Sobriety and Setting Things Up

 

It has come to our attention that we must be sniffing happy dust over here, our blog is so gushy.  Well, it's true, we are really fond of this place and it has been a big pleasant surprise.  But let's get real, down and gritty.  

We know this place is not for everyone.  It is not Switzerland or Denmark, where things are clean, tidy, well-organized, and efficient.  The look of much of Porto and its environs could be described as, well, a little grungy.  The history of the older parts is visibly on display and some of the new construction is a little shabby.  It hasn't been all tidied up.  The buildings are generally not freshly pressure-washed and painted, and the streets are a crazy quilt of ancient shops and apartments with rusting antique wrought-iron railings and faded paint.  But we think that gives the place a certain genuineness and authenticity.  It's much more interesting to walk over cobbles and to see buildings that look like they've been around for centuries, full of history and character and not turned out last week by an Ikea factory.

There is some graffiti.  It's less than we've been seeing in Seattle and it seems less destructive, like the vandalizing of street signs we've seen there.  Pictures of Lisbon show graffiti too, and it does seem to be a worldwide phenomenon.

There is a very little bit of homelessness, and what looks like a few gypsy professional beggars (who are all over Europe).

There is a lot of bureaucracy here.  It's unavoidable.  But it is tolerable because of two factors: them and us.  Most of the bureaucrats we've worked with here seem to genuinely want to help people and to do their job well.  (This, incidentally, seems to be the way much of business is run here.)  The other half of the equation is us: it's important that we remain polite and patient, qualities which are valuable to cultivate in anyone's life.  The bureaucrats are just doing their job and Portuguese society is in fact trying to become more streamlined, and getting angry at the agents doesn't do any good at all.  We become better people when we practice respect and keep perspective.  Plus, at the end of a hard bureaucratic day there's a glass of Portuguese wine.

The language barrier can be daunting.  It would be wonderful if everyone spoke English and had infinite patience for stumbling Portuguese language beginners.  But people can't take half hour blocks out of their day to listen to foreigners mangle their native language, while gently providing corrections to help them learn.  The locals have their lives too.  There are plenty of ways to learn the language and the barriers slowly do come down.  There is a great deal of English spoken in the cities, which we're grateful for, and it's really up to us foreigners who want to live in a new country to learn the language.  

We did find it a bit hot and uncomfortable during much of July and August because of the humidity here in Porto.  It's noticeably more muggy than Seattle, but inland it is better.

OK, we've racked our brains and this is about all we can come up with to complain about, in the interest of fair and balanced reporting.  We've been raving about all the wonderful stuff, which you can read about and see pictures of in our earlier posts, and here we've tried to soberly consider the other side.  Now back to the gushing.

Monday was our first day without a car, having returned the rental the day before.  We made use of the time confined to the apartment by applying for our Portuguese social security numbers, checking on our car delivery and contacting the bank about transferring funds, shopping for car insurance, trying to get our internet/phone utility records straightened out, combing through expat forum chats for useful nuggets, manually entering financial transactions from our Portuguese bank into Quicken software, and having an introductory video meeting with our latest language course host and other students.  (Did we say something about gushing?  Maybe next post.)

And the last few days have been devoted to more general paperwork and preparation for the car.  Gerrit found auto insurance and got that underway, our immigration conference meeting setup is underway, and we transferred the money for the car to the dealer.  We also found out that social security numbers are no longer provided to retirees as of a couple months ago, and not necessary for our immigration meeting.  Things change fast around here.

Our car experiences have been interesting exposures to the way the Portuguese love their paperwork.  Instead of simply transferring the money from the bank to the dealer online, which US banks, Wise and other financial services allow you to do, we had to meet our personal banker and fill out a number of documents and forms, and have them authorized and stamped.  Then we provided the resulting Proof of Transfer document to the dealer so they could continue.  (At least that could be done online.)  

Signing up for insurance involved getting an official automobile Declaration of Characteristics document from the dealer, which was just as officious as the bank document.  It listed things like the model number and engine size, things you can find on the auto manufacturer's website.  We're sure there's a simper way to do this, but it's actually kind of sweet to meet with our banker for example, shake hands, and watch how diligent he was.  Good old fashioned person-to-person contact.

Unfortunately the car won't be ready for us until Monday, so we have to cool our jets till then.  The next few days may be a little boring as a result.

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Cars and Myths

The big news is we have our own car now, a new Honda Jazz hybrid.  (Well, it's on order from the dealer anyway, should be here the first of September.  Our own pictures are to come -- this one is a stock photo.)  The Jazz is a "super-mini", small enough to get through the narrow streets of old European villages and to park in the crowded cities, but surprisingly roomy inside and comfortable for four adults (or to pack our luggage for extended vacations).  The performance over cobblestone streets and on the open highway is excellent; it's powerful and quiet.  The hybrid technology sips petrol sparingly, so our emissions are low, operation is economical, and our range is essentially unlimited.

New cars throughout most of Europe have pricing fixed by the manufacturer.  It's refreshing to know what the car will cost and not to have to go through that time-wasting chest-thumping exercise of negotiation, never quite knowing who is taking more advantage of whom and whether you really did get a good price.  Who needs that?  Maybe someone who wants to brag to his friends about how bad he screwed the dealer on his new car (this happened to Gerrit).

On the last post we should have mentioned straightening out our utility and banking accounts.  Setting these up from the US so we would have valid references for our visa applications involved using a Portuguese power of attorney (POA), and many things put on the forms were placeholders or temporary (like addresses and phone numbers).  Sometimes if the account needed to contact someone it had to be the POA, too, rather than a couple English-speaking rubes with funny phone numbers eight time zones away.  

