September 25, 2025 • 59 mins
You've heard the things we struggle with on "Don't move to Portugal unless..." (And if you haven't, go listen to that episode!) It's time to talk about some of the things that surprised us about becoming expats in Portugal in the best ways.
Whenever you move to a country as an expat or an immigrant, you go there with lots of expectations. Most of your experiences will be very different from those expectations, some in difficult and painful ways and others in delightful and wonderful ways.
This week, we are talking about the delightful and wonderful surprises that we found when we moved to Portugal, from fresh orange juice machines to aging gracefully and a lot more.
We also hear some of the happy surprises of moving to Portugal from listeners Jane, Gareth, Ena, and Milos.
Want to connect? Instagram @expatslisten or expatslisten@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Expats Listen with Ryan and Liz, the podcast where
we tell the truth about living abroad, being expats, being
immigrants, and how things aren't always so picture perfect
as they might seem, but sometimes they're really hard
and sometimes there are beautiful, wonderful surprises.
(00:22):
I'm Ryan and I'm a South Africanliving in Portugal as an expat
now. And I'm Liz and I am originally
from New York and also living inPortugal.
So our episode Don't move to Portugal unless is one of our
most popular. If you haven't listened to that
one yet, go back and listen. You can come back to this when
(00:42):
you're done. We talk about some of the things
that you might not expect to be really difficult when you make
the move to Portugal, and so many of the things that both
Ryan and I were surprised by in the move to Portugal that really
kind of shook us and made us work a bit harder than we
(01:02):
expected to. So we've had a very long week,
just lots of admin, lots of these annoying inconveniences.
So we thought that this week would actually do something that
would be a little bit happier, maybe a topic that sort of
brings a bit of a smile to our face.
And what that is, is discussing the amazing surprises that we
(01:25):
got in Portugal, which certainlywe didn't expect, but changed
our lives in the best way. So, Liz, why don't you lead us,
Sofia? Alright, my first one is a small
one, but was a delight from day one that there are fresh orange
juice machines in almost every supermarket in the country.
So you know the machine where you put the oranges on top and
(01:47):
then they go down and they get squeezed into the bottle.
And these are not expensive. They are under a euro for a
small bottle, they're maybe €2.00 for a liter.
And fresh delicious orange juicecan be yours every single day in
this country. And I just think that that is so
(02:09):
cool. It's super cool.
I don't really like orange juiceas much as Liz does, so when I
go to the supermarket and I'm onmy own, I will always get Liz a
bottle of that juice. But my favorite thing about it
is just the mechanics of it. Yeah, You know, seeing the
orange go in from the top and then it gets squished and you
see it getting squished and the juice coming out.
(02:31):
I don't know why, but there's something so satisfying about
it. Like, you know, that it's real
juice. Like there's the juice that's
going to be in my tummy coming down this machine.
I really enjoy that too. And in the winter, the
pomegranate juice machines, I get very, very, very, very
excited about those. Yeah.
What's your first one, Ryan? Mine is a bit, mine is a bit
(02:53):
more of a deeper and existentialone than orange juice.
But one of the things that really blew me away when we
first moved to Portugal was the way in which older people carry
themselves. And you know, I hope this
doesn't offend anyone who's of acertain age.
Certainly we are there, if not approaching it very fast.
(03:15):
But once you get, I would say above like 404550, you know,
life goes in a different direction.
Your body changes, your feelingschange because you are at an
older age. I guess, you know, you're not
like decrepit or anything, but you are older.
And in our societies in outh Africa, and certainly in the
(03:37):
USA, there's a lot of chatter and media and just general
coverage of people really being unhappy about getting old.
And it's really sad to see. For sure, the makeup industry,
Botox, there are so many surgeries that people are
undergoing these days in order to look an age that they are
(04:01):
not. Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's a
humanity thing, isn't it? So it's not just now, it's
always been this disgust with ourselves of getting over the
hill. And I know that I expected that
to be almost universal, everyonefeeling the same way.
But when we arrived here, I was really taken aback by the fact
that so many people of that age are embracing it.
(04:25):
So you will see a woman walking down the road with glorious a a
full glorious head of Gray hair and.
And it's so normal and. It's so normal.
It's not it's she doesn't stand out for it.
He doesn't stand out for it's men as well.
And it's just such a nice thing to see.
You don't see ridiculous amountsof makeup being worn by people
(04:50):
who are a bit older trying to conceal it.
I don't really see too much Botox and fillers.
Almost never. Almost never.
I know that it is growing. I know that that is something
that's becoming more of a thing for more people, and I
understand why. But in my experience of Portugal
(05:11):
since I arrived, I think that that's one of my favorite things
because I think there's so much beauty in it.
It's a different kind of beauty.It's a different kind of grace.
It's a different type of dignitythat people have got.
I think grace really is the wordthere, that you're getting old
with grace. Growing old is a privilege, and
Portugal is the third oldest country in the world.
(05:33):
It is, yes. Portugal does have a significant
number of older people as the population and it's a big part
of how the country finds its identity, you know?
Completely. And I don't think that people
are running away from the idea of getting old.
They're looking at it as a privilege.
They're looking at it as something that is good in
(05:56):
society to have older people, torespect those older people, that
they have a real police in society known as pushing them to
the margins. And I think that not being
scared of getting older is really part of respecting the
(06:16):
people who are already older. Yeah, I think it's awesome.
It's just really one of those nice things to see about a
society where older people are valued, older people feel they
have a place. Yeah.
There's a level of respect that's extended to all people,
regardless of the age they carry.
It's really cool. And that was one of my favorite
(06:37):
things that surprised me when I moved here.
What's your next one? My next one is the sport of
paddle. So before we moved to Portugal,
I had never heard of paddle and when we came to Lisbon we saw
these paddle courts everywhere and didn't really think too much
of it. We were rowing when we were in
Lisbon and just kind of didn't have time and didn't have the
(06:59):
interest. And when we moved to Sioux Ball
we started playing tennis a little bit and then some friends
of ours were like, oh, do you want to play paddle with us?
We said sure, why not? So we started this game and you
guys, paddle is such a cool sport, It is so fun.
(07:20):
Yeah, so paddle is one of the sports that really bites into
you in terms of the fanaticism of it very quickly.
So after you have your first session, you are going to just
fall in love with the sport and you're on your way on some kind
of paddle journey. Just a quick description.
Paddle is basically tennis in a box.
So you play double S2 on 2 and it is a tennis ball.
(07:45):
It's a racket sport, so you've got a racket.
It's a little bit different thana tennis racket, but you're
hitting a tennis ball with your racket.
