The way things go

A while ago Ann and I started talking about how much has happened over the past year - much of it planned, so much unplanned.  Or at least unknown.  Sometimes though, it’s hard to tell a story without someone, or some thing, to center the story around.  So while this post  frames things around a couch, it is really about the way things have often unfolded for us during this period. 

Last year we decided to make a move to Portugal on a bit of advice.  We’d considered the notion of moving overseas once Ann retired (for any number of reasons), and we set about doing it properly.  That meant doing research and, to be honest, spending money to gather information from people who had done it before, through memberships, books and videos about opportunities in other places.  It was money well spent.  We wound up seriously looking at several European countries - Italy, France and to a smaller extent, Portugal - and after a great disappointment from doing a dive into Italy and discovering it’s insane bureaucracy, we looked south to Costa Rica, Mexico, and Ecuador.  From that review we’d settled on Mexico and I started doing a deep dive on the paperwork needed to get a visa there. It was like walking through a door into a house full of a million and one nick nicks that called for your attention.

During that process, I’d contacted a State Department friend of mine to ask for a recommendation of places in France (he was at US embassy Paris [I’d written a letter of recommendation for that posting]) and he wrote back a couple of weeks later, after we’d given up on Europe.  Being the history buff he is, said we should look at Normandy (“They love Americans there, they haven’t forgotten!”).  Then came the magic words, “But if it were up to me, I’d really check out Portugal.  Shelly and I have been there twice and it’s great.  Very affordable, the people are nice and the food is amazing.”  Ann suggested we look at Portugal again.

And the more I looked, the more everything seemed designed for us. There were still a million and one nick nacks that needed attention, but  It would be fairly easy to get residency status for both of us.  Most importantly, I could continue to work off-economy without a work permit, and there would be tax benefits to boot.  Good health care ranking, good social index ranking.  Yes, there was a bureaucracy, but folks followed the rules and if you did things properly you got what you desired (after 2 - 3 trips). [Compare that to Italy, where one resident said, “My advice is to get to know the mayor of your town, that will help things along immensely.”] We periodically checked out alternative countries, but time and time again the roadblocks reminded us of why Portugal should be the choice.  Ultimately, it was.

But reading about a place isn’t the same as being there, which isn’t the same as living there.  

So we planned our January trip to Portugal.  While we had spent quite a bit money to get some preliminary logistics in place (got national tax numbers (NIF) [how important is the NIF - let’s just say I have my NIF memorized and can say it in Portuguese, I don’t know my cell phone number), set up a bank account, etc. plus the air fare), we flew out here with the intention that we could always walk away from it if we have any reservations whatsoever.  Obviously, that didn’t happen.  We were a go.

Fortunately, we found our house early in our stay here.  We had been here about a week when we saw our place, and had about 10 days to just hang out after we signed the paperwork.  We didn’t waste it.  Given it was an empty house and we had floor plans of the house, we could roughly figure out what we would need to supplement our household goods.  Top on that list was a couch.  So we searched the internet for furniture stores and found several we could get to by train or by foot.  A good test for getting out and exploring.  Seeing if we could function over here.

After several different stores, we found our couch.  We didn’t know it at the time, but as we did with several places, we got contact information and Ann verified that we could correspond via e-mail.  But before we left, we knew the couch we wanted.  There would be a 6-8 week delay between purchase and delivery, so timing was going to be the issue. As it turned out, everything seemed to be about timing.

Less than a week after we returned from Portugal, we headed down to San Francisco to submit our residency visa application.  We stayed in a hotel right inside the edge of Chinatown.  At that point, news had started coming out about this virus in Wuhan.  Ann asked me if we should be concerned.  I said no, because there hadn’t been any reports of it appearing in the US yet.  I was wrong.  We now know that there were probably cases of it in the US already - definitely in Seattle, but probably in San Fran too.  Little did we realize that the Corona Virus was going to turn things upside down for most of us.  But would it interfere with our plans?

The way the residency visa works is that once you get it, you are allowed to enter Portugal twice in a 4-month period.  That gives you time to get an appointment with SEF to get a residency permit (which often takes several months to get), and to get your affairs in order.  If you are in-country and have an SEF appointment letter when your 4 months expires, you can stay in Portugal.  Fortunately, our SEF appointments were within our 4 month period.  Once we got the visa, the clock was ticking.  Once we got our SEF appointment, we had a drop-dead date to be in Portugal. With the damned virus around, timing was going to be critical.

