movingtoportugal

Last Saturday, I asked my wife if we had any butter left in the fridge. Her reply was, “we only have butter without salt.”

Now, I’m sure you’re wondering where on earth I’m going with this post, so let me explain. If we still lived in England, her answer would have been, “we only have unsalted.”

Learning Portuguese - Unsalted Butter

In Portuguese though, it’s not called unsalted butter, it’s called “mantiega sem sal.” Butter without salt. My wife was translating Portuguese into English and not the other way round.

This rather dull dairy-related anecdote is actually really huge to us. It’s like the next significant stage in our integration into Portugal. We are finally, if only very rarely, starting to think in Portuguese.

After this happened, we started to weigh up our progress learning Portuguese, as we approach the 18 month point in our Portuguese adventure. My wife recalled that the butter incident wasn’t the first time she had thought in Portuguese – a couple of weeks previously she had been unable to remember the English word for chives, only recalling the Portuguese.

Don’t for one moment think that this means we are approaching fluency, or even competence, in speaking Portuguese. However….it is surprising how much has gone in subconsciously. Sometimes the radio will come on in the morning, I will listen to an advert and think to myself “hang on, I understood that.”

Even stranger was the other day when I found myself singing a tune to myself that I had heard. It was a Portuguese song called “O Que Faz Falta.” It hadn’t really occurred to me that what I was singing was Portuguese. Doesn’t mean I understood what I was singing but still!

Whilst the language learning is progressing, wading through the cross-border bureaucracy is still a hateful nightmare. Never be fooled into thinking that if you live in the European “Union” that all European nations sing from the same hymn sheet.

I appreciate that our exact situation of working in one country and living in another is unusual, but from the reactions we get from official bodies you would think it is the first time anybody has ever done it.

We have just had to force ourselves to sit back and let the situation unfold at its own pace. Back at the start of January we had to send a form to HM Revenue and Customs in the UK. HMRC are so behind that we were told that it would take them six week before they had time to OPEN our letter. At the time, that meant we expected a response in mid-February. When we called back at the end of February we were told their “target date” for opening our letter was now mid-March.

Our Portuguese accountant shrugs a lot and constantly says reassuring things like “it’s not your problem.” Yet somehow it feels like it is! I’m starting to realise that my fondness for a slower pace of life has limits.

Danger: European Red Tape

When you have to wait three months for a response to a letter you have to learn patience. On this occasion it is England slowing things down and not Portugal, but the way European freedom of movement and employment law works in practice is a cruel joke, with all of the countries seemingly free to interpret legislation in their own way.

If we were actually trying to claim ANY kind of benefit, I could understand all the delays, but all we are actually trying to do is work hard and pay tax on the money – I can’t believe how hard it is proving to be! If sitting on our butts claiming benefits was our plan, then we hardly would have left England now would we?

I’m starting to rant so I’m going to sign off now. To sum up, I now know my first song in Portuguese but still haven’t got to the bottom of my tax situation. It would be kind of useful if it were the other way around.

PS. One thing that has been helping with our language learning is a new “Portuguese Language Lessons” page we recently “liked” on Facebook. If you do the Facebook thing, check it out!

Technorati Tags: learning Portuguese, living in europe, portuguese bureaurocracy

To conclude my retrospective look at our first exciting year in Portugal, here, as promised in my last posts are our high points and respective low points of our first year in the Algarve.

THE HIGHS

1. Sharing our new home with friends and family - some of our happiest times here to date have been those we have shared with our visitors. A big thank you, in no particular order, to Richard, Pam, Kat, Rob, Rick, Bill, Mike, Tom, Amy, Hannah, Ben, Dionne, Jacob, Emma, Steve and Nat, and all the other people coming to see us soon.

2. Enjoying all the scenery the Algarve has to offer – and soaking in water from the cold (lake under the waterfall at Pego Do Inferno,) to the warm (Montegordo in August.)

Portugal - eating out in the Algarve

3. Eating and cooking – from fish feasts at the cheap and wonderful Vela 2 in Tavira, to barbecues on the terrace, and tapas over the border in Seville. The gastronomic wonders of this part of the world have lived up to all of our expectations.

4. Meeting people - Portugal has made us very welcome. Various people spring to mind: friendly neighbours in Tavira who put up with our slow Portuguese, a certain bar owner who offered us advice and encouragement during the wobbliest of our early days (you know who you are,) and all the lovely people who provide advice on the forums and here on this blog. There are some very good people in this part of the world. I must also give a special mention to the surly young shop assistant in our local mini mercado, who now greets us with a smile and saves her visible disdain for the tourists

5. Small victories: Finally getting our residency, finally getting our broadband and cable TV, successfully building on our limited Portuguese, and finally getting a smile from the girl in the shop (see above.)

