No Mail for You

There are many more important, meaningful things to write about right now...my trip to Rome, future planning, the upcoming holidays...

But, I need to share this.

Let me start by saying that there are many parts of Spainish life that are well organized, and logical.  For starters, the city is immaculate -- a fact that is made more evident the more I travel around Europe.  The city workers are out all day, every day, clearing the streets and parks of trash, washing roads, trimming trees, repairing and repaving sidewalks...hell, I even saw one guy yesterday meticulously replacing tiny tiles on a decorative mosaic sculpture at one of the parks down by the ocean.  And no...this was not a tourist site, or famous sculpture...just another sculpture with a little tile missing.  Decorative sculptures and structures are everywhere.  I kid you not.  This city is an artistic masterpiece, just gorgeous. 

The holidays come around, and, on cue, the city's decorations go up.  As we speak, neighborhoods throughout Barcelona are systematically being strung with lights and festive illuminated images.  Barcelona parties hard, after every city-wide fiesta and/or parade (which there are many...usually involving explosives) there is inevitably an army of cleaning trucks and workers, blasting through the mess with water, and sweeping up the debauchery leaving Barcelona the gleaming beauty she is, once again. 

And the cabs?  Amazing.  Just amazing.  Not only are they all marked exactly the same as yellow and black Priuses, they are plentiful and pretty much always spotless inside and out.  Unlike in the US, the driver isn't on his cell phone screaming in another language while simultaneously smoking and ripping you off.  Here the drivers are professionals -- always well dressed and groomed, they look like your uncle and are usually very friendly and willing to let you practice your sad Spanish skills with them.  At the airport they are lined up, and because there is only one taxi service and they do not receive tips, there is no one soliciting or trying to drag you away to their own service.  You just walk to the stand, let the guy know how many people/bags, and they point to the next available taxi.  NO other city I have traveled to has an airport taxi system quite like it.  It is heaven.  Is it possible the taxi driver will take you on a tour of the city if you clearly don't know where you are going to jack up the price?  Yes.  But I haven't had an issue with this yet.

While we are on the subject -- the public transportation also kicks ass.  I can firmly say that Barcelona is probably one of the most child friendly cities in the world.  Now that I'm savvy enough to understand and use the bus system, I'm obsessed.  The buses, also spotless, go EVERYWHERE, and are absolutely huge inside, room enough for 2 or 3 strollers to be wheeled right on.  Plus there is a tram system, also huge and big enough for strollers, and I think something like 80% of the subways have elevators (Poblenou, my stop, unfortunately does not). 

Now, on to the postal system.

Mail here, in my humble opinion, is kind of a joke.  Ain't nothing gettin' in...and today I've realized, ain't nothin' getting out, either.

Let's take it back to April, when my sister kindly tried to send us two care packages to our home address.  I had already received a package at our house previously, so I had no idea that having mail sent to a residential address can sometimes not work out so well.  When the weeks ticked by, and the packages still had not arrived, I checked the tracking online to find that both packages were in Madrid, stuck in customs.  "Great!"  I thought.  They are in Spain!  It will probably just be a couple days before they are released, and I'll have my stuff.

Yeah, no.

I won't bore you with the details, but what followed was a hair pulling charade of faxing, emailing, re-faxing, emailing, and playing cat and mouse with Spanish customs office over what seems to me to be an obnoxious amount of paperwork in order to have two small boxes of stuff delivered.  I would give them what they want, they would email a week later asking me to fax it again.  I would give them what they want, and they would email saying they had nothing.  I would give them what they want, and then they finally informed me IN JULY (this went on for three full months) that my stuff was on its way back to the United States.  Sigh.

After that debacle, I wised up.  If anything needed to be sent to us, it needed to be sent to Chris's work where professional Spanish speakers at his company can deal with customs issues should they arise. 

Since that time, we've had a few successful deliveries -- however, my mother recently mailed a birthday present to Mia, paying extra to have it delivered on time for her birthday (October 21st), and it still isn't here.  We got the dreaded customs "notice" in the mail a few weeks ago, faxed what they needed immediately...and guess what...we still haven't received her gift.  I'll bet you all the money in Spain that if I called them today, they'd ask me to fax exactly what we already faxed to them in order to get our stuff.  I would love to see that fax machine in the customs office.  I picture a lone fax machine, in an empty room, overflowing with paperwork sent by all the poor foreign schmucks like myself.

