Author: Susan Darcy

The New Year began with Tim being sick. I can count on one hand the number of days he’s been under the weather in the decades I’ve known him. He awoke with a headache, sore muscles and a general feeling of fatigue. He slept the entire day on the living room sofa while I read Michelle Obama’s fabulous book on our sunny rooftop terrace. I’ll take my day over his anytime.

Wednesday brought restored vitality to Tim and a vague sense of expectancy for both of us. Maybe today was the day that we’d finally snag the elusive and all-important NIF! We met our new acquaintance Helena in our park at the appointed time. She escorted us to the Finances office where we took a number and our position in a short line. We were armed with a pouch of every document we’d brought with us, including but not limited to our visas, marriage license, bank records, apartment lease, and even two envelopes addressed to us at our current apartment. (We’d been told at the previous visit that we would need to bring a utility bill to prove we lived where we claimed to, but, alas, we receive no bills as all our utilities are included in the rent.) After a brief wait, we were summoned to the counter where Helena explained in rapid Portuguese what we were attempting to obtain. After a lively exchange between her and the helpful clerk behind the counter, we were asked to present our passports. That seemed like progress to me, because when we turned them over at our last visit to their office, they were flatly waved away. As the clerk left to make copies, Helena explained to us that all we needed was for her to sign that she would take financial responsibility for us for six months! We just met this woman! We asked if there might be some other way to obtain the vital number, but she said there wasn’t. We were a little appalled that she was so casual about it, but she seemed totally on board with the process. When we asked for more detail about what that entailed, she said it simply meant that any mail we would generate through financial transactions until June would also have to be mailed to her address!

A little background note here: When we applied for our visa, we had to lay bare our entire financial life to the Portugal consulate in Washington DC. We sent months of bank statements, proof of income for both of us, the credit limits on our bank cards, etc. We were deemed financially capable of supporting our selves, now and in the future. But now, we are seen as an unknown commodity, and therefore a financial risk! The required remedy is that a near-stranger, a woman of possibly meager means, must become our temporary financial guarantor! Yikes!

Helena was very cheerful to be able to help us achieve our goal in such an easy way. She signed all the documents, we were issued our numbers, and we left satisfied, if somewhat bewildered.

Before coming over here, every source we researched warned us of the capricious and chaotic bureaucracy that we’d find in Portugal, so we’re not particularly surprised by the fact we’ve run up against it. We’re just surprised at the quaint, almost charming path through it. According to local lore, the best way to weather the turbulent bureaucratic storm here is to simply be accompanied by someone who speaks Portuguese! No specific knowledge or professional expertise required beyond the mother tongue.

As we plan a brief overnight visit to Lisbon tomorrow, we now find ourselves in another bureaucratic black hole of our own making, but I don’t have the gumption to write about it today. I must try to find some kind of solvent that works on red tape.

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.

On this date in 1975, Tim and I officially join forces to create our own family unit. We were young, but we both knew without question that this was one marriage that would stand whatever tests came our way. Could we ever have imagined that 44 years later we’d be celebrating our anniversary in Lisbon, Portugal, having taken residence in that country? Not a chance, but why should we have imagined that when so many other life experiences caught us by surprise as well.

Could we have dreamed we’d eventually raise five children? No way. Did we ever envision such a diverse and interesting clan? Not in a million years. Would we have predicted that we’d both have such mediocre and ultimately inconsequential careers? Nope. We’ve been surprised by some of the curves life has shown us, but we’ve never been surprised by each other. We knew what we had in each other going into this, and we wouldn’t change a thing.

At dinner tonight, on the rooftop terrace of an Art Deco era hotel overlooking historic Lisbon, we toasted to 44 more years together. Hey, it could happen! We both have longevity genes, and people are living longer these days through the marvel of pharmacology. If both of us suddenly lost vast amounts of weight, kept it off for the next four decades, and began taking our health and fitness seriously, why couldn’t we live to 110? And if we did, the toast on our anniversary would be to 88 more years. I’m always greedy for more time with Tim. What better place to celebrate that than in this beautiful, timeless city?

We left for the capital on the 9:00 train, thinking that rush hour would have tapered off. Apparently we were right because the train uncoupled about half the cars before we left the station. Our car was nearly full most of the way, but never packed.

