Houses and Health Care

The Christmas consumer buying frenzy is not just a US phenomenon.  They're totally gearing up for it here, all the stores are installing huge Christmas displays and having big sales.  They even have a Black Friday here, called "Black Friday" (in English), even though they don't celebrate Thanksgiving Thursday!  Black Friday in Portugal pretty much extends over most of November and all of December.  The Thanksgiving holiday is not a line of demarcation like it is in the US, over here it's one big Christmas present buying frenzy starting in early November.

We have been continuing to look at house listings online and visited four of them last Wednesday with our agent Bernardo.  We were all geared up to fall in love with one of them this time, the listings looked great, but that was not to be.  You can't smell mustiness in an online ad, for example, or see that what looks like fine hardwood floor is cheap and shoddy.

The seller's agent was delayed getting to one house, so Bernardo drove us around the nearby little village and we stopped for a coffee at a café there in the morning sunshine.  Walking from the car, Bernardo chatted up an old guy who was warming his back in the sun.  His face lit up and he told us, through Bernardo, what a nice place it was we were in.  His wife came up and agreed, and she and Bernardo were like instant friends.  They casually and easily touched each other's arms as they spoke and laughed.  We've noticed this kind of warmth all over Portugal, and it's different from the US in our experience.

There was an orange tree across the street, and Bernardo ran over and picked us an armload of fresh, fragrant oranges.  As we sat sipping our coffee a very friendly street cat came up for some petting, which she really appreciated.  So much so that she jumped up on Gerrit's lap and would have sat there all day.  Everyone who walked by gave us a little nod and a "bom dia".  Everything felt like a happy dream.

At one of our house visits, the seller's agent spoke English but not masterfully.  We were talking about the peaceful rural setting and she said "yes, all you can hear are the kitchens".

Huh?

Then she laughed and corrected herself: "chickens"!  She said she mixed up those words all the time.  Ever think about how those two words just have their ch and k sounds switched?  We hadn't!  It makes us feel better about doing the same thing with our Portuguese.

On Friday we had our first encounter with the Portuguese health care system.  We're not eligible yet for the social health care, but we met our new PCP in the private health care system.  It was in a hospital in Porto, just a few Uber minutes away.

The experience at the hospital / health care center was really clever and efficient.  When you enter the building you take a number.  A receptionist then calls you, asks for your NIF (which is like your Portuguese social security number), verifies your appointment and the location, and directs you to a waiting room elsewhere in the building.  You take your building entry ticket with you, and the same number appears on a reader board in the waiting room directing you to a consultation room.  After your appointment you pass by an ATM-like thing where you pay your bill with your debit card.  All very efficient and smooth.

The health care center was sparkling and modern, people were friendly, and our doctor spoke English excellently. She was helpful, friendly, and knowledgeable.  Our brand new health insurance has a 90-day waiting period so we paid cash for the visit, which totaled €85 ($90) for each of us.

Afterward we went to a nearby café for lunch.  The owner was friendly and smiled encouragingly at Gerrit's primitive Portuguese, and the place was filled with locals.  Food and beer were great, and we wandered around a little afterward, including up a lovely old typical Porto street shown here.  We stopped at a pharmacy to get our prescriptions filled, then called an Uber and were shortly back home.

We've used Uber twice here now and are pretty impressed.  The drivers have arrived within minutes, the rides were door-to-door and quick, the cars were in good shape, and the cost is actually less than the metro (which is already dirt cheap).  Yesterday our ride from home to the Porto hospital was €4.95, and the metro would have been €6 for both of us and required a few blocks of walking.  No hassles with parking, and Gerrit appreciated being able to sightsee instead of being on high alert for traffic, turns, and pedestrians.  Portuguese city driving requires all your attention.

(As usual, you can click on any photo here to enlarge, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.)

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Language and Looking

This week has seen us doing a lot of boring house hunting.  Pat set up a cloud notebook to keep track of likely properties, their good and bad points, and whether we want to pursue them.  It's amazing what a blur it all turns into after you've looked at a few dozen of them with a sixty-something brain.  We have identified three of the best-looking places and our real estate agent is setting up visits for next week.

We've been trying to get a little more language practice too.  Gerrit is starting on the beginner mystery book we mentioned a few posts ago and is finding it fun, educational, and interesting.  We have several online teaching resources which we are trying to exploit too, including a new one by a young polyglot named Leonardo Coelho: "Portuguese with Leo".  He speaks clearly and a little slowly, at an intermediate level, in order for beginners to stretch their comprehension skills.  He has an amazing facility with accents.  He is born and bred in Lisbon, a native Portuguese speaker, but when he switches to English he sounds like he's from Seattle.  We hate him.  No, he's actually great.  He has a number of interesting videos where he goes into Portuguese history, geography, food, and culture, which he delivers with patience and care, so we get to learn about Portugal along with learning the language.

