movingtoportugal

Living in Portugal is great, and I’d be the first person to support and encourage anyone thinking of making the move themselves. Having said that, a dose of realism is required. Every week, someone new pops up on the expat forums stating their intentions to move here, and you can detect a level of naivety and lack of research that is only going to end in tears.

So, for this week´s post, the time has come to dispel some myths about life in the sunshine.

First off, living somewhere is NOTHING LIKE being on holiday there. Being on holiday in London is nothing like working in London, and it’s no different in Portugal.

Tourists enjoy the beach in Portugal while we work indoors

For a start, unless you have retired, you actually have to work, and trying to be productive when it’s 32C outside is vastly different to reading a book on the beach when it’s 32C outside. Just because it’s hot and sunny every day, it doesn’t mean you have time to sit out in it and get a tan. By the time our work is done for the day, the sun has lost much of its strength, and it can be rather frustrating finding yourself half way through the summer with less of a tan that a tourist who has only been here five days! Looking over the top of a laptop at people swimming in the pool all day sucks too.

We have also been a little bit surprised that we still frequently find ourselves desperately short of time at some points. Once the working week is out of the way, the house tends to need cleaning, and shopping and other errands need to be sorted out-in the blazing heat. So, that’s Saturday gone. Then it’s Sunday, and then, shit, it’s Monday again. Much like real life in any other place!

Driving back to Portugal from Spain

And don’t expect anyone “back home” to believe you or offer any sympathy. Whatever you say, they will assume that you spend at least half of every day drinking pina coladas whilst floating in the pool. There is nothing you can say to convince them otherwise.

Next up, finding work. We spent three years designing a way to earn money remotely. So when the forum newbies say “what kind of work will I get, I can’t speak any Portuguese yet?” What do they really expect the answer to be? Why not ask a different question: “I’m Portuguese and moving to England, I can’t speak any English yet, what kind of work will I get?” Does that help to answer the original question?

Portugal is going through hard times economically. There’s a fair bit about it on the news. The ground-level reality of the situation bears no resemblance to the situation in England. The UK has a fair minimum wage, and there IS still work for those willing to do it. There are people in this country working very hard for a level of income that a UK benefits claimant would turn their nose up at…and the cost of living isn’t THAT much different.

For those of us lucky enough to have income, we have just been told there is a new extraordinary tax for 2011, meaning we have to give the government an extra 3.5% of what we earn. It IS hot, it IS sunny, but it’s not always easy.

Portugal - cost of living is fairly high, but sunsets are free

Now, I know all of that sounds like a rant, which is why I preceded it all with “living in Portugal is great.” It truly is. But you have to work and research to make it that way. Which is why, when people come to the forums expecting to be able to have a life which is like their summer holiday, and arrive here and walk into an English-speaking job, they need to realize that life isn’t like that.

Youngsters in their teens and twenties CAN just get on a plane, find seasonal work in bars and restaurants, and have a damn good time in the sun until the work dries up, and I admire their guts for doing it. But, it is different for people with families, and the thought of people coming out here without doing their research when it involves taking children away from their schools and friends frightens me a bit.

For those with serious intentions of moving, there is a wealth of existing information to help, on the forums and on blogs like this one. The people who dedicate days, weeks and months of their lives getting familiar with it develop realistic and achievable dreams, and they end up being the people we walk past looking happy at local beaches and markets. The others are the ones who have their dreams dashed by the time they’ve read the first three replies to their first post on a forum.

I highly recommend this book to anyone seriously considering a move, it contains lots of interesting information and case studies from people already living here, including (shameless plug) a bit that I wrote!

Buying Property in Portugal (second edition) – insider tips for buying, selling and renting

Technorati Tags: living abroad realities, Moving abroad, portugal economy

The start of the month saw us once again boarding an Easyjet Airbus and setting off to London for a short work trip.

You would think that after over a year of doing this it would become somewhat routine, and in some ways it has. We still spend the week preceding our trip with feelings split between looking forward to seeing friends and dreading having to re-join the rat-race. Otherwise though, the “culture shock abroad” experience changes every time.

