I come from a rainy place. A very, very rainy place. It is said that it rains more than 200 days a year there. It's a record in Europe. My husband claims it to be 300, but even if he's the one always checking the weather and the statistics on the back of our local newspaper, I don't really trust him. Rain made something happen with his head, I think. Like a dark, rainy cloud confusing his once so positive thoughts and making everything dark and negative. So – after ten years in Bergen, Norway, we decided to move to his country.
One of the main reasons we moved, was, alas, the rain. Not being originally from the area we moved to (Almeria), and with just limited experience to count on (we bought our holiday home here in 2004), my dear husband leaned on statistics. And what does the statistics say about Almeria? That it has an average annual temperature of 18 degrees – the most stable in mainland Spain. That all the greenhouses have created a micro-climate that makes the temperatures even more stable. That it is the driest place in...Europe? That it has the only desert in Europe. Now, add the fact that every time we talked to my husbands parents via Skype, the conversation went:
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Y que....allí llueve, o que?
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Si....llueve.
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Pues, aqui vamos en mangas cortas!
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Y aqui con botas y chubasqueros....
(So what...it rains there, right? - Yes, it does - Well, we still put on t-shirts. - And we rain boots and raincoats...)
Conclusion: a dry place. A very dry place. My husband moved one year before the rest of the family, and we "enjoyed" conversations much like the one above. As I originally was quite reluctant to move away from my friends and quit my job, move from the centre of a city to a small apartment in a deserted residence far from a city in an area full of ugly greenhouses,I had some conditions. The conditions were:
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I want a dishwasher (check)
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We need more space to all our clothes. You need to build a closet in the second bathroom and do something about the (extremely useless) ones we have already. (check)
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Find a solution for all the shoes (check)
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Move the barbecue and put in the laundry machine. Make place for laundry on roof. (half check)
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Build an extra room on the roof. (ha ha)
Our apartment is 75 m2 – and the roof terrace the same size. Needless to say, a lot of space we don't use. So I thought it would be a good idea to put the laundry up there. So thought my husband, and installed dishwasher where the laundry had been, and moved laundry on roof. During the year he lived here alone, he went heroically to IKEA all by his own, bought laundry baskets, installed them, moved the barbecue to another corner, made a little house to the washing machine, made a kind of counter top made from thin wood (cheap plank bought at BrikoMart) over the laundry baskets and then decided it was enough – we would cover the wood as soon as we found tiles that we liked, and there was no hurry in finding doors for the machine and the baskets.
- What about rain? Said my visiting Norwegian friends this summer. My husband started to laugh. - It never rains, he said. As he's the native, I decided to trust him, and soon had the same answer to visiting friends. - My husband says it never rains. And if it does, it's just a little bit. Noooo, there's really no trouble having all the laundry up here, uncovered. And the counter top made from thin wood with holes in it? No problem. And the electricity? Nooo, don't think it'll be a problem.
Now, during this year, I'm beginning to realize that I need to stop and do a consideration whenever my brain suggests thinking: He's the native, he knows how to do this, I'll trust him.
This is what I have to think: He moved away from home at 13. From Spain at 17. He's equally lost. AND he's a man. He doesn't always get the gossip, the talk, the comments, the information given at school - even if it's his own language. I need to trust myself. I need to get something to cover the roof top washing room before the next rainfall soaks everything again. Never trust statistics, I learned at University. Don't trust the locals, even if he's your husband, is what I'm starting to realize.