Polyglots have great ears and mimicry (natural gifts), but they're also obsessed with language.  They probably spend way too much time learning new languages, because they love them and they're obsessed.  Well, we can emulate the part about spending as much time as we can spare on a new language anyway.

There are many words in English which have completely different meanings for the same word, like "pretty":  "We were pretty close to the pretty picture."  Or "might": "The might of the king might be his downfall."  You don't think much about them in your native language but they're a source of confusion and mirth in a new language.  Aspirar in Portuguese, for example, means both "to aspire to" and "to vacuum" (as with your vacuum cleaner).  If you translate "I aspire to vacuum the floor", you get Aspiro a aspirar o chão.  Who says learning a new language isn't hilarious?

Pat has been investigating health insurance here.  Our traveler's insurance is probably not good any more since we are demonstrably living here, complete with retirement visas, even though we're not officially residents.  Portugal provides good free coverage for residents, but we need private insurance as non-residents.  This is something residents often buy too, for more options and faster service.  Pat is finding things like the copay for an MRI at a private hospital is only €80 ($84) and for an ultrasound it's only €30 ($32).  This is for the middle plan option with the only insurer which covers aged clients like us, regardless of pre-existing conditions or anything else.  It costs €436 ($459) a month, total, for both of us.  She's signing us up right now.

And speaking of boring, here's an update on our dehumidifier: it's working great!  We've nicknamed it "R2D2" for obvious reasons.  We run it all day and leave it off at night.  It runs quietly in the bedroom with the door open, and brings the humidity in the whole apartment down from 80% to 50% so it's much more comfortable.  We can dry a load of towels and jeans closed in the bedroom in about 8 hours.  It's brilliant!  The electric bill has gone up a tad, but not much.  A clothes dryer would bump the bill up too.  (By the way, "dehumidifier" is desumidificador in Portuguese.  Seven syllables!  Gerrit loves saying it.  It's even more fun to say "the dehumidifier is available": O desumidificador é disponibilizar.)

On Friday Pat had a hair trim and blood test, so Gerrit ferried her around for that.  It's amazing how comfortable we are with stuff like this now.  It isn't a big intimidating unknown now, it's becoming part of our routine.  Even dodging through the narrow and convoluted streets, we're getting to know our way around.

Then we took a long drive out to a potential home site on the Douro river to check out the noise level and the neighborhood.  The weather was clear and not cold.  We went out along the non-highway route, following the river valley, and it was a really beautiful drive.  On the way back we took the highway route because is was getting a little late.

Douro valley drive

Douro valley drive

 (As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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Lawyers, a Car Wash, and Ponte de Lima

Last Thursday and Friday we went over the two properties we'd looked at on Wednesday after returning from Andorra.  We have been maintaining a list of pros and cons for each place we visit (six of them now).  We reluctantly decided against both of these new ones, although one of them was close.  We are getting good at this, and learning to recognize the good and bad points pretty clearly and how important they are.  We have gone back to the real estate listings for another dive.

Gerrit also contacted the law firm which is supposed to be arranging the government meeting to confirm our residency.  It has been almost three months now, and the only time we hear anything from them is when we ask.  No progress reports, no information, nothing.  We have also inquired with Nia, our immigration counselor and all-around immigration expert, and she agrees that residency meetings are almost impossible to obtain.  On November 17 our visas officially expire, but the Portuguese government has extended the actual expiration by a year.  It may take that long before we can get our residency cards.  Until then we're in kind of a limbo.  Travel outside Portugal may be tricky using visas with expired dates on them since customs agents in other countries probably won't be aware of the temporary extension which Portugal has implemented.  Fortunately we can buy a house even as non-residents, and there is plenty of exploring inside Portugal to keep us busy.

Saturday it was bath time for Pérola (our new car).  This was her first bath, and she needed it after our long road trip to Andorra.  Conveniently, we have a car wash just up the street.  We've noticed that the locals take pride in the cleanliness of their cars.  Many cars going into the car wash look perfectly fine to us.

