Boas festas!

Regular readers will know that I usually write about the new or interesting things that Jill and I have discovered during our grand Portuguese adventure. To change things up a little, I’m going to start this post with things that seem to me to be the same the world over…

Homeowners’ Associations

One Saturday, Jill and I attended the annual COA (Condo Owners’ Association) meeting for our snug little compound here in SMP. We’d had the date circled on our calendar since the meeting was announced. Going into the meeting we knew that it would be conducted entirely in Portuguese, so we made plans to sit next to our lovely Portuguese-native neighbor Ilda in the extremely likely event there were some topics we couldn’t grasp with our rudimentary Portuguese. It’s not a stretch to say I was actually excited about the meeting. I viewed it as an opportunity both to see how such things go in Portugal and to have a go at a real-world Portuguese language comprehension test.

The COA administrator sent out a comprehensive packet (in Portuguese) via email a few days before the meeting. I pored over it so I could familiarize myself with the slated discussion topics. It was also a fascinating read in terms of seeing the full accounting of income and expense (along with who was behind on paying their COA fees).

It all started out well enough. Filipe (our property manager that Jill and I really like) and António (our beloved gardener) had been working hard all week to make the grounds look very nice. Jill and I arrived 5 minutes early to the community game room and saved a seat for Ilda. One of my favorite things about Portuguese culture is the sense of community. Almost every person who came into the room would stop at the door and survey the room and say something to the effect of “Boa tarde a todos!” (Good afternoon to all!) before picking up their packet and finding a seat.

Universal Truth #1: Administrators of home owners’ associations have a difficult and thankless job.

The meeting had a clear agenda and the first part of the agenda was to present the past year’s budget and performance against that budget in terms of income and expense. Everyone with a grievance completely ignored the agenda and lobbed in their grenades whenever they wanted to. The president of the COA handled it patiently and gracefully. He granted the bomb throwers a minute or two to talk themselves out and then noted the portion of the agenda where we would come back to that particular grievance.

Universal Truth #2: People only want what THEY want

And the corollary here is that people resent paying for ANYTHING that is not specifically what THEY want.

This condo development is about 30 years old and is generally in great shape, but there are certain capital-improvements and maintenance that need to be done.

For example, we have a full miniature golf course that gets a ton of use by kids and families, primarily in the summer time because that’s when school is out and families are here. The proposed budget put before the owners for this year included €4,000 to do some work on the mini-golf course to get it ready for next summer because some of the wood borders on the holes have weathered and splintered and the artificial turf has degraded over time. There was a surprisingly fierce verbal campaign waged by a group of residents who NEVER use the miniature golf course to spend the €4,000 removing the course instead of maintaining it so that they would never again have to pay for maintenance on something they don’t use.

Universal Truth #3: Petty squabbles between neighbors apparently happen everywhere.

I’m not making this up… There was a heated 20 minute exchange between two residents about one of them planting tomato plants in the common area outside of their balcony that would have otherwise had to have been landscaped by the COA.

In point of fact, there WERE tomato plants there LAST YEAR, but this year it’s been landscaped to match the rest of the compound. Editor’s note: I personally thought it was a great use of space and those were some of the healthiest tomato plants I’d ever seen. Plus, apparently, the planting of tomato plants was sanctioned in advance by our gardener, António. In spite of the fact the situation had already been remedied, we were treated to a cage-match between two people who don’t hold each other in high regard. The aggrieved party was throwing around words like “mentirosa” (liar) and “cadela” (female dog).

I could not understand why the other attendees were all shaking their heads and openly laughing during that exchange, but Jill explained it to me in our post-meeting debrief. The complaint, by the rogue tomato-grower’s upstairs neighbor, was worded as “Unauthorized Tomatoes”. Apparently in European Portuguese (I can’t speak for the Brazilians), the word “Tomates” (tomatoes) is also slang for testicles. So every time the complainant talked about what translates as “Unauthorized Testicles” there was a wave of giggles in the room. A more accurate, but far less sophomorically comical, complaint would have been that there were “tomateiros” (tomato plants) planted in an unauthorized area.