The rules are the same as tennisbasically, except for the fact
that you're in a box. So after the ball bounces on the
ground, it can bounce on one of the walls and then you can still
play the ball. And what this meant is that when
we were playing tennis as very below average tennis players, we
(08:11):
spent maybe 50% of the time we were playing chasing the ball,
maybe even more than that. But with paddle, you're never
chasing after the ball. You can keep playing the
rallies, go for a lot longer andit feels so much more exciting
and I think that's where that bite comes from because you
really feel like you are achieving something, even if
(08:34):
you're at a very below average level.
Well, that's it. So certainly we have been at a
very low level for a long time and I expect us to stick around
there for another long time. But I think one of my favorite
things about it is being able toplay with people who are much
better than you or much worse than you and still have fun.
(08:54):
Whereas when you play tennis, ifyou're playing against someone
who's really good, man, like there is not going to be any
kind of competition or rally, sothe points are going to be over
immediately and you're going to spend most of your time just
picking up the ball like a sucker on a hot day.
So paddle really gets everyone involved.
It's properly about fun, which Ireally enjoy.
(09:16):
And a big part of it is that there are four players on the
court at the same time, so it's very, very easy to use paddle to
make friends, and both of us have done that completely.
I think that's, you know, there's no way of hiding from
the fact that Paddle has been atthe forefront and a big platform
of our entire social life, and it's really played such a big
(09:38):
role for us in making friends and creating relationships and
building community. So many of the people who we
call close friends and family now in Portugal have been part
of our paddle journey. And if I look back, it's very
seldom that I actually fantasizeabout actually playing paddle as
(10:00):
a sport because I'm so bad at it.
But he's lying. He's very good.
But I think having that time with people, being able to share
it as an experience that you're doing, it's really so healthy
because you're doing something that's good for you physically,
you're doing something that's good for you mentally, You're
outside most of the time, you meeting new people and it's just
(10:25):
really such a good thing. I'm part of a group of guys who
play a couple of times a week. And really, you know, it's
almost a bit stereotypical whereif someone says, hey, how do men
relate to each other? How are they supposed to manage
stress? And one of the cliche
(10:45):
suggestions is, have you ever tried joining a Sports Group
with some men similar to you? And yes, I do.
I have. I have a group of men just like
that. And we go and we play.
And it's really interesting because so often, you know, we
play a very low standard of pedal.
Sometimes the ball will go up inthe air and it's set for an
amazing smash that could look like it came out of the sports
(11:07):
highlight, and a guy will hit the ball as hard as he possibly
can straight into the ground in complete failure.
But that action is not necessarily about the sport,
it's sometimes about getting ridof the frustration that he's
carried for the rest of the weekand now he's got the opportunity
(11:28):
to get rid of that. And then we will all have a
laugh at him and then he will laugh too.
And then we'll have a drink after the game and everyone's
feeling better and he's in much better shape going home to his
family. And I think having that
opportunity for us all has been such a blessing, really.
It's true. We need those outlets.
And I think before we found Paddle, most of the socializing
(11:51):
that we were doing was do you want to meet for a drink?
Do you want to meet for food? Meeting for a drink?
Meeting for food is fine, but but it's so much nicer to me
when we meet for sport and we play some sport, we play some
paddle and then have the drink afterward, or we play some
paddle and then have the food afterward.
I love meeting people at the gym, meeting people for paddle,
(12:13):
meeting people for an activity before the food or the drink.
I just think that my mind is more clear.
I enjoy myself more and we open up so much more.
When you just meet for a drink, you kind of talk about the same
things. But when you meet for paddle
first and you're sweating and you're moving and you've done
(12:34):
something that you thought was amazing and then you did
something that was so ridiculousthat everyone had to laugh at
you. It opens up a different part of
your brain and it really does allow you to and relax and talk
more deeply about your life. Yeah, I would agree.
And I think more than that as well is that we end up going to
(12:56):
some interesting places. We meet people who we never
thought we would would have met.Yeah, we experience things that
we would have never experienced.We've got a couple that we play
with in a town that's maybe 20 or 30 minutes outside of our
hometown who we play with maybe once a month.
And we would never go to the town that they live in if it
(13:17):
wasn't for US playing paddle with them on that once a month
occasion. And it's really such a treat to
be able to say, well, we've got friends in a tiny little village
that we would have never maintained a relationship with
those people if we weren't playing that paddle game.
And you know, I know for us it'spaddle.
For other people that could be kayaking, it could be playing
(13:39):
tennis, it could be going on hikes.
But having that healthy, positive activity to build some
type of social community with and keep yourself active has
been so transformative for us since we arrived.
And when we arrived, we had no idea the sport even existed.
Exactly. I think that's the whole point
of this happy surprise is that it's a sport that we never even
(14:01):
heard of and we had no idea existed, and now it's such an
integral part of our lives. We are literally playing paddle
3-4, sometimes five times a week.
Yeah, no, it's, it's really beena, a fun journey.
It's really been nice to to pluginto that.
All right. What's your next one, Ryan?
Happy surprise. Happy surprise.
(14:22):
In the mid 90s, my mom perfectedher sponge cake recipe and
really just a plain white cake that she would bake maybe once
every couple of months. And it was not even frosted.
It was just made in a cooking pot and put in the oven and used
(14:48):
as a baking tin. And it was so comforting and it
was so simple. And the day my mom made her last
sponge cake for me was the last day that I ate that sponge cake
obviously. And for the rest of my life, I
sat and thought, well, I will always remember that cake as
(15:09):
being the best cake that I had ever eaten just because if it's
nostalgia and what it meant to me.
And I gave up ever having that cake.
And then Fast forward to me starting my new life here in
Portugal. I went down to the local Pingo
Dose, which is the little supermarket across the road from
(15:31):
us, and I saw they had a confectionery treat a little
cake for sale for $0.60. $0.60. And I thought, you know what,
I've lived here for so long, letme start eating more of the
pastries that they offer in thiscountry.
And I bought this particular little cake and I took it home
(15:53):
and I ate it, and it was exactlythe same as my mom's sponge cake
from the 90s. And they sell hundreds or
thousands of these things at every little bakery and corner
cafe in the Portuguese world. And it's called cake, but it's
(16:14):
spelled QUEQUE, so we call it KK.
KK, it's a bit sassy but but yes.
And they've got this delicious KK that they sell in the
supermarket. At any time you can go in and
buy this and it tastes exactly like my childhood.
What's your next one, Liz? All right, so my next one is
that small towns in Portugal arefull of so much more personality
(16:40):
and vibrancy than we had expected.
I think it's really interesting when you talk about where do you
want to go in Portugal and people are listing off these
bigger places and these bigger cities and even bigger, like
touristy places that people really enjoy going to.
(17:01):
Our favorite places in Portugal are probably the places that we
had never heard of before and the places that are so small and
so unique. Like Luso stands out to me,
which is a tiny, tiny town in the north interior of Portugal.