We managed to navigate our way from the train station in Lisbon to the metro station, and from there, to the starting hub of the hop-on, hop-off bus tours. It was gratifying to rely on our wits and the kindness of strangers. All we had to do was call up our experience with mass transit in NYC and layer a foreign language on top. Throughout our two days there, the language barrier in Lisbon was negligible compared to our life in Setubal. In fact, whenever we needed assistance, every person we asked spoke beautiful English. As is our practice when approaching a big new city for the first time, we bought two-day passes on a sight-seeing tour. We find it’s a safe, comfortable, and efficient way to get the lay of the land while learning about the history and character of the city. It helps us identify the places we want to go back and see later, at our leisure.

On Friday morning, the first circuit we rode took us through large parts of the older city, including the water front of the Tagus River in an area called Belem. We could see early in the tour that Lisboans are very proud of their role in the Age of Discovery during which countless ships departed from this country to every unknown corner of the world. Like my hometown of Dayton, Ohio which never misses an opportunity to tout the Wright Brothers and their invention of powered flight, this city abounds with reminders of the glory days of exploration of the seas. There are even small golden sailing ships perched atop street lamps over a large swath of the city.

In Belem, we drove past a huge sculpture in the shape of a sailing ship, its decks covered with figures representing sailors and all the others who made world explanation possible. Navigators, cartologists, astronomers, mathematicians, and others are represented here. Belem is also the home of the ancient Tower of Belem, built to defend the city from invaders, and several large museums, including the Museum of Electricity and the Museum of Coaches. The latter houses royal horse-drawn carriages from the 15th through 17th centuries. Belem is also the birthplace of the famous pastries that have become ubiquitous throughout Portugal – the Pastel de Belem, or Pastel de Nata. Yum! Tim and I decided to make Belem the site of a separate day trip in the near future, and not just because of these sweet custard delights!

While riding through this beautiful historic city, we learned about the horrific earthquake that struck one morning in 1755. The six-minute quake was followed by a huge wave and raging fire. The entire city center was destroyed, and 40,000 people lost their lives. In order to rebuild as quickly as possible, the tradesmen were organized into something like an assembly line. All the stone cutters cut stones into the same size, windows were mass produced in the same size, etc. All the blocks in the area of destruction are now lined with buildings whose exteriors are nearly identical, except for modifications that have occurred in the last 300 years.

Another section that impressed both of us was the area built especially for the Expo of 1998 to commemorate the 500th anniversary of Vasco da Gama’s discovery of India. This huge area is filled with massive buildings of exquisite design. Modern architecture is on proud display everywhere you look. The aquarium and marine sciences center is so stunning, it’s worth a visit even if you never venture inside. There’s an elevated train platform here which conjures the same awe as the finest old world cathedrals. Just as we had been marveling at centuries-old structures all day, these modern edifices will be inspiring generations for centuries to come, if those generations are able to survive climate change.

We noted as we traipsed around that this is a city of museums. In addition to the ones already mentioned here, there are museums dedicated to water, ancient art, contemporary art, ceramic tiles, miniatures, beer, modern design, Oriental art, world history, and more. They are housed in all types of buildings, from 16th century monasteries, to gleaming, soaring modern structures of glass and polished stone.

Two days was enough to whet our appetites for this world class city, and you can bet we’ll be returning soon, and often. Check back here tomorrow for photos of our trip.

There are lots of ways to get around Lisbon. Here are some of my favorites.

These two edifices tell an interesting story of Portugal. On top is a huge bull ring. While bull fights still occur in Portugal, an 18th century prime minister declared that the animals must not be killed. The photo on the right shows a prison built in the early 20th century to rehabilitate prisoners after capital punishment was abolished. It may have taken 200 years for human life to be given the same consideration as that of bulls, but Portugal is still 100 years ahead of the United States in ending the death penalty for humans.

Throughout the city you can see evidence of Portugal’s prime role in the Age of Discoveries, as seen in these photos.

You’ve seen me write about the stone mosaic pavement that covers all of Portugal. Following are some of the beautiful patterns we saw in Lisbon.

