Arriving in Estepona
Our last couple of days before arriving in Estepona were in Brussels and Paris. We spent four nights in Brussels, seeing the sights, eating chocolate, drinking beer, and enjoying some time with Jay's cousin Mark who just happened to be in Belgium for the Grand Prix.
Previously, back on June 27th, when we were in Paris, we had left a piece of large luggage with a service called Stasher. Stasher allowed us to store this luggage full of stuff we wanted for our year in Spain but didn't want to lug all over Europe with us. Fast forward to August 29th, and we took a train from Brussels to Paris, stopped for a bite to eat and a quick visit to the Arc de Triomphe, picked up the luggage, and spent one night in a Paris-Orly hotel before leaving for our flight to Malaga first thing in the morning.
Arriving in Malaga, we realized we had a bit of a misstep. (feel free to skip this part if you are not interested in bureaucracy). We have a visa from Spain to live here for a year. That visa needed to be stamped when we entered the country to mark the start of a 30-day period we had to register with our city. Since we arrived from France, part of the Schengen Area, we did not pass through immigration or have our passports stamped. This wouldn't have been a problem if we had come straight from the U.S. or any other non-Schengen country. We found the police and asked if we could find and go through immigration, and even though many people tried to help us, the answer was ultimately "No." We even went to the off-site Malaga Airport police station and talked to some very nice officers with our relocation consultant Rhona on the phone; they would not stamp our passports and said we didn't need that. Our passports were stamped in Amsterdam when we entered the Schengen Area weeks ago, which should be fine, and even if it weren't fine, our local police station would handle it.
It was not fine.
We were also dealing with shuffling all our luggage, managing the three kids, and renting a car. We decided to head to Estepona. The next day, we registered with the town at the local municipal office. Afterward, we went to the local police station to see if they would help because we worried about our entry into Spain not being recorded. With the help of our relocation consultant Rhona, we waited and talked with multiple officials who referred us to someone else or refused to help. Ultimately we drove back to the Malaga airport police station to explain that the local office would record our entry into Spain. At this point, the Malaga airport police had us fill out some forms in quintuplicate for us to attest that we did indeed arrive in Spain the day before so it could be recorded into "the system." They also called our local police and chastised them over the phone, which was interesting.
By the end of 2 days of travel and bureaucracy, we had seen the inside of one government office and two police stations (George was very excited to see the "cages" where people are held) for something close to seven hours.
With all that behind us, we are not yet finished with our paperwork. We still need to pick up our stamped local registration forms and bring them to another appointment to apply for our residency cards. Then make another five appointments to pick up the cards once they have been issued (45 days). All this "should" happen by mid-November. 🤞
Moving on from frustrating bureaucratic paperwork:
The house we moved into is beautiful with plenty of room for us all plus guests, a pool, and directly by the sea. We are only a short drive from the school. The kids are all excited to start their new school adventure.
