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We're fortunate that our mate has said we can stay here on the Costa del Sol until almost the end of January - so having a rest generally which is nice. James turned 52 on the 8th and we went for dinner to our 'expensive' local restaurant. Used to be 12 euro for 3 courses for dinner... gone up to 15 - holy moly - that's insane. And we've only been gone a bit over a year, patently rampant inflation. Our usual haunt for outings is a lunch joint that's 3 courses for 9 euro including a glass of wine. Trouble with finding our haunts is we tend to stick with them for fear of spending dough elsewhere and it's simply not as good. Anyway. First off, I can now sing Happy Birthday in Spanish. Cumpleanos Feliz, Cumpleanos Feliz... etc In other, late breakng news... we run out of Schengen Zone time (90 days out of every 180 days) as of 27 January - we would take someone's hand off at the elbow if they offered us a European passport, but for that to happen we need to wait for a massive lotto win and then just buy a passport in Cyprus! In the meantime we need to move on from the lovely Schengen zone where 99% of housesits are and to the other side of the iron curtain so to speak. We sat down with a list of non-Schengen European options (Romania, Cyprus, Bulgaria). Then a list of exotics - Turkey (going further to hell in it's artisan handbasket every day) and Morocco (sigh... love it, but tired of being mistaken for carriers of pounds sterling or 'ATMs'). Montenegro, Albania, Serbia, Bosnia, Kosovo, Moldova etc (in the little blue beret UN area) and checked flight prices. Well first off we were all excited and were going to fly Tui-Fly (based in Belgium) to Albania and have an action packed tour of the Balkans. Tried to buy the flights online 3 times. I literally lost the plot several times as the credit cards (all three of them) were declined. I rang the bank in Australia. Nope. No issue there... they weren't even seeing the transactions knocking at the door of the account. All of 150 odd euro. Gave in. Rang the Tui help desk in Spain. "Oh... you're in Spain are you. Well you need to phone Belgium". Couldn't get through to Belgium on Skype. Got through to Germany though. Nope you need to phone Belgium. Eventually got through to Belgium. Guy on the help line said to clear the cookies. Ate the whole packet. He made the booking at his end and then I tried to pay online again. The call centre fellow couldn't take the credit card payment himself as apparently Tui doesn't trust it's own flight flogging employees with, heaven forbid, payment details. He wandered off to check with a colleague (at 30 cents a minute mind you). Came back on the line and said they'd figured out the problem. "Brilliant!" I said. "Not so much..." he said. You're in Spain so you have to be using a Spanish credit card that matches the Spanish IP address. Or you need to call someone in Australia who can pay for your booking with an Australian credit card... being used in Australia with an Australian IP address. OK.... so Tui is a 'global' airline... but not much as it turns out. But hey - we were game. We figured given the 9 hour time difference with Australia we could probably get a nearest and dearest to pay for the booking online. So. How long does the booking stay valid for prior to payment? (I asked). "An hour" said my help line fellow... "and you have a lovely accent". Well that was my night made. So we figured that after 3 hours of pfaffing about trying to book flights that were, quite simply, never going to happen, it was a sign. So we went to the next option.... Romania (named after the Romans you know). Wow. 60 euro between us with a bit extra for bags... Hey! that's less than an airport cab. Let's go to Romania for six weeks!!! As it turns out Europe is experiencing a cold snap. Which in terms the average resident of Bucharest could understand... It's going down to minus 23 there tonight. OK. That might explain the cheap fares... Theoretically it'll have to warm up soon for it to snow any more. In fact, it's snowing in the Greek Islands and southern Italy and the fountains froze in Rome over the weekend. So yep. It's a cold snap. Here on the Costa del Sol... we've been having days of 20+ degrees (and that's C not F...) and a very, very cold night would be down to say 7 degrees - like this morning for instance. Could barely see the Spanish folks under all the layers of clothing. Speaking of layers, we are currently taking inventory of our winter woollies and determining exactly which shirt to start with, to be layered with which jumper, to be layered with a down jacket and then a big shearling (James) or a bunny-fur coat (Viv). Luckily we both bought fur hats (with flaps) a few years ago. Those hats are only funny until you are actually in a cool country. Then they become your best friend. So our heads will be warm at least. What will be getting up to in Romania? Well first off a free city walking tour. Apparently the Romanians are a hardy bunch and the walks continue rain, hail or snow. Or sun (though that seems highly unlikely). We'll also be visiting lots of nice museums and galleries and indoor spots. Also indulging our inner culture-vulture tendencies. Any opportunity to visit grand opera houses and see a ballet or opera for say 7 euro each (albeit in the cheap seats) will suit us down to the ground - and such an economical night out. Costs twice that much to see a movie in Sydney - and a small mortgage to pop into the Sydney Opera House for a show. Well that is all for now... it's coming up to 3.30 pm and we're sitting in the sun... which is simultaneous very strong, but not particularly warm. Strange. Mind you, I'm too pale to live above ground and can simultaneously get sunburned and be cold.
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