And to put an ironic bow on that particular vendetta, the tomateiro planter got the last laugh because she is now the newly elected COA representative, which I do not think the agitator was considering when hurling invectives.

In retrospect, we needn’t have worried about having allies to help with our fledgling Portuguese, but it was comforting to have people looking out for us. Our neighbor Bruno also sat near us and kept checking on me to make sure I was keeping up (or to let me know when someone was just bloviating). But here’s the GREAT news, I understood probably 75% of what was said – which is saying something because this was rapid-fire back-and-forth exchanges (sometimes emotionally charged).

In the end, every proposal in the packet that was distributed in advance of the annual meeting passed and Filipe got a well-deserved raise, which we were delighted to see.

Other than the discourse happening in Portuguese, this same scene could have played out at our homeowners’ association meeting in Austin.

Car Maintenance

Last week I took our trusty Renault Austral in for its annual scheduled maintenance at the Renault dealership in Caldas Da Rainha (a larger town just down the A8 from SMP). I already knew the drill from last year’s scheduled maintenance and this was another good experience with the nice folks at the dealership.

Universal Truth #4: Car dealership maintenance lounges are the same no matter where you are.

I cooled my heels in the dealership’s customer lounge for a couple of hours while they changed my oil and gave everything a good once over and threw in a car wash for good measure and drove off a happy customer.

Drunk Driving

Portugal, the country that drinks the most wine per capita in the world, has an extremely low tolerance for drunk driving. The legal limit here is 0.05% blood alcohol content (vs. 0.08% in Texas).

Universal Truth #5: Holiday Checkpoints for Drunk Driving

At the end of the year the GNR (Guarda Nacional da Repubicana), Portugal’s national police force, launches a well-communicated campaign to let us know that they’re stepping up enforcement. For several weeks before the start of GNR’s annual national drunk driving campaign, every radio station in Portugal and all the news outlets trumpet the upcoming no-refusal regime with the full support of the GNR (I attribute this to the GNR preferring to PREVENT drunk driving over having to enforce the penalties). During the actual campaign the GNR sets up checkpoints and waves motorists over for a field sobriety check. One thing that is different about traffic stops here in Portugal is that while they’ve got you pulled over for any reason they will run through a laundry list of possible infractions. In addition to the standard license, registration, and insurance checks they may check to make sure you possess the required roadside emergency paraphernalia (yellow-vest and orange hazard triangle) and have functional turn signals, brake lights, etc. Portugal also has a presumed-guilty citation scheme. If you are found in violation of minor regulations at a traffic stop by the local police or the GNR you pay your fine right then and there via debit card, credit card, or MBWay (Portuguese Venmo). And if you want to contest it later in traffic court, you are welcome to try. That might seem a little heavy handed to Americans, but it seems to work ok here and probably keeps the traffic court docket manageable. This is just my opinion, but I think the seriousness with which enforcement is carried out conveys the notion that driving a car here carries more social responsibility than it does where we came from.

Universal Truth #6: The Christmas season officially kicks off with Thanksgiving

Even though Portugal doesn’t celebrate American Thanksgiving, the holidays (or “festas” as they are known here) seem to kick off in conjunction with Thanksgiving. For example, SMP’s tree lighting ceremony this year was Friday November 28th, the day after Thanksgiving. And we’ve noticed that since that date it’s not uncommon for American Christmas music to be piped into our local cafés.

That brings us to the title of this post: Boas festas!

“Boas festas!” means “Happy holidays!” in Portuguese and any town big enough to have a town council in Portugal has some sort of “Boas festas!” display during the month of December. Generally speaking, the larger the town – the larger the decorating budget. I may be biased, but I think SMP punches above its weight in the decorating department.