(17:22):
And, and it was stunningly beautiful and we had such a good
time there. And the only reason we stayed
there is because we happened to find a cheap hotel that was dog
friendly and we were like, oh, that looks nice, let's go there.
And then we were blown away by the small town.
And that has happened to us so many times to the point where
(17:44):
now I'm not choosing where to goin Portugal based on the town
anymore. I'm choosing based on a hotel or
an Airbnb and choosing a property that looks kind of cool
and then we just explore whatever is nearby when we're
there. And I think it's been such a
cool way to see the country because I, I never would have
(18:06):
heard of most of these places. And I'm not looking for any kind
of stereotypical experience. I think there's real beauty in
arriving in a place and knowing nothing and being like, OK,
let's see, like, what do you have to offer?
And then we are almost always pleasantly surprised.
I think it's been huge for us inhow we've experienced this
(18:29):
country because all of a sudden it went from, well, we're going
from point A to point B for thisexperience.
And now it being everything frompoint A to point B is going to
be the experience. And I don't know how many times
you've stumbled into a place that we didn't even know existed
(18:49):
and find something really like, wow, I can't believe that
exists. Did you see how stunning that
was? You see how interesting this
was? And there isn't even any mention
of it on Google Maps or any reasonable mention of it on
Google search results or anything.
So much of this stuff isn't evendocumented, and you would only
(19:09):
even know that it's there by going there and experiencing it.
And I'll go further and maybe bea little bit controversial, I
would say, and kind of celebratethe fact that it isn't readily
available to everyone. Yeah.
That it isn't publicized and puton some type of BuzzFeed list
(19:32):
and that they aren't 10,000 really bad Instagramers telling
the world to go to each one of these places because I really
feel like that's the fastest wayfor those places to get
destroyed. I'm so tired if I'm honest of
going to places and paying 25 times the price for a cup of
(19:55):
coffee because this wasn't someone's Instagram reel.
They've got 35 billion views. I'm so tired of not being able
to take a seat and have a small meal at a place because I can't
get a table there because. Someone who was very loud and
colorful on Instagram said this is the best something in the
(20:17):
world ever. And you know that whole, you
know that whole that whole spiel.
For sure, and in Portugal there are so many tourists, especially
in the summer. Lisbon is packed with tourists,
but as soon as you go to the interior of the country, as soon
as you leave the coast, you can find these towns that really are
(20:39):
small and quite Portuguese still.
They're not made for tourists anymore.
They're still. Because that's The thing is that
I, I think that what's nice is that a lot of these small towns
have these really cool attractions about them, these
really cool characteristics. But what's really nice is the
(20:59):
fact that those little characteristics might not be
enough to develop massive infrastructure around it and
bring the whole world there. So are you really going to
travel from Lisbon and travel two hours, let's say during the
summer into an area where the temperatures upwards of 45° for
(21:19):
you to swim in a little tidal pool fed by a mountain stream?
It's an incredible experience. It really is.
But I don't know if it's worth doing the two hours to go and
get there. And I'm kind of glad that you're
not going to do it because I'm willing to go do it because it's
such a unique and special experience.
And yeah, I know it's, you know,if, if anyone's out there saying
(21:42):
Ryan's gatekeeping, you know, I'm going to have trouble
disagreeing with you all. Right.
Well, what's your next one, Ryan?
So many children around the world are so annoying.
It's a plague. It's a problem that we have
discovered across this planet. So many parents saying no, I
(22:07):
would Our children will never hear the word no because we
heard it when we were kids and it damaged us.
And so now these children are all terrible.
But in Portugal, one of the things that really I was not
expecting was how children are treated by their parents and
(22:29):
general society as being integrated into the experience
that we all share in a particular place and they are
held to a standard that makes sure that we're all OK.
Parents are so even tempered andreasonable with their children
(22:49):
in what I've seen in making surethat they behave well and even
when a child does lose control at times.
Because children are children, they aren't really dealt with in
any extreme way, but dealt with in quite a cool, calm and
collected way so that everythingcan continue almost as normal in
(23:10):
whatever situation that happens to be.
So if you're at a supermarket and you know, little Joao, who's
three years old, is not getting the sweetie that he wants and he
starts crying and it does happen, Number one, that crying
isn't very extreme or very like violent or anything.
Yeah, it's not accompanied by like, throwing himself on the
(23:30):
floor and kicking and screaming.Thrashing about or anything like
that. And even with the little bit of
reaction little baby Joao's giving his mom, Joanna is just
going to have a quiet word with him and say, listen, this is
what's going to happen. This is what's not going to
happen. And little baby Joao is back on
track, you know? And I've really come to
(23:52):
appreciate that. I think that there's almost
something to learn about that because not only does it make
such a big difference at that age for everyone, but I think it
also goes such a long way in creating children who become
adults eventually, who still have an even sense of temper and
an even way of looking at the world and some reasonable level
(24:15):
of emotional and impulse control, which really is good.
I think you see it at every stage because yes, you're not
seeing tantrums from the three and under crowd, but you're also
seeing 8 year olds, 789 year olds who are able to go to the
supermarket by themselves and goto the beach with their friend
(24:37):
and they have a lot more freedomand they don't abuse it.
And then you're able to see groups of teenagers get together
and have a wholesome night of karaoke before they go to their
grandma's house for dinner. And I think that there's really
something to be said about not being so controlling of these
(25:02):
children that they're getting introuble for every single thing,
and also not being so loose withthese children that they can get
away with anything. And I think it's really created
this great balance because what you're saying, I agree
completely. The level of respect that
children have for all other members of society seems really
(25:25):
high, and I think that they do have a good amount of freedom to
see who they are. Yeah, I think that's really a
great thing to, to to experience.
And one of my favorite things about that is watching young
people, teenagers, hang out withthe older family members because
(25:47):
I remember in my day being so, like, embarrassed and mortified
of needing to hang out with the old people everywhere.
And like, Portuguese children just don't have that in general.
I love being able to witness real families spending real
quality time where they're all invested.
(26:09):
No one is feeling embarrassed orshy because they're holding
grandma's hand up and down the stairs at age 16.
They're there. They're invested in that
experience, and I love it. But I think that, you know, the
people who are responsible, the parents for creating this really
deserve that credit. Completely.
Next one, Lizzie. All right, so my next is that
(26:31):
Portugal is a small country and nothing's really more than a
three hour drive away from Lisbon.
But it's so much more diverse than I expected it to be, with
different cultures and customs and weather and terrain.
And you really can get a quite different experience with a
(26:52):
short drive. In our episode Don't Move to
Portugal unless we did tell you that there is generally no air
conditioning or heat in Portuguese houses.
