Preparing and Hoopoes

 Our first scheduled meeting with the immigration authority AIMA to get our residence card was scheduled months ago for May 2, which is now coming right up.  Then a couple weeks ago we got identical appointment email notices to the previous ones, but with a date of July 4.  No explanation, just a duplicate appointment.  What??  Does this mean the May 2 appointment is canceled?  Was it a mistake and May 2 is the actual date?  It is impossible to contact AIMA, so it is impossible to know.  So we are gathering the required documents and will drive to the city of Vila Real on May 2, with all our documents and a recent screen shot showing both scheduled appointments.  Our native Portuguese fixer Rita will accompany us, and we will hope for the best.

We put together an Ikea buffet for the kitchen, and it was really disappointing.  Worst Ikea furniture we've ever seen.  The frame is loose and wobbly despite cinching the pegs and locking screws down as tight as they will go, pieces don't fit together well, the instructions are for about a dozen different variations and are very hard to follow, and it turns out that "white oak effect" means plastic veneer.  Ugh.  We're going to write this one off and head to the nearby little town of custom furniture makers.

This just in from the Bird Nerds: Pat saw her first Eurasian Hoopoe in our neighbor's vineyard, and again the following day out our back window.  It's a beautiful, dramatic bird, especially when it's raising its crest  like the stock photo here.  Pat's specimens were more relaxed.

Stock photo

Pat's photo

On Sunday Apr 27 we had some Portuguese friends over for lunch.  We served whole baked sea bass, new potatoes, olives, Portuguese cheese, green salad, and local Loureiro wine, with pasteis de nata (Portuguese custard tarts) and Pat's homemade limoncello for dessert and espresso afterward.  It was a wonderful time with a local menu and local friends.

You probably heard about the massive power outage on Monday Apr 28, which blacked out the entire Iberian peninsula.  Our power was out from 11:30 AM to about 11:00 PM.  We were fine, the weather was pleasant and about the only effect was to have to throw out some food afterwards.  We were not able to get into the garage at all though, which is a little disturbing.  We found out the following day that the manual door release is not working right.  We had a renovation project manager out though (coincidentally just before the power failure), to quote on adding a guest room and a people door to the garage.  So hopefully that will be done before the next Iberian blackout.  This experience makes us serious about installing a solar panel array too.

We're developing our own little ecosystem here.  As the weather warms we leave the doors open more, so flies and little lizards come and go freely.  At sunset we close the doors, Gerrit swats the flies which remain, and the lizards eat the fly corpses that night and the following day.  It's a beautiful thing: a fly-free house, happy lizards, and a clean floor.  Well, except for the lizard droppings.  That's part of an ecosystem though.

Tuesday evening Apr 29 we went to our local village Junta de Freguesia (like a parish council) to get our certificates of residency.  This proves that we actually live where we do, and is essential for getting our residency approval from AIMA.  We brought along the documents we thought we'd need but we had no idea what bureaucratic labyrinth we would have to traverse.  We met with a calm and qualified civil servant who spoke not a word of English.  He smiled when he saw we had purchased Peter and Caroline's house, since he knew Peter from the local hangout Café Martins.  Within a few minutes he had prepared and signed the official certificates and we were on our way!  This bodes well for our fateful meeting with AIMA on Friday May 2.

The next day, today, Pat finished up gathering some documents for our AIMA meeting and Gerrit signed the contract for a solar panel and battery installation and transferred some money for the down payment.  Next time the Iberian peninsula blacks out we'll be sitting pretty.

(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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Spring in Portugal

On Monday Apr 14 Gerrit spent some time researching electricity-producing solar panels (photovoltaics) and talking with a vendor about them.  It is quite feasible for us, they could be easily installed on our flat roof which has continuous sun exposure.  We would include a battery for power during dark periods and grid power failure.  We would only resort to the grid part time during the winter, and it might be possible the rest of the time sell any excess power we generate to the local utility.  We would be totally self-sufficient much of the year.  The time to payback for the initial investment is about six years for a system big enough to provide all our electricity needs (including heating, A/C, and a pool heat pump) almost all the time.  We've both secretly longed to be off the grid someday, and this would pretty much do it.  We already have independent well water and septic.

We forgot to mention a scene of typical Portuguese kindness from a Braga café we visited in the last post.  Gerrit had joined a group at the cash register to pay his bill.  A few people were waiting there for the clerk to refill the cash in the register.  When he was done a woman ahead of Gerrit stepped up to pay.  But a young man behind him tapped her shoulder and gestured to Gerrit, holding his cane and sporting his grey hair.  She hadn't noticed him there, and she immediately waved him ahead with a smile.  When you receive such kindness it fills your heart and makes you want to pay it forward.