There is a long, broad avenue, The Avenue of Liberty, in the center city. It was originally built as a pedestrian park with walking paths, trees, and water features after Portugal gained independence from Spain in 1640. More than a century later, the wealthy citizens were looking for ways to enrich the coffers of their city after the devastating earthquake of 1755. Many decided to build new mansions along the edges of this magnificent promenade. Most remain today in excellent condition, and are home to world famous fashion boutiques, high-end jewelry shops, banks, and corporate offices. Tim and I enjoyed strolls down the avenue, both day and night.

We enjoyed every sunny minute of our first trip to the capital. We’d be happy to retrace our steps any time any of our readers want to check out this intriguing place. We hope to see you soon!

When I last wrote about our journey through the tangled web of Portuguese bureaucracy, I mentioned that we were in a new mess of our own creation. Since then we have also waded through an additional road block to our goals. What follows is a brief overview of where we’ve been and where we hope to go.

After obtaining our temporary residency visa in the USA before arriving in Portugal, we knew we had a few steps to complete before we could earn our residency permit. In no particular order, we had to: get our national tax identification number (NIF), open a Portuguese bank account, and schedule an interview with immigration services in the hopes of being granted a one-year residency permit. You may have read that we checked the NIF off our list last week. Now for the rest.

The first thing we did within days of arriving was present ourselves at the local immigration office, which, for reasons I don’t understand, is called SEF. The clerk at SEF explained that we could not schedule the appointment at their office, but must instead call a centralized phone number to schedule the interview. She wrote that number down for us and sent us on our way.

We were a little intimidated to call the number because we spoke barely a word of Portuguese, we’d been told that hour-long hold times were not uncommon on the SEF phone lines, and our American cell phone would charge us 20 cents per minute for calls. We asked our experienced expat friends how they had made their appointments and they told us we could make them online at the SEF website. Tim did just that, even though it meant stumbling through the Portuguese instructions he found on the site. At length, he was able to make our appointments for May 29. We received almost immediate email confirmations in both English and Portuguese. So far, so good.

Except several days later, we read an article that claimed the only appointments that could be made on the website were for those immigrants who had been granted their first one-year permit and wanted to apply for a two-year renewal. Tim tried to call the central phone number to see if we, in fact, had appointments for the wrong kind of interview, and if so, to try and schedule the right kind. He called from his US cell phone, deciding we’d just have to bear the cost, whatever it was. The SEF number would not accept calls from a US phone.

He walked a half hour to a phone store to buy a local burner phone and made sure it could connect to the SEF number. Returning to the apartment, he placed the call. It rang for a very long time, but Tim hung in there until someone finally answered. After asking for an English-speaking clerk, he was placed on hold for nearly an hour. (No exaggeration.) He hung up and dialed again. The second time, the phone was answered quickly by a woman who assured Tim, in English, that she could help him. He explained we were new in the country, here on a 120-day visa, and were in need of an appointment for the first interview, but had unknowingly made appointments for renewal interviews. She said she could change the appointments for us. After placing him briefly on hold, she returned to say she was unable to set up another appointment because we were “in the system” already. She’d have to cancel the existing appointments before making new ones. Tim reiterated that we need a different kind of appointment, not just a different date. From what I could hear over the speaker phone, I wasn’t confident that she was listening to what Tim really needed, in spite of his efforts to make it clear to her. After a moment, she told Tim our appointments had been changed to late July and confirmations would be sent via email. As you have probably guessed by now, all she did was delay our appointments for the wrong type of interview! Somehow, for all Tim’s effort, we had taken a step backward.

We admitted defeat and did what we should have done from the get-go. We contacted a company called Timely Solutions for Expats. For a mere 150 euros ($187) per person, they would be happy to deal with the SEF scheduling nightmare, assist us with the documents necessary for our first appointment, and accompany us to said appointment, wherever in the country it happened to occur. We willingly agreed to cough up the cash and proceeded to enter the quagmire of trying to transfer funds overseas from long-abandoned PayPal account. That story will have to wait until tomorrow…

It’s been so many years since either Tim or I stopped using PayPal that I can’t even tell you why. I think it had something to do with a password or wanting to change bank accounts, or a combination of things. The reason doesn’t matter, but the fact that we and PayPal parted ways has come back to haunt us.