Despite having lived in London for well over a decade before moving to Portugal, the place feels more alien and unfriendly every time we visit. The times we spend with friends and in our old local bar are “just like old times,” but the rest of the time we feel increasingly lost and culture-shocked.

From London to Portugal - the old commute

Regular walks on Algarve beaches, accompanied by frequent “Bom Dia” greetings and smiles from strangers, have now become our “norm.” This means tube commuting is now a time of bemusement, despite the fact that I was once one of those people hustling along, eyes down, earphones in, staring at a smartphone as if profound answers were contained within.

Although I used to be a Londoner, I now spend the first 48 hours in London getting funny looks from people when I catch their eye and smile – it takes me two days to put my guards back up and build up the requisite amount of background anger and resentment to fit in on the 0830 to Waterloo!

The hardest thing about all of this is that it’s very hard to express these feelings to friends without coming across as a born-again expat hippie, and giving the impression that my view is as simplistic as “London’s crap and Portugal’s great.” That’s not it at all. It’s just that our lives are so much different now.

Culture shock abroad? Out most frequently used train in Portugal

I often don’t charge my mobile phone for days after the battery has run out. I always have time to cook healthy food, exercise and, to quote the Center Parcs marketing team, “stand and stare.” Those things have enhanced my day to day existence more than any increase in salary and status ever could have done. So when I notice people on the London commute, looking thoroughly miserable despite their designer clothes and shiny cutting-edge gadgets, I feel nothing but bewilderment.

“How’s Portugal?” is becoming an increasingly difficult question to answer, now that everyone we know is already well versed in the superficialities of the weather, food and drink. We’ve now lived an utterly different culture for long enough that it’s difficult to answer the question without risking causing offence by making honest comparisons. We love it here in Portugal and we would hate to have to go back…..and it’s very hard to say that without it sounding like a condemnation of the lifestyle we left behind.

It’s important for us to remember that WE are the people who moved and, as a result, the people who are going to change as the cynical, hard skin of city life falls away. As time goes on, we are going to have to be careful to ensure that the happiness our new life has brought us doesn’t come across as self-satisfaction, even if it not intended as such.

“How’s Portugal?” Fine thanks.

Photo credits, charbel.akhras Tony Castillo Quero

Technorati Tags: culture shock abroad, living in a foreign country, Moving abroad

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

Apologies for my absence last week – it was a rather unsettled week that threw a few curve-balls in our direction!

First of all we both came down with a nasty flu-bug – I guess we were due an illness of some kind, having been very lucky on our travels between London and Portugal so far.

Being ill forced upon me a life-change that had been long overdue: I decided it was time to give up smoking – something I knew I had to do before the low cost of cigarettes in Portugal

Lifesaver - the electronic cigarette

turned me into a lifetime chain smoker. I now have behind me eight days of really rather horrific “cold turkey” and am in possession of an “electronic cigarette” to give me a blast of nicotine in an emergency.

So, between flu and cold turkey, blogging moved rather far down my list of priorities last week!

Another reason for a slightly grumpy temperament last week was the Algarve in August. We had never been here in August before and I may even go far as saying I would rather not be this time next year. It was pretty horrendous.

Restaurants that are usually a pleasure to dine in became shambolic. Supermarkets were like Christmas Eve in London and we spent time in traffic queues for the first time since we moved to Portugal.

We had been told to expect it but we weren’t really prepared for it – it was a lot busier than July. If the first time we had visited the Algarve had been in August I would say there is a good chance we never would have returned!

And then, almost as quick as we had noticed all of these people, they all disappeared. This weekend they all, collectively, buggered off again – restoring the calm and serenity of our little town. I am looking forward to again swimming in the pool without having to dive underneath a film of sun-cream, and being able to buy prawns without having to queue for half an hour. Listen to me, the grumpy new “local.”

When we originally moved to Portugal, now ten months ago, our plan was to spend a year in the Algarve and then a year a bit nearer Lisbon to decide which lifestyle we preferred. At various points we have become convinced that the Algarve is right for us, making a Lisbon experiment unnecessary. After an Algarve August we are back to considering trying out somewhere a bit nearer the city next year.

