movingtoportugal

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

Apologies once again for my extended absence. We had to pop back to England to attend the wedding of some dear friends, and to earn some money.

As with last time, it was a whirlwind of activity without a second to spare, and we hardly found time to breathe until we unceremoniously landed back at Faro airport, wondering how we managed to keep up with the pace of city life for so many years!

Now we have been away from the UK for six months, our Portuguese life seems like our normal life and it was pleasing to find that we now view and refer to Portugal as “home” without giving it a thought.

As ever, it was good to find time to catch up with some friends but we did find ourselves longing to be back in the Algarve. My wife, especially, experienced home-sickness for Portugal for the first time, although this was perhaps magnified by the fact that there is only so long anybody can stay sane within the purple and yellow confines of a Premier Inn!

Every time my wife and I finished our respective hectic days and reconvened over some kind of hastily procured takeaway food, we found ourselves discussing how our lives had changed, and the general theme was how glad we were to have made the drastic jump to a life in Portugal.

London Underground - not a good way to start the day

We concluded that there was literally no amount of money that would persuade us to return to a life in London – and we really do mean ANY amount! Getting some distance from the hamster-wheel existence so many people live really does put things in perspective, and although I looked very hard, I failed to see a single happy face on the rush-hour district line. My wife reports that she did see a lady who looked reasonably cheerful walking down a street in South London, but was swiftly reminded she was no longer in Portugal when she tried to smile at her and was met with a look of astonishment and distrust!

I am aware I am sounding really negative about my old home-town, so believe me when I say I am not trying to put across an attitude of “London’s crap, Portugal is great.” However, between incredulity at paying the equivalent cost of a great seafood meal for two one-day travel-cards, shock at just how unsuited the average London shop assistant is to any kind of customer-facing role, and paying coronary-inducing amounts of money for rather mediocre food and drink at every turn, I find it very hard to sugar-coat our most recent London experience.

There were good sides: seeing people we miss (as always,) being able to get fish and chips, taramosalata and Thai food, and being able to buy clothes designed for those of us who eat on a regular basis and can’t fit into clothes made for slim Portuguese men, but unfortunately we had done all of this within a couple of days and were then counting the hours until our return!

Now we are back where the sun shines and just have to shake off whatever nasty bug it was we caught on the plane on our way back, before we can settle back into Portuguese life….then I can start to blog about nice things again

Technorati Tags: downshifting, hamster wheel, london, Moving abroad, rat race, ratrace

A reader of my blog asked me the what I missed about the UK since I moved. I have been meaning for some time to post a “negatives” list to balance out all of the sunshine and new experiences, so here it is! People back at home in the cold and rain could be forgiven for thinking we have just embarked on an eternal holiday when they see the photos and blog posts, but the fact is that you do still have to deal with all the day-to-day crap that comes up (well most of it!)

We don't miss the M25!

SO: Here is what we miss so far:

1. UNDERSTANDING: When the people at the town hall refuse to give you a fiscal number, or your mobile internet stops working, or you miss a delivery from the postman and get a card through the door, you take in for granted in your home country that you understand what do about it, and know how to complain if necessary. This is not possible when you only understand a smattering of the language. We wish we had had more time to get ahead with the language before we came. You start out reasonably intelligent, get on a 2 hour flight and when you get to the other end you become rather stupid. Quite a strange feeling.

2. CENTRAL HEATING: Friends in England don’t seem to believe us but in the Algarve it gets cold at night – and when you are in a house with tiled floors, designed to keep the heat OUT, it can get really bloody cold. Air conditioning heats individual rooms very well, it doesn’t ever make a house feel cosy and toasty when you walk in. This one surprised us.

3. FOODS: Taramasalata and poor quality sausage rolls from Greggs – that’s it so far.

4. FRIENDS: I was starting to tire of Facebook, Twitter etc. in the time running up to our move, but these things become a real lifeline when you are thousands of miles away. There are still times though, once a week or so, when you really miss human contact with the people who have known you for years. I don’t this this will ever change.

At this point in typing the post I have had to call my wife to ask for ideas. The fact is for me that is it. After ten minutes of intense thought, all she has come up with is: “the potential for snow at Christmas,” “stepping onto a carpet when getting out of bed in the morning,” and “electrical sockets that don’t spark when you unplug something.” We both agree that we are scraping the barrel for ideas and that it is a lot easier to come up with things we don’t miss!