And one day it was around 40°C, which is 104°F.
And I was looking at the weatherand trying to figure out when it
(27:13):
might cool down a bit. And I noticed on the weather map
this little dot of a different color, and it was in a town
about an hour away, and it said that it was only 30° there,
which is 86°F. So this 10°C difference, 20°F
difference is massive, especially when you're just
(27:34):
sitting there melting. And I said to Ryan, do you think
it's true? I did not think it was true.
I think it was lies. I think that it was an
inaccurate with a map. He did not believe it at all and
I was like come on, come on, let's just go and let's see,
Let's bet. If it is actually 30° there, I
(27:55):
get €20. If it's not then you get €20.
The money wasn't the thing for me, it was the pride.
It was knowing that I was right,the victory.
In that, I wanted the money. I also wanted the pride, but I
wanted the money. And we get in the car and we
start driving and it's 40° and we drive for about 15 minutes
and still 40°. We drive for 10 more minutes and
(28:18):
now we're almost halfway and it's 41.
And now I'm really starting to sweat because I'm going to lose
this bet and I do not want to lose this bet.
But it said that it was 30°. It has to get cooler.
It has to, and we're still driving and we're still driving
and now Ryan is talking a lot ofsmack.
It's getting hotter. It's not even, it's not even
(28:39):
slowly getting cold. It's getting hot, like it's
worse than it was when we were at homeless, damn it.
And we keep driving and then allof a sudden when we're about 10
minutes away, it goes 393837. And I'm like, right, right.
Look, look, look, look, look. Because it's displayed on the
(29:00):
dashboard of the car and we could both very clearly see it.
And now we get to about 33, and that's when Ryan starts to
sweat. It was not not my finest moment
and I still believe there was witchcraft involved in this
whole thing. And we keep going and we keep
going. And as we drive into the sign
that says welcome to this town, it changes over to 30° and I was
(29:26):
victorious. And it actually was a 10°C
difference with a one hour drive.
And it was incredible because that 10 degrees Celsius, 20°F
was the difference between beingquite miserable and being quite
comfortable. Yeah, we ended up actually
having quite a nice day that day.
We were able to walk around, we had some ice cream, we had a
(29:49):
pizza. We sat outside.
It was actually quite pleasant. Whereas where we were coming
from our hometown, things were, I mean, like the, the, the road
was melting a little bit. That's how hot it was getting.
So things really did take a drastic turn just 60 minutes
away from our house. And I think that's something I
definitely didn't expect when coming to Portugal, that you
would be able to get to something that felt so different
(30:11):
in such a short time. Yeah.
I mean, I think that's a big thing that a lot of people don't
realize when they move to a place like Portugal, the variety
of sort of biospheres and the diversity in how the, you know,
the country's put together, but also how close it is.
So, you know, where we live is abit more central in the country.
(30:33):
So we've got a unique, I don't know, habitat that we live in.
And if you go north, it's a lot greener.
There are these forests, it's a lot wetter, there's a lot more
rain. And then if you go further South
or down to the bottom to the Algarve, you're almost walking
into sort of a Moroccan, North African kind of climate, and
it's completely different. And even within those areas, you
(30:56):
can go to different places within those three different
areas and the interior or the coast, and it gets even more
different, you know, And I thinkthat's such an amazing thing to
live in such a small country with so much diversity.
And I absolutely love it. And you don't need to travel
very far to go and experience it.
You can do something different every weekend.
(31:16):
And that's what we've been doingand we've gotten the opportunity
to see and experience so much variety it's been.
Really cool. It's been really great.
And what's your next one, Ryan? So when I first heard about
Portugal as a potential place for us to live, Liz said to me,
(31:37):
I just want you to know no one speaks a word of English in that
country. You are going to be so screwed,
Ryan. Good luck to you pal.
To be fair, I had really only been to a very small part of the
very northeastern tip of Portugal where not a lot of
(31:57):
people spoke English. And I was assuming that the rest
of the country was like that. And I just said to him, I wanted
to warn him that he would need to learn Portuguese and he would
need to learn it quickly. So she used that tiny experience
to terrorize me. And yeah.
And so she said, no, look, you know, you need to know how to
speak Portuguese, man. That's not a that's not a
(32:20):
negotiable. You're going to struggle if you
go there and you don't know how this language works.
And I was prepared for that, honestly, when I first arrived.
And it took a while for me to suss out what the actual
situation was. And even if Liz was 100%
correct, I would have needed to have figured out what that would
have meant for me. And you know it.
(32:41):
It took some time and then I discovered that pretty much
everyone under the age of like 40 speaks English incredibly
well and in certain situations they quite enjoy speaking
English. They enjoy practicing their
English, they enjoy teaching youPortuguese, they enjoy having a
(33:03):
little giggle at your efforts atthe language, They ask for help
in their English, and they're just nice, nice people.
And I really wasn't expecting somany people to speak English.
That was the big surprise for me.
And I think even to this day, I'm really sometimes quite
annoyed by the fact that so manypeople speak English from
(33:26):
Portugal because it really sometimes holds me back from
developing my Portuguese skills.So I would go to a restaurant, a
coffee shop for a haircut or whatever it might be, and start
having the conversation in Portuguese with my admittedly
terrible Portuguese. And the person who I'd be
speaking to would just be very quick to switch to English
(33:47):
because they just want to save themselves so much stress of
needing to listen to me Babble like a little baby Portuguese
person. And I, yeah, I don't know.
I'm, it's, it's, it's bittersweet, You know, it's,
it's easier for me, of course, when things are done in English.
But I know that it holds me backfrom integrating further into
(34:07):
society. So yeah, English is a lot more
widely spoken out here than I ever expected, and certainly a
lot more than Liz told me all. Right, Ryan, what's next for
you? Quick one, accessible, delicious
fresh fish. It is not something that I grew
(34:28):
up eating, it's not something that's really available for most
South African people in general,and I feel very sad for not
having enjoyed fish up until moving here.
And in Portugal, you're able to go down to the market, you're
able to go down to a good restaurant and get some of the
best fish that you will ever experience over the course of
(34:51):
your life. And I would encourage anyone who
hasn't eaten much fish in life to actually give it a go if and
when they come to Portugal, because you build up a habit of
saying no to fish because you never really ever ate it.
And so you miss out potentially when you come here and you don't
gravitate towards this actually amazing thing.
(35:13):
And I would say this, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a big fan of
encouraging people to spend excessively.
But if you do get the opportunity to come to Portugal
and you go to a good fish restaurant, get the biggest fish
that you can afford, because thebigger the fish, generally the
better it tastes. And you can share it.
(35:33):
Obviously you're getting a bigger fish.
You're going to share it with four people, six people.
If you can get a group of peopletogether and order a giant fish,
you are going to have an amazing.
