Please prepare the following documents..
“Please prepare the following set of documents, both translated and Apostilled for relocation to Peru..” is a sentence that has been quite frankly engrained in my memory. What do you mean? Now, of all times? I had just accepted an offer for a new job in a field that I’m interested in, started to plan our wedding locally and overall finally existed in peace with my life, happy even. No, screw your peace and happiness, here, take this relocation instead. The timing was purely comical – we received the confirmation on my last day of my old job – nothing more glamorous than calling everyone in mascara tears from a parking lot filled with cameras catching it in every possible angle.
It took half a day of completely unnecessary self pity to create a more or less reliable plan and a list of actions that we both had to do before leaving. Absolutely horrified about the fact that the given list of documents that are to be prepped before leaving includes our birth certificates as neither one of us had them on hand. T had his one lost and mine was somewhere and unusable due to the recent changes. Yet another lovely surprise, no idea if it’s Peru related or an overall international immigration policy – your birth certificate needs to have your current name and surname in order for it to be considered valid. I found this to be absolutely absurd as people can add or change their names and so many people change surnames for a multitude of reasons, including marriage. We managed to get the birth certificate issued again for T, but LV was somehow unable to locate mine on time. I’ll definitely create a separate post on the full list of documents and national ID process as a whole when I’ll receive mine. Before leaving we were informed that birth certificates were not necessary after all, which was a relief.
How to clean out a flat in 5 hours?
The answer to that would be: pure ADHD power – panic induced productivity. This photo was taken at 11am on Sunday, the 28th of April 2024, the day before our flight. We had spent our last week saying our goodbyes with family and friends maybe a little too much as we were still yapping away with the girls at 4am on Sunday. We managed to donate the last things such as dishes, cutlery and boardgames to our neighbours and reduce all our belongings to 2 big suitcases and 6 Ikea bags, which was about 6 big Ikea bags over the predicted/allowed limit. We managed to be done by 4pm and actually meet the set 5pm check in time, despite arriving at the hotel like two sweaty and dusty vagabonds with an enormous pile of luggage. Left our pile, went to our favourite shopping centre for the last time and left our flat keys on the table. The feeling of freedom after handing over the flat was just heavenly, not that our day was over by any means. After the realization hit that we had not had anything to eat that day apart from a pastry and a coffee we grabbed bubble tea from our favourite spot – Hooligaan and set out to get some dinner, our last one here for some time before dealing with the mess in our room. After repacking everything we would take with us into 2 fat suitcases, 2 shoulder bags and 2 backpacks we had to pack the rest up in boxes, head out in the old city centre like gypsies in the night and stash two huge bags in the unfortunate nearby bin.
48 hours on the road
Riga -> Helsinki -> Madrid -> Lima
One hotel breakfast (champagne and an omelette) later along with our gifted survival kit consisting of mini black balsam and crossword puzzles we headed out to RIX airport. Handing over luggage at the airport came with another expensive yet not entirely unexpected surprise – our bulging luggage was well over the allowed weight limit, which resulted in an 80 EUR fee. The employee that checked in our luggage was shocked that we did not have a return ticket and was left in utter disbelief that we were moving to Peru. Easing (and simultaneously growing) the financial pain with an iced coffee mixed with some local black liquid courage we walked to our small Finnair plane to Helsinki. The flight itself went by smoothly despite the miniature looking plane, pleasantly amazed by the fact that our smallest plane had the biggest leg space out of all three of them.
Upon landing in Helsinki we realized that we had only 30 minutes to run to the bathroom, smoking area and somehow apparate at the gate on time. Had to sadly speed walk by the Moomins but there’s always next time. Our whole flight to Madrid was longer and accompanied by an uncomfortable lack of leg space and silence thanks to a future opera singer (screaming crotch spawn) sitting in the row next to us.
Thankfully Madrid layover was longer, we had time to get dinner, charge up phones and take a breath. Airport smoking area had an interesting roof – the cut outs are wonderful during sunny days and dreadfully cold during the nights. While we were heading to the gate we saw a fascinating scene – the airport elevator had stuck and two girls tried to get their family out of there. Even after solid 10 minutes no airport employees showed up to help. They managed to ply the elevator doors open, however we did not test our luck and took the stairs with four heavy bags. Our airport adventure ended in front of a huge airplane with multiple gates. Stepping in the airplane itself was actually interesting – a woman in front of us dropped her water bottle and didn’t even blink or try to get it despite us tapping her on the shoulder and asking if she needed help. At first we couldn’t understand it but when we sat down the reasoning became clear – there is no space for movement of any kind – if you drop something then that’s it, there is no way to retrieve it without a long stick or an equivalent. My luck seemed to end at that point based by the fact that Satan itself sat in the row in front of us. Despite the take off warning seat 47A decided to fully recline the seat and then proceeded to keep it that way for the rest of the 12 hours. Oh and did I forget to mention the jumping on the seat? My heart and bruised knees were full (of hatred). Flight attendants had to literally shout at her to take the seat up when we reached landing point. Apart from devil incarnate in 47A, lack of air and morally dying from storm turbulence over Amazon Rainforest while T was blissfully snoring, the flight itself was great.
My first reality check came in Lima airport when going to the loo right before the immigration queue. It seemed very strange that everyone around me was so young.. After becoming quite concerned I decided to take a closer look only to realize that for the first time in my life I was the tallest person in the room. After the initial joy of being a tall person wore off it was replaced by utter horror as I realized that we will never be able to easily fit in a crowd here, even after learning the language – gringos will always stand out as easy targets. Second dose of reality check was the immigration booth when we got to it. From previously done research we knew that English isn’t commonly spoken here, but it did feel a bit peculiar that airport immigration officers spoke only a local dialect of Spanish. Third and last dose was the fact that if I could decently understand spoken Spanish in Spain, I got about 10% of information here… hello darkness, my old friend. At a limp snail’s pace we rolled through immigration registration process towards luggage retrieval. Thanks to stress induced vision clarity we managed to catch the first suitcase right away and second bag arrived shortly after.
At 5.58am local time and 2 minutes short of losing our transportation to Airbnb by the grace of Peruvian gods (the old and the new) we recognized the sign held by our assigned driver. As soon as we stepped out of the airport the ocean air surrounded us. It smelled like home.
