Moving from Hong Kong to Spain’s Mallorca, a leap into the unknown

But … where is everybody? Where are the Spanish officials with their clip­boards and microchip scanners, descending on me to scrutinise, then probably reject, the veterinary documents I paid so many Hong Kong dollars for and fought so long to acquire?

All I get is an irritated “talk to the hand” gesture from the guy hiding behind his computer near airport conveyor belts 10 and 11: Excess Baggage. The “baggage”, in this case, are my two dogs, Koldbrann and Lasi, who boarded the plane with me in Hong Kong 29 hours earlier.

With neither help nor hindrance forthcoming, I break open the dog crates, affix leashes and walk out of the airport. No one even glances at the hounds (breed: common Lantau ginger) as we sashay through Nothing to Declare and out into the winter rain of Palma, where Koldbrann immediately marks this virgin territory.

This start to my Spanish adventure – that is to say, moving to the Mediterranean island of Mallorca after almost 30 years in Hong Kong – is promising. If no one at the airport cares about my dogs, perhaps it won’t be so difficult to set myself up in a strange land where I know none of the language.