So basically, if stuff is sent here, about 50% makes it past customs unscathed.  The rest is caught in the web, and so far, we haven't been successful in getting it out of customs when it does get caught. 

OK, OK.  Can't win them all.  So I can't count on shipping here in Spain.  I can roll with it. 

But today I attempted to do my first mailing OUT of Spain.  And it was priceless. 

So, I had ordered some new glasses online from a great American website Warby Parker.  Somehow, I knew trying to order prescription glasses here in Spain would end up being more work than it was worth, and Warby Parker has fab glasses, amazingly good prices, and does all the work for you in terms of finding out your current prescription.  To me, it made sense to order them online, have them sent to my mother in law Judie, and have Judie ship them to me here. 

Well, the Spain Mail Gods were good to me, and we got the packages Judie so nicely sent us -- nothing caught in customs!!!!  Hooray!!!  Except, the glasses did not fit the way I hoped, and decided to call Warby to see if I could exchange -- which they were totally cool with.  Not only were they cool with it, they immediately mailed different pair, and told me just to ship the glasses I had back as soon as I could. 

Hmmm...I hadn't mailed anything from Spain yet.  It has been, what, 9 months?  The post office here isn't my favorite place, for obvious reasons.  They really, really don't like to speak English, even if they are able, and there is usually a line of angry people (just like in the US) behind me who aren't super excited that I'm stumbling along in my broken Spanish holding everything up.  So I avoid that place like the plague.  I had passed a Mailboxes, Etc. many times here in Poblenou, and always made a mental note that it was there.  We had one back in Rowley, that I loved -- they used UPS, and it was always so easy to just pop in, drop off what I needed to have mailed, and run out. 

So, today, I headed over there to the Mailboxes, Etc. to send my tiny little 1oz. glasses box back to New York, NY.  Now, I had just received an email yesterday from Judie saying the new glasses were on their way to Barcelona by way of USPS, they cost just $11 to ship. 

I could tell immediately when I walked in, this isn't like the Mailboxes, Etc. in the US.  Now, from what I understand, the only way to ship internationally to the US is through UPS or FedEx -- and this place uses UPS.  First off, there are no prices listed anywhere like they are in most UPS or FedEx stores.  I was handed off to what appeared to be the owner, and he informed me he had to take the destination address "in back" and do some figuring to find out the best price for me.  Ok....

After filling out the UPS form, showing him my minuscule glasses box, and waiting 10 minutes for him to write down three figures on a piece of paper, he comes back with a series of prices.  All between 90 - 110 euros (around $125).  Mind you, the glasses I'm sending back are $95.  I kind of smile, and explain that what I'm mailing back is not worth the cost of shipping, and I can't pay that much for shipping. 

I'm ready to get my box and leave, when he comes back with:

"What about 85 euros?  That's as low as I can go..."

Um, since when is postage negotiable?  I get the fact that I'm in a private company offering shipping services, but seriously? 

I'm kind of taken off guard, and everyone in the place is staring at me at this point...

"Um, no thank you.  I really, really appreciate you taking the time to find options for me, but the cost is way too high.  It costs $11 to ship this exact box from the US to Barcelona."

He THEN comes back with:

"Ok, Ok.  I have another company that does shipping.  I could ship it through them for 60 euros.  How about that?"

I felt like I was at a Toyota dealership, and this guy was trying to sell me a new Camry.  We are talking about postage here people.

I, again, politely declined, and asked for my box back...and get out of there, and everyone in the place seemed shocked and somewhat pissed I wasn't going to ship it with them. 

Where are we?  Antarctica?  How could it cost over $100 to send a little box to NYC? 

I fully get that there is likely a cheaper option, and I am being scammed...but I guess postage is one of those things that I assume isn't gouged too much -- you pay for speed or weight, but generally don't expect an owner to adjust the price depending on how naive you might be. 

I am now faced with the task of finding some Vistaprinters traveling back to the US soon to smuggle this to the US for me, or braving Correos, the local post office, to see if they are a little more fair and honest.  Sheeesh. 

And thus is the story of the hustlin' postal man.