And in the home repairs department: a small leak in a skylight has become large, causing a steady drip of water into a bathroom over the past few rainy days.  We knew about this from our home inspection, but figured we could put it off until summer.  No such luck.  We got a tarp and 28 bricks to hold it down in the wind, and Gerrit hauled them up to the roof to cover the skylight until we can actually fix it.  Fortunately he dodged the showers and stayed dry.  It looks kind of like a low-budget trailer park up there for now; good thing it's invisible on the roof.

On Saturday Apr 19 Gerrit's son Ian and family arrived for a few days.  It was fun seeing them all and having the house filled with the noise and chaos of young grandkids.  Gerrit made a Portuguese-ish dish similar to the pork chunks and clams which is a traditional Portuguese favorite.  He used the same spices and seasonings, but made a stew out of it.  The next day (Easter) was drizzly but we all went shopping and to a playground, where Liberty tried out her new rollerblades.  Afterwards Orson wanted some oranges from a tree along the sidewalk so Gerrit put his cane to good use and snagged a few for him.  We went to Braga the next day for an Ikea expedition, and to Porto on Tuesday after the weather had cleared up nicely.  In Porto we browsed around the big colorful Bolhão market, and the youngsters then headed for the Douro river for a boat tour.  They left on Wednesday after we all had a nice Portuguese lunch at a local tavern.

The Portuguese take Easter seriously.  The week leading up to it is called Semana Santa (Holy Week or Week of the Saints), and there are celebrations, church services, and concerts on each day.  Then on Easter Sunday it is a total blowout.  Fireworks and church bells start going off at 7 AM, and all day and night you can hear them echoing across the surrounding countryside.

We have a Brazilian ipê tree in the back yard.  It is the national flower of Brazil, and has a beautifully scented yellow trumpet-shaped bloom.  The former owners here told us it was one of only six saplings of this tree in all of Portugal, and we'll take their word for it.  We plan to start charging admission to our back yard.  The blossoms have been blossoming, and with the warmer weather the scent should be coming on.  To check this out, Pat said "I'm going to go sniff an ipê", which is not something Gerrit hears every day.  The scent still needs to develop, so he is liable to hear it for a while.

There is a bit more cigarette smoking here than in the US.  Smoking is not allowed indoors that we have seen, so it amounts to about the same societal effect.  You can buy cigarettes in the same type of places here as in the US, but here there are gruesome photographs and blunt warnings on every pack making clear the dangers of smoking.  Here is a picture of a rack of cigarette packs in a typical supermarket.

(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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From Calheiros to Braga

 On Saturday Apr 5 we had a few errands to run in Ponte de Lima, including making a donation to a local street animal rescue organization.  The donation was made at a little local restaurant in the historic part of town, so we enjoyed a nice lunch and craft beer there too.  Charities which accept donations seem to be a little hard to find here.  Maybe the church handles that sort of thing.  Many people recommend just leaving your donations next to the ubiquitous recycling drop-off spots too, and people will take them home from there.  We've done that a few times.  It seems like a nice way to donate directly to your neighbors.

We are actually in the village of Calheiros, near the town of Ponte de Lima.  It turns out that the name of the village comes from the Count of Calheiros, whose family has lived here for over 700 years.  700 years!  They built a fabulous palace in the 18th and 19th century, hidden from the road, just down the hill from us.  We see it as we drive in to our place from Ponte de Lima though.  Here is a nicely produced video in English showing the estate, including an interview with the current Count:  https://youtu.be/-OR-cg_p0e8 .  You can rent rooms there too, and the amenities include a spa, a tennis court, and a swimming pool.  (See https://www.pacodecalheiros.com/ )  They have many acres of vineyards on the estate, growing Loureiro grapes for the famous local vinho verde wine.  How about that?  Royalty for neighbors!

On Monday Apr 7 the installers from the metal fabricators arrived early in the morning and installed the four handrails we had ordered custom-made.  Here is the one on the indoor stairway and the one on the outside stairway up to the water heater solar panels.  They're beautiful, nice and solid too, and they really make getting up and down the stairs a lot more secure.  There has been a delay in installing the lift, but that is supposed to happen at the end of the month.

Pat also got an outdoor gardening cabinet and put it together on Monday.  It will tidy up a lot of the random weeders, trowels, fertilizer bags, and so forth which are accumulating around here, and get them all outside.

Fire departments here in Portugal are mainly volunteer, with volunteer support from the community which they serve.  It's a great model, fostering everyone's community involvement, and every time we see a fire department in Portugal it is modern, well equipped, and well maintained.  Vehicles are new and well kept also.  Firefighters here are also first responders, like EMTs in the US.  We have been planning on supporting the local bombeiros (firefighters) when we settled, so we made our pledge today and became "members" of the Ponte de Lima fire department.  Many local businesses provide discounts to members as their own form of contribution, so we will patronize them too.

Andrew, our all-purpose handyman, came out on Thursday Apr 10 and tried the new battery-powered brush cutter Gerrit bought a few weeks ago.  After some confusion with the harness they got it all going.  It is amazingly quiet; you can hardly hear it 5 meters (15 feet) away, and there are of course no two-cycle engine fumes or gasoline to worry about.  Andrew reports that it is lightweight and comfortable too.  Very nice!  We will donate the old gas-powered cutter to our neighbors by leaving it at the local recycling depot.

