Actually The Postal Service is one of my favorite bands and I had a great time singing along to "Such Great Heights" with a bunch of friends this weekend. That is not the postal service that I am talking about in this post (and I'm sure most of you probably didn't think it was--I just wanted to give props to great music).
No, this week I was traumatized with my dealings with the Correos, Spain's postal service. It all started out with me having to send my camera back to the U.S. so it can get fixed. I decided to look into doing this on Monday and I thought I'd just go to the Correos office on my street. Well for some reason that office is not open to the public. It's only a sorting center or something like that. Because I was already on that end of the street I decided to go to the Corte Inglés to find some packing materials, but after walking around for 15 or so minutes with a packing tape dispenser in my hands, but no actual packing tape, I finally asked where it was and was told that they do not carry packing tape (they just carry dispensers--dumb. I really have a love/hate relationship with Corte Inglés that I will have to post about some time). That night I got home and put my postal code in the finder on the Correos website and it told me the next closest office and I decided to go there after school on Tuesday.
On Tuesday I studied my metro map carefully and took it to where I needed to go to find the Correos ofice. I walked up and down the street and rechecked the address. Apparently there is no office at that location anymore or something. Foiled again.
So today I decided that I knew there was a Correos office in the Corte Inglés near Puerta del Sol. I went there after school and had to go down into the basement and then walk through this creepy parking garage just to find the office. I had read on the Correos website that I could buy a box there to ship my camera, so I waited in line and then asked the man (in Spanish) if they sold shipping boxes. He told me that yes, they do sell boxes there, but they didn't have any today. Oh. Okay. I wandered around that Corte Inglés for a little while trying to come up with innovative packing materials, and could not find anything that would work. Then I decided to go to the ISA office nearby because I figured the directors might have an idea where I could find a box. David was the only one there and told me the post office in Corte Inglés. Ha.
After that I decided to do what I should have just done all along--go to the Palacio de Comunicaciones. Really, that sounds a lot more special than it actually is. It's a beautiful building on the outside, but just a huge post office on the inside. (I think I have a picture of the building in one of my previous Facebook albums--I just didn't know what it was called at the time.) I went inside, stood around, and finally figured out that you had to take a number even though there were like 10+ stations open and only five customers there. I had to pick what kind of number I wanted to take and I picked the one that said I needed to buy something because I needed to buy a box. Well, I chose correctly and when I got up there the guy asked me what I wanted and I said in Spanish "I need a box big enough to send my camera to the United States." Well, he got pissy when he heard that and left me for a minute and came back with this really nice woman who got me my box, but told me that they did not accept credit cards. I only had 20 euros on me and had to spend 3 to buy the box (and I had figured it would probably cost around 25 to send the package), so I decided to just get the box and come back later with more cash. Like I said, the woman was very nice, so she weighed my package before I left and told me it would only cost 4,80 to send. I couldn't believe it would be so cheap, but was happy that I could just stay there and mail it. Unfortunately I had to take another number to get in "send" line (because I had been in the "buy" line). I got up there and handed the guy all of my information and he weighed my package and told me it would cost 18 euros to send. Oh. Apparently the nice worker had put in the wrong postal code. I was a euro short, so I took the box and walked outside. However, I scrounged around in my pocket and found two more euros in change, so I went back in, took another number, waited around, got up there, waited while the worker guy flirted with a worker girl and finally sent the box. I was so relieved just to be done with that experience. Although now we have to wait and see if the box actually gets to Wisconsin.
Of course when I got to the metro, I found that with all my digging in my pockets for various things at the post office I had lost my metro pass that still had 7 trips left on it. It's a good thing I found that last euro in my pocket because it bought me my trip home.
So the moral of this story is that you should just go to the big post office to begin with. And don't trust the Correos website for anything. I really love Spain, but sometimes I just feel that people aren't really on top of things and they kind of like to give you the run-around.
P.S. Just to let you all know I don't have classes on Thursdays ever and there's some holiday on Friday so I have an extra long weekend. My friends and I are going to Zaragoza on Friday, so I probably won't update this again until Sunday.
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