Que Vergüenza!

Here is a funny story that occurred today- Only in Spain!

So today, I woke up nice and early as I always do, and after doing some yoga stretches (this is not typical), I decided to make some coffee.

So I go into the kitchen and set up the coffee maker, and I start cleaning up the dishes from the night before. Then all of a sudden, I hear a *click*...

I look into the other rooms, and I realize the lights went off. Fantastic.  First reaction: get a flashlight and candles. Then I realize its 10 am and I can just open the blinds.  So my next though is: *circuit breaker*

Now, we don't have a basement, so I start walking around wondering where this box would be. Then I go to the obvious place: the front door. There it is, staring me in the face, taunting me.  So I turn all the switches, then turn them back. Nothing.
So I do it again. Nothing. Then again, in different combinations. Nothing.
Ok, time to call the Dueño. I call Nora for his number. Then luckally Margaxu wakes up and comes to help me out. So we call Paco, but his cell phone is out of service. Great. Paco is skiing in the alps or something and we're going to freeze in our cold, unheated piso.

So we call the electric company, since we ourselves haven't paid any bills, perhaps the bill didn't get paid? No, everything is fine. The lady even reset our electricity (twice) and we turned off and on the the circuit breaker again. Still, nothing.

Next step, since Paco still is unavailable to us, is to call an electrician. Because the rest of the vecinos (neighbors) have power. The man is annoyed, and tells us he'll be here in an hour. So what to do? Well we dont want to freeze, so we opt for a café at a café.


To our surprise, its hot out! Its over 60 degrees outside by noon (this is ironic because of my last post about the weather) Anyway, we decide to sit outside and enjoy our coffee while we wait for the electrician.


So finally, he arrives. (Oh but we also had to warn him, that when he comes to fix our electricity that is broken that he can't ring the bell because THAT is broken too) Anyway, he comes upstairs, looks at the circuit box... and within 2 seconds, our light turns on.


The man flipped a switch, the same switch I flipped 3 times.


"Que vergüenza!" (what embarrassment!)


Here's the best part: the man looks at us and says "That will be 130 euros"
I looked at Margaux and said "wait, HOW much did he just ask us for?"
We kind of had the fear of god in our faces Im sure, and played dumb americans, and probably looked on the verge of tears, and explained that we had done that 3 times already and its not our fault!
So finally, we did some great negotiating, and he only charged us 20 euros!!!!


So Marguax did her infamous scream out of frustration, and I just shook my head in shame.


But the way we see it, we could not fix the problem ourselves, so we  technically did pay for it to be fixed, and at least we had electricity, and heat (even though the day turned out to be over 70 degrees!)


Que vergüenza!!!!