Yes, we have vacation. Vamos a la spania

At the end of February the kids had vacation so we could go back to Spain. We had a lot of things to organize like the N.I.E.

To get there we took the train and off course checked the weather before. It seemed to be quite cold. While we like warm and sunny weather of course but it was also good to know what the winter is like.

Expecting cold weather but we did not expect that it would be snowing:

From San Sebastion we took again the train to Vitoria. A nice ride with even more snow. As Barcena has no public transport, what would you expect for an abandoned village, we have to rent a car. We now use an app and most often we rent the same car. A small one with four doors is perfect for us. The only downside is that it is petrol we hope it will be able to rent EV for a reasonable price soon too. For now it is okay especially because Spain does not have many chargers yet.

We off course also needed to visit our favorite bar in Miranda. We really like it that we get to know our way around. While the kids where playing outside, we treated our self on a nice coffee and thee for an exciting week to come!

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The first week of work

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El Vicino

In May we went to 'our' village to show it to the parents of Maaike. So we drove there and after a half our drive with a lot of corners we were a bit drowsy getting out of the car. And there stood a friendly man in blue overalls. He seemed Spanish we asked Maaike to talk to him. But she did not know what to say. So we looked at each other for a couple of minutes. Then he started to tell that the village is empty which we agreed upon off course. He also told that the village was being bought by some people. Maaike asked if she should reply and we said yes please do. After telling the we are the mysterious people we are buying the village he started to tell a lot of stories. His name is Gerardo. He was born in the village and now lives in Burgos and in the summer in Abajas. He knew about the buy because he owns a parcel of land and did not want to sell. He want to keep it for income and only wants to rent it out. So we talked about that for a bit and as we were intereste...

Finding the right pieces of land

When we first visited Bárcena de Bureba we where guided by the current owner Marcelino. As we where interested, we told him about our project Ardbol. We explained him that we needed about 5 to 10 hectares of land. He replied that it was no problem, he knew many farmers in the area. Soon we got an image of the land area (See image below) from Marcelino without any explanation but it looked promising. We assumed the black crosses where the pieces of land we could buy. When I checked it on the Spanish cadastral website some pieces where quite clear but some existed out of many small parts. After the price negotiation we where anxiously waiting on which pieces of land we could buy. In august we got a large zipfile with new information. As Yasmin could not open it and we where on mobiles we needed to wait until we where behind a computer, which of course added on to the tension. Finally we could open it. In it where 64 files. 60 of each house and 4 for the land. See the next imag...

ardbol

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