Quem não arrisca, não petisca.

The title of today’s post “Quem não arrisca, não petisca.” is my absolute favorite Portuguese phrase. Literally translated, it means “Those who do not risk, do not snack.” It’s the Portuguese version of “No risk, no reward.” So simple, but a perfectly apt maxim for our grand adventure of living in Portugal.

One of the fun aspects of the government-sponsored Portuguese language class we are currently taking three nights per week at SMPs public school is that our teacher, Sandra, selects several students to do a brief “leitura” (reading) at the start of class. It’s a great exercise because it forces each of us to have a passage in our back pocket that is in line with our respective reading comprehension levels. The way the process works is we select our passage, do our best to translate it to English, and email it to Sandra. And when it’s our turn to read, Sandra projects the Portuguese text and our translation onto the whiteboard at the front of the classroom and has us read it aloud to the class. Everyone does something different. Some people do a passage from a Portuguese children’s book, which is right in the sweet spot for a lot of us. My first reading was a public service announcement about an upcoming train strike (the ticket taker’s union was having a strike – which meant the trains would be running but no one would be checking tickets). It’s a great judgement-free icebreaker to start class with, because it’s a Portugal-centric sharing exercise that demonstrates we are making progress but also that we ALL have LOTS of room for improvement in our vocabulary and pronunciation.

One of the younger students in our class is Hannah from Ucrânia (Ukraine). Hannah is an IT professional in her 20’s working remotely from Portugal. When it was Hannah’s turn to read to the class, she trotted out “Quem não arrisca, não petisca.” and I knew immediately that I’d found my Portuguese catchphrase.

Apropos of both risks and snacks: Jill, Woody, Bulleit and I have quietly reached the seven month mark since we all boarded our respective planes in Austin to embark on our grand adventure. In preparation for writing this post, I’ve been comparing notes with Jill. We are in agreement that on all the important metrics of getting settled into Portugal we feel like we are ahead of our most optimistic expectations. And we also agree that none of the things we were scared of have happened (or when they have happened it hasn’t been as big a deal as we were worried it would be).

The negative side of the ledger is pretty short:

• We continue to be inefficient in Portuguese because phone conversations are still beyond our abilities.
• We’ve had one failed bureaucracy interaction. Our attempt to get an EU health card got kicked back because the person taking our application didn’t make a copy of our residence cards. We will re-apply soon as having that card gets us reciprocal medical services anywhere we travel in the EU and UK. We aren’t planning on needing it, but better to have and not need…
• We are still sorting out the best option for Woody and Bulleit when we travel. We’ve got a pet hotel/doggy daycare place that loves having them. It’s a converted stable – the boys get the run of the place with other friendly dogs during the day and share a stall with a large bed to sleep in sleep in at night. Woody LOVES it, but all of the stimulation seems to stress Bulleit out and after a fews days he stops eating and starts throwing up. Last time around we asked them to give the boys an afternoon siesta in their stall so Bulleit could decompress, which they did, but then Woody rubbed his nose raw during Bulleit’s siesta trying to get out and play with his new friends. And it’s not as simple as just giving Bulleit a siesta and letting Woody play because then Woody would get anxiety from being away from Bulleit. We will figure it out, but until we do it’s a little stressful to leave them.
• Our address is a little unconventional in that we don’t have a street number so we have to be on high alert for anything where that can cause a problem. For example, EDP, the Portuguese utility company, sent a service tech out last week to do a courtesy checkup on our home electrical system and he called asking me to drop a pin so he could find his way to us. It turns out that EDP was missing the whole stanza of our address beyond the street name. I’ve tried once to get the missing stanza added to our address, but even though the customer service person told me it was changed it doesn’t appear to be updated in the EDP app.

On the plus side of the ledger:

• While we are routinely humbled by the most basic interactions, our Portuguese is coming right along. We have lessons with Leonor four hours per week and class with Sandra for six hours per week. Pronunciation is going to be a problem for a while. There are sounds in Portuguese that just don’t exist in English. We’ve been told over time we will develop the muscle memory to make those sounds. Example: The Portuguese word for bread is “pão”, which, as native English speakers we instinctively pronounce as “pow” – but the proper pronunciation is a nasal “pauwng”.
• We have found all of the absolute necessities to live the lifestyle we want to live. So far our big departures from the Portuguese Standard(TM) way of life are that we have a giant – by Portuguese standards – bed and a clothes dryer.
• On the restaurant front we’ve been able to find things that we like on every menu (of course toasties are widely available so that’s a bit of a layup for me). The only thing obviously missing is TexMex – but we grow our own jalapeños and are doing a passable job of making tacos at home. We were a little worried everything would be too seafood-forward for us, but that hasn’t turned out to be the case. We’ve recently added the Michelin-mentioned Sabores d’Itália, in Caldas da Rainha to our rotation for serious Italian food.
• As far as purchasing groceries we feel like we now know where to get all the things we need to cook comfort food. Shopping does often entail multiple stops. For example, I made chicken adobo a couple of nights ago and we had to make a swing by the only grocery store that regularly stocks scallions (Continente). But, Jill and I make the best of it. Shout out to Jill’s sister Stephanie, who turned us on to AnyList. We’ve got a running AnyList list for all five of our mainstream grocery stores: Pingo Doce, E. Leclerc, Continente, Mercadona, and Aldi. Whenever we happen by one of those outlets we pick up all of the accumulated things on the related list. About the only things we’ve conceded we will need to import from the US on regular basis are heavy duty aluminum foil and Costco-sized bottles of Ibuprofen and Benadryl. Ibuprofen and Benadryl can be purchased at the Farmácia here in SMP, but they only sell them in individual blister packs of 8 tablets. On the topic of pharmaceuticals: Another thing you have to get used to here is that grocery stores generally don’t have any medicines – all of that is purchased at a pharmacy.
• Being a car owner in a foreign country is going well. The Via Verde toll tag makes everything so easy from a tolls and parking perspective. The parking garages are certainly cosy, but Jill just closes her eyes while I navigate the tighter spots.
• Thanks to Woody and Bulleit, we’ve met a ton of people. When we are out walking the boys it’s not uncommon for someone we don’t know to stop us and ask if they can pet them, which leads to conversations – sometimes in English and sometimes in Portuguese.
• We haven’t had any of the difficulties we were warned about getting packages delivered. It may be a little convoluted, but it’s always worked out. When possible we use Locky – the locker system run by CTT – but even when we have something too big for a Locky locker we’ve always gotten our goods. Sometimes they come to our door and sometimes they drop them at a pickup point in town, but we always seem to get our stuff.
• And now… We have a new home!