A brief digression into Portuguese conversational niceties…

Another of my very favorite aspects of Portuguese culture is the variety of simple situationally-appropriate ways that native Portuguese speakers convey good wishes to each other at the end of every conversational interaction. Almost without fail, at the end of every personal conversation or commercial transaction, the Portuguese close with situationally-appropriate good wishes. It’s both charming (because the range of options available requires people to make a conscious choice as to what to close with) and intimidating (because if I initiate the closing exchange I often muck it up by choosing poorly – the main evidence of which is that the other party responds with something more apropos of the current situation).

A partial list of sign-off phrases that we’ve been on the receiving end of (with rough translations) is below:

• Bom dia! – (Have a) good morning!
• Boa tarde! – (Have a) good afternoon! (in Portugal it is “afternoon” from when you finish lunch until it is fully dark)
• Boa noite! – (Have a) good night!
• Bom fim de semana! – (Have a) good weekend!
• Boas ferias! – (Have a) good vacation!
• Boas festas! – Happy holidays!
• Boa Véspera de Natal! – Merry Christmas Eve!
• Boa Natal! (also Feliz Natal!) – Merry Christmas!
• Feliz Ano Novo! (also Bom Ano!) – Happy New Year!
• Beijinhos! – Kisses! (I originally thought the “-inhos” diminutive meant “tiny kisses” but it’s an indication that you are speaking to a friend or relative that you are truly fond of)
• Boa sorte! – Good luck!
• Feliz Pascoa! – Happy Easter!
• Ciao ciao! – A little bit of Italian culture creep that’s accepted as a friendly conversational goodbye particularly with people you don’t know well
• Ate a próxima! – Until next time!

During the month of December, “Boas festas!” is the table-stakes of conversational closing phrases and as Christmas approaches, people will start to stack a few things into their closing line. For example yesterday we had our last Portuguese lesson of the year with Leonor and as she was putting her coat on she wished us: “Boas festas, boa Natal, e boa ano!”

Back to the topic of the holidays… We really like the feel of the holiday season here in Portugal – but it’s the first time ever that it’s just me, Jill, Woody, and Bulleit for the holidays. We are keeping some old traditions. We’ve decorated the house and we’ve watched all of our traditional Christmas movies. We’ve had lots of fires in the fireplace. I’ve made eggnog.

We also ordered a copy of Paul Hollywood’s British Baking cookbook so that I could expand my repertoire during the holiday season. I will be making proper ginger biscuits on Christmas morning.

And we are establishing some new traditions. Tonight, Véspera de Natal (Christmas Eve), we are going to an open house that some Austin friends are having. On noite de Natal (Christmas night) our local Indian restaurant, New Royal, is having a buffet dinner – which Jill and I have signed up for (in lieu of traditional Chinese take-out) along with one of our recently arrived friends who doesn’t have anyone to celebrate Christmas with. And on New Year’s Eve we’ve got dinner reservations with other ex-pat friends in SMP at Baía Cultural that will lead into SMP’s spectacular midnight fireworks display. Our new traditions seem to be skewed toward making sure our new friends who are also far away from loved ones have some company during the holidays.

Now for a bit of bad news… I regret to report that Woody has developed a limp in his right rear leg over the last couple of weeks and after a few visits to the local vet here in SMP he’s been diagnosed with a knee ligament issue that, pending near-certain confirmation from a veterinary orthopedic specialist, will require a surgical repair. Woody is his normal happy self, but I’m a complete emotional wreck. And it’s Christmas Eve so we likely won’t have any forward progress for a little while. In the mean time we have to get a happy golden retriever to stay sedentary, which is not an easy feat. Bulleit doesn’t understand why he and I are going on walks without Woody – my working hypothesis is that Bulleit knows Woody is not 100% and also that he is just SURE Woody is at home getting extra snacks.

We are both hopeful that we will get Woody all sorted, but it’s going to be a stressful journey and a long recovery. In the mean time I will keep baking myself to distraction.

Woody’s current situation aside, 2025 has been a banner year for us here in Portugal and we remain beyond grateful to be on this grand adventure.

From Todd, Jill, Woody, and Bulleit to all of you…

BOAS FESTAS, FELIZ NATAL, e BOM ANO!

Adventure is out there!