THE LOWS

1. Winter 2009. Finding out first hand, by enduring the wettest winter since 1870, that Portugal is a cold country with hot sun, and NOT a tropical paradise. Our first four months in the mouldy disaster that was our house in Tavira are not a period of my life I would be keen to repeat.

2. High Summer. Realising that the Algarve just gets TOO busy in July and August.

Mouldy memories - Portugal 2009

3. Trips to England. A means to an end, but it would be great to have less of them – they really mess with your routine.

4. Red Tape. Although when you finally get the piece of paper you need it feels like a triumph, getting there can be hellish – and you do end up having a sense of foreboding with regard to your next encounter with officialdom.

5. Meeting people. Figured I would put this in both sections. Most people we have encountered in this past year have been great, but as ever there have been a few exceptions. Cliquey, gossipy types, jobsworths, people who push you out the way in Easyjet’s speedy boarding queue and people from HM Revenue and Customs who can’t read forms properly have all made my shit list over the past twelve months!

So what advice would we offer to those considering chasing their own dream to Portugal or another sunny location?

Do your research, make sure you are sure, then save some money and do it – and when you are going through the hugely stressful last six months before the big move, always remember to soak up every minute of the adventure – you may come to miss the non-stop raw, emotional, scary excitement of changing your life. I’d certainly do it all again

Technorati Tags: adventures, changing your life, learning Portuguese, moving aborad, moving to portugal, working in portugal

It is now just over a year since we waved goodbye to Old London Town, and got on the plane to Portugal, leaving our old life behind.

Needless to say, the year has been one of the most eventful of our lives, and I’m finding it surprisingly difficult to work out how to summarise our first year in a blog post.

When you move abroad, especially to somewhere you have fallen in love with on holidays, it is surprising when, after a few months, you realise that you haven’t at any point felt that

Boats at Olhao - Moving to Portugal

undiluted happy holiday feeling.

If holidaying somewhere you adore could be likened to the electric, lustful feelings of the start of a relationship, going to live there is rather more akin to the deep rooted contentment gained through a happy marriage.

This is no bad thing, and there have been plenty of wonderful moments along the way that have lived up our initial hopes.

One day a couple of weeks ago, my wife and I were both frantically busy with work and within seconds of closing our laptops were both leaning over the kitchen sink – I was shelling prawns while she scaled sardines, ready for some guests coming over for a midweek dinner. We were both stressed. It wasn’t until I remembered we were preparing cheap and fresh seafood within seconds of finishing work, rather than fighting through the crowds on the way to a tube station, that it occurred to me that we were in fact living the dream we waited for.

This does go some way to illustrating my point. When you go to live somewhere, real life moves there with you. When you are on holiday, real life is put into a state of suspended animation until you get home and pick up the big pile of bills on the doormat. We ARE living our dream, but those bills still arrive on a daily basis, and wherever you live you can have weeks that suck and leave you thinking you need a HOLIDAY – even if the beach is ten minutes away.

Our one year Portugal anniversary has caused us to look back at the last year, and we do feel we have made substantial progress in integrating here, even if sometimes this progress happens so slowly you don’t notice it at the time.

Speaking Portuguese is an example of this. Now when we go into shops, restaurants, garages, we speak Portuguese without it occurring to us that we ARE speaking Portuguese. We didn’t actually realise this until some relatives pointed it out after observing us in a supermarket, and it was a very rewarding feeling. Even more pleasing was when I picked up a Portuguese cooking magazine the other day and realised that there were entire paragraphs I could understand. Compared to my wife I thought I had been decidedly slack when it came to learning the language, so I am encouraged by how much does seem to go in without you noticing.

Sunset over the Algarve near Barrill Beach

Another pleasing change which started to occur after about six months was that we stopped having those wobbly days or weeks when we questioned our decision to move. These are now few and far between and affirm our decision.

I figured the best way to look retrospectively over our first year would be to list five of the year’s high points, and five corresponding lows…stay tuned for my review of the first year, coming on Friday.

Technorati Tags: a year in portugal, algarve, learning Portuguese, moving to portugal

We had a bit of an unsettled week here in Portugal last week, followed by a very enjoyable weekend.

As any long term readers of the blog will know, every now and then we get “wobbly days” with regard to being here – something that most expats we speak to can relate to. We had a few last week.

Learning Portuguese - we are trying!

We have made a real effort to learn some Portuguese. Maybe it is just because it was the end of the tourist season, but despite how well we pronounced things, practically everyone we interacted with last week insisted on speaking back to us in slow, condescending English.

This language based game usually entertains us. We call it “the fight.” We speak Portuguese, the Portuguese person speaks English and everyone sticks to their guns until eventually one party gives in. If we end the conversation speaking Portuguese it is a victory for us. If we give in and speak English then we lose.

