Mañana in Sevilla

Perhaps we were silly not to keep looking for an apartment with a guest room. And perhaps we naïvely accepted the “Everything is new” pitch of our soon-to-be landlady. But the fact of the matter is that we were just plain tired of living out of our suitcases and were ready to have a home again.

So we took the fifth apartment we were shown by Don Juan Pedro, our English-speaking real estate agent in Seville, Spain. The first four apartments suffered from various drawbacks: too far from the city center, too expensive, too dowdy, too unfurnished. But the fifth place, the one we ultimately took, seemed juuuuust right. It had a huge living room with a wall of built-in bookshelves, and another wall of fancy colored glass. Two little balconies opened up just a step away from my future workspace. Marble floors lay sumptuously throughout. The capper? A huge roof terrace with a view of the cathedral.

In truth, I had been prepared to refuse the place if our condition of a remodeled kitchen was not met. But upon second inspection, Jarmila declared it fit and decided that a new kitchen was no longer necessary. She could deal with the gashes in the countertop as long as they straightened the ancient stove ventilator. No problem, said Mila, our future landlady.

Signing the contract and all the other details were made simple by Don Juan and Mila, and we walked away from the signing with a set of keys and a lot of optimism.

So naturally, complications immediately arose.

On the day I trundled our four giant suitcases to the new flat, the workers came by to fix the kitchen exhaust fan. I left them alone to do this, which is probably why I did not hear the breaking glass. Apparently, while moving the exposed exhaust pipe they punched the end of it through a window pane.

“No problem,” they said cheerily, “we’ll fix it Mañana,” the Spanish word for “tomorrow” or “morning”.

“Great,” I thought, “these guys are really on the ball.”

Which brings us to our first cultural lesson. In addition to its other meanings, Mañana is also widely used to mean, “some indistinct time in the future, hopefully after someone else does the job, or after the situation sorts itself out.”

So we had a pane missing from our kitchen window for a week. Luckily it doesn’t rain here. In the meantime, we realized that the marble floors were unpolished and in their rough state would be impossible to keep clean. “No problem,” said Mila. “I’ll send a cleaning lady over Mañana.”

“Wait… do you mean Mañana as in tomorrow?”

“Oh… uh… yes, she can come tomorrow if you like.”

“Fine. Tomorrow, then.”

So the next morning, the cleaning lady and I moved all the furniture, then she flooded the place with foul-smelling chemicals and got down to scrubbing. I left and returned after she had finished and let herself out. The floors were still rough, so Mila reluctantly agreed to send over a floor polishing crew… mañana.

Problem is, before Mañana arrived, the movers delivered our 45 moving boxes from Germany. These boxes, along with all the furniture, then had to be shifted around the apartment to facilitate the floor polishing, which added at least four hours to the work.

Then came the electrical issues: there were exposed wires in the closet that I was afraid to go near, and another outlet actually exploded when I plugged a lamp into it. “Mila, we need some electricians,” I said. She sent some over Mañana, and while they were there, I asked them to also install a light fixture in the bedroom. “No problem,” they said, and in the process smashed a big hole in the ceiling.

When they were showing me this, they cheerily said, “We spoke to the other guy and he’ll fix it Mañana.”

Which brings us to our second cultural lesson. For a beginner in the Spanish language, it’s almost impossible to get a Spaniard – in Spanish – to provide a concrete time for Mañana.

“What time Mañana,” you might ask. But you might just as well ask why flamenco dancers wear dresses for the look you’ll receive.

Anyways, the point is we had a hole in our ceiling for two weeks.

And then last Sunday morning I walked into the kitchen for a cup of coffee and instead stepped into a flood – the washer having spewed its dirty water onto the floor somehow.

I called Mila and she promised they would check it out… Mañana.

I didn’t pin her down to a specific day because I naturally assumed that a problem as large as flooded floors would merit a next-day Mañana. The handyman eventually showed up at 5 p.m. – Wednesday – and his bright idea was to extend the washer’s drainage pipe upwards – as if water from a clogged pipe wouldn’t crawl up an extra 6 inches.

I shook my head and told him the pipe was clogged, so he went to the store for some liquid Drano. He came back three hours later with a substance that guaranteed to dissolve all clogs, natural or man made. Opening the bottle, he sniffed it, made a face, and poured it down the drain. Smoke billowed upwards from the chemical reaction, we both jumped backwards, and in no time the water was flowing again. Unfortunately, it was flowing out of the now-dissolved plastic pipes, and was in the process of eating a hole through the wooden cabinet.

The man scratched his head and declared that he would come back, you guessed it, Mañana.

As of this writing, he has yet to return. Which isn't so bad, really. Because now when my wife asks when I'm going to wash the clothes, I just smile nicely and say, "Mañana."