Starting the Move, Meeting the People

There was a little misunderstanding about the real estate lawyer's bill after the deed signing, so after a night of insufficient sleep Gerrit sent him a rather abrupt note.  Not rude, but a little blunt.  He responded very graciously, explaining the whole thing, signing off with "um abraço amigo" (a friendly hug), and Gerrit felt pretty foolish for violating the Portuguese cultural norm of respect and kindness in communication.  Normally people start their emails or messages with a friendly "hello, how are you?" or similar, but Gerrit had bypassed that and sent a blunt, businesslike note, which sent all the wrong signals.  After the lawyer's gracious reply Gerrit got back on track and sent him an equally gracious response.  Moral: treat people well and with respect.  We think that holds wherever you are.

On Wednesday January 15 we had some imaging appointments at our standard clinic in Porto.  The lobby was very crowded and the exams were an hour late, so all is not perfect in the health care system here.  Still excellent care though, and the ultrasounds were only €85 ($88) each after insurance.

On Thursday the sellers of our new home (Peter and Caroline) prematurely canceled the electric utility contract, even though Gerrit had already initiated a transfer.  They forgot that, and didn't realize that the power would be disconnected for our move with a canceled contract.  They scrambled and got the contract reinstated though, so all was well.  The actual billing transfer is likely to take a week or so.  Gerrit tried and failed to penetrate the utility's opaque phone tree, so he has enlisted our immigration consultant Nia Queiroz (the "Portugal Wizard") to set up the new contract.

On Friday we took a carload up to Casa da Rocha.  We unloaded and got everything hauled up the stairs without too much difficulty, unpacked, and then were met by Peter and Caroline who were staying with friends nearby.  They walked us around the place explaining all sorts of useful aspects, Caroline and Pat picked an armload of oranges, and soon we all had delightful big glasses of unsweetened pure homegrown orange juice.

While we were there, a delivery of flowers appeared!  Gerrit's family had sent flowers, a few days early, but by sheer luck we were there at the time of delivery.  This had been done by a single phone call to Ballard Blossoms in Seattle, who then took care of the whole international part of it.  Remarkable!  

The flower delivery was stymied at first by our closed gate and the fact that no house address appears at the entrance.  They came and left.  But what happened after that is pure Portugal: the flower delivery person knew to go to Café Martins (the local meeting point for everything in our neighborhood), and drop the flowers off.  Manuela there knew the address and then delivered the flowers.  It's the kind of neighborhood you want to be a part of.

There seemed to be a big festival going on in Ponte de Lima.  Big flash-bang fireworks were going off in the distance, and folk music carried up the valley.  Apparently the mayor of Ponte de Lima has been drumming up festivals of all kinds (including the Lamprey Festival, the Our Lady of the Good Death Festival, and the Our Lord of Socorro festival (socorro means "help me"), among many others), so we'll be seeing plenty of this.  Life at Casa da Rocha will not always be serene, but we will go with the flow and join in the fun.

Peter and Caroline then led us to a regular Friday get-together of English-speaking expats at a bar near Ponte de Lima, where we were introduced to the gang.  Everyone was very welcoming and friendly, and the neighbors there congratulated us on our beautiful new home.  We got into some nice discussions with some very interesting people.  We are running into a very cosmopolitan group of people in Portugal who have lived and traveled all over the world.  We exchanged names and WhatsApp contacts with a number of them, and will return to the Friday get-togethers once we settle.

On the way home (the new one that is) we stopped at a local pizza joint for some excellent pizza, a big salad, and glasses of wine.  We had learned earlier from Caroline that in the Ponte de Lima area (capitol of the vinho verde region) if you order "red wine" you get vinho verde tinto, a rather sour version of vinho verde which includes grape skins in the mash to give it a reddish tint.  If you want good old red wine around here you must order "vinho tinto maduro", or "mature red wine".  It's a minefield out there.

Arriving home at Casa da Rocha we puttered around a little exploring light switches and their effect, then bedded down.  The distant sound of festivities continued until about midnight we think, but it wasn't disturbing and we slept like babies, on our first sleepover.

In the morning we had more fresh orange juice along with some muesli we had brought, but alas no coffee or tea.  We did our Portuguese lessons, put empty suitcases back in the car, and headed back toward the apartment.  On the way we stopped at the legendary Café Martins which Peter and Caroline had raved about, to grab some coffee and tea.  As we entered, we bumped into Peter and Caroline just leaving!  They did a U-turn, joined us for coffee, and introduced us to Nuno and Manuela, the proprietors of this way-more-than-a-café.

Café Martins on the outside

A tiny part of Café Martins on the inside

Café Martins is a nice little café and bar, to be sure, but it is also the most incredible hardware, grocery, and notions store you'll ever see.  Anyone been to McLendon Hardware in the Seattle area?  It's like a combination of that and Fred Meyer, all jammed into a little place right down the street from us.  There is barely room to move between the racks of stuff.  Deep in the basement of the hardware section are hundreds of bins of screws, nuts, bolts, washers, etc., and you can buy just one screw if you need it.  At 2 AM if you need to.  It's incredible.  We bought a drill, bits, and a tape measure there, just to get started.  Nuno and Manuela are warm and friendly, and speak almost no English.  Excellent!  We stammered and squeezed out little sentences (necessity being the mother of inventing them).  They will be great language learning helpers.

As we left we heard English being spoken though: a British woman came up and introduced herself as our neighbor.  Delightful and friendly, and another stitch between us and the new neighborhood.

Nicely caffeinated and excited, we headed back to our apartment for more packing and moving prep.  It has been beautiful and clear for days, but it is due to start raining tomorrow for about a week.

(As usual, you can click on any photo to enlarge it, scroll through them all, and click outside a photo when you're done.  Also, you can click on the bold underlined phrases to play the audio.)

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