The car wash was more like what we'd call detailing in the US.  There was a hand pre-wash of the whole car, including wheel wells and tires, then a basic machine wash, then two guys went through the whole car and trunk with vacuums and rags.  They removed the floor mats and ran them through a dedicated floor mat cleaning machine.  They thoroughly cleaned the inside of the windshield (a contortionist's job) along with the rest of the windows.  They cleaned the dash and the door interiors.  They wiped down all the mating surfaces of the open doors and trunk to clean the dust and water from those hidden areas.  They used a tire cleaning compound on the tires, leaving them shiny black.  Pérola looks like new, and all for only €11.  That's right, $11.60 in US dollars.

On Sunday the weather was beautiful, sunny and warm.  The locals don't seem to think this is unusual, but we're used to a whole lot more rain, cold, and gray skies halfway through November.  We decided to take a drive to Ponte de Lima for lunch and then to Braga nearby to see the neighborhood of a house which looks interesting in the listings.

Ponte de Lima is said to be the oldest village in Portugal.  The old part of town is beautiful and charming, and we had an excellent lunch.  The name of the town means "bridge of Lima", referring to the Lima river next to it, and as you might expect there is an ancient bridge crossing the river.  Legend has it that the Romans were afraid to cross the Lima, thinking that they would lose their memory if they did.  (How does this stuff get started?)  A courageous soldier crossed the river as his platoon waited nervously on the other side, and he called out their names one by one from the other side to show that his memory was fine.  There is a little set of life-sized figures of Roman soldiers there on the river bank to commemorate the event.

We strolled around Ponte de Lima a little bit and then halfway across the bridge before leaving for Braga.  There were hundreds of people out on the beautiful day, enjoying the riverfront of Ponte de Lima: families, couples, groups, and singles.  The temperature was a balmy 23 C (73 F).  There was a parking lot next to the river for visitors, with hundreds of cars in it.  We looked around for where to pay, but it was simply free parking.  Unheard of!  Everything felt happy and safe.  We saw a girl about 10 with her family, wearing a t-shirt "AC/DC Back In Black", and Pat whispered that the girl's DAD probably wasn't even born when that album was released!

Ponte de Lima scenes	On the bridge at Ponte de Lima
A Ponte de Lima street	Happy at the tiled fountain

The house in Braga is very nice, but the lot is small and the neighbors in tiny tract homes are jammed right up against it.  Plus there was a rooster crowing the whole time we were there.  We want a little more seclusion than that.  We headed back home.

Today, Monday, Gerrit heard from the law firm.  They are actually contacting the immigration agency each day, and getting appointments as soon as they become available.  We are number 77 in the queue now.  So at least progress is being made, but it still may be months before we actually get the appointment.

Pat found another house which looks good online, and we contacted our real estate agent about a viewing sometime this week.  We also took our sparkly clean car to the wonderful Continente supermarket this morning and loaded up on food and wine.  Gerrit has been looking for Madeira wine ever since reading that Benjamin Franklin used to enjoy it, and it turns out that they make port wine on the island of Madeira (an autonomous region of Portugal, just off the Moroccan coast).  That's fine with us, and we picked up a bottle from the vast Portuguese wine selection at Continente.  Gerrit is cooking rojões (marinated and fried pork cubes) for dinner tonight, trying to imitate the tasty rojões which are a specialty in Ponte de Lima, so we'll see how that goes.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside the photo when you're done.)

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People and Andorra

 Last Wednesday, Nov 7, the US election results came in.  The American expat group here organized a mourning gathering at sundown that evening in a big park here in Vila Nova de Gaia, above the bank of the Douro river.  We took the metro there but couldn't find the expats because there were hundreds of people there and a band playing.  It was actually an uplifting experience to be among all those happy people and music.

There aren't as many restrictions on behavior in Portugal as in Washington.  Alcoholic beverages are not so heavily taxed and reasonable public consumption is fine.  There were people selling beer and wine out of coolers there at the park, and you could smell the legal cannabis in the air too.  Everyone was relaxed and having a good time, and there was no sign of bad behavior.  It was really kind of refreshing.  We had brought a half bottle of wine and a couple glasses, and we stood next to a stone wall there sipping and having fun, people watching and talking.

We had the feeling that if you let people enjoy themselves without trying to be a finger-wagging nanny they generally act responsibly.  More freedom does lead to more risk, but is it better to clamp down on everyone in order to eliminate every chance of harm?  In Seattle the Kroger stores started demanding ID from EVERYONE purchasing any alcohol at all.  It was quite ridiculous and annoying as sixty-somethings to be carded every single time we bought a bottle of beer.  So much inconvenience, so much extra work for the clerks and customers, so little trust of anyone, and for what?  So that we could be absolutely sure that no minor would ever purchase alcohol?  As I recall, minors will find a way.  Better to show them examples of responsible drinking.