This left the accounts needing updating once we had gotten here and obtained our Portuguese address and phones.  This was more difficult than it sounds.  The worst example was having to spend two hours at the bank (with a banker who was truly helpful and efficient) getting all the i's dotted and t's crossed, but the utilities have been hard too.  We're still not quite done, but the bank was the big hurdle and it's nice to have that behind us.

Pat has been busy getting us connected, in many ways.  She's learning about expat resources here, joining interest groups, and getting our credit and debit cards sorted out so they work with Amazon Spain and other online vendors.  She has a coffee meeting (or tea in her case) with the International Women of Porto and Gaia on Tuesday.  This will really help with references for insurance and real estate agents, what to watch for and what to avoid, and so on.  She's already learned that when a parking spot is marked on a sign for emergency vehicles, police, etc., it's the spot AFTER the sign, not the spot which the sign faces.  Some poor Americans found that out the hard way, after paying a nearly €200 towing bill.

Today our car rental period ran out, a little before our new car was in stock and ready, so we're going to see if we can get around without a car for a few days.  Everything we normally need, and then some, is within walking distance, and if we have to drive somewhere we'll use Uber.

With our worldly two months of experience living here, we feel qualified to debunk at least a few of the Portugal myths in circulation.  These canards are frequently seen on blogs and guides, where they should know better:

1. The Portuguese are aggressive and reckless drivers.

Not in our experience.  Sure, you see the aggressive driver now and then, but you do everywhere.  We see mostly courteous and skilled driving here.  (but see our post here for a little revision to this.)

2. Portugal has some of the most expensive electricity in Europe.

Maybe they used to, but not any more.  See our post here.

3. It's hard to find modern consumer items or supermarkets.

At least in the Porto area here, stores and supermarkets similar to those in the US are quite popular.  Most things are readily available including up-to-the-minute modern conveniences, and if not they're only a click away online.  The food even seems healthier and fresher in general, and there are helpful government guides to nutrition on package labels.

4. Restaurant help can be surly and slow.

Not at all.  We've been to many now, urban and rural, and the service has uniformly been cheerful and quick.  They're understanding and helpful with the language barrier too.

We haven't experienced much of the health care system yet, except for Pat's monthly blood work, but what we hear from other expats is that it is excellent: better than the US.  Pat's experience has certainly borne that out.  Don't let US politicians tell you that in "old Europe" health care is slow and inadequate.  "The Healing of America" by T. R. Reid is a good place to start reading up on international health care.  The author has a number of YouTube videos too.

photo credit Reifen-Groessen.de

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Progress and Playing Catchup

Dear reader, it has been too long since a blog post!  We need to keep up better.  Here is a long one to catch up.  

We haven't met anyone socially yet here in Portugal, handicapped as we are by our weak language skills.  Last Wednesday, however, Pat was out on the terrace when our neighbor came out on his adjoining terrace and they said hello around the divider.  After a bit his wife joined him and Gerrit came out too, and we all had a nice visit.  They're lovely people, very friendly and helpful.  They speak English very well, but we got to try out a few phrases in Portuguese too.  It's so nice to make an actual local connection!

Then on Thursday Aug 15 we decided to go car shopping to the Porto Honda dealer.  Gerrit hadn't been successful with their website request form or understanding their Portuguese phone answering system, so we figured we'd head out there in person.

When we got there the place was deserted, contrary to the hours posted in the window.  Hmm, we thought, maybe they're appointment-only during the holiday month of August?  We got back in the car and headed to the next-nearest dealer, in Gaia a few kilometers away.  They too were closed!  Good grief, Portugal seemed to take this August holiday month seriously.

Well, the barbecue grill next door sure smelled good, so we got an order of barriga de porco (pork belly) to take out and headed home for lunch.  Where, d'oh!, we realized after looking at the calendar that today was the Assunção de Maria (Assumption of Mary) public holiday!  We have got to start paying more attention to the Google Portugal Holidays calendar.  The barriga de porco was excellent though.  Good thing the grill wasn't taking the day off.

To salvage the day, that afternoon we headed to the Reserva Natural Local do Estuário do Douro (Nature Reserve Douro Estuary Site), a prime local birdwatching spot recommended by our new neighbor friend, with big camera and lens in hand.  It is on the Douro river estuary, just before the river meets the Atlantic Ocean, and is a stopping point for about three dozen species throughout the year.  

The weather was beautiful and Pat took over a hundred photos, but only a few came out.  The wind was pretty strong and it was hard to keep the long lens still, so most of the photos are blurry when zoomed in.  We were in a bird blind and leaning through the open windows, so next time we'll bring along a tripod and place it inside the blind where it will shield the camera from the wind.

Meanwhile, here are a couple slightly blurry shots including a flamingo stretching its wings and showing off its bright colors.  We had to go to Portugal to see flamingos!  On our whole US Gulf States trip in the winter of 2022, even in Florida, we didn't see a single one.

The following day, Friday, we tried again at the Honda dealer with more success.  We met a very nice English-speaking sales guy named Amadeu and looked thoroughly at the Jazz, a super-mini hybrid.  They didn't have a demo model available, so we made an appointment for a test drive the following Thursday.  The conversation then turned to cultural differences, how much we like Portugal, what we've done, and Amadeu gave us some excellent seafood restaurant and wine recommendations.  He used to sell high-end wine to Angolan clients, so he knows whereof he speaks.  This was an unexpected bonus from our visit to the car dealer.

Gerrit finally found out how to contact the immigration agency AIMA for our obligatory meeting, but it is only by phone and those in the know say it is almost impossible to get through.  It's looking more reasonable now to hire a law firm to take care of the whole thing.  They will set up the appointment and even accompany you there, which will be a great help if the AIMA agent doesn't speak English.  On Wednesday Gerrit pulled the trigger on that, getting a recommended law firm started.