Meal. It's so luxurious.
Honestly, Liz and I today when we're in Portugal, we look at
getting fish as being such a treat.
(35:54):
I don't order steak when we go out, I don't generally order
chicken when we go out. If we're going to go out for
dinner, I'm going to say let's go get fish because they'll cook
it so well, the fish will be so good and we'll get the best fish
we can get at the time and I feel like it's such a treat.
And that really is such a surprise for you because living
in South Africa, you never went out for fish.
(36:17):
That was not a thing that you did.
No, I'm very glad and I'm very grateful I get the opportunity
to eat good fish as often as I do these days.
We are slowly trying to get better at making it at home.
But you know, that's a big confidence thing.
And we've done, we've done it once or twice.
Yeah, both times successfully. And hopefully as we, as we grow
(36:39):
in confidence, we'll do it more often.
OK, what's your next one? Let's.
All right. My last one is that Portugal is
so unbelievably dog friendly andthis is something that I
expected some level of dog friendliness coming from the USI
think I expected to be able to take the dog to a few places
(37:02):
here and there. I think from South Africa you
weren't really expecting to takea dog anywhere.
We. Don't take our ducks, No.
But in Portugal, Henry can basically come everywhere with
us and I think it's so amazing. And also, people really treat
(37:22):
their dogs like family in a different way than I've seen in
the US. So in the US, people treat their
dogs like family in that they'reconstantly buying things for
them and feeding them the best food and making sure that
they're very well taken care of.But they often leave them at
home to go to places because they wouldn't be allowed in
(37:44):
Portugal. Henry's allowed in the shopping
mall, Henry's allowed in all restaurants.
He's allowed in 90% of the places that we go.
And most dogs are not on the lead because they're so well
trained and so well behaved and,and they interact really well
(38:05):
with each other because they're well trained and well behaved
and they're not a problem. And I think that because of
this, everywhere is welcoming todogs, even places that might
have a sign that says no dogs. We show up with our dog and
people are like, oh, no, don't worry, he's fine.
Like come. On there's like some discretion
(38:26):
around the whole thing. It's not like this giant wild
animal that you've dragged in from the Bush or anything like
that. It's this tiny, handsome little
gentleman, and he's very charming in the way that he
looks and he behaves. So he gets a little bit of
special treatment here and therefrom everyone.
But now I would agree, Portugal's really good when it
comes to to taking into account the role of animals in our
(38:48):
lives. Can I say one more thing before
we move on to the next section? I did want to say that, you
know, we're sharing all of thesesurprising and wonderfully good
things that we experienced in Portugal and I'm really glad
we're talking about it. But I also want to say that I
know that there are a lot of people who might listen to this
and very quickly bring up exceptions of, oh, you know
(39:12):
what? You ate that cake, but I had
cake once and it was terrible. Or, you know, like you, you're
speaking so highly of Portuguesechildren and I know a Portuguese
child that's terrible. And, you know, and I and I know
that that's what's happening. And, you know, I want to draw
attention to the fact that so much of the media that we
consume and that's forced down our throats really is
(39:34):
highlighting those exceptions and creating false impressions
of what a place is like based onthose terrible exceptions that
are being pushed into our faces.And I know that there are a lot
of people who get triggered and engage in knee jerk behavior
that is very negative, that's attached to negative depictions
(39:58):
of what's going on around the world.
Really. It's not just Portugal.
And I would say bear in mind that not a lot of people take a
lot of time to talk about how nice the fish is in a place.
Not a lot of people take time tocreate content or make videos or
create a podcast or sing a song about how nice the fresh orange
(40:20):
juice is at the supermarket. And that's the problem is that
there's no balance. And so please, if you are aware
of there being exceptions to thestuff that we're saying, we know
it too. But we're actually talking about
what we see on a day-to-day basis.
And maybe it's not so bad that we feel that there's good stuff
(40:42):
about society, too. Let's move on to the next
section. I love it.
So now we're going to hear from some other expats in Portugal.
So first we have Jane, who is Welsh but spent 30 years of her
life in Hong Kong before moving to Portugal.
And Jane says that Portugal actually felt like it was a home
(41:04):
because it was so much like Macau.
And it was familiar because she felt like she already knew a bit
about Portuguese culture becauseshe had been to Macau so often.
And I think that's so interesting because you don't
think of all of these Portuguesecolonies that have kept parts of
(41:24):
Portuguese culture. And I know this is a whole
conversation on colonialism and how terrible it was, and we're
not condoning any of that by anymeans.
But I think it is interesting tosee the parts of the culture
that stuck and the parts of the culture that were able to stand
(41:45):
the test of time. Oh, I would agree.
One of my favorite things about Portugal is the interesting ways
that have contributed towards the world's cultures.
I know that as you say, I know that there's all of this
conversation around colonialism and I and I get that there's a
time and a place for that, but Ireally, I'm so taken aback
sometimes when you hear about the story that vindaloo carry is
(42:10):
from Portugal. It's a It's a portmanteau of
wine and garlic that creates that the.
Bean and allio are wine and garlic.
That's it. I didn't know that.
And samosas and. Samosas are Portuguese, they're
not Indian. I mean they are Indian now, but
that was the introduction and there's so many of these
interesting things. I come from a place in South
(42:31):
Africa called Kwazulu Natal. Natal means Christmas, and
that's Portuguese in Portuguese,and that's associated to the
travel around that particular part of the world by Portuguese
sailors hundreds of years ago. And you know, it's such a
fascinating thing. And when Jane talks about Macau
being so similar to what mainland Portugal is like,
(42:52):
that's really so fascinating. Wow.
Our next one is also from Jane and she says we moved to
Stubball without any knowledge of the place or where we would
live and it turned out to be themost perfect place for us.
So it was taking a chance and itreally working out for us.
And I think this one is so amazing too, that some people
(43:15):
are going to plan every single part of their move abroad and
they're going to take six years to meticulously figure out
exactly where they're going to go and what they're going to do.
And other people like Jane and like us, are going to be a bit
more spur of the moment about it, a bit more spontaneous.
And I think that when you roll those dice, it is great to hear
(43:40):
from someone else who rolled thedice and it worked out.
Yes, you know that it's it's a it's a very high stakes game
playing that. And really, sometimes it's nice
to see it working out for peopleand giving hope for wherever it
is that you might go and that, and I mean that even for people
who for whom it doesn't work onetime because the next time you
(44:02):
tried, it might work because it sometimes can be that random.
And I'm super glad it worked outfor Jane, because she's awesome.
I know we love Jane. She's.
Such a great lady. All right, my turn, Gareth,
who's also from Wales and a great paddle player.
