Another interesting week, sometimes for all the wrong reasons!

With Stuart fairly well rested we already knew we had to make this week count as only a week the following Monday i.e. THIS Monday coming as I write! We complete on our house purchase. That in itself isn't that remarkable, but having NO furniture, electrical appliances i.e. TV etc, kitchen gadgets, plates - in effect everything you need to buy for a home! - meant we had a lot of unfinished business to complete this last week.


We had already made some trips to furniture stores in the local area (Muebles is Spanish for furniture incidentally) and we had left deposits on orders in two places in Antas and one in Vera. We needed to go back into these stores to pay off the balance and get them nailed down on delivery dates. Although we will have the keys to the house on Monday actually moving in is purely dependent on furniture deliveries! We can't sleep there till we have beds delivered for instance, having a table to eat off would be nice too etc! So we managed to get assurance that our deliveries will happen Monday afternoon and Tuesday next week which works nicely. We aren't actually planning on sleeping there until the 24th though that might get brought forward if they do deliver the important stuff on time!


With all the above in mind maybe some of you might be wondering what we might be doing for other things that we might need to live there comfortably. We had decided on Stuart's return we'd go to Lorca to a big retail park to have a major shopping day out. Originally we talked about going to Antas and then onto Lorca but with some extra free time on Monday this week we managed to get that out of the way and leave Lorca as a trip on it's own. It was as we found out a wise thing for us to have done!


Tuesday morning we set off around 9am to drive the approx 80 kilometres from Turre to Park Almenara in Lorca. This was a very surprising destination as it was a very stylish retail park/mall. There were only three massive stores there, another (and best!) branch of "Casa" (who's sister store we'd visited in Almeria), Eroski (kind of like a Tesco, Asda superstore or Walmart for our American readers!), and Media Markt a German owned electrical superstore(like a Curry's/PC World or Best Buy store). Of course these are generalisations and as we came to find out, one in particular was nothing like it's UK counterpart! Other than that it was a mixture of what you might find in most UK places in major towns and cities in places like the Hounds Hill in Blackpool or the Arndale in Manchester for instance - for American readers a medium sized shopping mall.

Media Markt in Lorca - big impressive frontage!

Upon arriving at the retail park we reasoned it would make more sense to park closer to Media Markt as we potentially had more things to buy there. We went in for an initial look around and to note down some prices on things we wanted to buy so we could do some comparative shopping in Eroski. Online Eroski appeared to have a good electrical selection so we were hopeful that we'd get some price competition. Sadly this wasn't to be as their retail electrical selection was not as well stocked as their webstore was. So all we got in there on the electrical front - luckily as it turned out - was a 32" Smart TV for our bedroom. We still managed to fill a trolley/cart to overflowing buying up household items we knew we still needed so it was a fruitful visit indeed. We went back to the car to stash our Eroski booty and then went back into the Mall to get some lunch. By now we were really feeling the effects of the hot sunny day, it was by then about 29 Celcius and was making walking round the largely open air mall quite fatiguing! After lunch and some much needed "agua" to wash it down and refill our depleted reserves we went back to visit Casa before getting back to Media Markt for the main event!


Superficially Media Markt exudes retail style and gives a great upfront illusion of a swish well stocked retail electrical outfit. With it's Germanic roots you would expect great things from it for back end efficiency and stock ordering. Having worked in the UK at a Curry's/PC World Superstore I knew all about how a large store like that might be managed and how their back end should work for stock ordering etc. Just like in the big stores in the UK they have a General Manager to oversee the store and department managers for White Goods (washers etc), Computing, TV & Audio etc. Unlike Currys their management structure is ineffectual and cannot make decisions unless the General Manager does it! So many things that day needed the GM to sort it out it became the first time we really thought we'd begun to experience the mañana effect! Unlike Currys they do not have a distribution centre network to check stock with on their till terminals. We quickly began to find out that nearly everything we wanted to buy from Media Markt meant us taking display models on bigger items and even on some smaller items like food processors too! Now bear in mind in the UK if you buy the last one unboxed from a store you will usually be offered 10% discount, not here in Spain! Even when a food processor not only came unboxed but with no manual either they only offered a derisory 3 Euros off the price! Now bear in mind we weren't spending a small amount in the store, we were buying a LOT of stuff from many different sections. Of course like Currys I knew they would want to offer extended warranties as this is where they make a lot of extra money. As we were new in Spain and not knowing how good their after sales service might be, and given the recent EEC ruling on merchantable quality of goods and the 6 year expectation of usefulness we weren't going to go for any of those anyway! So as you can imagine we got next to no discount except two free HDMI cables out of them! One of the major purchases was a 55" Samsung 3D TV which we were dismayed to discover was another of the ex display only items. This was where I discovered their totally ineffectual service back end. In the UK if you go into a Currys (and I am sure to Comet too) you would have a sales advisor on a terminal and finding out which stores did have stock to have a stock transfer arranged in minutes or a Distribution Centre to check for stock for a home delivery. That is how it is done in the USA too I am sure! Not so in Spain in Media Markt in Lorca! The advisor could not make any calls to find stock, nor could any of the managers currently in the store, only the illusive general manager who was going to be out of the store till at least 17.30pm. Given that by now it was getting on for 3pm and we'd been shopping since just after 10am we were literally shopping and nearly ready to drop!


We had a few talks about changing to a different model or size of screen only to find that they too were only display models in stock and we'd have to have them wrapped in bubble wrap off the shelf! The model we wanted we were told might take a week or possibly up to 20 days to be delivered to us and this initially was what set us off on the search for an alternate model. Then I reminded Stuart that we had got the 32" in the car that we bought for the bedroom and we could use that till whichever TV we decided to go for arrived. He then said that in that case it would be silly to not go for the TV we wanted originally as we'd have to wait for a brand new boxed one to be delivered anyway! So we went back to our original choice of the Samsung 55" 3D TV and we decided to wait for however long it might be to be delivered to us in Bedar! By now we were really tired, and we had to wait for the other items we had decided to purchase to be bubble wrapped for us to take away with us! This store had nowhere for customers to sit, it appeared to have no area for people to be put through for credit applications which would have had seats! So by the time it got to 4pm we were seriously dragging, Stuart even more so with the still present jetlag too! 


We eventually got all our purchases put through the tills, and the car became a pickup truck for the day with a completely full boot/trunk and the back seats packed with purchases too! We literally shopped until we dropped. We bought the aforementioned 55" 3D TV and the 32" TV for the bedroom. We bought an extra 2 pairs of 3D glasses for the big TV to go with the two supplied and two extra HDMI cables. We also bought a Denon surround sound 5.1 system, a Samsung 3D Blu ray/DVD player, a Sony CD stereo and iPod dock system, a pair of Powerline home network adapters and network cables. We also purchased a Dyson vacuum cleaner, an electric knife, a Samsung microwave oven, a Moulinex food processor, a 4-slice toaster, and an Bosch electric juicer. We also bought bath mats, folding chairs, oven mits, throw pillows, mustard, and birthday card for Stuart's niece. We also bought more melamine plates to match the plastic ware we bought for the patio area in Casa. We also bought a microfiber dustmop since we need to clean up the apartment before we leave or have to pay an arm and a leg to have it cleaned! After all that we spent on this day we cannot afford an arm and a leg at this point!!  We got back to Turre for about 17.30 and then had to unload the car into our storage locker in the underground secure garage and by the time we got back up into the apartment we were honestly dropping on our feet!