Sunday, after doing some chores and paperwork, we decided to head back to the bird-watching area to see if we could get some clearer photos, but there was a lot of smoke in the air so visibility was poor.  We think it might be coming down the Douro river valley from wildfires.  We drove around sightseeing for a while though, including Gerrit trying his driving skill through a 2 m wide tunnel.  He squeaked through okay with about an inch to spare on each side, but a block further the road completely petered out so he had to back down the street and through the tunnel backward.  Very carefully!

On Monday we went to our first Expats Portugal get-together, at a restaurant/brewery in Porto.  There were probably 40 people there, mostly Americans, gathered in the outdoor seating area enjoying beers, snacks, dinner, and conversation.  We made some good connections, shared stories, and got some good ideas.

We've been watching Portuguese TV in the evening before dinner, mostly cheesy game shows and local news.  The cheesier the better actually, since they use simpler words on those shows.  We've even tuned in on a couple children's shows (including a modern version of "Lassie Comes Home", produced in Germany with people using cell phones, German signage, and dubbed into Portuguese).  We only understand a small bit, but just watching and listening helps to train the ear.  Pat found the local Porto channel, so we're able to keep up on local news and highlights around northern Portugal, or at least look at the pictures.  We've seen features on some beautiful areas and villages we want to check out.

On Wednesday we took another tour southeast of Porto along the south side of the Douro river.  We took the back roads, and it was another beautiful outing.  

We stopped at the sweetest little public bathroom in the village of Sante.  It was sparkling clean, tiled, old-fashioned, and simply a public convenience for everyone to use as they needed.  How nice!  Pat reports the women's side had a few problems though.

A beautiful, well-kept cemetery was right across the road.  We noticed several of the tombstones had a man's name plus "wife and children" on them.  Did this mean he had a wife and children, or were they buried there too, anonymously?  Portugal has been a patriarchal society in times past, so it may be the latter.

We stopped for lunch a little bit up the road, and the employees came out when we arrived.  A welcoming committee?  They didn't look very cheerful though, and seemed to be looking up the road.  One of them took us inside, where we asked about lunch for two and what was available.  She said there was no food, and then something else we didn't understand.  We smiled and said okay, thank you, and goodbye, and as we left a fire engine with emergency techs pulled up with flashing lights.  Somebody inside had had some sort of emergency, and here we were asking "what's for lunch?".  We felt bad as we drove away for being such unwitting idiots.

We stopped a bit further on the way home at a small village restaurant and had another wonderful rustic Portuguese lunch.  We had olives and bread to start, breaded hake, fries-and-rice (a common combination in Portugal, we've found), a full bottle of good vinho verde, and a demitasse of espresso all for a little over €18.  No one spoke English and we had to muddle our way through a bit, but there were smiles and good will all around.  Another lovely Portuguese experience.

Today, Thursday Aug 22, we went back to the car dealer and took a test drive.  Suffice it to say for now that we put a deposit on a new car.  More next post.  We came back home and walked to Pat's blood test appointment, then had a delicious lunch at a local restaurant a couple doors down.  From now on you can just assume that all our meals out are delicious, simple, authentic, and cheap.  We'll tell you otherwise.

(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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Duties, Douro, and Port

 

We continue to experiment with regional fish, and we found that perch is really good.  We had some frozen fillets from the local supermarket, and it's a firm and flavorful white freshwater fish which is now on our regular menu.  

Our last post saw us with newly validated retirement visas in hand, so we have been following up on the next steps.  First we need to set up our obligatory meeting with AIMA (the immigration agency) to confirm the visas and give us long term resident status, but that is proving to be difficult.  The agency is new, and procedures for setting up the meeting vary wildly all over the internet.  The least helpful of all is the AIMA website itself, which is somewhat disconcerting.

This led us to Expats Portugal, a group and forum of, as you might expect, English-speaking expats in Portugal, which was recommended by Gerrit's friend Daniel.  They have a lot of experience with things like this, and we had a consultation with one of their experts yesterday (Monday) afternoon.  That should lead to us at least getting on the AIMA calendar, but it may be months before we actually have our meetings.

Gerrit has been shopping for cars, too.  Our rental has been great, but we need to get our own now.  He is looking at the "super mini" hybrid category, similar to the Toyota Yaris we have been renting which is being discontinued.

Meanwhile, Pat has been making sure we don't spend all our time working.  She set up a nice Douro river tour and port wine tasting for Sunday.  We decided to walk and use the metro, so about 9:30 we set off for the metro stop three blocks away.  We mostly remembered how to recharge our reusable tickets there, and within minutes we were on our way north.  We got off at the São Bento station, just on the Porto (north) side of the Douro river, and followed Google maps a couple blocks to the "meeting point" the tour had directed us to.

Only it was not a meeting point at all.  It was a tourist office which wrote out vouchers for the tickets we had already purchased, and informed us that the start of the tour was on the other (Gaia) side of the Douro river!  We needed to walk yet a couple more blocks and catch a river taxi to get there.  Well, this was a surprise, but what could we do?  We did get some more exposure to the beautiful riverside neighborhoods of Porto anyway. 

Then the river taxi was quick and easy.  The young boat pilot was slumped over his wheel when we arrived, but he reared blearily up with bloodshot eyes and we took off in short order, we being the only passengers.  It must have been a late night for our poor pilot, but he still did a fine job piloting (fortunately for us).

It went smoothly at our boat tour start and we soon embarked in the Além Douro (Beyond Douro), an old transport boat which had been reconditioned for tours. The day was overcast but warm. 

We spent about an hour making a water circuit of the Douro river, around the six bridges which span the river in the Porto area. It was really beautiful and a great way to appreciate the old town river sections of Porto to the north and Gaia to the south.

