Gainfully Unemployed

Today was my first official day of unemployment. Friday was a public holiday and the weekend didn’t count either. But today was a Monday. And I was not at work! And it was great!

I went to the civic centre to get the electricity account from my old flat taken out of my name – a task I would normally have hated. But today was different. I got to walk there at my leisure. I walked down Government Avenue, which is really pretty. I stopped and sat on the grass. I took photos of squirrels. I puttered about the city centre. I wondered past the Castle. I saw a beautiful fountain with seagulls all over it and a rainbow in the spray. As I sat on the grass being stalked by a few manic looking squirrels, who all thought I was going to give them peanuts, I was overwhelmed by peace and happiness and I thought to myself “That’s it – the year off starts now. Despite the mountain of admin I still have to do, I am going start having enjoying it NOW!”

And since then, the day has been great. The electricity chore took all of 10 minutes. I walked home back up Gov Ave and detoured through the Company Gardens, which is full of amazing trees from all over the world. I packed. I saw friends. Even the Croatian visa glitch has not dampened my mood.

Yes. A glitch.

As per my last post, the Croatians refuse to allow you to apply for a visa more than 3 months ahead of entering their country. They take between 20 and 30 working days to process said visa. It’s a nightmare logistically if you’re travelling elsewhere first. So we decided to do the expensive version, whereby you pay R900 and get a visa quickly in three working days. Only, when I called the visa section to confirm, I managed to ferret out the one vital piece of information that they had hidden from us before. No matter when you apply, they will not print a visa more than two months in advance of you entering Croatia. So it appears that we cannot do the quick visa thing that we had planned. Oh great. Out only option is to apply for our visas once we’re in Italy. The problem with that is that we are going to Spain and Mallorca in the middle of the Italy trip. And we need our passports for that. So we cannot just hand them over to the Croatians for their 20 to 30 working days. And it is going to be a delight and a half to try and find our way around Rome/Naples/Milan to find the consulate of Croatia. And even more fun to try and negotiate between Italians and Croatians and explain our problem.

So there is a very real chance we might not go to Croatia. We might get to Italy and find that it’s too much of a performance to get a Croatian visa. In which case we will likely come home and take a month to go to Spitzkoppe and climb before heading off to Asia a month early. But it’s early days yet. First we’ll try our luck in Italy.

Anyway, this news has not upset me. Sure, it’s annoying to have our plans changed like this at the last minute and it will cost us a fair amount of money to cancel flights and accommodation etc. But things happen how they are meant to and I am sure that whatever we end up doing it will be an adventure and a whole lot of fun. I also reckon that this will not be the last “disaster” we have to contend with. You’ve got to be flexible if you’re flying a year by the seat of your pants.

I’m driving the bakkie to Jhb tomorrow, where it will live for the year, so that’s it for the blog tonight. Need to get a good night’s sleep.