He talks about finding out that Portugal is so relaxed, more so
(44:23):
than Spain and the other countries he knows in Europe,
especially the UK. The vibe is definitely more
family orientated and more personal.
No one speeds you along and is happy to have a chat, which is
frustrating for other people, but it's so great if you're not
working and you have that time. And I think that's really such a
good point that he he made thereof time of the relationship
(44:48):
between Portugal, Portuguese people and time.
It is a double edged sword. There is incredible frustration
when you need to move really quickly sometimes and that's not
the natural speed of the country.
But then when you do have a moment where you want to soak in
being alive and living and feeling and breathing, I don't
(45:14):
know, I've got to say, I think Portugal might be up there in
being a spot where you can be pretty damn human in realizing
your own existence, experiencingthat in its fullness.
And even when in that depth is good and bad in the sense that
it might psych you out because you're going to need to ask
(45:36):
yourself some very real questions because you'll be
alone with your thoughts becauseeverything's moving that slowly.
And it can be something that might allow you to answer some
of those questions and teach youabout yourself and allow you to
experience your own existence ina very new and interesting way
if you're coming from somewhere else.
It's true. It forces you to slow down, and
(45:58):
I think that you can react to that with frustration or
acceptance. Well, both, I feel sometimes,
yeah, yeah. Because I think there's some
days where I get very frustratedat the Pingodess line where I'm
buying my KK and someone's talking nonsense at the at the
tailor and, you know, I'm waiting to get back home to eat
(46:19):
my KK. And then there's other times
where late on the same day I'm sitting and I'm eating my KK and
no one is on my, on my, on my case trying to get things done
and I'm just able to enjoy it. And I feel like I'm not able to
enjoy it that way in many any other places, you know?
So yeah. All right, Next up, we have
Anna, who is originally from Serbia and actually the reason
(46:42):
that we moved to Stubal in the 1st place because she was living
there, invited us over for a barbecue and the rest was
history. And Anna says, I think even if
bureaucracy is slow, I was surprised that people that we
had contact with were always kind and helpful.
I think that this one is a really great point, because as
(47:06):
frustrating as the bureaucracy in Portugal is, and it is, and
everyone will tell you that it is, the people that you're
dealing with throughout the process of that bureaucratical
disaster are generally not jerks.
No, I think, I think everyone accepts the awfulness of the
(47:30):
bureaucratic process together. And in a in a very frustrating
and weird way, There's some beauty around it.
The people who are behind the desk are not happy about being
there. You're on the other side of the
desk, you're not happy about being there.
You're both frustrated that the policy and the system that
(47:50):
you're needing to use is terribly outdated and
inefficient, and it's making life difficult for both of you.
And everyone is just trudging through the mud at the same
speed trying to get to where we're going.
And I think that there have beenso many times where I've even
connected with people who are trying to help me as best they
(48:13):
can in accepting the fact that, like, yeah, we don't know why
it's this way, do you? And, you know, we're just, we're
just doing what we can. And you have a bit of a laugh
sometimes, you know. So next step we have Milos,
who's married to Anna and is also from Serbia.
And he says that people in Portugal have a relaxed vibe.
For example, when they go out, people are chilled and relaxed
(48:36):
and aren't really in a rush. And that is really such a
quality experience to to go through because it's not just a
case of it being on one particular evening where
everyone's relaxed. It's something that you can
actually bank on, which I think really changes the way in which
you experience things. One of our favorite things to do
(48:57):
is to sit in the town square andhave a cup of coffee or a small
beer. And if you just sit there long
enough, maybe like 1520 minutes,someone that you know is going
to walk past and they're going to definitely be able to stop
and have a drink with you and talk about what they've been
doing for the day and where they're off to and what they're
(49:18):
going to be doing this weekend. And that's one of my favorite
things about the place. Yeah, me too.
I think there's been so many times where we've been sitting
in that square and not expectinganything and then you see
someone and end up spending 4 hours with them because it is
this real vibe of no rush, relax, chill and let's see where
(49:41):
the night will take us. Yeah, no, it's really an awesome
thing. The other thing that that Milos
raises is he says that Portugal still has unexplored territories
and it's still not completely taken over, For example, how the
coast is. And there's still so much more
to explore. And I think that's so true.
And it ties in very much with what you were talking about
(50:02):
earlier, about there being so much diversity in such a small
place. Exactly.
So much to see, so much to do. And so much of it is dependent
on you taking the time to actually go, rather than just
following the beaten path that'soften laid out for so many
people who come to this country.And it really does feel so
special when you go to a place that is unexplored and you get
(50:26):
to explore it. It's really, it's, it's one of
those fresh examples of travel people who know, you know, if
you know, you know, one of thosethings where you sometimes go to
a place and you realize that, hey, you know what?
This isn't part of the travel tour that is being sold to
everyone. And it's this special feeling
that you get where you know thatwhat you're experiencing is
(50:49):
truly special. And there's so much of that
available in Portugal for the right people, I guess.
Thank you so much to Jane and Gareth and Enna and Milos for
sharing. That was really great.
We agree with so many of these and also just love to hear your
perspective. So thank you again.
Thanks guys. All right, last up, we have our
(51:12):
Would You Rather and this week is a Would you Rather Portuguese
edition. Ryan, Are you ready?
I hope so, Liz. All right, would you rather take
a first time visitor to Portugal, to the north or to the
South? This is controversial, I guess.
Hey, yeah. OK, so here's my answer.
(51:33):
I would take this new visitor tothe north of Portugal.
I would take them to the north of Portugal because they need to
see Porto. They need to see the Dora River
Valley. And I feel as though those are
still uniquely Portuguese experiences which are holistic
in the culture. OK.
(51:54):
As opposed to, and this is whereit gets bad, the Algarve, which
is in the South where I think that it's Portuguese light, I
think that it's Diet Portugal. I think that it's Portuguese
flavor. I don't think that it's, I don't
think that it's as authentic as I would want it to be to show to
someone brand new. And by saying that, you're
(52:16):
saying that a lot more English is spoken.
There's a Tesco, it's there's a British supermarket.
In there, go with training wheels and you know, and if
that's your, if that's your jam,absolutely.
We enjoy going down there. For sure.
Regularly, it's a great place tobe, but if you're coming there
and it's your first time and youwant to know what this country
is about and I have to choose between North and South, I'm
(52:38):
going to take you north. So here I'm going to agree with
you that the North is more Portugal and the South is more
Portugal light. And my answer to this, would you
rather is going to be a bit of acheat, but it depends on the
visitor. Because if it is a visitor who
has never really travelled before and they are an English
(52:59):
speaker and they're quite scaredof being abroad, taking them to
the South where English is spoken by almost everyone.