Next it was time for lunch.  The restaurants in the riverside neighborhood there in Gaia catered mainly to the throngs of tourists in the area, so we opted for some street food from a local stall.  We had "piglet sandwiches" (apparently a regular menu item in Portugal) and vinho verde (a light, fizzy so-called green wine native to Portugal) while watching the crowds.  Gerrit had a great time ordering the meal, since it is a thrill when a local actually understands you.  He even made a bit of small talk with the booth lady: "está barulhento, pois não?" (it's noisy, isn't it?), referring to the din which a large contingent of motorcycles was making, and understood from her that it was a regular Sunday occurrence and she didn't much care for it either.  He never thought it would be so much fun to exchange a couple phrases like a first-grader.

After some fresh fruit cups for dessert and a visit to the WC, we made our way to the port house a half block away for some tasting.  The house was a family-run operation, founded in 1846, called "Quinta do Bom Dia".  This lovely-sounding name translates to "the good morning farm", which is much less romantic.  Apparently the parishioners in the small chapel on the farm used to say "good morning" to each other a lot, so that's what they called the farm.  Oh brother.  We think they need a good marketing department.

We had a young and enthusiastic employee take our small group through the cask room there, explaining everything in passably good English.  He carried little wooden stools from point to point for Pat and me, a really heartwarming gesture.  We learned about ruby, tawny, and white port, and Pat impressed the group by correctly identifying which was which in a display of five decanters.

Then came the tasting.  A "fine white" and a "fine tawny", the low-end offerings, were included with the tour and they were delicious.  The house sold ports up to 40 years old though, so we thought we'd try the 10-year tawny and 10-year white in addition.  The white was very good, but the tawny was really remarkable.  We bought a bottle.  We could detect notes of wood, leather, cigar smoke, dried dark cherries, and other undefinables in there.  It was kind of like being in a very old gentlemen's club, with a little bowl of cherries at your side.  Wonderful!  Our guide had said that when a bottle has been opened it should be finished within a week, so we'll do our best.

As we left the port house, a huge surreal bunny built from scrap metal greeted us on the corner.  Was it real, or a port dream?  We'll have to return to make sure.

To get home we rode a cable gondola from right near the port house to the top of the river valley, exiting right next to the metro stop we needed.  Perfect!  Gerrit again had a successful Portuguese exchange with the ticket vendor, and we enjoyed the spectacular view on the way up and at the top.  The overcast had burned off by now and the weather was clear, warm, and breezy.  A few minutes later we were on the metro heading home, and after a final three block trudge from the station we were actually in the apartment with our shoes off.  Over 14,000 steps today!

We enjoyed glasses of port that evening with cheese and chocolate, burying our noses in the glasses, inhaling the vapors, and being transported to other worlds.

(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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Walking the Visas Through the UK

Now the full story of our Portuguese visas can be told.  To review a little: back in Seattle in late June we had been renting the empty apartment here in Portugal for almost four months.  We had airplane tickets for June 25, which was six weeks later than the latest expected delivery date for our visas, but they still weren't here.  A week before the flight we were told that it would be more like July 22 before they arrived, so we scurried to get second passports (yes, those are legal) and flew to Portugal on tourist visas, which are automatic to the EU with US passports.

We lived a month in Portugal, bla bla bla, read the blog, and our visas were finally both delivered to our permanent US address in Burien by July 29.  Pat's cousin Jeff has access permission there, so he very kindly ran down from north Seattle for us, picked them up, and couriered them to us here in Portugal.  Yes, couriering passports is legal and commonplace too, in fact DHL has a whole web page devoted to it.  Two days later we were gazing fondly at our actual Portuguese D7 visas nestled securely in our original passports.

And now the final major step of the process had to take place.  We originally entered Portugal on our second passports, so the passports with the visas had not undergone an actual border crossing to validate them.  We needed to step out of the Schengen zone using our tourist passports so the tourist visit would be terminated, and come back into Portugal using the visa passports so they would be verified, stamped, and recorded.

We decided a flight to England and back would be jolly fun (they have the best beer in the world and an old friend lives not far from the airport) and would take care of the Schengen hopping to boot.  Pat booked a flight, hotel, and car rental to leave Sunday August 4th and return Tuesday August 6th, and we packed a bag.

Early on Sunday we headed to the Porto airport, getting lost on the way and having a great deal of difficulty finding the parking lot we wanted.  We had done a dry run the previous day, but that didn't seem to help much.  Then we were lost in elevator hell trying to get to the Departures area (we know, how hard can that be?), checked our bag, trudged out to the farthest gate in the terminal, and just made it on time.  Why are all our flights at the farthest gate in the terminal?  Some demon is tracking our travels.

The flight to Gatwick took about two hours, where a lovely assistance agent insisted that we hop on his little golf cart buggy and ride to baggage claim.  We tried to modestly refuse, but not very hard.

There are a thousand reasons why being disabled stinks, but one good one: airport assistance.  Most airports are huge and confusing, and being able to ride a little golf cart and bypass the long queues is a miracle of kindness.  The assistants are happy, helpful, and friendly; they really have hearts of gold.  The only problem is trying to look sad and pathetic in the golf cart while being secretly delighted, so that you don't cause too much resentment among the herd stuck in line glaring at you.  You have to keep your canes in plain sight, too, and it doesn't hurt to hunch over a little.

Thanks to this airport miracle we soon found ourselves renting a right-hand-drive Mercedes and plunging into the bizarro world of left-side driving in England.  Gerrit had successfully driven on the left side back in 1996 in Ireland, but for some reason this time it was more difficult and taxing.  Could it be those 28 additional years of mileage on his brain?  We made it to the hotel without any head-on collisions though, checked in, and then headed to Faversham to get together with our friends Jess and Julian for dinner.

