Friday 1 August 2008

Get along with el vecinos

When we first arrived in Spain one of the things we had to come to terms with was our new house.
When we seen the house for the first time I was pretty dismayed. I was expecting a lovely, small, Spanish holiday home. What I saw -on a drizzle afternoon in the middle of the Spanish Spring- was a residential home. Not just any kind of residential home, but a high rise residential home. The tallest building in the whole of Nerja.
Except for the fact that geography of Nerja is so that it appears to be built on the side of a valley so the building isn't as protruding from the skyline as you would expect.

After a few days living here I started to find more things I liked and disliked, close to the beach; pool is closed, those kind of things.
One of the good points was the "residentialness" of the building.
I figured that no one is going to want to holiday here. The building is going to be full of Spanish. It'll be good to get to know a few of the faces and eventually, and hopefully, get in to small talk with people.

It turns out I was wrong. I don't think I could of been anymore wrong?
This building is like a big piece of fresh, clean, bare skin attracting annoying, buzzing mosquito's from far away.

We get plenty of holiday makers here. Mainly the French. Although there is the odd English, Spanish and German holiday makers. But those nationalities are no where near as noticeable as the French.

I'd say that about 80~90% of mosquito's holiday makers arrive on Sundays. This is the one day that I've started to hate.
All day we get taxi's and minibuses pull up. Kids shoot out screaming and running about. Suitcases being pulled up to the main door.
I'd like to mention at this point that we are extremely unfortunate to be living on the ground floor and have our bedroom right next to the only door in to the building. So we have all visitors pass us.
Some times, if we are very lucky, we will get a French group pull up on a Sunday/Monday morning at about 2am shouting and banging on while removing their suitcases from the car to the door. All of this happens right. Outside. Our window.

P7121474
Another annoying point to having different weekly neighbours is you never know who is going to turn up at the pool.
A few weeks back we had a large group of French kids. The flat they were renting must of had bodies laying down in all directions at night.
For the entire week these kids did nothing but sing songs, scream and shout as loud as they could while in the pool. Which is really annoying if you just want a nice swim, relax and sunbath.
Some weeks we just avoid the pool and don't think of the holiday makers.
The last week or two we have been very lucky. We've had quite a few new families/mature people who have been very quite and reserved at the pool which has been beautiful.

But Saturdays are always nice. Things are much quieter around here. The pool is more then often empty. And all this quit time gives me the chance to pray to the Gods of First Choice and Thomson Cook that the next visitors we get are quite....


...and not French

3 comments:

Please Don't Eat With Your Mouth Open said...

Nice of the accommodation agents to let you know that minor detail of your flat, wasn't it?

How frustrating. At least you know that in the winter it'll be a bit quieter.

adventure grrl said...

Cute picture. Are you making all the girls in Spain swoon????

Robbie said...

@Joanne It's been like a bit of a learning curve for us. Now we know what to look for in our next apartment.
Every person I've got to know here that live here have been saying how much they are all looking forward to getting the summer over and done with. The main areas of this town are like a 1/10oth mini version of London. Yep the streets might be tiny but they seem just as full.

@Grrl Thank you. I wouldn't say swoon...