The best advice we read while preparing for this move was to rent for the first couple of years – it gives us the flexibility to change our minds and experiment – and isn’t that what life should be all about?

I’ll be back next week, hopefully as a longer term non-smoker and slightly less grumpy with it!

Technorati Tags: algarve august, e cig, electronic cigarette, giving up smoking, lisbon, Moving abroad

Time really does fly.

Easyjet

Each time we land back in Portugal after a quick work-related trip back to the UK, we always count how many weeks it is until the next time we have to join the Easyjet “speedy boarding scrum.”

However many weeks it is, it always seems to only be five minutes before once again we have that sinking, melancholy feeling that always hits us around ten days before we have a trip back to the UK booked.

Once we get there it is fine – a whirlwind tour usually involving several different clients, a few friends, a corresponding quantity of city-sized hangovers and a couple of nice family visits.

Then, before we know it we have landed back in Faro again, ready to endure the first couple of days back in Portugal which always seem strangely unsettling while we get back into the flow of life in our new home.

In an ideal world we would pop back for work with less frequency than we have to now, but it is part of the deal, and having to spend just five weeks out of 52 in the UK is a lot better than the other way around! Being there and getting on with it is actually the easy part – the nasty bit is the few days before we go, when we suddenly start to appreciate everything about our life in Portugal all the more – rather like the sad end of a holiday.

Anyway, each trip back presents us more contrasts between our old and new lives and serves as a bit of an appraisal as to how well our move to Portugal is going.

This time the main thing I noticed was how miserable the average stranger looks in the UK – all the time I spent pounding the London pavements between clients, the words of Dizzee

Dizzee Rascal - accurate about London

Rascal kept playing through my mind: “take you down to London city, where the attitude’s bad and the weather is shitty…” accurate and slightly depressing!

Dwelling on the negative for just a moment longer, something about the UK we just cannot get our heads around now is the opening hours of shops. At shopping centres in Portugal, shops opening daily until 11pm is commonplace, yet in a city of 8 million people the doors are closing at 5.30pm.

Surely someone is missing a trick if the shops open at the precise times when most people are at work and close as soon as they would get a chance to visit them? One night per week of “late night shopping” until 8pm is a bit of a token gesture and surely in the peak of the summer, 8pm would mean, at best, “early evening shopping.” Next time the UK enters recession, opening shops when people are free to visit them could be a good way to boost the economy!

Before those reading from the UK tire of my whining, I must point out that this time round there were several aspects of our quick visit back we did enjoy immensely: a roast beef dinner, Thai food and shopping in big, well stocked supermarkets.

Most importantly though, we enjoyed a good helping of English banter. Conversations we have in Portugal can be quite repetitive – with expats they tend to be of the “how long have you been here? How do you make a living?” variety, and those with our Portuguese friends are restricted by our limited grasp of the language. It was a real pleasure to chat with people close to us in our native language – we do miss the quick, cutting English wit.

Home sweet home

One wonderful surprise in these conversations with friends and family, is that we now consistently refer to Portugal as “home,” without thinking, rather than England. I see it as an important part of the process that our subconscious minds believe here to be home…

So, the trip complete, we are back HOME in Portugal. As I said earlier in the post, there is generally a couple of unsettled days of “re-entry,” not helped this time by the fact we were not quite prepared for HOW busy the Algarve gets in August, even “up the quiet end” like we are.

As predicted by a couple of expat friends earlier in the year, we have now had our fill of tourists and are ready for them to disperse and give us back our roads, beaches and supermarkets.

Other than that it is lovely to be home, somewhere where the sun is shining and we have time to eat healthy food at a slow enough pace to avoid heartburn. After nine months we are starting to see the good and bad in our past and present lives, but we really do prefer this one

Photo credits: Autodance1234, Chaerani, Arpingstone

Technorati Tags: algarve in august, dizzee rascal, london, Moving abroad, moving to portugal

I promised to some readers a while back that I would post an update on our situation with regards to making our move to Portugal all official. For those who didn’t hear about the fun and games we had the threads can be found here:

Red Tape in Portugal
Portugal Red Tape Rant

I am pleased to say some progress has been made! We are now officially Portuguese residents, albeit currently only for one year as no-one at our local camara (town-hall,) seemed to be able to get their head around the fact that we live here in Portugal but make all our money in the UK via remote working.