The drive was a little over an hour, and the highways are much easier than the two-lane roads.  We were sipping pints of that lovely British ale with our friends in a neighborhood pub before we knew it, and then had a delightful dinner at a nearby restaurant.  It was great to meet Julian and to catch up with them both.  We left before sundown, but thanks to some Google confusion we got lost a couple times and didn't get back to the hotel until well after dark.

The next day, Monday, we had planned to sightsee our way to Brighton via the back roads.  It was a beautiful drive, but Gerrit was a bit sleep deprived so driving was even more taxing.  The pictures here are a country road en route and the Royal Pavilion in Brighton.

On the way back we stopped in Lewes for an excellent lunch.  The beer was about as fresh as it could be, since Harvey's Brewery was about two blocks away and we got the first pull on a new barrel of their bitter.  The trip home after that was a bit hair-raising though, with the sleep deprivation and lunch really taking its toll on Gerrit.  A nap in the hotel helped, and a bit later we headed out to Frogs Hole, a friendly and relaxed neighborhood pub nearby, for dinner.  They had Fuller's London Pride, Gerrit's dad's favorite beer, so we hoisted one in a toast to him.  Cheers, Dad!

The next day, Tuesday, we had a couple hours before we had to get back to Gatwick, so we visited the Warnham Nature Preserve 20 minutes from the hotel.  It is a beautiful place on a lake filled with birds of all sorts.  The facilities looked new and well maintained.  We walked to a couple bird viewing blinds (or "hides" as the Brits call them) and Pat took dozens of photos while we chatted with our fellow birders.  It was a good time of year for birdwatching, since the little babies were just out and about.  The weather was drizzly, but it was nice and dry in the hides.  Gerrit had slept well the night before, so his good driving redeemed him from the previous day and restored his confidence a bit.

We got to the airport in plenty of time, since returning the car was very quick and we had our guardian angel assistance team to shuttle us around.  We shared a "Texas style" brisket and salads for lunch at the airport.  We were a long way from Texas, so lunch was overpriced and underwhelming.  At least we got a last taste of British beer.  Then we caught our 5:10 PM flight back to Porto.  Our seat mate was an interesting guy, heading to Porto for vacation with his Portuguese wife and kids, and we had a nice conversation.

Unfortunately there is no assistance crew in Porto and we exited the plane at the rear onto the tarmac, so there were many stairs and steps to trudge through to get to passport control.  Fortunately a kind fellow passenger showed us weary-looking cane wielders how to jump the long line to the passport agents.  

Here was where it all came down: would we get the coveted stamps and approvals, or perhaps be interrogated for hours in a bare room with a single light bulb?  The agent spoke a little English, we explained our whole complicated situation as simply as we could, and stamp-stamp, away we went with our fully validated visas!  Ah, not only was it a fun little vacation but it worked too.

Now that we have our validated visas we need to make an appointment with AIMA (Agência para a Integração Migrações e Asilo, the Agency for Integration of Migrants and Asylum-Seekers) to confirm our visa application information and finalize our resident status.  Unfortunately AIMA is currently overwhelmed with applicants, so this may take six months instead of the normal few weeks.

And things are in fact more difficult here in Portugal when you don't know the language very well.  The translation apps like Google Translate and DeepL are marvelous and helpful, and they even translate speech or photos of text instantly.  You can translate documents, menus, signs, and the like quickly and easily.  Unfortunately, though, the translations aren't very good and are sometimes misleading or incomprehensible.  Websites and utility bills are the same way.  We are spending much time poring over them in puzzlement.  When it comes to important contracts, like for a car or home, or perhaps for our AIMA meetings, we are going to have to hire someone truly bilingual.  Fortunately this is easy to do in Porto.  

We'll get there eventually, but for now we're pretty incompetent.  It's fun to read the signs and mail and interpret them as best we can though, and a good way to build vocabulary.  We went through a newsletter about civic improvements in our home town that way, with the help of a dictionary, and you can get the gist pretty well.

And a final note: Pat's phone is now fully ported too, so texts and calls to her US cell phone will reach her via Google Voice.  You won't see any difference.

(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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Handball and the Beach

We forgot to mention in our last post: when we arrived at the car rental counter we exchanged greetings, people saying "boa tarde" (good afternoon) all around.  The agent smiled at Pat and said "Say that again".  When she did the agent looked delighted and said "I love that accent!".  Here we we were worried about mispronouncing things when all it amounts to is an adorable accent!

Gerrit's US cell phone port to Google Voice is complete now, including texting.  He's tested voice and texts between the US and Portugal both ways, including two-factor authentication texts from financial institutions, and everything seems to be working.  His US cell number continues to work exactly like it did before, but now it's not tied to a cellular carrier.  And it's free!  (Well, it uses his Portuguese cell carrier for mobile data when he's not connected to WiFi, which is not free, but he can see your eyes glazing over so that's about enough of that.)

Ever heard of the game of handball?  Not the one where two players slap a hard rubber ball and bounce it back and forth at each other in a small room, but the one that's a team indoor sport on a court like basketball, with a net goal like soccer, and a ball a third the size of a soccer ball which is thrown around with the hands.  Yeah, we'd never heard of it either until we stumbled into it in the Olympics on our new TV.  It's a really exciting game, fast-moving, physical, skillful, and strategic.  It's kind of the opposite of soccer in that you can only touch the ball above the knees.  Players can't be stationary with the ball longer than three seconds, so the play is constantly moving around.  Rough play is part of the game, including pushing, grabbing, and pulling on jerseys, but sportsmanship is good and we haven't seen any fights or disputes.  Fouls seem to be called at the discretion of the referee, and they do happen.  The game is an hour total, in two halves, and scores run up to 30 points or so.  Men's and women's handball are quite equally fun and impressive to watch, there's no advantage in the game for one sex or the other.