Well, anyway, we had a great time there at the park with our wine.  We met a nice young couple from Toronto there too, chatted about our lives, and left feeling better.  We followed a narrow and dark cobblestone street along the park to get back to the metro, and Gerrit caught a toe and went down.  He wasn't hurt, fortunately, and before he could even get up a young lady had rushed down the hill to help.  She pulled him up, he thanked her kindly, she smiled and we went on our way.  Life is full of kindness.

The following day, Thursday, we left first thing for a driving trip to Andorra to visit Gerrit's son and his family.  We traveled through northern Spain, spending the first night in a lovely hotel in Logroño, and reached Andorra late the following afternoon.  The final 100 km (62 mi) or so were through the Republic of Catalonia, one of the autonomous regions of Spain, and the Pyrenees mountains were jaw-droppingly spectacular.

Pretty in the Pyrenees

Pretty spectacular in the Pyrenees

Andorra is a tiny country (only 18% the size of Rhode Island) nestled in the Pyrenees between Spain and France.  They are technically not part of the European Union, but the border crossing is easy.  It is a duty-free tax haven, so there is a lot of wealth there evidenced by fancy cars, stylish clothing, and upscale shops.  Much of the main city of Andorra la Vella is beautiful and new.  The geography is very rugged with little flat land, so much of la Vella consists of tall buildings clustered along the Valira River valley.

View from our hotel in La Vella

The Andorran family

It was a joyous reunion, we hadn't seen Ian and Oona for six years while they traveled the world, and it was our first meeting with the 3- and 4-year-old grandkids.  We had brought them bags of toys which earned us their instant regard, and we had a wonderful weekend with all of them.  Saturday the adults went out to dinner for Pat's birthday, and Ian cooked for us on Friday and Sunday.  They showed us around Andorra all weekend and we went to playgrounds with the kids.  It was hard to leave Monday morning, but good to know that visits are not too difficult.

We took two days to get back home, spending Monday night in a gorgeous hotel in El Burgo de Osma.  There is a fabulous castle and cathedral there (tower detail at the left) which we spent a little time exploring.  The trip through northern Spain was really beautiful, with lush pine forests and even areas which resembled the colorful mountains of southern Utah.

The following day was yesterday, Wednesday, and we had arranged to drive with our real estate agent Bernardo to a couple places of interest.  One place, in Vila Verde, was intriguing enough to pursue further, so that's what we've been doing today.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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Park Peek and Daily Life

Our friends Jess and Julian returned home to the UK, but not before Jess contracted COVID.  She started having symptoms at the fado performance which we all attended together on Oct 29.  Fortunately none of the rest of us have shown symptoms, but what a lousy way to wind up a vacation for poor Jess!

Our TV has been erratic for a couple months now, sometimes working and sometimes not, but getting worse.  Gerrit tried to use the self-diagnostic thing on the Vodafone app (the Portuguese equivalent of Xfinity) but it didn't work, then their phone menu was in Portuguese with no English option, so we went to the Vodafone main branch in Porto with our TV box in hand.  We were told there that they couldn't just exchange the TV box, they needed to get a technician to diagnose the problem.  We went home, the technician called to set up an appointment to visit, and said it was almost certainly the TV box.  Sigh.  Well, at least they're coming out here to do the exchange and we don't have to go back.

We are going to drive to Andorra, the tiny country between Spain and France to visit Gerrit's son Ian and family.  We will be seeing these grandkids for the first time!  Liberty is four and Orson is three.  Their family has been hopping around the globe for years, and recently moved from Mérida, Mexico, to Andorra where they will probably settle for a while.  We're really excited to see them, and Pat has been busy plotting routes and reserving hotels.

Meanwhile, Gerrit has been shopping for home inspectors.  He got quotes and qualifications from three and selected one.  

The weather was beautiful again on Saturday Nov 2, sunny and warm, so we decided to take a trip and picnic lunch to Portugal's only national park: Parque Nacional Peneda-Gerês.  The park is about 70,000 hectares (270 sq mi) and there are several main entrances which open into different regions of the park.  It straddles the Portuguese/Spanish border, much like North Cascades National Park in Washington does with Canada.  

Near Rio Caldo at the south entrance	Rio Caldo scene
Mountains in the park	Little stone hut in a meadow

The park is just over an hour from us.  We entered near the town of Rio Caldo at the south end and followed a beautiful scenic road about 32 km (20 mi) north, to within a stone's throw of the Spanish border before we turned back.  The road looks straight when zoomed out on the map, but it is narrow and very winding.  On the drive we saw streams and waterfalls, mountain ranges, forests, meadows, and gorgeous fall colors in the leaves.  We got brochures and maps so we can explore more on subsequent visits.