The residency was more complicated that we had been led to believe. In the end we needed to have a form from our local village council signed by two residents of the village – an interesting job at the time when we didn’t KNOW two residents of the village. A big thank you goes out to the man in the bar and the lady in the shop!

After we had this form all we needed was passports and tenancy papers and we were good to go. I have made this sound a lot easier than it really was – it required several visits to various government buildings, including an extra two trips when we discovered that Tavira camara had managed to get our address wrong on the first residencia certificate we were given.

Our next task is getting this certificate renewed when our year is up. This involves us getting a form called a “workers S1,” from the UK (now in progress) which proves to Portugal that

Portugal Red Tape

we are still paying national insurance in the UK and therefore covered by a reciprocal arrangement. I think we may need to take a native Portuguese speaker when we come to do this part!

Health cover was next. Until we have our workers S1, we don’t fancy our chances of registering with the local health centre, so if we need a doctor we will go and pay 40 euros at the local private surgery, something a lot of people do anyway. We have also taken out private healthcare for emergencies.

Driving licences are a bit of a minefield, and one that the majority of the expats we speak to choose to ignore, but we have always been determined to be 100% official and respectful of the local laws.

As soon as you become resident in Portugal, or as soon as you no longer live at the address on your UK licence, your licence is technically invalid. It needs to be replaced with a Portuguese licence or supplemented with a piece of paper from the IMTT (Portuguese equivalent of the DVLA,) which makes it legal again.

This part of the red tape was the easiest at all. Twenty minutes at Faro IMTT resulted in the correct form being issued. It is slightly odd that despite having a photocopier onsite they insist you go to a small kiosk down the road to get the documents copied, but if it had been 100% straightforward it wouldn’t have felt right!

So, for now at least, we are completely official and with a bit of time to sort out our taxation situation, the next part of the battle. Anyone going through these processes is advised to take it slow and try to treat any tiny bit of progress as a significant step forward – you do get there eventually.

If anyone is doing any of the bits we have been successful with and would like any advice, please leave a comment and we will try to help.

Photo Credit: Kozumel

Technorati Tags: Moving abroad, moving to portugal, red tape, residencia, residency

When we moved to Portugal, we had to have a huge clear-out, as everyone does unless they wish to spend a fortune shipping clutter to their new home!

Back when we were in the process of moving, I had intended to write a post on how we had gone about selling the items we weren’t going to ship. I didn’t get round to it then, so as part of

Ebay

my mission to provide more posts to help those in the process of moving to Portugal, here are some tips to help you offload your unwanted items.

Starting with the most obvious: Ebay. By the time we arrived in Portugal, we had sold around 800 items though our ebay account. Ebay can be wonderful and infuriating in equal measure. One of the best things about ebay is you can, by using the “completed listings” feature on “advanced search,” get a pretty good idea of what your items will sell for by taking an average from the last few times that item was sold.

Ebay is great for selling certain things: electrical and computer bits, video games, DVDs and musical instruments tend to consistently sell for what they are worth. Other things are less successful. Since Ebay stopped allowing people to charge postage for books, there is little point in trying to sell those via Ebay. Similarly, we sold some furniture towards the end, and this went for upsettingly low values.

Having said that, where Ebay does come in handy in terms of furniture is when you stipulate in the listing that the buyer will have to dismantle the item to take it away. We managed to get rid of our king size bed, which we would never have managed to get down the stairs had the buyer not come to take it to pieces. Although it sold for less than it was worth, the fact we saved ourselves a day of work taking the thing to bits was a very fair trade.