When the friendly agent at Timely Solutions for Expats assured us he could part the Sea of Red Tape like Moses and all we’d need to do was throw money his way, we were all in. When he told us the only way to pay him was through PayPal, Tim committed to doing whatever it took to re-connect our dormant account. When he figured out how to get into his old account, they would only accept money from a bank account we’d closed many years ago when we switched to a credit union. They would not allow him to add our current account. He decided to call the 800 telephone number to try and speak with a human, but the 800 number would only take calls from a land line. (A what?!) Eventually, Tim, the hero of this story, did an end run around the PayPal folks by creating a new email address and setting up a new PayPal account tied to our credit union funds. Well, that was easy! There was just a small hiccup when PayPal rejected the phone number of the Timely Solutions agent as suitable to receive a confirmation that payment had been sent, so Tim just used his own cell number and the payment went through. While we awaited the Timely Solutions magic to happen, it was time to open a Portuguese bank account.

And we entered another rabbit hole. The bank staff was friendly, spoke fluent English, and was most eager to assist us in opening an account. There was just one teensy-weensy little thing they would require in order to accommodate our request. We would have to visit a local governmental office (whose name remains a mystery to us still) to obtain official verification that we actually reside in the region.

We went to the nameless government office and gave the clerk the paper from the bank, stating in Portuguese the exact form they required. The clerk who spoke better English than my Portuguese (but not a lot better), asked for my passport and visa. As always, we came armed with a pouch of every document we’ve ever had, so I handed the requested ones to her. She began to fill out a form that included the names and birth places of my mother and my father! What this has to do with validating where we live is beyond understanding. After confirming that we were married (never mind the multiple forms of marriage licenses I had in the pouch – she just needed to see our wedding rings), she determined that we’d only need one document because we are a family living in the same household. She gave me the form she’d filled out, and I foolishly assumed we’d accomplished the task of obtaining the necessary document. Nope.

She showed me a place on the back where we needed to collect the signatures of two Portuguese citizens who live in the Setubal voting district and would confirm that the information I’d provided on the front of the form was true and accurate. (How are virtual strangers supposed to know my parents’ names and birth places?) After gathering the required signatures, I must return the form to her. This was beginning to feel like a quest for a gem from the crown of a Fairy King.

As we left the Unnamed Government Office (UGO), Tim and I discussed who we would ask to sign our paper. It was a short discussion because we know exactly four people who meet the requirements. We stopped by the pastry shop on our block and asked Sophie behind the counter if she would sign for us. She did. Then we went to the shoe shop owned by Paula, who will become our landlady in April, and whom we just met that morning. The shop was closed for lunch from 1:30 until 3:00. It was 2:30, so we decided to sit in the park across the street until Paula returned. By 3:20, there was still no sign of her, so we put our quest on hold until the next day. The following morning, I texted her and asked if Tim could bring a form by her store to ask her to sign it. We planned for Tim to call me as soon as he had her John Hancock, and we’d meet up at the UGO.

When he called me, he said he and Paula (and her husband, Jorge) would meet me at the office in 10 minutes. Naturally, I was curious why Tim was bringing a posse for the simple act of dropping off a form, but he said he’d fill me in later. At last, our small mob entered the UGO building and approached the desk of the clerk who had helped us. She looked understandably confused as to why these crazy Americans were bringing a parade to her desk, but Paula jumped in and explained her presence. It turns out that our signers were required to fill in their voter ID number on the form (to verify they were legal residents of Setubal). Paula hadn’t voted in over 10 years and had no idea what her voter ID number was. She didn’t want to bollix our form by signing it, so she’d thoughtfully recruited a back-up signer to accompany her. (Jorge) The clerk said the voter ID wasn’t really needed, Paula signed, and I eagerly extended my hand to accept the coveted document. Hold the phone!

The clerk explained that she would submit the form and we could return on Tuesday afternoon to pick up the document which the bank required to open an account. Oh! Right! That’s what started this whole thing! We still don’t have a local bank account, but I’m guardedly optimistic we’ll have one someday.

One of my reasons for keeping this blog is so that when we are older and grayer than we already are, we can look back and recall details that have faded from our memories. What seems strange or notable today will eventually be commonplace for us, and therefore unremarkable. Today’s post will capture and preserve some random observations Tim and I have made in our first five weeks in Setubal.