Autumn leaves in Peneda-Gerês

And more

OK, we must admit that there do seem to be more fast and aggressive drivers here in Portugal, contrary to our earlier rosy claim.  They seem to be most evident on the toll highways, were they can be seen flying along 40 or 50 kph over the limit, zooming up behind law-abiding speed limit adherents flashing their lights or turning on their turn signals, and weaving in and out of lanes with no signals.  These same drivers nearly nick your fender after they barely get around you.  Their cars seem to be mostly German and mostly black.  Autobahn wannabes?  Maybe it's a European thing, not necessarily Portuguese.  They've become a running joke with us.

The Vodafone tech came and Gerrit got to try some baby Portuguese with him since the tech knew very little English.  Gerrit learned that the Portuguese word for "cable" is "cable", so that was good to know.  With hand gestures and three-word sentences he managed to explain the situation and explore solutions.  The tech replaced the WiFi TV link with hardwired Ethernet, which Gerrit is skeptical will fix the problem, but it's working now and we'll see.  It was nice to have them come here to work the problem.

We've been doing some soul-searching on the home we sent a picture of in the last post, and have decided it's really not for us.  Our hearts fell in love, but our heads have been saying no.  It is a lovely, peaceful, secluded and natural property with a beautiful house and views, but it is just too far out from civilization and community and would require too much work to bring up to snuff (and in the long term to maintain).  So we're back to the property search with some different parameters, and some interesting places are cropping up.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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Porto and Fado

Last Tuesday we got together with Jess and Julian, our vising friends from England, for a three-hour Porto tour from our real estate agent, tour guide, and all-around great guy Bernardo.  We started at the awesome tiled São Bento train station, then he drove us across the Douro river to the Mosteiro da Serra do Pilar hilltop monastery in Gaia for a breathtaking view of Porto and the Duoro river at evening.  Then we drove back to Porto and all around the city's most scenic spots and viewpoints.  Bernardo was full of enthusiasm, information, history, and facts, and we came away with an even greater appreciation of this beautiful city.  He even treated us all to a bottle of one of our favorite vinho verde wines, which we enjoyed at a lively viewpoint packed with happy locals in the Foz do Douro neighborhood overlooking the mouth of the Douro and the ocean.

Tiles at São Bento train station	This is a train station?
Detail of some São Bento tiles	The Douro river, Porto, and Gaia at night
One of the six bridges across the Douro	Vila Nova de Gaia and houses in Porto

Bernardo had also arranged for us to visit a neighborhood restaurant nearby named Luca for some local food and a fado performance.  Fado is a traditional Portuguese song style.  It represents the feeling of saudade, which doesn't have an exact English translation but means a longing for things of the past, a kind of nostalgia.  It first appeared with the sailors of the 16th and 17th century as they longed for home on their long voyages, but a couple of star singers brought it to international prominence in the 20th century.  The melodies are sweet and poignant.  The singer is accompanied by a classical guitar and a Portuguese guitar, which is a little like a large six-string mandolin.  Here is an example which seems to be pretty good judging by the Portuguese comments.  They use a string bass in the video instead of the classical guitar.

Our singer was a man, but a woman stepped in for him later in the show.  He and the crowd had a great rapport, and we wish we could have understood the jokes he was making.  The restaurant was mostly locals but they had set aside a few tables for visitors like us.  At the start of the performance a waitress introduced the band in Portuguese, speaking to the locals in the house, but then she turned to the visitors and said in English that she hoped we enjoyed the performance and that it would become part of our own saudade someday.

The audience was very attentive and respectful to the musicians.  Dinner was only served between sets so there would be no eating during the performance.  The audience sang along quietly at times, gently swaying to the music.  The musicians were completely relaxed and casual, they looked like they just came in from the street.  They were all fabulous, especially the singer with his rich soulful voice.

Dinner was good, with a very attentive waiter keeping our wine glasses filled.  Gerrit had Bacalhau à Brás, one of his favorites, but the others had roast beef.  The beef was odd: very thin, barely cooked, and covered in a cream sauce.  Not exactly the way Mom made it, but maybe the way Portuguese moms do.

We left about 11:30, unable to keep our eyes open much longer, but we heard the band starting another set as we left.  We caught an Uber for a quick and flawless ride home.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click in the black area outside a photo when you're done.)

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