The game was invented in the late nineteenth century in Scandinavia and Germany, and became an Olympic sport in 1936.  Interestingly, the US and Canada have not fielded an Olympic handball team for decades.  This probably explains why we've never seen the game in US Olympic coverage.  It's all over the TV here in Europe though, and there are teams from all over the world.  If you get a chance or can dig a game up on video, check it out.  Even Gerrit, the complete non-sports dweeb, finds it fascinating and exciting, and Pat thinks it might even supplant American football for her.

We love salmon, no matter what ocean it comes from, but we do miss that Alaskan sockeye in Seattle.  It really is the best in the world.  Atlantic salmon is good, we just had some again last night, but it's softer, oranger, and not as rich in flavor.  Lots of good omega-3 oil in it, but we definitely miss that sockeye.  So when you come visit, throw a sockeye in your suitcase for us, willya?

And the vacation's over.  We've been hunched over our computers taking care of residence responsibilities like getting billing accounts transferred to our name, shopping for a car, buying a vacuum cleaner, and taking care of visa requirements.  We scheduled a quick trip to England a couple days from now, too (more on that later).  

We did take a short trip to north Porto today though, in the beautiful weather, to visit a scenic memorial at a beach: Obelisco da Memória.  It was erected in 1832 to commemorate the landing of a liberating army nearby.  Today it is on a beautiful, uncrowded beach.

(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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Business, Details, and a Break

Last Wednesday was a busy errand day, getting a new battery for Pat's phone, recycling an old waterpic, and doing some grocery shopping.  In the process we got a parking ticket (€6) and picked up some more of the delicious mushroom cream sauce Pat had discovered a couple shopping trips ago.  We also got our new Portuguese cell phone SIM cards in the mail.

The mushroom cream sauce is a delight.  It is made with one of Europe's favorite wild mushrooms, Porcini (boletus edulis), which gives it a wild and rich mushroom flavor.  Campbell's Cream of Mushroom it is not.  It doesn't hurt that most of the rest of the sauce is real cream, either.  We've had it now with chicken noodles, sautéed mushrooms, and steak, and it is such an easy way to whip up an elegant dinner.

We had a nice, quick lunch out at a nearby café, of empadão com vitela (pot pie with veal) and quiche com queijo (cheese quiche).

Gerrit tried his new SIM card and it worked, but we don't want to switch over for good until our US cell numbers have been ported to Google Voice.  This should provide no-charge VOIP service for our old numbers, so they can be used for phone and text just the same as in the US.

Thursday was a big walking day (Pat's Fitbit said over 10,000 steps).  We walked to the El Corte Inglés one-stop mall store where Gerrit got a haircut, then to the clinic for Pat's blood test, and to our local grocery in the afternoon.  Gerrit started the process of porting his cell phone to Google Voice, hoping that the number was not going to get lost in cyberspace somewhere and thereby not be recoverable if it didn't work out.  It takes 24 hours or so for the port to complete.

Our Portuguese retirement visas (the ones we drove to San Francisco to apply for) were to be delivered by UPS overnight from the San Francisco embassy.  We had seen Pat's appear on Monday but not Gerrit's, figuring that there was just a processing delay.  Checking tracking, however, we found that somehow UPS had misinterpreted Gerrit's package address and the delivery was on hold.  We have copies of the UPS shipping labels and verified that the addresses for our two packages are identical.  Why was one delivered but not the other?  This is annoying.  Gerrit then spent a couple hours in the hell of the UPS "customer service" system.  Did you know that it is literally impossible to speak with a human being at UPS?  There is an automated phone system, email, and chat.  If the phone system voice recognition doesn't perfectly recognize the 18-digit cryptic tracking number as you speak it (over and over, with increasing volume, anger, and frustration), it basically says "sorry" and hangs up.  None of the tricks like 0, #0, saying "representative", etc. works.  (We later learned that shouting obscenities might get you to a person.  Is this what customer relations have come to?)

What do people with accents, speech impediments, or poor phone connections do?  It is unfathomable, but UPS simply dumps people at the curb if it can't recognize the tracking number they speak into the phone.  Then if they try chat they find that "chat agents are busy, try the automated phone system".  No queue or callback, just a brick wall wherever you look.

Gerrit finally managed to get email to someone who barely spoke English, also to "change" the delivery address to the same address (his idea, not theirs).  It looked like that will cause a delivery retry.  We should find out Saturday whether that succeeds.

Automated phone systems are not something we will miss about the US.

On Saturday Gerrit's phone port to Google Voice was complete and he tested it out.  It all seems to be working, but text messaging may take another couple days according to Google.

Gerrit did some remote computer financial work for his dad.  It's amazing that this can be done from thousands of miles away just as if you're next door.  It's actually more convenient, since Gerrit can log in to his dad's computer and use it while he's asleep thanks to the 8-hour time difference.

We went back to the car rental company to renew our rental.  It's hard to believe we've been here a month and our car rental period is up!  The agent spoke English very well and was quite helpful.  There was only one chair on the customer side of the counter, which Gerrit sat in since he would be signing documents (plus he admits he's a thoughtless bum).  The agent brought around a chair for Pat.  Gerrit said "muito gentil, obrigado!" (very kind, thank you!) and she replied "We need to take care of one another" so naturally and sweetly that he almost began to cry.  We have seen kindness all over the US all our lives, but it seems to be deeper and more pervasive here.

And good news about Gerrit's visa: the delivery retry worked and now both visas are waiting for us.  This is excellent news, because it allows us to start long-range planning instead of being in tourist visa limbo.  It means we can integrate further into society too, obtaining health user numbers, social security, and driver's licenses.  And now we feel comfortable doing things like buying a car and hunting for property.

