Big Ideas and Little Differences

One of the things I love about exploring another country is observing and experiencing the little differences. In Portugal, it might be how you weigh and tag your produce in the grocery store before putting it in your cart. Or how you have to take a numbered ticket for almost every queue you’ll stand in. Or how everyone is basically polite, unless there’s no number for a queue, then they can get a little pushy. No wonder they instituted the ticket system!

We also like how the home construction is so cleverly simple: most homes are made of concrete covered by the famous orange tile roofs. They’ll be standing 200 years from now. Inside, at least in our house, the rooms are designed so all the water pipes are grouped in one small area. The kitchen backs up to the bathrooms and the washer is in the kitchen (which is very common here) and the septic tank is right outside on the other side of the wall, so all the pipes are positioned within just a few square meters. There is really no need for a home inspection industry here because most of them are only a concrete shell with electricity and water added, and those lines are simple, easy to find and deal with. Keepin’ it simple. We like it!

Perhaps due to this sturdy construction style, it’s not hard to find abandoned houses in both the city and country. Unless someone tears them down, they’ll just sit there forever. Many of those derelict buildings have For Sale signs on them; I suppose someone can just come in and rebuild the walls on a foundation built during the time of Christ, and be good to go in short order.

We also like the way they accommodate special parking needs. The US of course has handicapped parking spots near most entrances. But the Portuguese take it a step further. You can find signs that essentially say, “hey, if you’re old, or pregnant, or have a bunch of little kids you’d prefer not to see splatted on someone’s bumper, you can park closer too.” I have nothing against handicapped-only spaces, but the vast majority of the time in the US they sit empty. Adding these spots for people who are also stressed out in a parking lot is not only a great idea, it’s compassionate. I also love the Portuguese for not needing additional messaging detailing the fines in order to discourage lazy scofflaws from using those spots. As far as I can tell, the Portuguese generally respect these kinds of signs. Of course, they’ll otherwise park just about anywhere they can squeeze a car into, but that’s only because space is at such a premium.

I’ve also taken a liking to a queuing system some large grocery stores have adopted. Instead of walking up to columns of checkout counters frantically trying to figure out which one is going fastest, and then fuming when it turns out the one next to you went twice as fast, everyone gets into one longer line and then an electronic board announces the number of the next available check-out counter. I’m not sure it saves a ton of time (unless you have a knack for always picking the wrong line), but it certainly reduces the aggravation.

The country has also adopted a very clever and simple way to pay bills. Since computers aren’t as ubiquitous as the US, the expectation that everyone can just pay the bill online isn’t reasonable. Instead, when you receive a bill, they come with an “entity” number plus a nine-digit reference number. You can then go to any ATM (aka “multibanco”), which are everywhere, and plug those two numbers into the appropriate areas, along with the amount, and voila! the bill is paid. You can do the same with your online bank account as well of course. I know there are just-as-simple ways to pay bills online in the states, but every bank there does it a little different and every merchant extracts payments differently as well, and you pretty much have to own a computer to use them. Here, everyone plays by the same rules, and even if you don’t have a computer or smart phone, you can pay your bills quickly and easily.

Now, I know any conversation about guns is always controversial, but at least consider the examples provided when a country <gasp!> restricts gun ownership. I know owning guns is a big thing for some people in the US, and indeed, I certainly understand once you go down that road, you start feeling like you need a gun just because maybe everyone else –especially the bad guys– probably has one already. But if virtually no one has them, it really takes a lot of the angst out of walking alone anywhere, safe in the knowledge that you’re probably never going to get shot. Portugal is one of the safest countries in the world: the lack of guns surely deserves a lot of the credit. Sure, maybe the military can take over the country a lot easier here than in the US, but there are a lot of people, including myself and probably almost every Portuguese, who gladly accept that trade-off. Besides, the chances of the military trying to take over the US only to be beaten back by a bunch of folks with handguns and shotguns is about the same as someone capturing Trump kissing Obama on video. Sure, it could happen, but do you really want to invest money into a filter that would prevent your seeing that?