On the subject of stipulating certain things in the listings, this brings us to the part where ebay becomes infuriating. The majority of buyers are good and honest people, but there does seem to be an inherent inability to read specific details. If you say “collection has to be on Monday or Tuesday,” you can be sure at least three people will ask to collect on Sunday and Wednesday. One of those three people is likely to actually turn up at your house on Sunday or Wednesday and then send you an email asking why you weren’t there. It is best to assume a “idiot factor” of 1 idiot for each 20 items sold.

For people with plenty of time, Amazon Marketplace is a good bet for books and CDs in good condition as they tend to fetch better prices than Ebay.

Onto car-booting. Car boot sales are tremendous fun and great for getting rid of the lower-value items that aren’t worth putting up on Ebay – provided you can resist the temptation to go home with more crap than you arrived with.

Car Boot Sales - Fun

Nobody expects to go to a car boot sale and pay a lot for ANYTHING, so they are not the place to take high value items, though we did have success with some obscure kitchen gadgets. Also surprisingly successful were any power adaptors and cables – people seemed to snap them up, and clothes go well too.

Car-boot sales also give you the opportunity to meet some of the world’s more unusual people, including a strange man who strolled the stalls stroking a glove puppet, and another who claimed to be allergic to “digital waves,” and was pleased to buy a tatty old analogue cordless phone from our stall. Unfortunately he then used “interference from digital waves” as his excuse to try to walk away from our stall without paying.

It is worth mentioning that VHS videos do not seem to be wanted by ANYONE. Your best bet for those is to drop them off in a charity shop and then leg it before they realise they are VHS videos are try to give them back!

Finally, don’t overlook friends and family when offloading your treasures. We set aside our dining room for everything we were getting rid off and insisted everyone to visit our house had a good look around our “shop.” You do end up giving a few bits away but you also find that several items people are happy to give you money for things.

Our final tip: when you reach the final stages where people are collecting ebay items, buying things from you directly, and handing you money at car boot sales, make sure all the money goes into the moving fund, and not straight into the wallet or purse!

(Ebay photo credit rmfphoto.net/)

Technorati Tags: amazon marketplace, car boot sale, ebay, Moving abroad, selling on ebay, selling up

Only time for a very quick update this week, as my birthday is a few days away and we are getting our house in order ready for a short holiday

We are taking advantage of how close we are to Spain and taking a trip to Seville.

Seville

Moving abroad has changed our approach to holidays completely, not least because the bulk of the annual holiday entitlement my wife has from her job is now spent going to England to attend weddings and christenings! Unfortunately, whilst there I also have to work so we don’t get an awful lot of time off at the same time.

Of course the flip side is that we now live in a warm climate, ten minutes from a beach and have access to a swimming pool just yards away, so the urgency of “having to go somewhere hot” has gone as well. A lot of the things we used to enjoy on holiday – walking on the beach, having barbecues in the sun and having time to read a book (something I never relaxed for long enough to do in London,) are now what we do all the time, so everything is turned on its head.

What we haven’t had though, in over a year, is a break AWAY together, so we are really looking forward to this trip, not to mention the chance to explore the beautiful city of Seville.

I know friends of ours back in the UK joke that our lives are one big holiday now we live here. Whilst we are certainly very lucky that a few times per week it does feel a bit like that (a cooling swim at lunch time is definitely preferable to queuing for a disappointing sandwich in Pret a Manger,) that simply isn’t the way it is. We live in a different country, not a different WORLD and have to deal with the same bills, clients, idiots and call-centres – sometimes in foreign!

It is quite important to know this if you are considering moving to the sunshine but still has to earn a living – I’m afraid there are still many days when you have to tap away at the keyboard while the sun blazes outside temptingly – and no one back home will sympathise, because whatever you tell them, they will assume you spend every day bathing in Sangria.

Did someone say sangria? Back in a week

Technorati Tags: emigrating, holiday, Moving abroad, seville, short break seville

Readers of the blog from long ago may remember a post called “Worries and Jitters,” that I posted just over a year ago, when I looked into the future and wondered how we would feel about our move to Portugal once we had been here six months or so and everything had sunk in.

At the time, I promised to revisit the questions that I had asked myself and see how the real-life experience compared with my predictions. As we have now just passed our six-month point, I thought it the right time to make good on that promise and see how things had worked out.

