Here’s a quick story about our dining experience this evening.
Early in the day someone from one of our expat Facebook groups posted a question about where to get good Chinese food in Setubal. Several local members responded with their suggestions and reviews of their top picks. We recognized that the crowd favorite was on a street quite close to us, although slightly off our beaten path. Because we are susceptible to the power of suggestion, and because we were both a little tired of our uninspired home cooking, we decided to head over and check the place out in person.
After the Chinese proprietor took our orders in a Chinese-English mix, our meals were served by a pair of young non-Asian men who might have been from a thousand places around the globe. Shyly, first one man and then the other began to speak with us in English. In the first man’s voice I heard what I thought was the lovely lilt of an India-type English. When he asked us where we were from, we said the USA. I asked if he was Portuguese, and he chuckled and said he was from Nepal. The second fellow told us he too was from Nepal and he had a brother who was living in the US. He explained that they had been all over the world but were now in Portugal where they are working to obtain a Portuguese passport which they would then leverage into admittance to the US.
So, two Americans in Portugal had a Chinese dinner served by Nepalese waiters who offered them tiramisu for dessert. It’s a small world indeed.