I’m sure at least partly due to the lack of guns, Portugal was recently ranked as the third most peaceful country in the world, while the US came in at 114th. So you gotta ask yourself, is America’s gun culture really working?

I also like the metric system. Back in the seventies, all the talk was about how the US was moving to the metric system. I don’t know who or what stood in the way of that, but if it was a who, he should be shackled and have the number 12 tattooed on his forehead. I’m just saying ten is a lot easier to divide and multiply than twelve, and by the way, tell me how many ounces are in a cup and how many cups are in a pint and how many pints are in a quart and quarts are in a gallon, and even if you know all of that, it makes sense how?

That said, Carolyn is slower to embrace said metric system. She still looks lovingly at her old American tape measure (and I think secretly measures with it behind my back). I’ll admit, when you’re new to the system, it takes time to mentally and automatically comprehend what 40cm looks like. She can immediately picture what 36 inches, which is three feet, which is one yard, looks like (although what’s the word for three yards? Ha! Tell me that you metric haters!*). And there’s comfort in that. But I’m confident that once the adjustment is complete, the better system will be appreciated. Just like when you switch from Windows to Mac. Ha!

I’ve already commented aplenty about universal health care being da bomb here, so suffice it to say that it’s a big idea that trumps the American system by multitudinous kilometers, both from the standpoint of international comparative statistics and our own personal experience.

Not everything is perfect here by any means. As long as human beings are involved, paradise will only be present in our fantasies. But we appreciate the big ideas and little differences that make living here the next best thing.

* Three yards.

Waste Management

Well shit. Yep, number nine is all about crap. Also known as detritus, garbage, waste, junk, filth, debris, offal,  rubbish… all of that cocô. I thought about making this category number two for obvious reasons, but the German part of me said “nein!” So nine it is.

I know this seems like kind of a crappy subject to make a top ten most favorite list. But the little surprises are the things that endear us all the more to this country, so the unexpected things get a shove up the ladder, or down the chute as it were.

After we purchased our house in Portugal, the owner provided us with a very thorough (and extremely appreciated) list of all the things we needed to know. The names and numbers of a gardener, a painter, a doctor, the septic people, where to find everything in the house, and so on.

As I perused the three neatly typed pages, I realized there was nothing listed about garbage collection. After spending some time in our apartment in the city, we learned that you simply bag up your garbage and set it outside your front door. By morning, it will have magically disappeared. But in the country, I never spied any garbage bags sitting in front of anyone’s house. So I asked the owner about this apparent omission on his list. He told me that you simply bag the garbage up and toss it into any one of the multitudinous dumpsters sitting by the side of the road all over Portugal. Well duh. Everyone in Portugal knows that. Well, now they do.

The closest dumpster to us is just up the road, near our mailbox. Our property in Oregon had a long driveway, so I was used to hauling garbage up a road a little ways. It’s only a little bit further than that here, and well worth the extra effort anyway because there are no bills to pay afterward. We certainly cover it in taxes, but that’s completely transparent and I have to guess the whole process is actually cheaper because everyone participates and no one needs to make any money off it. I used to pay over $50 a month for garbage collection in Oregon. I doubt tax money earmarked for that here adds up to anything close to that much. Plus, they have large receptacles all over the place ready to accept recycled goods; they’re separated by cardboard, glass, and plastic, so recycling is easy for everyone, and very efficient.

Additionally, the government employs a good number of people to sweep the streets and clean up the garbage around the city. The Portuguese are of course a vast collection of an assortment of human beings just like in every other country, except of course in Africa and Asia. Because, you know, they all look alike there. What? What’d I say? (…I’m just kiddin’, relax already). So there are always going to be occasional nitwits who toss garbage into the street, despite the ubiquitous dumpsters. Plus, the famous Portuguese sidewalk bricks often look to be held together by cigarette butts. There are more smokers here than in the states: I’m guessing the anti-smoking message here is probably ten or twenty years behind the US. But overall, the city and countryside are both relatively clean.