So: here is a quick list of the things we DON’T miss!

Just another December day

1. Traffic – and just the general amount of time it can take to do what should be simple things in London.

2. Celebrity Culture.

3. Greedy, money focussed London city types.

4. Overpriced, poor quality food (apart from Greggs sausage rolls!)

5. Extortionate Council tax.

6. Wine that costs more the 3 euros.

7. Darkness, rain, wind, sleet, hail etc.

7. Being in a perpetual rush.

8. Routine rudeness from strangers and people working in “customer service” roles.

9. Paying for parking.

10. Overpriced public transport.

11. Our old neighbours awful piano playing.

We have hardly had to think to come up with those eleven and we could go on! But I think you probably get the picture, we love it here so far, feel almost constantly lucky and thankful, and, so far at least, we wouldn’t change a thing

VNQQKYZSZWUC

Technorati Tags: london, Moving abroad, politics, portugal

In order to take my mind off the intense pain of my dental abscess while the antibiotics do their thing, I have spent a lot of time on the web over the past couple of days.

As a keen cook, exploring all of the the different food Portugal has to offer is one of the things I am most looking forward to – and the fact that I am currently only able to eat foods which require little or no chewing has found me looking lustfully at food-related websites. This web-surfing landed me at www.continente.pt – the website of a Portugese supermarket chain. I have spent a fair bit of time browsing this site to get an idea of how much things are going to cost when we arrive in Portugal.

I thought I might make more sense of the foodstuffs if I translated the whole site into English with Google Translate – it is not perfect but it generally gives you a good chance of working out what something means. That said, it has left me with a few unanswered questions this time:

1. If I fancy a stew, does “diced biological calf” taste as nice as stewing steak?

"Cool hunting" anyone?

2. Will eating “a piece of cool hunting” improve my street-cred?

3. Does “dogfish, whole, clean” imply that unless specified other fish is “dirty”?

4. Can I really buy a “small horse” for 40cents?

Discoveries like this are when I remember what enormous fun this journey is going to be, and with the stress of moving, we don’t often get a chance to remember that at the moment. I can’t believe it is less than three weeks until we go!

I’m off to find out what kind of fish a “cool hunting” is….

Technorati Tags: continente, Food, Moving abroad, moving to portugal, portugal

England's green and pleasant land

I have been a bit slack of late when it comes to keeping this blog up to date. Those reading from England will know that the weather here has been really rather special the last couple of weeks, and after three back-to-back bad summers before now it is about time!

So, blogging has taken a low priority, below barbeques, pimms, cider and getting in far too late every evening. England is a contrary so-and-so – spending years winding you up with shocking weather and grumpy people  - pushing you right to the point where you arrange to leave and go to Portugal, then at the eleventh hour becoming a lovely sunny place where strangers smile! Still, there’s no way it will be permanent and the fact the good weather has had such a positive impact on my state of mind affirms our decision to move to where the sunshine is.

Now, after a month of sunshine, we find ourselves with only FOUR months to go until move day which is pretty daunting, but having said that, we do seem to be making progress – our work situations are getting to the point of being finalised and there are finally spaces appearing on shelves where our Ebay and car-boot efforts are starting to make visible progress. The build up of savings is starting to slow down at times – it seems a lot easier to build funds up when there aren’t so many opportunities for al-fresco dining in London!

The next thing we have to do is book some flights over to Portugal to arrange our fiscal numbers and then the next milestone is being able to “go public” with our news to my clients. I have been itching to do for several months but business reasons have prevented me from doing so. I am a very direct and honest kind of person and dislike feeling duplicitous, so I am really looking forward to everyone knowing, even if it does mean telling the same story to dozens of people. Perhaps I should just print the blog URL on some cards and hand them out?

Technorati Tags: london, Moving abroad, summer, tavira

Algarve orange trees

It is now less than five months to move day. Things are now moving at quite a pace, and it seems especially real now people are starting to book flights to come out and see us after we have moved. We’ve got past the stage where we realised all the things we were going to miss about London – a tube strike, a few too many hangovers and the brief early summer rapidly turning back to grey, wet gloom soon got us back on the right track (the one that ends in Tavira!)