Salt. Bet you didn’t expect a paragraph devoted to sodium chloride! We have found the cultural relationship to salt to be so different between the Portuguese and the Americans that we want to record it here. The first thing we noticed was that the Portuguese people don’t seem to use much of the seasoning that sits on every table in the USA. (Ditto for pepper.) You never see salt shakers on tables here. French fries and popcorn are served salt-free. Peanuts in the shell are common, but they’re never salted. We had to scour two stores to find crackers with salt, and even then, we could neither see nor taste the salt on them. Back in the States, I’d stopped ordering fries or chicken sandwiches at restaurants because they were so heavily salted. That doesn’t happen here. All this seems pretty ironic since the City of Setubal has been harvesting salt from the sea since Roman times. Perhaps they’d rather reap financial benefit by selling it around the world than use it in their own diet.

The relationship between drivers and pedestrians. We’ve learned that pedestrians have the right of way when crossing streets anywhere in the country, as long as they cross in the marked crossings. Steep fines are levied against drivers who ignore that law. We live in a city with fairly steady traffic on most streets, and we spent the first few days here hesitating at the curb when we needed to cross to the other side. We noticed that everyone else simply walked to the edge of the crosswalk and blithely stepped off the curb, never looking to the right or left. Every car stopped, every time. I’ve never even seen a near miss. Now, increasing the odds that this balance is maintained, I’ve observed a couple of things. First, we rarely see anyone jaywalking outside the crosswalk, showing that the pedestrians are doing their part. Additionally, crosswalks do not just show up at the intersections. On long blocks, you might find three or four crosswalks in mid block, assuring that pedestrians don’t have to go out of their way cross legally. Everyone is very civil about this; no honking horns, no revving engines impatiently if the crosswalk keeps filling up with pedestrians, causing longer delays for the drivers, no flipping obscene gestures by anyone. You should see us now – striding confidently into the oncoming traffic like we owned the place! You might also notice, if you were here, that we can’t resist the tiniest of nods or a slight wave to the drivers in acknowledgement of their kindness in not running us down. We’re confident that habit will eventually fade as we become more and more like the natives.

The public persona of Portuguese people. We have noticed that strangers on the street tend to walk with their eyes down, avoiding eye contact with passers-by. Now, if you were in a large American city, you may not find that so odd. But to this Midwestern native, it strikes me as a little sad and lonely. Also, Setubal residents seem to emit a faint melancholy as they move about their daily lives. We witnessed the same thing when we were in Sarajevo several years, not long after the bloody siege that laid waste to that great city. We know that Setubal is a working class city, unlike the shimmering Lisbon just to our north. It, like all of Portugal, suffered a deep economic decline about 10 years ago and has yet to see a full return to previous levels of employment. Nor has Setubal experienced a renewal brought by legions of tourists that some regions of the country have seen. In short, there may be a kind of public malaise – a general sense of this is as good as life is ever going to be. Yet, as we meet and interact with individual Portuguese, we can scarcely imagine kinder people. They are delightful in their willingness to lend a helping hand, answer questions, even speak English to the best of their perhaps limited ability.

Priority Service Law. There is a national law that gives pregnant women, parents with small children, frail elderly, and the disabled priority service in all public places. This means not only preferred parking spaces, but front-of-the-line status at government offices. That seems to fit in a country that takes the word of a citizen, or the presence of wedding rings as official “documentation” for important transactions. (See previous blogs.) Kindness and a sense of humanity seem to permeate Portuguese society. The whole place seems a bit like Mayberry to these two immigrants from the USA.