I wouldn’t give them an A+, however. That grade must surely go to Singapore, where they only ban chewing gum, but the first time you throw away a cigarette butt or candy wrapper you’ll get fined $300. And the punishments go up after that. So while I’m glad Portugal doesn’t try for that grade, generally everything is cleaner than most places in the US, so it definitely gets a higher grade than most places there.

In any case, it makes my top ten because it’s so easy and efficient, and I appreciate the common sense of it all. I know free enterprise is great, but when there’s no competition anyway (we had no choice of garbage haulers in Oregon, where’s the free enterprise in that?) and it’s something every citizen must participate in (he who hath no trash, throw the first garbage bag), then having one entity to take care of it all certainly seems to work.

I must add, however, that the one thing we don’t appreciate about waste in Portugal is that spotting dog poop on the sidewalks is pretty common. Some of it is surely deposited by the occasional stray, and we’ve seen Portuguese with plastic gloves on doing their scooping doody, but apparently the message hasn’t quite taken hold the way it has in the US. I can only add that any Portuguese who lets their dog just poop on the sidewalk ought to be damn glad he or she doesn’t live in Singapore!

Well, that’s enough shit for one day!

Roundabouts

You might ask, what kind of top ten list is this anyway, if roundabouts make a top ten love list for Pete’s sake?

I understand Roundabouts may seem like a small detail compared to the bigger issues you might usually consider when evaluating a country and its culture, such as food, weather, music, crime, and most importantly, the quality of their ice cream. On top of that, roundabouts are certainly not exclusive to Portugal; they’re all over Europe, although, excusing the pun, they have made a few inroads into the US.

But roundabouts are a great example of clever efficiencies other countries use that the US has been slow to adopt, so they get extra appreciation from us Americans. In Portugal, we almost never have to stop at a stop light or stop sign, other than occasionally on some side streets or downtown. Oodles of electricity are saved by eliminating the need for stop lights. Watt?

I’d be curious to know how long it would take to pay back the construction of a roundabout by eliminating said electricity. Even if it takes decades, using less energy to power anything that can be replaced with no power at all is good for the planet.

They aren’t without their challenges, to be sure. Portuguese drivers fully understand that when you’re approaching a roundabout, you will look almost exclusively to your left, and if anyone’s coming, you stop. Since every driver understands that, lots of drivers come barreling into the roundabout and stop only at the last second. Approaching cars already in the roundabout don’t pay them any mind, because they know they’ll stop; they always do. Of course there’s always that one time someone might not, which is what Americans like us worry about. Carolyn still jumps in her seat and eeks! a frightened exclamation every time that happens. After a year or two or ten of avoiding that one guy, I’m guessing she’ll be as steely-nerved as any Portuguese round-abouter.

The other challenge involves pedestrians. Pedestrians have the clear right of way in Portugal, as long as they’re walking in the “zebra” (which is what they call the thick-white-lined crosswalks). It also seems they have the right-of-way if they look in its direction as they approach it from down the block, or had a dream about doing it a couple of days ago. If a step inside the zebra is signaled by even a wayward glance, drivers better slam on their brakes or risk public humiliation.

On the other hand, if you, as a pedestrian, step into the street outside of a zebra, cars will not only ignore you, they will actually speed up and aim the front bumper right at your groin. I think this aggressive intolerance for jaywalking stems from all the times drivers have had to slam on the brakes when someone makes a move toward a zebra, even though, when taking on the pedestrian role themselves, they have often been the beneficiary of said behavior. Besides, there are more zebras here than an African veldt with no predators, so step into a crosswalk or risk your life.

Portuguese walkers are so confident of their rights-of-way that parents with baby carriages will blithely lead with the carriage without so much as a glance into the street. Or maybe they just don’t like their babies, I dunno. I’ve actually had someone dressed all in black step out right in front of my speeding car… at dusk… without looking either way. I swear I’m gonna take someone out one of these days, and it’ll be all my fault.