Today, Sunday, we finally got out for a little country drive.  We went to the town of Campo following the less-traveled roads and had an elegant lunch there at Casa Pichel restaurant.  We were celebrating our visas being approved.  It was a really noisy fun time, the restaurant was packed.  It seems to be a tradition for families to go out for lunch after church.

Doorway in Valongo

Tiled church in Campo

(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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Shopping, More Porto, and Connectivity

We wanted to do a little more intensive exploration of the city of Porto, but Saturday was a drizzly day and not suitable for sightseeing.  So we returned to El Corté Ingles, our local department store shangri-la, and did a little clothes shopping for Gerrit instead.  Pat had managed to bring sufficient clothes with her when we came to Portugal, at least a couple month's worth, but Gerrit had little more than a couple pairs of jeans, eight or so shirts (mostly tee), and some orthopedic looking shoes.

We had lunch at the food court there: pork sandwiches.  They were called "piglet sandwiches" on the English menu, which is a technically correct way to describe a young pig but makes readers of Winnie the Pooh squeamish.  Our qualms quickly vanished, though, when we found how tasty they were.  The buns were crunchy and soft artisan bread too.

Neither of us likes shopping much, and it's worse when you don't know your size and can't understand the labels very well.  The online size translation tables we found before we left were wrong about the pants, but trial and error got us there.  Pants are sold with a fixed inseam length here; you just hem (or roll) them up if you need to.  Fortunately Gerrit is on the tall side in Portugal so it looks like the standard length will do.  He got a couple pairs of summer pants, some dressier shoes, and the thin grey shorty summer socks he's been looking for all his life.  Why did we have to come to Portugal to find them?  The rest of his wardrobe enhancement will have to wait for another day.

Sunday was a beautiful hot summer day.  We wanted to take a more extensive driving tour of Porto to at least see the sights we wanted to concentrate on later.  Pat set up a nice itinerary of a half dozen stops recommended by Rick Steves, and off we went.  Gerrit was sporting his new Portuguese pants and shoes, feeling very stylish.

After way too many wrong turns and wild excursions due to a silent Google Maps (our bad), the first stop was at one of the many "Chinese stores" (yes, that's what they call them) to pick up a fan since Monday is supposed to be a scorcher.  Casa China turned out to be about an acre of the gaudiest and poorest quality of anything you can imagine.  (At least in Gerrit's opinion.  Pat kind of liked some of it.)  Whatever exists, you can find a trashy and poorly made version of it here.  Notice we're not saying "cheapest" because they aren't.  The low-quality fan we got was €29.99, and should have been about €10.  Well, at least we'll have moving air in the apartment on Monday.

To continue the theme, next we had a rather disappointing lunch.  Gerrit tried a traditional Portuguese dish called a Francesinha, which is a sandwich of fried egg, beef steak, ham, and sausage between thick slices of bread, wrapped in cheese, and smothered with gravy.  It's about as dense and filling as it sounds, kind of like a croque monsieur or Canadian poutine on steroids.  The steak in Gerrit's was the toughest he'd ever tried to saw through, but other than that it was okay.  Pat had bacalhau (cod) with three amêijoas (clams), one camarão (shrimp), and batatas fritas (french fries), but she found it disappointing and hard to eat.  The waitress was very kind though, speaking slowly and simply for us which we really appreciated, and the restaurant décor was cool mid-20th-century modern.

But then our afternoon began to improve.  The intrepid Google Maps lady (talking to us now) guided us through the labyrinthine streets of Porto along Pat's route to some of the best spots in the city.  Porto was intense this time: swarming with tourists, chaotic, disorganized, and thrilling.  We were awed by the narrow cobblestone streets, the crowded squares, the grand medieval churches and spires, the mixture of the ancient and the new.  Gerrit is really starting to drive like a European, fully confident amidst all the chaos.  He didn't hit a single pedestrian.

Here are a couple quick shots from through the car window:

Porto City Hall

Clérigos Church

On Monday night we tried the next installment in our ongoing series of "Portuguese frozen fish".  This time it was grouper filets. They were good, but we again had the impression that one of them was a little old.  We need to look into the best way to buy fish here.  The Portuguese actually consume far more fish per capita than any other European country, so they should know.  There are many new (to us) varieties of fish to be found here including the grouper we just tried, which is a nice firm white fish a bit similar to halibut.  We have some perch to try next.

As of Monday, the temperature is getting up above 30 C (86 F), a little too hot especially for Gerrit.  Our Chinese Store fan is helping, but Gerrit wanted to get the apartment air conditioning going.  After a fair amount of cursing and poking, he found how to operate it with the remote control here.  Very nice!  To avoid feeling too much like spoiled Americans we're keeping it at 26 C (79 F), but that makes a nice difference especially with the fan in conjunction.  That and a glass of chilled vinho verde keeps the hot afternoons pleasant.

And all of a sudden we have our internet and TV connected!  Our Portuguese fixer read the carrier (Vodafone) the riot act for taking so long, and we literally got a call when the installer was on the way the next morning.  In Portugal every company is required to keep a Complaint Book which customers have access to.  There are serious repercussions for complaints, so we bet our fixer threatened them with an official complaint.  Whatever she did, it worked.

As the installer started rummaging around in the front closet Gerrit peeked over his shoulder and discovered we have fiber to the apartment!  Sweet.  We will have bandwidth galore.  This is the most state-of-the-art communication network either of us has ever had, and now we can retire the lame, slow cell phone hotspots we've been using for internet.  And we can watch all the futebol we want!

(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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Day Trips and Eggs

We have made a couple exploratory trips the last few days, to Braga (northward) and Coimbra (southward).  We really should have done more research and spent more time in each of these historic cities, but we did get a quick look, enough to come back for more.  Here are some pictures anyway, and we're already doing some research for next time.