Creature comforts. Not everything is rainbows and unicorns around here. There are some quirks in our apartment, and most other personal residences that we’ve heard about. First, they do plumbing differently. The drains are routinely installed without traps (that U-shaped piece of pipe you find under sinks in the US). The purpose of traps is to maintain an amount of water in the drain which acts as a shield against rising sewer gas. Here, where there are no traps, bathrooms can sometimes smell like…well, sewer gas! That was a huge struggle for us when we first arrived, but now we’ve learned to keep the sink and tub drains plugged up when not in use, and that seems to do the trick. Maybe because housing is smaller than the average American home, most residences here don’t have large hot water tanks. Instead, water is generally heated on demand by propane gas. Besides conserving space, it also conserves the energy required to keep a large amount of water heated, waiting to be needed. Still, we need to run water for quite a few minutes before it gets warm enough to shower in. We’ve forgotten the luxury of washing hands in soothing warm water. Almost no homes in this country have central heating, and even fewer have air conditioning. Couple this with the fact that homes are built with no insulation, and you have a recipe for “chilly.” Even though our weather since we’ve been here has been sunny and in the low 60s by day, nights have begun to drop into the low 40s. As you can imagine, it gets pretty nippy inside. Just before we arrived, our landlord installed a heater/air conditioner in the living room, which helps take the chill off, but rarely makes the apartment toasty. Everyone we talk to is in the same boat – they just add another sweater or huddle under blankets to keep warm. In daylight, everyone takes to the streets where they can pass the time in sunny sidewalk cafes. Fortunately, folks who’ve lived here through all the seasons tell us that summers are very comfortable, even with no A/C. The buildings tend to stay cool inside, and most places are built with good cross ventilation to capture breezes.

Home laundry. I may have mentioned the fact that most people here have small washing machines in their kitchens, and dry all their clothes on clotheslines or racks. We happen to have an ideal terrace attached to our current apartment, so I don’t need to stretch precariously out the 7th floor window to pin sheets on the line. Instead, we drape everything over a big folding rack on the front terrace. Most days, I do a load just before going to bed at night, and then place it out to dry when I first get up. Everything is usually dry by late morning, but we won’t have it so easy when the rainy season starts any day now. It may take a day or so to dry a load inside a cold apartment. In some ways, I really like the simple, organic ritual of hanging clothes out to dry. I feel my carbon footprint shrink with every clothes pin I use. I flash back to memories of a happy childhood when my mother instructed us in the most efficient ways to pin wash on a line. BUT, there are times when I really miss my dryer. Without the dryer, clothes tend to get wrinkled. The energy we save is probably lost by the need to use an iron more often. Our towels and blankets have lost their fluffiness. And I screwed up royally this week when I neglected to remove a tissue from the pocket of a sweater before running it through the wash. The sweater and everything else in the load emerged with a thick coat of shredded tissue. A dryer would have magically removed all that fuzz, but, alas I was forced to spend lots of time and effort hand-picking all the bits off everything. I’m not making that mistake again!

Well, that’s the end of my whining for the day. On a positive note, we successfully picked up our certification of residency from the UGO today. Tomorrow we push on to the bank account. We’re also having our first Portuguese lesson with our private tutor tomorrow evening, which gives both of us shivers and jitters. Yesterday we approached a table of fellow diners in a lunch restaurant when Tim thought he heard them speaking English. Sure enough, the guy Mike is from Quincy, MA and his wife Helena is Portuguese. We had a nice conversation, exchanged contact information, and made plans to meet for dinner next week. Mike actually laughed at a weird, funny line Tim used, so they will either be kindred spirits, of too darned strange to bother with.

When we made our move to Portugal, we had lots of lists, among them what to pack, what to pitch, long-term goals, and short-term goals. That latter list consisted of five items: schedule our immigration interview, obtain our NIF tax number, open a bank account, enroll in Portuguese lessons, and find a long-term apartment. As of today, five weeks and one day into our adventure, we have checked off all the items! Opening the bank account was fairly mundane, except for a single moment. Our new bank is Millennium, a huge European enterprise that most expats we know have heartily recommended. While the agent was explaining the benefits of a Millennium account, I was barely listening until he started talking about a particularly wild benefit. There is a number we can call during evening, weekend, and holiday hours if we happen to be feeling ill. The number connects us to a doctor who will ask about our symptoms and, if warranted, come to our home and check us out. If we’re in need of a hospital visit, s/he will call the ambulance and accompany us there! All of this costs 10 euros, or about $11.50 per episode. Can you believe it? Wild! Also, as we move closer to getting our residency card, the bank is happy to work with us to sign up for health insurance

As we were walking home from that appointment, we heard from our guy at Total Solutions for Expats about our residency interviews with immigration. He found an immigration office in a small city about 3 hours from here via train and bus that can see us on May 7. Hooray!! We have our hard-won appointments, months sooner than we could get them in Setubal. What’s even nicer is that our agent will meet us at the Lisbon train station and ride with us on the bus to hold our hands for the interview. That’s service!