Despite their presence on our top ten list, roundabouts are the scariest in this regard. When you approach, you are looking intently to your left, ready to speed into the intersection ahead of the oncoming cars as you mentally calculate the speed vs. momentum vs. distance vs. the square root of an isosceles triangle vs. reminiscing why you didn’t pay more attention in physics class –and actually your physics teacher was pretty hot– and did you remember to turn off the iron? And then you have to factor all that in and compare to the risk and cost of the damage to your car and physical well-being should you have missed a decimal point in your calculations. And you have to do all that within the 1.2 seconds it will take for the oncoming car to hit you should your calculation be in error.

Meantime, to your right, an unconcerned pedestrian will simply start walking across the street, whether or not you’ve decided it’s safe to steer your car into his or her direction.

It’s best not to be chewing gum or otherwise be distracted when approaching any roundabout. I’ve learned to focus solely on driving, with eyes scanning back and forth like Arnold in The Terminator, especially when I’m driving downtown. No music, no conversation, no screams of panic before I plow into another car. Don’t say nuthin.’ I’m on the hunt for wayward pedestrians.

Despite all that, roundabouts make our list at Number Ten because in the end, they make more sense, save electricity, get us to where we’re going faster, and occasionally improve our blood flow by increasing our heart rate. So you see, roundabouts are so awesome they even help you live longer… as long as you’re not a pedestrian stepping in front of an American driver.

More than six months after we packed all of our remaining belongings (at least those that wouldn’t fit in the four suitcases we schlepped through the airports) into 32 boxes, we finally received them. It was like Christmas! Except we knew what we were getting. And it’s May. And the wrapping paper was plain white, and there was no tree, or lights or any other decorations signifying the holiday. And it’s about 80 degrees outside.

But other than that, it felt like Christmas!

We were excited to finally dig into the rest of our belongings, some of which we forgot we even owned, and some of which we wondered why we kept. We probably could have cut it down from 32 to about half of that, but hindsight is 32-32.

Surely no one else remembers, about 80 blogs ago, that when we initially sold all of our stuff at the estate sale, I discovered I owned about six hammers. Well, here we go again. We had packed a hammer, and I had already been forced to buy one here. Of course, the one I bought here is metric, so there is that. Ha! But Lord Almighty if I end up collecting another hammer before I’m done, I’ll be writing an episode for The Twilight Zone. The title will have to be something about getting hammered.

The only casualties were onion salt and onion powder of all things. We packed all of our spices along with our kitchen stuff, and we’re glad we did because the Portuguese have an unfortunate habit of labeling all of their spices in another language. And of course there’s always some spice you might buy once a decade, so I’m sure we’ll be happy to have that one a recipe calls for but that we would have never thought to have purchased ahead of time. In addition to that, the spice selection in American grocery stores is much broader than it is in Portugal, so I’m sure we have some unique items. Heck, a couple of them might be illegal for all I know.

Anyway, for some reason, the onion salt and powder expanded and hardened to the consistency of a rock in their little jars. Nothing else did that. Now I’ve got to go to my translate app and look up onion (ok I just did it, and it’s cebola), and spend the 27 cents it probably costs here to round out our spice collection.

Pretty much everything else made it in good shape. My heartfelt thanks go out to my sister Lynne and my good friend Mark Meyer, both of whom were indispensable in making sure we got our stuff delivered.

There truly is no place like home, especially when you have your last 32 boxes.

The Atlantic ocean is about a ten minute walk from our house. Well, at least the cliffs bordering the ocean are. It’d take another four or five seconds of falling straight down to actually meet the ocean.

We’re on a peninsula of sorts; on one side of us are the cliffs and on the other side, about a seven minute drive away, is the very long sandy beach where we relax, watch the waves, and count our blessings.

But for walks, we head toward the side with the cliffs. There is virtually nothing but shrubbery and silence there, interspersed with numerous trails and dirt roads. Who made them, and when, and even why, is a complete mystery to me. But I’m grateful for them because they give us plenty of options to explore while taking walks.

Sometimes I walk the trails alone, and I’m constantly amazed at how quiet it is. Not even many bird sounds. Just the occasional drone of a distant boat, or the buzzing of an insect, or the wind whooshing by your ears. If it’s not a windy day, it’s as silent as a dream. After walking just minutes from our house, I can easily feel like I am the only person in the world.

