Living abroad tips and hints for money savers

Merrywidow

Yes DS - you are simple - but then so am I and I guess lots more. You are certainly not a boring old ****. Stop putting yourself down, I still love you!!
Can;t remember who commented on their age still starting with a '4' but can assure you a lot of our posters still have a 5 before their age. Me? I ain't telling!! I'd have to kill you.

droopsnout

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Our little village is very quiet, too quiet for me on occasions, I sometimes go stir crazy.

What would you do, if you had all the power and money necessary, to make your village ideal?

I would like to see our village château restored to its former glory. It is so very sad to see it in its current state. I'd like a multi-purpose store-!!!-cafe, and I'd like certain villagers to adopt a quieter and more considerate approach to living in a community. I'd also improve the environment by burying the electricity and telephone cables, and by creating a proper communal sewage and waste water facility, rather than have the individual arrangements we have now. (Not that there is any unpleasant odour, or danger, or anything. It would just be "greener"). The village needs landscaping, too.

I'd provide a sheltered area with benches so that people could stroll, sit and gossip. Maybe a boules strip.

Edit: This site is hyper-sensitive. The swear filter has removed three letters which form the Latin word for "with" and are pronounced "come". Dearie me ...

droopsnout

Merrywidow wrote: »

Yes DS - you are simple - but then so am I and I guess lots more. You are certainly not a boring old ****. Stop putting yourself down, I still love you!!
Can;t remember who commented on their age still starting with a '4' but can assure you a lot of our posters still have a 5 before their age. Me? I ain't telling!! I'd have to kill you.

Ta, MW. :beer:

When are you going to show me the sights of Amsterdam, then?

seven-day-weekend

droopsnout wrote: »

What would you do, if you had all the power and money necessary, to make your village ideal?

QUOTE]


Give it all the facilities of a city :rotfl:

But then it wouldn't be a village, would it?

Seriously, I would create a parking area at the top of the village so that it doesn't get cluttered up with cars in these steep windey lanes that started off life as mule tracks. I would have a local with a minibus available to take people and shopping down into the village if they did not wish to walk or had shopping etc.

I would make what facilities it has got far more accessible. For example, it has a nice little photographic museum, provided by a Danish expat photographer in the 1970s; he loved Yegen and its people and has captured them in hundreds of photographs. The villagers love his work and there is even a lane named after him; the man himself is laid to rest in Yegen's little cemetery. However, the room with the photos in is always locked. One of the villagers is a keyholder, but I for one do not know where they live and tbh would find it intimidating to knock on the door and ask them to open up. There is nothing anywhere to say who is the keyholder and where they live, you are just supposed to know. Tourists never get a chance to see it. I would have set opening times and put a notice on the door saying when it will be open and re-imburse the keyholder accordingly.

There is also a nice little display of original artwork and a collection of Gerald Brenan memorabilia in one of the bars. The bar owner has taken it upon himself to do this (he is the artist), again however, they are in a room which a visitor would not know was there. I would encourage Eduardo to make it more acceessible to the public, especially as his work is for sale. As it is, people get to see it if they express an interest in artwork, otherwise you would never know it was there. It is in the public part of the bar, not his family space, but a casual visitor would not realise that there is another room to the bar.

So there are a few things I would do.

WaxiesDargle

donny-gal

can I ask what part of spain are you...I know you said alicante but what area...no worries if you dont want to say

droopsnout

seven-day-weekend wrote: »

Give it all the facilities of a city :rotfl:

But then it wouldn't be a village, would it?

Doh! :wall:

seven-day-weekend

droopsnout wrote: »

Doh! :wall:

I've now expanded my reply....:rotfl:(see above).

de1amo

i would invent some traffic rules that people keep to where i am!--i ride a motorbike and constantly play russian roulette with cars that consider my slowing down as they emerge from side roads as an invite to pull out in front of me--also i would buy some yellow paint and invent the double yellow line to stop people parking anywhere they feel like!

droopsnout

de1amo, I'm so sorry: I forgot to welcome you earlier! I just happened to be busy then, and I've had a busy day preparing and teaching today. I forgot to scroll back up and mind my manners.

This is lovely! More people from all round the world, and now yourself in Turkey! Thanks so much for joining in.

I know it's a bit of a political hot potato, but do you come across much feeling one way or the other about Turkey's membership of the EU? Or is it a case of the ordinary person not giving a monkey's?

I think that s-d-w's friends have realigned her dish to point at the Astra satellites at 28.2 degrees East, where the "Sky" programmes come from. The rather disturbing news is that SES, the satellite company, could be replacing the present satellites at that position with new ones. The present satellites tend to spill their signal into continental Europe, rather than just on the UK. This has implications for TV rights. The new ones have more advanced electronics which will spill less of their signal over the continent. It may be that at some time in the future we expats will not be able to pick up the signals unless we replace our existing dishes with much bigger ones.

This info comes from here. Gets a bit technical, though.

seven-day-weekend

Welcome de1amo, I thought you had posted before, sorry for not welcoming you sooner.

Yes it is the Astra 2 28E satellite, droopsnout. We have to have at least a 1.2m dish to get ALL the British channels. Ours is only an 80cm one, so we don't get the main ones. But it's great to have the British ones we have got now!

Moght get a bigger dish at some point.