Next, we got a phone call from our newest acquaintances, Helena and Mike, inviting us to dinner tonight at a Brazilian buffet in Setubal. They have a car and offered to drive us there – our first ride in a car since December 10.

Well, it’s late now and we just returned from our dinner with Mike and Helena. What a blast! We went to a huge restaurant a block off the beach that serves Brazilian/Portuguese fusion food. We all filled our plates more than once, with an incredible variety of fabulous foods, shared a pitcher of good red wine, and talked for three straight hours. We closed the place down, and when we went to pay the bill, our share was 25 euros. You can’t beat that for a great evening! Just like that, we’ve meet another very compatible couple that we’ll be seeing lots more of in the future.

A final note on the day – our one-hour Portuguese lesson left our heads spinning. This promises to be one of our biggest challenges yet. Stay tuned. Boa noite!

When we arrived in our new neighborhood nearly six weeks ago, the first impression I had was of a stark cityscape. At every turn, the streets were flanked with seemingly unbroken lines of flat-faced high-rise apartment buildings with no architectural charm or distinction. Except for variation in the pastel hues of their concrete faces, they were indistinguishable from each other. I’d never seen a place that so literally lived up to the idea of “city blocks,” looking as if it had been forged from giant pale Legos.

I’ve come to see Setubal differently now. First, I’ve discovered that these long, unbroken lines of buildings standing shoulder-to-shoulder hide a bigger story. I’ve learned that most of these large buildings are designed so that each apartment has a front view and a back view. This allows the occupants to take full advantage of the sunny days in winter, and the cooling breezes in the warmer months. My experience with American apartments is that cross-ventilation is not very common. I’ve also learned to keep an eye open for ground level pass-throughs or “tunnels” in the ground floors of these long block fronts. While the street side of the buildings are a nearly treeless expanse of crowded sidewalks and jumbles of cars parked helter-skelter, the tunnels lead to another view. There are often parking lots behind the buildings, often with shade trees and grass, sometimes with play areas for pets and children. The tunnels also provide shortcuts to other areas, eliminating the need for pedestrians to walk the length of entire blocks, turning, and walking another distance to get where they’re going. By using the tunnels, a person can get from point A to point C without having to pass point B. Very handy when walking is your only form of local transportation! With two-view apartments, hidden open spaces, and convenient pass-throughs, the city design here seems quite people-focused. Add to that the many parks, and it becomes a very comfortable city in which to live.

Below, I’ve posted some photos of the stark street faces, the hidden spaces, and the tunnels so you can see what I’ve been talking about.

Now, on to more personal notes. I’m happy to report that our social life has been picking. Our new acquaintances Helena and Mike who drove us to the Brazilian restaurant last week, opened a new self-serve laundry in the old town on Friday. We took them some flowers to help celebrate the big day and got a tour of their neat little shop. Laundromats are a new concept in Portugal, so this is pretty cutting-edge for Setubal. The place is completely automated, meaning Helena can open it from bed, using her phone. She can refund a customer’s money if they pay for the wrong machine, she can lock up and arm the fire and burglar alarms the same way. They’re very excited about this new venture, and we wish them all the best as they develop this new revenue stream.

After visiting their shop, they guided us a few blocks through the tangle of old streets in this section of town. They wanted us to see their other venture – a fully restored old building they’ve turned into a bed and breakfast. We saw their four beautiful rental apartments and their own home on the top two floors. They’ve done a beautiful job on the design and finishes, and created a way to support themselves here. They reflect an entrepreneurial spirit we’ve seen in so many Portuguese people since we’ve been here. We ended up spending a good deal of the day with them and then hurried the half-mile home in a light rain.

Yesterday, we met Ken and Jo for lunch in their neighborhood. After a leisurely meal that included good food and a small pitcher of nice local wine, we went upstairs to their wonderful apartment and spent hours talking about all sorts of things. Another really great day that reminds us both how lucky we are to be retired and free to spend our time as we please. By the time we left at 17:00 (5 PM), it was raining, so our friends gave us some umbrellas for the walk home. Sadly, it was far too windy to use them, but the rain didn’t dampen our spirits. I guess we’ve suddenly entered the rainy season we’d been warned about. If “rainy season” means we get a little shower every day for an hour or so, I’m okay with that – especially when we read about the wintry blast that currently covers most of the US.