On my latest journey, I noticed some stairs had been cut into the cliffside. I thought it was pretty amazing because there are no drivable roads that come anywhere close to that part of the cliffs. Some of the trails that crisscross the area are essentially roads in that they’re wide enough and have obviously been occasionally driven upon. But you’d need a Humvee or an ATV to get around most of them, and I have yet to see one try.

I assumed someone had cut the stairs into the cliffside to provide access to a secluded beach or a great fishing spot. I continued my trek over the next hill, and when I looked back in the direction of the stairs, I saw this:

At the bottom of the stairs, which you can no longer see from that vantage point, is a house of some sort. The only access must be by boat, or I suppose an ATV followed by a trek down the stairs. It’s hard to imagine a more secluded place to live. I zoomed the camera in closer hoping to view more details when I got back to the house.

It looks like there’s a large deck on what is for all intents and purposes a house. It doesn’t look much like a structure for fishing. In fact, I couldn’t see where you’d even tether a boat. I can’t imagine the logistics of building such a place.

I’ll need to either bring binoculars or a zoom lens to decipher further what it is. I’m not too keen on finding my way down to the stairs and walking down to knock on the door. It could be where Hannibal Lecter takes his victims, or perhaps its a hideout for drug runners. Is it a coincidence that I saw the Portuguese navy patrolling the waters right around there?

I did decide to take the image into Photoshop and see if a digital zoom would reveal anything further. Lo and behold I saw something I hadn’t seen before. I do believe that’s Luke Skywalker practicing with his light saber! Who would’ve thunk! Luke’s hideout was in Portugal all along!

Okay, just kidding about Mr. Skywalker. I’m pretty sure his hideout is on another planet in another galaxy far, far away anyway. But it is a remarkable house, and I hope, over time, I can find someone who can explain it to me.

UPDATE

I found someone who could explain it to me. Our good friend Luis, who provided excellent painting and light hanging services for us, told me that it is a private building built to provide support for fishing. I still marvel at the construction in such a remote place, surely everything had to be boated over. Anyway, mystery solved. Guess I won’t be knocking on the door to find out anything more!

Here pictured is the first cherry pie I’ve ever made. The other day, I passed by a street vendor who had dozens of flats of cherries and strawberries. I decided to stop by to sample his wares.

He didn’t speak a lick of English, so we struggled with the pricing somewhat. I have gotten to the point where I know my Portuguese numbers through 100, give or take. But when the Portuguese say anything, it whizzes into one ear, bounces around the empty space in my head and then exits before I can process the first syllable. As a result, I couldn’t make out whether he was saying 25 or 250 or what. He only had larger bills, so we struggled to make it all work. But he didn’t want my 20, so we were stumped until he fetched a pencil and paper and wrote out what the deal was. Turns out one flat of strawberries was 2.50, so we made it two, and when added to the very large flat of cherries for 10, we had a cool 15 euros to deal with, which we could both handle cash-wise.

We haven’t seen a pie of any kind anywhere in Portugal so far. They seem to go in for tarts and mousse and cakes and pastries instead. So you’ll never hear the phrase, “As Portuguese as (insert a fruit here) pie.” The grocery stores have no pie tins or pre-made pie crusts. I’m not stupid enough to hassle with making my own crust, so we used a tart thingee and it worked just great.

So clearly, it was the best pie we’ve ever had in Portugal. Because it was the first. And boy it was delicious. I may have to stop by that vendor again, although pitting all the cherries was a bit of a pain the butt. But my mouth is telling me that it was very worth it! Bonus: Carolyn’s not as big a fan of cherry pies, so I get most of it. Booyah!

I’ve always liked the fog. Whether it rolls in from the ocean or lays its sleepy head over the countryside like a warm blanket, it conjures forth a temporary world of peace and tranquility. Sounds are muted, bringing serenity and stillness to an otherwise bustling world. Sight is also muted, granting all creatures in its grasp a momentary gift of visual equality. While in its calm embrace, it’s as if Mother Nature is gently prodding us to focus only on what’s near. It reminds me of a blanket of snow, except without all the school closures and car crashes and people dying from hypothermia.