In Braga we did stop at an archaeological museum, Museu de Arqueologia Dom Diogo de Sousa, and marveled at the antiquities from ancient Greece and from Roman times in the Braga region.  Here is an example of the ancient Greek mosaic tile work on display.

Church of St. Mark in Braga

On the way to Coimbra we stopped at an elegant restaurant "Pompeu dos Frangos" in the town of Anadia for lunch.  It was delicious, and the restaurant itself was a slice of history.  The building had been a "changing station" stop along the Lisbon to Porto postal route since the second half of the 19th century, back when it took 34 hours, four meals, and rests and changes for the staff and horses to make the 300 km (186 mi) trip.

We also saw saw some large bird nests atop poles, kind of like the ones ospreys build.  Then we saw the occupants: storks!  Unfortunately we couldn't get pictures, but it was a fun sight to see, very European.  And on the way home the poor saps going the other direction on the highway were backed up for many kilometers because a truck full of bananas had overturned.  That sounds like the punchline to some joke, but I'm sure those drivers didn't think it was so funny.

We just found that there is regulated traceability on each individual egg here!  Each egg is labeled with a code which identifies if it is organic, free range, or ground laid, the origin and region it came from, and a date code.  (Look closely and you can see it printed on the egg in red here.)  Much of the regulation we see here seems to be intended to provide information and to protect the consumer.

We've had our sporty and fun rental car (a Toyota Yaris hybrid) for three weeks now.  We've been joking that the gas gauge seems to be stuck, it goes down so slowly.  We've been doing a mixture of city and highway driving as the gauge crept downward.  Finally on the trip to Coimbra we got down to 1/4 tank and filled up: 24 liters (just over 6 gal), cost €41 ($44), distance 633 km (393 mi), resulting in a gas mileage of 26 km/l or 62 mpg.  Wow!  Looks like we're restoring our karma for all those miles pulling the trailer back in the US at 10 mpg.

(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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The Power and the Glory

On Friday our TV came and Gerrit got it mounted to the wall bracket.  We should have checked this before we put down our debit card, but the energy consumption of this model is the worst it gets on the TV rating chart: 70 kWh per 1000 hours of use.  "Dang," we thought, "and with electricity so expensive in Portugal!"  Then we wondered, how bad is it really?

There seems to be a lot of conflicting information out there, but an authoritative source says "the final price of electricity in Portugal for household consumers is in line with the EU-27 average".  It's not "the most expensive in Europe" as you sometimes see.  Portugal's energy from renewable resources is also impressive, quoted anywhere from 65% to 95%.

Electricity prices are fluctuating a lot in Europe right now, but something like €0.25 per kilowatt-hour (kWh) for a year-around average is probably reasonable (we just got our June bill, at €0.17 / kWh).  At this rate, even if we watch 2 hrs of TV a day on our energy hog set the cost will be about €13 a year.  We're definitely saving that on wine alone, so it would be appropriate to watch TV with a glass of wine.

On Saturday we were tethered to the apartment waiting for an Amazon delivery (they won't deliver unless someone is here), but it arrived before noon so we decided to take a little outing after that.  We headed southeast into the rural area around Porto again, this time a little further north.  The weather cleared up nicely and it was a beautiful drive.  

Portugal is known for its tolerance.  Outside our home town of Gaia we saw a gay couple walking hand in hand, completely unselfconsciously.  It was so refreshing in its complete normalcy.

We stopped for a delightful rustic lunch at a local restaurant just outside the little town of Rio Mau (Bad River), on the Rio Mau itself.  The young waitress spoke English quite well, but we were also able to try out some Portuguese with her.  Gerrit asked her about the name of the river and town.  Before flood control the river would occasionally flood the countryside causing heavy devastation, thus the name.  Inside the restaurant they had painted a red horizontal line about 4 feet up from the floor and labeled it "1962" as a grim reminder of how high the water rose that year.  Cripes, our roast pork would have been underwater!

The restaurant was such a nice, unassuming place, family-run, and had been there for many years.  The people were friendly, relaxed, and curious about us.  They had a wall dedicated to the visit of "El Presidente" some ten years ago, of which they were very proud.  The waitress told us that El Presidente had enjoyed one of the lunches that we ordered.  We wish we had asked, "El Presidente of what?".  It sounds Spanish.  In Portuguese it would be "O Presidente".

The customers who were seated when we arrived were conversing in German, and as they left the man had a nice fluent conversation with the waitress in Portuguese.  Pretty impressive!  That's the way we want to be, comfortable in both languages.

The countryside we drove through was just beautiful: forests, farms, grassy open space with stone walls, and dramatic outcroppings.  (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.)

The destination of our trip was Parque Eólico da Serra da Freita, a stunning and beautiful wind farm named after the Serra da Freita mountain peak nearby.  The wind farm is on a high, flat, exposed ridge.  The turbines were huge and majestic.  The area was beautiful and spare, many rocks shiny with mica, and a nice narrow paved road which led through the park.  On the other end was Refugio da Freita, which looked like a summer camp.  There were groups of youths there, a little market, and a campground.  A little further on we found a nice little picnic area with stone picnic tables and grills nestled in the trees.

Just beyond this we saw a traditional goatherd with his flock.  We tried to wave sweetly as we took his picture from the car, but he looked like he was thinking "malditos turistas!" (damn tourists!).

And we went grocery shopping on Sunday.  We thought we'd look for a bread with low carb and high fiber in the bakery there, and we selected a dense and chewy looking loaf.  Pat spied a DIY slicing machine, and after puzzling through the instructions a little we watched the spinning blade zip our bread into our chosen 12 mm slices in 30 seconds, like a sawmill chopping horizontally through a log.  Brilliant!  The bread was still warm, and as chewy and flavorful as it smelled.

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