What do you get if you mix a trip of 100 kilometres, a technical inspection of your car, meeting a friend, visiting a castle, buying cat food, having Spanish tapas, a trip of the same 100 km but in the other direction, lessons and falling asleep when you want to write a post? By blending these ingredients we get my Monday. I'm not even sure if I know how to retell it in such a way that it would be interesting for you too... but if I anticipate with a little teaser, that I was both laughing and crying at the same time after one incident, then hopefully you will stay with me and read these lines.
So let's get into this little story because maybe it can be somehow useful to you... Maybe you have to do a regular technical inspection of your car too so this post reminds you about that. Maybe. And then you go to make an appointment through the official website of the inspection station - and you get it from the first, you remember this post and feel relieved that you read it and didn't miss the checkup. Maybe. What happened with us is that we didn't read any posts about this topic but we anyway asked for an appointment in April. That action almost finished as a mission impossible, as for some unknown reason there were no free time slots in any city close to us for the next two/three months.
We needed to do this vehicle checkup around these dates so the option was to find an official inspection station anywhere within a reasonable distance.
Is 100 km a reasonable distance to travel just for a periodic motor vehicle inspection? It was just a rhetorical question... we had to do it. We got the appointment for Monday morning, close to the town of Villena as it was the best (closest) choice.
Waiting in line. Luckily, vehicles don't have feelings (or do they?) so the cars were not nervous like before an exam, as humans can feel. Our micar went through a long inspection... waiting in this spot and from time to time looking at how the technicians worked around it was not as boring as it would seem at first glance.
I know, almost 45 minutes could be spent in a different way but this is once a year now we have to do these vehicle inspections (starting from this year). When the car is new you don't have to do this at all for the first four years. Later, it is every second year the car needs to be checked and after it turns 10, the technical inspection is mandatory every year.
How it is in your country?
The station where these checkups happen is located in the middle of nowhere. There were just olives and one tall, steel tree... It was a bit odd feeling, as I was standing there and hearing that sound, the transmission of electrical energy through the wires. 馃槼
Should I just leave that spot where I was standing under the wires?
We left that place indeed, with micar who got a pass with all good scores from the technicians, and a pat on the tin back from me. It deserves to be washed more often, though. Our next destination was our friend's home in a nearby town, actually, we just picked her up and went to another little town. One that is called Sax, and which will be presented to Hive in one of my next posts. There we got a map, like in old good times and climbed to a castle.
Two cool details form Sax - a musical sign that is familiar to everyone. A treble clef, surrounded with notes and musical instruments. It stood in the middle of one traffic roundabout.
In this little town, I also discovered the secret life of one Hiver. Or a relative of it, I think.
Well, I saw it accidentally but this little owl was looking at us from afar... and it didn't even blink during all the time I spent in its presence. 
After saying goodbye to the little owl we went to buy a sack of cat food for our friend's cat. It was a good idea to put it in our trunk since the car she was driving broke down so she couldn't carry a 10-kilogram bag.
There was no way we would have forgotten to take it out of the trunk, because after having some tapas together we went to her house, rested a bit and started our journey. The 100 km of driving home was more challenging than the morning trip as we were a bit sleepy but all finished well.
We parked in the garage of our building... and got out of the car... and... REMEMBERED!!! 馃槺
The sack of salmon cat food was forgotten in our trunk!! 馃槀
That was the moment when I started laughing so hard that tears came to my eyes. The crying of laughter part came when I wrote a message to my friend, telling her the happy news... she didn't remember the cat food either! The reactions of both of us were priceless, and the conclusion she made was that her cat would hate her now. Oops.
Now it is not a little owl that is looking at me, but a cat, sitting in our storage room!
P.S. I am one day late with this post, as yesterday evening I fell asleep when I started writing it. 馃槀