I’ve always liked the fog.

It was just over 9 years ago that my ex-husband walked out of our home, and the life I had known for 25 years went up in smoke.  At times the pain of that experience took my breath away. I felt I was suffocating.  If you told me then where I would be now, I would never have believed it.

I said “I do” almost four years ago to the wonderful amazing man I now call my husband. He is kind, generous, funny, and smart.  He keeps me grounded, showers me with grace and love, and has helped heal wounds so deep I feared they would never heal.  I am blessed, I am loved, and I am accepted for who I am. What more can love give?

Portugal would pretty much be our paradise on earth… if they only used English as their native tongue. I’m only kidding about that; it’s our problem, not theirs, and Portuguese is a beautiful language. But the truth is, the only part of this whole experience we would describe as difficult is learning Portuguese. We’re retired, for goodness sake. We’re not supposed to have to work at anything!

But work we do. We are not only taking lessons from a tutor and playing around with some software training (via a very effective online program called “Memrise,”) , but also every time we go out, we read all the street signs and advertisements aloud and debate what we think they’re saying. When we go into any given store, we look at tons of products and attempt to decipher their purpose. Sometimes we see products unique to Portugal and can’t help but be impressed at their ingenuity.

For example, I want to buy this tube of mofo repellent before we go back to the states. There aren’t very many bad mofo’s in Portugal, but it’ll be nice to have a tube of Stop Mofo if I wander into a bad area of Portland or Seattle.

Some translations are easier than others. For instance, the sign to the left is obviously telling people to control their velociraptors. We were surprised to learn that dinosaurs are apparently still alive and well here in Portugal. In fact, not only are there signs pointing to where you can find them, as seen below, but they even have dental clinics dedicated solely to the care of their dinosaur teeth. The top sign must mean, “lots of dinosaurs,” and of course it’s easy to translate the one below it to “dental clinic,” obviously intended for the dinosaurs mentioned above.

So you see, it’s not all just about memorization. Sometimes you have to connect the dots and use your brain power to figure this stuff out. And as you can tell, our brain power isn’t suffering from any dementia yet, boy howdy.

Otherwise, how are our Portuguese lessons going, you ask? Well, it’s progressing, we answer. We have been inching our way toward a little more understanding of things. We are catching more words spoken by passersby. As already illustrated, we can obviously translate more signs than ever (although accompanying illustrations are always appreciated). And of course the more Portuguese we throw around at strangers, the more we can confuse them as to what the hell we’re trying to say.

There are days when we think we’re never going to learn enough. And then there are other days when we feel like we’re getting a handle on it, like when we can finally translate the stop signs on the streets. There aren’t nearly as many of them here as in the US, mostly due to the prevalence of round-abouts, or as I like to call them, “scream generators.” Carolyn still hasn’t gotten used to cars racing up to the roundabout just as we’re passing in front of them. So far, they’ve always stopped in time, but we don’t know if that’s due to Carolyn’s screams or whether they all understand they have to give way to anyone coming from the left.

We did finally figure out that the letters on the red signs not only spell STOP, but they mean that too. It was confusing for a long time because the Portuguese word for stop is “pare,” and we couldn’t find out what “stop” meant in Portuguese. In the end, we figured they didn’t want English speakers to use paring knives while driving, so they went with the English version to cut down on the emergency room visits.

Otherwise, we can provide an example of our progress by showing you an entry from our training book. We can actually read the below and mostly understand what it’s saying:

O Pedro levanta-se as 7:00, toma um duche, vesta-se e as 7:45 senta-se para comer. Ele toma o pequeno-almoco sempre em casa. Come sempre pao com manteiga e doce a bebe café com leite sem acucar. O Pedro e economist e entre as 9:00 e as 13:00 trabalha numa empresa no centro da cidade. As 13:15 almoco com os colegas num restaurante perto do trabalho. As tercas e quintas, as 18:00, tem aulas de ingles numa escola de linguas. A noite chega e casa e prepara o jantar. Janta as 20:00 e deita-se sempre as 22:00. Ao sabado de manha, o Pedro vai as compras e a tarde limpa a casa. Ao sabado a noite, ele sai com os amigos e deita-se tarde. Ao domingo, ele so se levanta as 11 horas e almoca em casa dos pais.