I wonder if I’ll miss everyone too much?

Algarve Early Evening

Not really. Our own visits back to the UK, combined with people coming out to see us means we have had plenty of company, and that time you do spend with family and friends is more precious.

We do suffer from the occasional “home-sick” day, and “sick” is the right way to describe it, as it hits you suddenly and really is like a physical feeling. At those times, technology like Facebook and Skype really does become a lifeline, and one we would hate to be without.

Being at such a distance also reveals a few surprises in terms of relationships with others – the people who make the most consistent effort to stay in touch and come to see you are not necessarily the people you would have expected.

Given that I am writing this the day before the world cup, I must mention that however much I love being here, the best place to watch the game is in a rowdy London pub with a bunch of good mates, and I expect to miss this tremendously in the coming days.

I wonder if I will miss the changing weather in England?

No, not one little bit – and after our first Algarve winter (the wettest since 1870,) it is quite changeable enough where we live now!

It is nice to know you will only need shorts and flip flops every day from March onwards, and on the odd day that it does hammer down with rain it is a pleasant novelty. England can keep the frost and biting wind!

I wonder if the locals will accept us?

Almost without exception, we have been made to feel very welcome, something for which I am extremely grateful. About once per week we are served in a shop by someone determined to scowl their way through the transaction and this can be slightly offensive when the same individual manages to be polite and jovial to the Portuguese people ahead of us in the queue. This doesn’t get us down – every country has its share of arseholes and Portugal certainly seems to have far less than London!

I wonder if I will I actually get bored of fresh fish and healthy living?

Well, it’s not that you get bored of fish, but you don’t want to eat it every day. With shellfish especially, its quality and abundance tends to lead to us having a fortnightly binge, followed by a period of never wishing to see another clam again!

Healthy living? Yes, we do spend more time walking, swimming and riding bikes, but my innate inability to keep to any kind of consistent fitness regime does appear to have moved to Portugal with me!

Sadly, life does still get in the way of the very best of intentions sometimes, but it is certainly easier to maintain a healthy lifestyle here without a fried chicken shop on every corner.

I wonder how much I will miss London?

London Traffic

The answer to this really has surprised me. When I predicted my answer to this question I was adamant that it would only be a matter of HOW much I would miss it – I would never have guessed that I wouldn’t miss it AT ALL.

We miss spending time with friends, we miss pub-banter in our native language, we miss reading the papers over a Sunday roast and we miss browsing in bookshops and record shops, but none of this has anything to do with London itself. This leaves menacing chavs, pollution that makes you cough, high prices, maddening traffic, ludicrous quantities of signs and announcements listing things you are not allowed to do, and journeys on public transport that leave you hot, sweaty and cross.

So, no, we don’t miss London at all!

I wonder if it will all be as wonderful as we hope?

The last question is the biggest, and the hardest to give a straightforward answer to. On a web-forum the other day, someone said, as part of a conversation, “nowhere is paradise,” and that was the first thing that popped into my head when deciding how to answer this question.

Wherever you find yourself in the world it doesn’t mean you won’t get food poisoning when you have made plans, it doesn’t mean clients will start paying their invoices on time, and it

Praia De Cabanas, Algarve

doesn’t mean there won’t still be days when you wake up in the morning and simply don’t feel up for it.

However, as I type this I can glance out of my window – I see blue sky, sunlight bouncing off palm trees, and all I can hear are church bells, birds and crickets. I have great quality food to put on my barbecue shortly that cost us next to nothing and a small rack of inexpensive but delicious wine to choose from. I am not still in a car cursing the traffic on the A3, knowing that when I get home all I will have the energy to is decide which menu to order my takeaway from.

Most of all, I can be fairly confident the sun will blaze in when we lift the shutters in the morning and that if I am having an “off day” there is always that endless, glistening sea at the end of the road to lift my spirits.

Would I go back? What do you think?

If you are interested in what I predicted my answers to these questions would be prior to my move to Portugal, you will find them HERE.

Technorati Tags: emigrating, london, Moving abroad, moving to portugal, six month review

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