In the meantime, we had to sell our house (which we did before we received our visa), and sell the Sportsmobile (which we did after we received our visa, about 10 days before our flight).  And . . . we had to order our couch!  But when?  We couldn’t order it too soon - we wouldn’t be there to get it.  Too late and we’d be sitting on the floor forever.

The COVID-19 precautions definitely kept us on edge - both from a Portugal and from a US perspective.  And definitely from a traveling perspective.  But we decided that as long as we could, we would press forward with the move.  Our fear was that flying would be banned and/or countries would start locking out other countries.  So the virus got worse in Portugal and they locked down well before we received our visa.  A few weeks later parts of the US locked down.  Then the US “reopened” and Portugal said they were staying locked down for at least another two weeks, but would probably open after that.

So we booked our tickets for several days after Portugal planned to re-open.  And I booked an Air BNB for 2 weeks, and a rental car for 3 weeks.  And, given it was about a month to go before we would arrive, we decided to order the couch.  What followed was a series of e-mails, requests to swap the arrangement of certain sections (it’s like the image immediately above), and the transferring of funds to their bank account.  A process that we’ve repeated on several occasions for a variety of matters.

And then we waited with crossed fingers.  As we expected, the US numbers started going up again.  Would that stop us?  But Portugal re-opened as planned and didn’t announce any restrictions.  We had our window to get there, and we took it.  Wearing masks the entire time.  Three weeks later the EU banned tourists from the US (it may have been possible for us to enter on our residency visas, but I’m glad we didn’t have to press that issue).

We contacted everyone that we were in-country.  We got the keys to an empty house and started transferring utilities into our names.  We hired assistance to help us get cell phones and do the utilities.  On our own we shopped to get some basic furnishings and, surprisingly, buy a car.  I established a great relationship with a bank clerk who speaks English and that has helped immensely.  We made a trip to Porto to a bed store - another made-to order thing.  So at first we slept on an air mattress until our bed got delivered.  We missed one delivery opportunity (a lost-bed weekend) because I hadn’t prepared for a phone call in Portuguese.  I didn’t pick up the phone.  After a call back to the store, we arranged for another date where we were certain to be home and for a rudimentary exchange over the phone to confirm that we were at home.  It worked.

That is the way it is.  There are times where folks don’t speak English, and definitely not nearly as many people in Braga speak English as they did in Porto.  Always, their English is better than my Portuguese.  I’m working again, and am still getting used to things, so I haven’t been really studying Portuguese yet.  Yet another thing on my plate.  But when the guys from the furniture store called, and it was a babble I really didn’t understand, it didn’t really matter because I had the wherewithal to mention the store name.  They said “sim” (yes) and I said “I’m at home” in Portuguese.  It was enough to let them know to make the delivery trip - after we’d been in the home for about 10 days (closer to the 8 week end than the 6 week end of things).

And that’s the way it’s been.  People have been incredibly gracious with the fact that we don’t speak Portuguese.  We make an effort, and I’ve come to master the phrase, “Desculpe, não falu Portuguese!” Which means, “Excuse me, I don’t speak Portuguese.”  Often between pigeon-English and pigeon-Portuguese and google translate (which doesn’t work when there’s no cell coverage!), we get things done.  David was right, the Portuguese are a really nice people.  I have no excuses, I must learn Portuguese, but in the meantime they’ve forgiven me so far.

When I can, I often try to prepare phrases or research how things need to get done.  Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  For now we try the best we can.  It seems like everything takes two hours.  At least.  And while some days seem to go smooth as silk, other days it seems that, despite our best efforts, we get absolutely nothing done.  Those days we just accept that fact and try not to get frustrated.  It’s going to be like that for awhile.

But we continue to move forward.

If you’ve been following the blog, you know we’re settling in.  Even without our household goods, we’ve got a nice living set-up to keep us going until the rest of our home arrives.  In some ways settling in has been easier than I’d expected, in other ways it’s taking a whole lot longer than I thought.

I guess I knew it would be like that.  Jumping through a lot of hoops, some things working out exactly the way you’d hoped, others seeing delays, and some unexpected opportunities that work out great.  Which is pretty much life.  And the way you get a to-order couch while moving from the US to Portugal.