Now, if you don’t speak Portuguese, you’re probably wondering what all that means. Well, he says, hitching up his pants with Trumpian confidence while speaking in boastful tones not unlike Don Knotts at his best (albeit in a lower timbre). It has something to do with Pedro the economist who goes to work and is struggling with the ideas of eating his children and having spiders in his pants. He’s also a bit upset when he goes out to eat, because perky college students always serve him almonds instead of meatballs. So he just licks the arugula and refuses to tip. But they don’t tip very much in Portugal anyway, so despite his worrying about getting shot due to his stinginess, he makes it home safely with almonds in his shoes.

The paragraph actually doesn’t make a lot of sense to us, because there are very few guns in Portugal, so his worries are very misplaced. We just don’t think Pedro is all that smart. But hey, if your claim to fame is to have a one paragraph biography in a language textbook, how smart can you be?

The interesting thing about the Portuguese language is that if a Portuguese speaker were to speak that paragraph aloud, here’s what the entire thing would sound like:

OPedrolecon shh shh prajant sh sh sh rrrrr-limdos-doshpais.

All uttered in approximately three seconds. And we’re supposed to understand that.

It’s not really a long term problem though. Because as soon as we give them our best I’m-not-even-going-to-pretend-I-understood-one-word-of-that look, they translate everything they just said into about ten English words.

I’m not making that up. Once, our attorney was talking with a banker on our behalf. They went back and forth for fifteen minutes in Portuguese. When they were done, I asked what was said. He told me, “She says that you have to turn in the form and wait five days.” That was it? He shrugged and said, “pretty much.”

So they either use a lot of words to communicate individual ideas, or they were talking smack about me, knowing I couldn’t understand. Maybe I have to buy some of the Stop Mofo paste for here after all.

A year ago this week we landed in Lisbon, where we were first exposed to Portugal’s amazingly inexpensive yet delicious wine, the beautiful (albeit rainy, at least during our visit) streets of Lisbon, and some cramped living quarters, especially in the steep stairway of our rented apartment.

One year later, we are very much enjoying the inexpensive wine (with a bit of a taste for their “green wine,” or “vinho verde”), we’ve driven the winding streets of Lisbon and the surrounding area to the point where we hardly use the GPS anymore, and the apartment we purchased for short-term rentals has its own narrow stairway (although not as narrow as the one we rented in Belem, shown at the right).

We couldn’t be happier with our choice of Portugal. We were fortunate enough to find a house in Sesimbra just minutes away from a sandy beach that stretches beyond sight. We pass by a medieval castle every time we drive into town. And while we have had some of the same May rain we did a year ago, it quickly gives way to 75-80 degree days, which is perfect weather for the beach or our ever-warming pool. I describe it thusly because it’s still too damn cold to swim in. I’ve jumped in a couple of times for an immediate cool-down. But it’s straight to the ladder after the cold water wreaks its bodily-shrinkage-havoc.

A quick drive into Sesimbra town brings us into a delightfully touristy area of shops in front of another nice beach. Condos and other buildings are built into the hillside, reminiscent of a seaside town in Greece. And the wine is still as inexpensive as it was a year ago.

In addition, the area surrounding our home has a seemingly inexhaustible supply of nature’s beauty. We enjoy taking walks whereby in the first five minutes we are treated to a 220 degree vista of the Atlantic ocean. We can see the Cabo Espichel lighthouse from the upper floor of our house, and can even walk to it if we don’t mind a two hour round-trip hike.

While taking a walk recently, I decided to photograph the various weeds and flowers that lined the way. Yes, even the weeds are beautiful in Portugal!