I say it usually entertains us. Last week it happened so much it was frustrating. It made us think that even years down the line we are still going to be seen by strangers as stupid English people, which doesn’t seem fair when we are making an effort to learn the language.

We had one triumph last week though, when speaking Portuguese with a local lawyer. He complimented us on our Portuguese and was very surprised we had only been here ten months, even asking whether we had previously lived in Brazil or Spain.

He then said something that gets to the heart of the whole issue: “geralmente o Inglês, não tente aprender,” which means “generally the English do not try to learn.”

So, basically, we will continue to be tarred with the stupid brush because of the “two large beers please,” crowd who come here on holiday and don’t even attempt a “bom dia “ or “obrigada.” Irritating to say the least.

Anyway, after an annoying week we had a very pleasant weekend with lots of cooking and sunshine and a Saturday on Montegordo beach with some great waves – the best kind that knock you over if you don’t pay attention.

We followed this with a Chinese meal which has become a treat now due to the nearest good Chinese being 10 miles away – see Chinese Restaurants in Montegordo over at Food and Wine Portugal for details!

We then had one of those Sundays that just feels perfect. A lie in, Sunday papers in the sunshine, followed by roast chicken and ‘Friends” DVDs. This was exactly the kind of Sunday we

Chinese in Montegordo

used to have when we lived in London and we hadn’t realised how much we missed it.

In the ten months we have been here we have been charging towards the beach every Sunday or exploring some new part of the local area. We failed to realise that our perfect Sunday had been born of extensive research into what we actually wanted to do.

As we were living in a new country, our brains tricked us into thinking we should do something new on a Sunday, when there was in fact nothing wrong with what we always used to do. True, we now have sunshine and access to a pool, which can be incorporated into our Sunday routine, but other than that we plan to revert to what our Sundays always used to be like. No more rushing around – it is not what Sundays are for!

So, having discussed one old habit we are reinstating, I guess I have to address another habit…..giving up smoking. Last week was partially successful.

My electronic cigarette turned out to give me migraines, leading to a small relapse. However, I am now down to just three cigarettes per day, which is a huge improvement. I am still rather annoyed with myself but I have managed to reduce my consumption by 86% which isn’t bad at all.

I am awaiting a book from Amazon called Stop Smoking, Stay Cool: A Dedicated Smoker’s Guide to Not Smoking

This book has worked for several people who have not responded well to some of the more popular giving up smoking methods and appeals to me as someone who doesn’t particularly like being told what to do. Hopefully it will arrive this week – I will let you know how I get on.

Have a good week

Technorati Tags: chinese food montegordo, giving up smoking, lazy sunday, learning Portuguese, montegordo, Moving abroad, old habits

I had very much hoped to call this next post “Chilling Like a Resident.” Unfortunately, despite a tour of four different government offices yesterday, it was not to be – we still don’t have our residency.

The two major problems here, as I see them, are firstly that European law changes all the time and therefore the rules change, and secondly that Portuguese officials appear to all be individually free to interpret the law however they see fit.

Computer Says "No."

Yesterday was truly soul destroying and included the “Loja De Cidade” (citizen shop,) the city council, the SEF (basically the borders and foreigners police,) and our local village hall, who really put the nail in the coffin of the day when they said we had to find two Portuguese voters from our own tiny village to sign one of our forms.

We don’t even know two Portuguese people in the village yet – we know plenty in Tavira, but, no, that won’t do. The best plan we came up with yesterday was to ask the nice ladies in the laundrette to vouch for us!

The really annoying thing though, is that I have extensively researched the process for residency on all the relevant sites, including that of the European Union itself, and the fact is that as EU citizens we have right of residency anyway. The problems are caused by the fact that officials here all seem to have their own way of doing things. For example the residency application form for EU citizens they have online wasn’t even the same as the one given to me by the city council!

Adding to the frustration, research on the expat forums shows that many people have managed to get their residency at different town halls with no problems at all and in very quick time – there is just no consistency.

When we were doing our initial research about our move to Portugal, everyone highlighted the red tape as one of the big negatives. Until you are in the situation, and negotiating it with highly questionable Portuguese language skills, it is hard to describe how stressed and helpless it makes you feel.

I deliberately waited over night before I typed this post as I didn’t want to get all ranty, but re-living the situation does make me angry again. The billions of pounds that have been poured into the EU seem to have not resulted in there being a coherent approach to people moving between countries – there are as many hurdles and hoops as there would be if we were trying to move somewhere outside the European “Union.” It already feels galling to need an accountant in both countries as the paperwork is too complicated for one mere mortal to get their head around.