We have seen a little mouse in our house.  We chased him out, but there are likely more.  Pat found a clever mousetrap you can make with an empty wine bottle.  (Well, there's a problem right there.  Where would we find one of those?)  Tip it up a little, put some cheese in it, and when the mouse crawls in after it he can't get out up the slick glass sides.  Gerrit cobbled one together out of cardboard and duct tape, somehow finding an empty wine bottle.  We're not sure what to do after we actually catch a mouse like this, but Pat did not like Gerrit's suggestion to just tip the bottle into the jaws of a waiting cat.  We'll probably find a lovely mouse refuge somewhere about 160 km (100 miles) away, gently drive the little creature there, release it with a loving wave, and return to find that his whole family has moved in and turned ALL our cheese into mouse droppings.  Plus bred a half-dozen replacements for their deported relative.

We also have Iberian Wall Lizards which come in the house all day when the doors are open, to pay us visits.  We often catch them napping on the back of the sofa.  They're cute and harmless so we mostly ignore them.  Their droppings are harder to ignore.  Living in nature we are.

On Friday Apr 14 we went to the city of Braga, the third-largest in Portugal, with our friends Maayan and Dan and their visiting kids for a little sightseeing.  It is about a half-hour drive south from here.  The weather was a little drizzly but we saw some beautiful sights in this historic city, and YES we finally took some pictures of lunch!  (That currency you see spread all over the table is not our generous tip, it is built into the table top for decoration.)

Instagram wizards we are.  (Starting to sound like Yoda we are.)  It was not exactly traditional Portuguese, but it was tasty.  We ate at Bira Dos Namorados ("Valentine's Day") a nice hamburger café near the Jardim de Santa Bárbara where we all met.  Lunch, plus delicious coffee and pastries all day long, got us through.  

The Jardim is where a meetup happens every Friday which Maayan has introduced us to, where you get a chance to do actual immersive Portuguese conversation on a basic level.  The meetup was canceled for the day we were there, but we will start attending the following Friday.

Braga landmark

Our crew, less Pat behind the camera, apparently wandering aimlessly like a cloud of gnats

Flowered promenade

Part of the Jardim de Santa Bárbara, bordered by an ancient castle and arches

Dragon fountain across from the Jardim

City of flowers

Thanks to Ian, Gerrit's linguist son, and Maayan herself, for the help in transliterating from the Hebrew and finding pronunciations for "Maayan" and "Dan"!

(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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Getting Our Vez On

Weeding, caulk and window film updates, water filter cleaning, grocery shopping, haircuts, obtaining real estate documentation, picking up shipments, reworking ugly clock shelves: these are a few of our less-favorite things.

Lift installation project late and stalled about a month, our residency appointments changed from May 2 to July 4 with no explanation, the wrong paint color on our custom handrails requiring stripping and repainting, the cloud data server for this blog changing URLs which requires updating URLs in the entire blog: these are a few of our least-favorite things.

We had Alex, our British in-home hairdresser, come for a trim for both of us.  Pat looks cute as a button and Gerrit, uh, has shorter hair.  And it only cost 15 € for her and 5 € for him for in-home hairdressing -- amazing!

(Where to put that € sign?  We know where to put the $, but people go both ways on the €.  We're thinking we like it better after the number, with a space between them.  That's how you say it, anyway.)

Bernardo, our Portuguese friend and real estate agent, sent us this picture of the Portuguese Survival Kit.  All strapped onto a little portable tabletop and ready to go!  (And the way things are going in the world, we may all need something like this...)

On Thursday 4/3 the weather was due to turn rainy in the next few days so we took off for a little drive in the afternoon.  We wanted to take another look at Arcos de Valdevez, where we had gone for the Carnival parade a couple weeks ago.  The first thing we went to was the castle of Paço de Giela, a medieval castle which is the hub for many festivals and gatherings around town, just to see where it was.  There will be a big Easter festival there in a couple weeks which we may want to take the grandkids to on their upcoming visit.

Next we found a nice waterfront park along the Rio Vez (Vez river) which passes through town, went for a bit of a stroll, and found that it was part of a worldwide biological preserve.  There is an eco park all along the Vez river.  We saw a sign for another part of it further north in the town of Sistelo which looked interesting, so after returning to the car we headed north along the Vez.

The drive was beautiful, with fields of flowers and much natural countryside, and the town of Sistelo itself was a little jewel.  We wandered around a little and bought some wine and an embroidered apron at a gift shop, getting back to the car just as the rain began.  On the way back home we noticed some large burned areas, the result of some unseasonal wildfires in the region just a few weeks ago.

Vez river, clear and clean

Terraced hillside outside Sistelo

In the town of Sistelo

Sistelo town square

Sistelo farm

(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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