They can get their familiar foods, they can get their
familiar hotels, they can get their more familiar your
experience while still getting some Portugal, they're going to
have a great time. Versus if you have someone who
(53:21):
it's their first time in Portugal but they are a bit more
of an experienced traveller, then I'm taking them to the
north to see some of the more authentic Portugal experience
like what you talked about. Or they could just stay at home,
get some Nando's, sit in the sunand you know, that would be it.
But. No, but the South has some
(53:43):
beautiful things as well. The beaches in the South are.
Incredible. They've got the grottos, they've
got those beautiful Cliff, cliffside beaches.
It's gorgeous. And I think I point taken, I
think you're onto something there.
Okay, Next up, would you rather eat aros Pato or baccala brass?
Well, why don't you tell us whatthose things are this first.
(54:04):
Of okay, so arospatto is a duck rice.
So in Ryan terms, it's almost like a duck biryani but with
different spices. Let's not get carried away here.
I see where you're coming from. And then bucalo, brass bucalo is
codfish, so it's a salted cod and it's mixed with scrambled
eggs, thinly cut fried potatoes,some onions and some black
(54:29):
olives. And it looks kind of like an
omelette, but the taste is it's fish, It's mainly fish and
potatoes, and the egg is more like a binder.
It's it's a really interesting dish.
And quick story on that, on the second day that we lived in
(54:50):
Portugal, we got pulled into some person's restaurant who
said we've got the best Bacaloa brush, you should eat this.
And we said OK. And we had never had this dish
before I. Think it might have been our
first Portuguese dish that we actually ate in this country,
and we ate it and it was phenomenal.
Incredible. It was one of the most delicious
(55:10):
things I'd ever eaten. The potatoes were crispy, the
cod wasn't too salty, the onionswere caramelized and incredible
and brought this sweetness to it.
It was so good. And we have never had Bakalawa
brush like that since it's. Been but I keep ordering it and
so and. So we know what it could be, but
(55:32):
it hasn't been that good since and it's been many, many years
now. I have since given up so I don't
order that anymore. I have not and the answer to my
would you rather is Bugalow brush and I'm going to keep
hoping to relive. Continue to live a life of
disappointment while I eat my arrows Pato, which is duck rice.
It's it's a it's duck rice is nice.
(55:53):
It's solid. You know what you're getting.
It's generally prepared the sameway.
And and that's my answer, man, I, I wish you the best of luck
with your bad Bugalowa brush. I this is ongoing.
What's our next one? Last one, would you rather go to
a Pimba show or a photo show? So these are two different kinds
(56:14):
of Portuguese music. So straight from Google.
Pimba is a genre of Portuguese music characterized by its
upbeat, often humorous and sexually suggestive lyrics and
it's simple melodies, repetitiverhythms using instruments like
an accordion and some synthesizers.
And the term is derived from a hit song called Pimba Pimba by
(56:35):
singer Emmanuel versus Foto. Foto is a traditional Portuguese
musical genre known for its mournful, melancholic style and
lyrics that express themes of fate, longing, swarad, love and
loss. Typically sung by a solo
vocalist, A Farista foto is accompanied by a wire strung
(56:57):
acoustic guitar and the unique pear shaped Portuguese his
guitar. The word photo comes from the
Latin fatum, meaning fate or destiny.
I am going pimpa, pimpa, pimpa, pimpa.
I think it is hilarious. I love it.
The action at a pimpa show is sogreat.
(57:19):
I was working for an NGO that had a little bar food stand
during a concert of Pimba and I was getting to serve beers and
sing Pimpa at the concert and I had a phenomenal time.
You know, I was going to choose Fido, but I know that Fido has
(57:41):
the ability to play on my natural pessimistic, melancholic
tendencies. So I'm going to go with Pimba,
too, just because it keeps me moving.
It keeps me alive a little bit. Because once Fido starts
playing, yeah, you know, man, that music does its job.
(58:01):
Beautiful, but it's so sad. Oh.
And it's, I mean, I don't know, sad is what I said is I don't
know if sad is the right word. Does Yeah, you know why?
Because sad. Sad is like Death Cab for Cutie.
That's sad. Fodder is is rolling around on
the ground being sad. You know, the dramatic like, no,
everything is wrong. The world is going to end.
(58:23):
That's what Fodder is and I and I and I, and I do enjoy it
because I do think that it's interesting and it is beautiful
music. And honestly, the people who are
performing father these days areso talented musically.
That's true and I really enjoy that.
But I think maybe sometimes to counteract the Swadad Pimber
(58:46):
might be the tonic for it. Well, everyone, that is our show
for this week. It's about the biggest positive
surprises we got after moving toPortugal.
And I really hope you enjoyed it.
And we want to say thank you again so much to Jane, Gareth In
and Mila for sharing. And we always are so happy to
(59:07):
hear about other people's experiences in Portugal and
around the world with all of thethings that that are part of
this life that we all share, which is such an adventure.
Please reach out to us and shareyour experience.
You can find us on Instagram at Expats Listen or you can send us
an e-mail on expatslisten@gmail.com.
(59:29):
We can't wait to hear from you. Please rate the show, leave a
review, tell us what you thought, leave some stars for
us. We'd really appreciate it.
Share. Subscribe.
It really goes a long way to helping this show reach the
right ears, and we'd really appreciate that.
And until we speak again, goodbye.
Welcome to Expats Listen with Ryan and Liz, the podcast where
we tell the truth about living abroad, being expats, being
immigrants, and how things aren't always so picture perfect
as they might seem, but sometimes they're really hard
and sometimes there are beautiful, wonderful surprises.
(00:22):
I'm Ryan and I'm a South Africanliving in Portugal as an expat
now. And I'm Liz and I am originally
from New York and also living inPortugal.
So our episode Don't move to Portugal unless is one of our
most popular. If you haven't listened to that
one yet, go back and listen. You can come back to this when
(00:42):
you're done. We talk about some of the things
that you might not expect to be really difficult when you make
the move to Portugal, and so many of the things that both
Ryan and I were surprised by in the move to Portugal that really
kind of shook us and made us work a bit harder than we
(01:02):
expected to. So we've had a very long week,
just lots of admin, lots of these annoying inconveniences.
So we thought that this week would actually do something that
would be a little bit happier, maybe a topic that sort of
brings a bit of a smile to our face.
And what that is, is discussing the amazing surprises that we
(01:25):
got in Portugal, which certainlywe didn't expect, but changed
our lives in the best way. So, Liz, why don't you lead us,
Sofia? Alright, my first one is a small
one, but was a delight from day one that there are fresh orange
juice machines in almost every supermarket in the country.
So you know the machine where you put the oranges on top and
(01:47):
then they go down and they get squeezed into the bottle.
And these are not expensive. They are under a euro for a
small bottle, they're maybe €2.00 for a liter.
