A Hard Week

I have to say, this week has been one of the hardest weeks of our project. It seems that time has started speeding up since we lost our apartment option in Barcelona.

One of the hardest requirements to get our visas is to provide a contract or property address for where we will live for the year. This requirement must be submitted at the time or our appointment even though we don't know for sure we'll get approved for our visas.

We've been working on finding a place to rent for about a month now. Initially, it was hard to know where to start. To help us get reacquainted with Barcelona again, we decided to look at properties using various leasing websites. This helped us narrow down the size and the areas we wanted to lease in.

After reaching out to the Wagoners, John was able to find a worldwide leasing company to help us narrow down our options. The most difficult part of looking at places is asking for a lease now that will start a couple months in the future. Barcelona, like Austin, is a hot real estate market so the competition is fierce. And, without visas and without "jobs", (we will not be working in Spain), landlords are scratching their heads, probably wondering if we are "for real".

As you can imagine most natives do not know about these requirements, why would they? So they have found our situation most interesting, (and probably amusing).

With only 10 days to go until our appointment, we are at wits end today. The last few apartments the agency showed us were not optimal for various reasons.

All we can do is keep chugging along. There are other options we are exploring and have made a decision to find a place this weekend, no matter what.

Time is of the essence. We must get whatever agreement for leasing in place soon because we'll need to send the document over to our translator and get it back in time to make copies.

To make matters worse, Summer has arrived in Austin and tempers have been running hotter than normal, just like our A/C units. Everyone seems to be just a little on edge, making conversations "exciting", to say the least.

I am in a cool, comfortable ice fort. I am in a cool, comfortable ice fort that is located in Spain. LOL

I am starting to feel better now.