The flight's been booked

Today we made the flight reservations. As we planned before, the departure will be on the week nr29 in July, on Thursday 19th to be more specific. The plane will take off from Tampere-Pirkkala airport at 15:50, land in Copenhagen where we'll catch the connecting flight after 3,5hrs of waiting and finally we'll touch down in Madrid Barajas airport at 23:30 local time. The cheapest flight operator came out to be Blue1, with the price for one adult incl. taxes coming up to 137€.

I have also made arrangements for the transportation of Rocio's and my belongings to Spain. A very friendly one-man company called Kulkurin Logistiikka will pick up the things from our doorstep in Tampere after halfway June and deliver to the location in Spain for 500€/2 m³. That's all the space we'll need as we're not taking any furniture or other excessively big things with us - most rental apartments in Spain come furnished.

In the meantime, we've lived through the Vappu - the Finnish Labor Day. It was a nice evening with some friends, beers and a night out in the city. The next day we went so see the Vappu market with it's balloons and all the people wandering in the streets and between the sales tents with their morning-after headaches - or in some cases the continuation of the previous night.

The aftermath of Labor Day

A couple of weeks ago we took a trip to Ähtäri Zoo, some 150km from Tampere, which gives a nice view of the most typical Finnish animals as well as of some more exotic ones, such as the snow leopard. Take a look at a few that we encountered:

The snow leopard

The reindeer

Owls

The moose (is loose)

The cuddly bears

...and two very wild lynxes!

And for a final note this time, a few tips for those interested in the price of everyday things in Spain. Two major Spanish shopping chains have their online stores in the following addresses, where you can see the prices of food, household products and some other consumer goods:
http://www.mercadona.es/ns/principal.php
http://www.carrefour.es/index.html

...and what happened with the NIE-number?

Well, today I received a letter from the Spanish authorities regarding my application for the NIE-number. The resolution was negative and the instructions on the letter guided me to apply for the number from the authorities of the city I will be living in once I get to Spain. No harm done here, except that I won't be able to take care of all the things immediately once I get there. The only thing that makes me wonder is why the web page of the Ministry of Interior Affairs of Spain says it is possible to apply the number in your country of residence from an embassy or other diplomatic post, yet in the end it isn't. This might be because the legislation regarding the NIE and residencia has been recently renewed and the procedures and rules are still a bit unclear - even for the officials. There is useful information about this in the issue 4/07 of the OLE-magazine and also will be in their future issues. Anyway, I hope this experience might save a little trouble from someone in a similar situation. Here's a quote that confused me from the page in question (in Spanish):

• "Las presentadas en España personalmente por el interesado, en cuyo caso habrá de acreditar que se halla legalmente en territorio español y justificar documentalmente el motivo de la asignación de dicho número.
• Las que se presenten en España por el representante del extranjero, acreditando dicha representación mediante poder general o poder especial, así como justificar documentalmente el motivo de la asignación del número.
• Las que se presenten en las Representaciones Diplomáticas u Oficinas Consulares españolas ubicadas en el país de residencia del solicitante, en unión de los documentos que justifiquen el motivo de la asignación del número."

Source: http://www.mir.es/SGACAVT/extranje/regimen_comunitario/tarjeta_residencia.html

What else is new? Well, nothing much really. These weeks and months seem like only passing the time before getting on the go actually. During the easter time we did some traveling though, visiting my family in Jyväskylä and Kuopio. We also spent one night at our summer cottage, which was a nice experience: having sauna in the middle of the night and sitting out on the porch in the chilly air, seeing the starry sky the way you never can in the city... And while on the road, it seemed as if it was just the time for the swans to do their migration as we saw plenty of those. Here's one picture I took of those beautiful birds:



Oh, and there was a couple of new experiences in store for Rocío as well on this trip: her first icicle and of course since it was easter - mämmi! Take a look: