This Week's Bane of My Existence

Stamps. I have been on the lookout for them ever since my second week in Spain, thinking that I will go and purchase them if I happen to pass by an estanco, or tabaqueria, which sells them. (I realized too late that I could purchase stamps at the place I registered for my Metro pass. I was right there, in the same shop.) 

Anyway, I have some long-overdue postcards to send, and my project on Tuesday was to find a place where I could buy stamps. That day was also my find-a-book-in-English day, so I was pretty busy. After going to the bookstore, I stopped off at Sol to get some more postcards and look for an estanco, but it was getting late, I was tired, and I let myself off the hook because I felt so accomplished for having bought not one but two books in English earlier that day.

Wednesday was the match, and so I gave myself off that day, too.

Thursday we had a barbecue after work, so I went to that instead.

Friday I found an estanco on GoogleMaps, and I thought I had the right bus station. At about 8:45 p.m., I hopped on a bus, but it was the wrong bus because it didn’t take me where I wanted to go. I got off, looked around for an estanco, didn’t find one, and then spent twenty minutes waiting for the right bus to come and pick me up. (Public transportation failure – four other buses came before mine did.) At this point, it was almost 9:30 p.m., and I still had to buy food from the local grocery store (Lidl), which closes at 10 p.m.

My stamps would have to wait for another day.

And that day was today. I have been to the Estrella supermercado a few times, and across the street is a tabaqueria. To make sure that there really was a tabaqueria there, I looked at the street view on GoogleMaps. (Despite my best efforts, I can’t figure out how to take a screen shot on my computer or find a picture on the internet, but I'm trying to show you what it looks like. To compensate for my lack of computer skillz, just imagine a maroon-and-yellow T hanging above a shop door.) I found the tabaqueria and was on my way. I got lost a little bit, because I pick a direction before thinking about the best way to get somewhere – I want to look like I know where I am going, but such a desire causes me more trouble than it’s worth. However, that is neither here nor there, and I arrived at the tabaqueria with little incident.

I joined the line, which was about four people deep. As other people bought their cigarettes, and I kept thinking that this is place couldn’t possibly have stamps to send my postcards to the U.S. By the time it came to me, I asked the sentence I had prepared in my head: “¿Vendes los sellos para los Estados Unidos?”

To my surprise, and gratification, she said “Si.”

She took her time finding them, and she asked me if I wanted one. Ha ha. No, I wanted eighteen. Granted, I don’t have eighteen postcards to send – right now – but it took me this long to figure out how to get stamps, and I wanted to make sure that I had enough for the next round. She got my eighteen stamps, I paid for them, and then I went on my merry way.

I now have eleven postcards, written, addressed, and stamped. I forgot to put them in the mailbox today. I won’t forget to put them in the mailbox, though, because unlike post offices (which don’t sell stamps anyway, or so I’ve heard) and tabaquerias, post boxes really are everywhere. To prove this, there is one just outside my apartment building. It looks like this:

This isn't my "correo" box. Mine has graffiti on it. It gives it extra personality, I think.