Anyway, we have made a decision. Someone on a forum has recommended a document agency to us. We are basically going to pay someone to sort it all out for us. Days and nights of research have got us nowhere, so rather than relying on the “what you know,” we are going to try the “who you know.” It seems to be the way things work around here.

Some people may be interested to read my forum thread on this – it shows the wide range of theories and experiences people have!

Residency – Aaaargh! Link to Expats Portugal

Technorati Tags: EU, european union, learning Portuguese, Moving abroad, moving to portugal, politics, portugal red tape

“How’s your Portuguese coming along?” Probably the only question our friends and family ask us as much as “how’s the weather?”
So, how is it coming along? Slowly is probably the most appropriate word. Having said that, it was pleasing last weekend when some guests who last visited us a couple of months ago commented that we seemed a lot more confident this time around.

On a basic level, we are doing alright. Things like going to restaurants, ordering train tickets and asking directions are second nature now and nowadays we are far less likely to need Google Translate when deciphering cooking instructions on packets of food. Even better, when it comes to using a cash machine, road signs etc. we generally know the words without translating in our heads any more.

It really helps that the vast majority of Portuguese people are so helpful and appreciative of our attempts to learn. Over the weekend at least three different people asked “Fala Portuges?” with a surprised smile when we spoke to them in the correct language. It’s a shame so few people who visit (or in some case live in) this country don’t make any attempt at all – and the hugely positive reaction we get reflects how used to this arrogance the locals have become. I can only begin to imagine the reaction someone would get in a London restaurant if they stubbornly refused even say thank you in English!

Other parts of the language learning are not proving nearly as easy. The Algarve does have a distinctive dialect, which, as far as we can tell, involves chopping both the beginning AND end off phrases. As an example, “Tudo Bem,” which is basically an informal “all good?” greeting is taught to you in language courses as a distinct three syllables. When you hear someone from the Algarve say it, it sounds more like “ooong-bay” with two syllables AT MOST! This leads on to the problem that as we pick up words and phrases by osmosis, we are learning Algarvian lingo and although we can be understood, we don’t necessarily know the actual words, let alone how to write or spell them!

The other problem is that the more convincingly we speak the words we do know, the more likely the person we are talking to is likely to fire something back at us that we don’t understand at all! Sometimes we are able to get round this by homing in on the one of two words we make out that we DO understand but this can be somewhat hit and miss.

All in all though, we are getting there slowly but surely, and we seem to have hit that critical mass of words now that we can make ourselves understood most of the time with the help of some arm waving. We do, however, have to get used to the fact that we are always going to look English, so even in several years when we are starting to approach some kind of fluency, the locals are still going to assume we don’t understand a word!

Click here to see our recommended language learning aids in my book store!

Technorati Tags: learning a foreign language, learning Portuguese, portuguese

February already, and the start of our forth month in Portugal. After reading back through my last few posts, I have discovered that I am scarily weather obsessed (they say that about the English, it must be true,) so I am going to try to avoid talking about the weather for this post, other than to say it’s been pretty sunny and a lot more like we expected…

No weather talk this week!

We seem to have settled into a routine now, and much as we thought before we moved that it would be marvellous to not have so much time pressure, having some sort of structure does seem to be good for the soul, and is making us more settled. My work is very flexible, so can really be done at any time, but we have now both settled back into something much more like a nine to five. Having back the excitement of Friday night, along with the slight sadness at the end of a Sunday just seems right somehow. Also, when finishing at five actually means finishing at five, rather than beginning a hellish commute at five, it makes you grateful for the extra time you have at your disposal. Time that can be spent cooking healthy food and (I never thought I would say this) getting some exercise!

Our language learning is coming on slowly but surely, every so often I look around me and realise that all of a sudden I seem to know the words for a lot more things. Where we still fall down is conjugating verbs and constructing actual sentences. To assist with this, last week we purchased a thick book called “501 Portuguese Verbs” (link below.) I have yet to look through it, but my wife did and so far she says the main thing that it has taught her is that it will be many, many years before we are anything approaching fluent!

During the last week we have restored a tiny bit of colour to our cheeks, had our second barbeque of the year, and visited one of the best restaurants we have tried so far in Portugal (see the review at www.foodandwineportugal.com) Our mould problems, sadly, are not over, but are improving and we have now found a new rental property starting from May. The mould is a pain, but from what we have read on forums, it is a common problem, so all we can really do is deal with it as best we can until we move. It would be nice though to have a few days without mould related sniffles, or bleach related sore throats!

Other than that, there isn’t much to tell from the last week – but not much to complain about either. We still like it here

501 Portuguese Verbs (Barron’s 501 Portuguese Verbs)

Technorati Tags: expat, learning Portuguese, mould, portugal, weather