Five months really isn’t long, and I started thinking about everything we have got to get done. Aside from having to sell the contents of a house, a car, a business and an inflatable chill-out room, we have to book flights, arrange shipping of our things, and deal with far too many call-centers when we come to changing addresses and suchlike. We also have to continue living a pretty hectic city life and do all the various social things we just have to do because “we won’t be here next year.”

I am trying to decide on which units I should use to count down the time until our move to portugal. Which should I use:

1. Number of incoming work emails – I get around 525 per week so 10,500 emails.

2. Bottles of Magners cider to consume – about 160 (that figure probably half way between the true amount and what I would admit to the doctor!)

Lisbon Cakes - better than Starbucks!

3. Remaining days to endure London’s transport network – 80- ish – now that IS exciting.

4.  Starbucks Frappuccinos -20 – (I’m down to one per week.)

5. Cigarettes – 1400 – REALLY have to give up before they are only 3euro per packet.

6. Sleeps - 140 – not including Sunday siestas

7. VAT Returns – 2 – Yay!

8. People who accidentally delete a file on their PC and blame the IT department – 27 approx.

9. Days of good weather – er, 3? The UK has been promised a good summer by the media but don’t they say that every year?

Can anyone suggest any more units of measurement?

Technorati Tags: Moving abroad, portugal

London Town

It was one of those rare, perfect weekends in Old London Town. With 25 deg C and solid sun in an idyllic park in Wimbledon, I think at one point I actually said the words, “if it was always like this I wouldn’t need to move.” Obviously it was only temporary, a couple of tube journeys since soon put paid to that nonsense (does it never occur to anyone that if you don’t stand aside to let people off the train you’re not going to have room to get on yourself?)

Back to the point. As moving time gets closer, my contrary mind does kick in at certain points, doing things like making me suddenly appeciate things about the UK that I have taken for granted for years. These thoughts are shortlived, but it made me think that perhaps I should document the “I wonder if…” questions that come up and then revisit them after 6 months or so in Portugal to see how it turns out. So this is what I am doing. I will come back to this after that time and give an honest assesment. I would also be very interested if anyone who has already made the move would like to tell me what they think the answers will be! 

1. I wonder if I’ll miss everyone too much? – with Facebook, Skype, MSN and email, coupled with the fact that our spare rooms appear to be booked by friends and family for most of the first 10 weeks, I think probably not!

2. I wonder is I will miss the changing weather in England? - an odd one this, but it hit me yesterday. One of the main reasons for moving to Portugal is for the weather but will I come to take the sunshine for granted?

3. I wonder if the locals will accept us? Almost everyone we have met around Portugal has been great and WE are nice people and very respectful of the culture……but what if we are the second English couple to move into our street and the first were your typical “expats from hell.” 

4. I wonder if I will I actually get bored of fresh fish and healthy living? Too tough to call I think!

5. I wonder how much I will miss London? Note that I said “how much” and not “if.” I know I will miss the place. Anyone who has ever lived here for a long time knows that they will always have a strange love/hate relationship with London. I am really curious HOW much I will miss it though. By way of a prediction for when I revisit these questions I think I will probably have odd pangs that will be it.  

6. I wonder if it will all be as wonderful as we hope? Well I have researched to a massive degree and think I am prepared for the things that aren’t going to be great, but who can really say. All I can say is it’s going to be a grand adventure and I can’t wait to report back and answer these questions.

In conclusion for now, jitters is probably too strong a word really – as we certainly don’t have any actual doubts, it’s just odd how these insecurities kick in as it gets nearer. I have no doubt that it is time to leave the UK and I am CERTAINLY ready to be away from London now. When I ranted to my wife the other day about the people not standing clear of the tube doors she said, “well it’s London isn’t it, they don’t care that you want to get off the train as it’s not their problem. THEIR problem is thet they want to get on.” If people in Portugal, us included, have just enough extra time in their lives to be more considerate and less jaded than the average Londoner, and the sun gets it’s hat on then I think we are going to be just fine.

Lisboa

Technorati Tags: london, Moving abroad, portugal