrid.com) who was very helpful and responsive via email (just not always in incredible haste) but I believe another good D’Flat contact is Mr. César Rivera +34 / 645186233.

I admit once I discovered the lack of oven I flipped into a bit of “buyers remorse”. Had we selected the flat in haste? Were we not thorough enough? Were we paying too much?  These thoughts have passed as I have learned to appreciate other things about my apartment, like its gigantic master bedroom and bathroom.  As for appreciating my area…that’s a whole other story entirely…

Now that we’re four months in I have figured it out!  As I work to master the art of Spanish cooking I have begun to notice the lack of oven-time necessary to turn out such delicious items. And while Spaniards (especially the older ones) LOVE their bread and pastries…these aren’t ever made at home…no way! These are lined up for and savored in cafes, bakeries and pastry shops…for hours at a time.

Oh but in the end…I am an American so our apartment kitchen is now complete with a state of the art Taurus toaster oven (from the all powerful El Cortes Ingles). Let the entertaining resume.

What about you? Have you used D’Flat or perhaps another company for your apartment search that you would like to share about with us?

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Re-connecting with a world outside Madrid

January 25th, 2010 | Posted by jodiehop in Communications | Jodie - (0 Comments)

The following weeks after moving to Madrid had some serious ups and downs. The Spanish course was fantastic, truly fantastic. I had not laughed so hard in along time. Yes it was a Spanish course but it was actually more of a beginners guide to Spain. Almost everything in the Spanish language has a sexual meaning of some kind. Political correctness does not exist. Our teacher took great joy in singling people out (in great humour) and teaching us new expressions: Someone mentioning that they were from North Dakota gave us el culo del mundo (the arse end of the world), and someone talking about their boyfriend  meant that we learnt cursi (cheesy) (ok that one was me).

But at the same time I still had no internet or phone at home, I was waiting for insurance on the laptop, it was difficult to work without afore mentioned services and my grandmother was sick. I wasn’t the happiest bunny in town. Not being used to a stressed/unhappy girlfriend, my man also got less communicative on the phone which stressed me even more.

So here’s my first set of tips as for me, communication to the outside world is key: Internet providers

Telefonica – I have a dislike for this company which, for a while, leant towards hatred. This was the old nationalised phone company. Their customer service is terrible. They didn’t respond to two messages I sent via their English language website (www.telefonicainenglish.com), then when we finally got through they told us three times (and yes this was verified by a Spanish speaker) that they would be coming to fit the wifi and then cancelled the order every time with NO notice. Each time (after we called them) there was a different excuse 1. Telefonica can’t work in your building (then why do two of my neighbours have it?), we came and couldn’t connect you (no, I was the only person who lived there and I didn’t see you), 3. ok ok you get the picture and now I’m just whinging . The downside is that as Telefonica own most of the lines, even if you go with another provider, chances are that at some point Telefonica has to get involved which means delays.

ONO – This is the one I signed up to so this is an honest view. I love the customer service with this company. They are great. They have a number for English speakers (902 929 000) and are quick to respond to queries. The downside: despite two visits to my new apartment (I didn’t stay in the granny flat) they haven’t figured out why two computers can’t work on the wifi at the same time with out the odd cut off – slightly frustrating when we are both home but not the end of the world. Any they are one of the cheaper providors (around 40eur/month)

Jazztel – I have a couple of friends who have Jazztel and they are really happy with them. A real plus is that they don’t require a minimum contract. They are also one of the cheapest of the phone companies with regular special offers giving you the first few months for 15-20euros instead of the usual 40euros.

Orange – If you want a one-top shop then this is one of the two options you have. Orange is one of the cheaper mobile networks (they are all relatively expensive) but do offer decent internet/tv/phone deals from around 35/40euros per month. Most people I have spoken to seem happy with this service although as it’s not one of the preferred providers so maybe there are hidden problems that I just know about.

Now, I have saved the top tip for last. Whilst you are getting your wifi/broadband/phone organised – go to the Phone House (with identification including your visa if you need one, and proof of address) and get a dongle (I am not sure if this is an official term or just want my genius IT friend calls them). They are USB sticks that give you internet connection, available immediately and 100% transportable with the laptop. Usually they charge by the overall download in one day (kb/mb) – around 3eur per day is the most you should pay. You can also get this as a monthly service through StudentsPhone. Read our notes on these guys before you sign up though.

And finally I had internet. Welcome back long rambling conversations with friends and family. I had no idea that having internet was SO important but it is, and it’s worth getting it sorted. Now I could breathe a big sigh of relief….