We’ve spent the last two weeks getting settled in…

Much to Woody and Bulleit’s delight, we’ve taken delivery of an Emperor-sized bed (look it up – it’s a thing). We’ve also taken delivery of several appliances, including Jill’s prized clothes dryer, a TV, and some dehumidifiers.

A quick note on dehumidifiers: Our new home is on the end of a narrow finger of land projecting out into the capital-A Atlantic Ocean, which is no further than 200 meters away on three sides of us. Humidity is just a fact of life here and something that needs to be managed and mitigated. Those of you who know me well know that I take water VERY seriously when it comes to being a homeowner. My first line of defense includes four dehumidifiers – three in the main dwelling and one in the storage room in the garage.

My initial goal is to keep the relative humidity down below 60% whenever all the windows are closed. With the exception of the closet in the office, the dehumidifiers are currently doing the job. Fortunately, we also have these nifty passive dehumidifier bags to hang in our closets.

They’re pretty amazing. They have consumable desiccant beads in the top pouch and when the desiccant comes in contact with water it liquifies and gravity drains it down into the bottom pouch. When the crystals in the top pouch are gone the bottom bag will be full of liquid and it will be time to put in a new one. They last between a month and two months.

The primary test will be when it gets cold and wet for two weeks at a stretch during winter. If I need to call in reinforcements, our two split heat pumps also have a Dehumidify mode and can be added to the mix.

If you want to follow along at home, the live feed from our home weather station, including relative humidity, can be found here.

Back to the topic at hand, which is settling in…

We’ve made multiple trips to Hôma, a Portuguese home goods retailer. And we are at four trips to IKEA… and counting. All of my sixty-year-old joints are extra creaky from long sessions sitting on the floor cross-legged assembling IKEA purchases.

We’ve stocked our kitchen with Portuguese stoneware and glassware. And I’m gradually building up my cookware inventory piece-by-piece, with a bias toward made-in-Portugal items whenever possible. Jill is excited, because a couple of days ago we picked up an appropriate saucepan for me to make popcorn for her. We tried it out last night and it performed admirably. We bought some inexpensive, but perfectly adequate, flatware with the plan to ultimately replace it with Portuguese-made flatware from a specialty store in Lisbon, but between now and then we still need utensils.

Perhaps the seminal purchase was my new Instant Pot. I celebrated it arrival by making chicken adobo on one of our first nights in our new home.

Our patio furniture was delivered last week and we’ve purchased a new guest room bed which will be delivered in the next couple of weeks. It will be tight, but the new bed should be here before Jill’s parents arrive for their first visit on December 4th. From there on out it will be just decorating and figuring out how to optimize in the new space – both things that Jill and her mom can tackle when they are here.

I’m pleased to report that our 1Gb Vodafone fiber Internet connection is awesome and my wireless mesh network (using the existing wired network drops for backhaul) yields the Vodafone-advertised speeds with low latency everywhere in the house and garage.

Everyone seems to be settling in just fine…

Earlier this week the nice folks at Amazon Germany came through with a 2 meter tall pre-lit artificial Christmas tree. We will start decorating in earnest for Christmas next week. One of our 14 pieces of checked luggage when we made the move to Portugal was dedicated to our favorite Christmas keepsakes. My prediction is that Jill and her mom will do a fine job rounding out our Christmas decorations with new purchases at the various local Christmas markets we plan to explore during their upcoming visit.

In and amongst all of the move-related activities we’ve maintained a full social calendar.

We had a fantastic visit with my college roommate Jim and his wife Kay. They live in Germany and had never been to Portugal. They came to visit and were immediately smitten with SMP. We are planning to go visit them in Germany this spring. Spoiler alert: Jim and Kay have an important announcement coming sometime in 2025.

We’ve been trying to engage in more community events in SMP. We are now doing Tai Chi in the community room at the Bombeiros Voluntários (volunteer fire department) and we walked in the Cancer Awareness Walk around the bay.

Our Austin friends Ron and Mike, who are building a house in Famalicão – halfway between SMP and Nazaré – were in town to check on their construction project and we introduced them to our favorite French restaurant, Meu Jardim, which will be right in their backyard, and showed them around the various places we shop in Caldas da Rainha.

I’ll close with this… I still can’t believe how lucky we are to be on this adventure. And now that we have our new home base up and running the possibilities seem endless.

Adventure is out there! Plus, there’s the possibility of snacks.