And fresh delicious orange juicecan be yours every single day in
this country. And I just think that that is so
(02:09):
cool. It's super cool.
I don't really like orange juiceas much as Liz does, so when I
go to the supermarket and I'm onmy own, I will always get Liz a
bottle of that juice. But my favorite thing about it
is just the mechanics of it. Yeah, You know, seeing the
orange go in from the top and then it gets squished and you
see it getting squished and the juice coming out.
(02:31):
I don't know why, but there's something so satisfying about
it. Like, you know, that it's real
juice. Like there's the juice that's
going to be in my tummy coming down this machine.
I really enjoy that too. And in the winter, the
pomegranate juice machines, I get very, very, very, very
excited about those. Yeah.
What's your first one, Ryan? Mine is a bit, mine is a bit
(02:53):
more of a deeper and existentialone than orange juice.
But one of the things that really blew me away when we
first moved to Portugal was the way in which older people carry
themselves. And you know, I hope this
doesn't offend anyone who's of acertain age.
Certainly we are there, if not approaching it very fast.
(03:15):
But once you get, I would say above like 404550, you know,
life goes in a different direction.
Your body changes, your feelingschange because you are at an
older age. I guess, you know, you're not
like decrepit or anything, but you are older.
And in our societies in outh Africa, and certainly in the
(03:37):
USA, there's a lot of chatter and media and just general
coverage of people really being unhappy about getting old.
And it's really sad to see. For sure, the makeup industry,
Botox, there are so many surgeries that people are
undergoing these days in order to look an age that they are
(04:01):
not. Yeah, I mean, I, I think it's a
humanity thing, isn't it? So it's not just now, it's
always been this disgust with ourselves of getting over the
hill. And I know that I expected that
to be almost universal, everyonefeeling the same way.
But when we arrived here, I was really taken aback by the fact
that so many people of that age are embracing it.
(04:25):
So you will see a woman walking down the road with glorious a a
full glorious head of Gray hair and.
And it's so normal and. It's so normal.
It's not it's she doesn't stand out for it.
He doesn't stand out for it's men as well.
And it's just such a nice thing to see.
You don't see ridiculous amountsof makeup being worn by people
(04:50):
who are a bit older trying to conceal it.
I don't really see too much Botox and fillers.
Almost never. Almost never.
I know that it is growing. I know that that is something
that's becoming more of a thing for more people, and I
understand why. But in my experience of Portugal
(05:11):
since I arrived, I think that that's one of my favorite things
because I think there's so much beauty in it.
It's a different kind of beauty.It's a different kind of grace.
It's a different type of dignitythat people have got.
I think grace really is the wordthere, that you're getting old
with grace. Growing old is a privilege, and
Portugal is the third oldest country in the world.
(05:33):
It is, yes. Portugal does have a significant
number of older people as the population and it's a big part
of how the country finds its identity, you know?
Completely. And I don't think that people
are running away from the idea of getting old.
They're looking at it as a privilege.
They're looking at it as something that is good in
(05:56):
society to have older people, torespect those older people, that
they have a real police in society known as pushing them to
the margins. And I think that not being
scared of getting older is really part of respecting the
(06:16):
people who are already older. Yeah, I think it's awesome.
It's just really one of those nice things to see about a
society where older people are valued, older people feel they
have a place. Yeah.
There's a level of respect that's extended to all people,
regardless of the age they carry.
It's really cool. And that was one of my favorite
(06:37):
things that surprised me when I moved here.
What's your next one? My next one is the sport of
paddle. So before we moved to Portugal,
I had never heard of paddle and when we came to Lisbon we saw
these paddle courts everywhere and didn't really think too much
of it. We were rowing when we were in
Lisbon and just kind of didn't have time and didn't have the
(06:59):
interest. And when we moved to Sioux Ball
we started playing tennis a little bit and then some friends
of ours were like, oh, do you want to play paddle with us?
We said sure, why not? So we started this game and you
guys, paddle is such a cool sport, It is so fun.
(07:20):
Yeah, so paddle is one of the sports that really bites into
you in terms of the fanaticism of it very quickly.
So after you have your first session, you are going to just
fall in love with the sport and you're on your way on some kind
of paddle journey. Just a quick description.
Paddle is basically tennis in a box.
So you play double S2 on 2 and it is a tennis ball.
(07:45):
It's a racket sport, so you've got a racket.
It's a little bit different thana tennis racket, but you're
hitting a tennis ball with your racket.
The rules are the same as tennisbasically, except for the fact
that you're in a box. So after the ball bounces on the
ground, it can bounce on one of the walls and then you can still
play the ball. And what this meant is that when
we were playing tennis as very below average tennis players, we
(08:11):
spent maybe 50% of the time we were playing chasing the ball,
maybe even more than that. But with paddle, you're never
chasing after the ball. You can keep playing the
rallies, go for a lot longer andit feels so much more exciting
and I think that's where that bite comes from because you
really feel like you are achieving something, even if
(08:34):
you're at a very below average level.
Well, that's it. So certainly we have been at a
very low level for a long time and I expect us to stick around
there for another long time. But I think one of my favorite
things about it is being able toplay with people who are much
better than you or much worse than you and still have fun.
(08:54):
Whereas when you play tennis, ifyou're playing against someone
who's really good, man, like there is not going to be any
kind of competition or rally, sothe points are going to be over
immediately and you're going to spend most of your time just
picking up the ball like a sucker on a hot day.
So paddle really gets everyone involved.
It's properly about fun, which Ireally enjoy.
(09:16):
And a big part of it is that there are four players on the
court at the same time, so it's very, very easy to use paddle to
make friends, and both of us have done that completely.
I think that's, you know, there's no way of hiding from
the fact that Paddle has been atthe forefront and a big platform
of our entire social life, and it's really played such a big
(09:38):
role for us in making friends and creating relationships and
building community. So many of the people who we
call close friends and family now in Portugal have been part
of our paddle journey. And if I look back, it's very
seldom that I actually fantasizeabout actually playing paddle as
(10:00):
a sport because I'm so bad at it.
But he's lying. He's very good.
But I think having that time with people, being able to share
it as an experience that you're doing, it's really so healthy
because you're doing something that's good for you physically,
you're doing something that's good for you mentally, You're
outside most of the time, you meeting new people and it's just
(10:25):
really such a good thing. I'm part of a group of guys who
play a couple of times a week. And really, you know, it's
almost a bit stereotypical whereif someone says, hey, how do men
relate to each other? How are they supposed to manage
stress? And one of the cliche
(10:45):
suggestions is, have you ever tried joining a Sports Group
with some men similar to you? And yes, I do.
I have. I have a group of men just like
that. And we go and we play.
And it's really interesting because so often, you know, we
play a very low standard of pedal.
Sometimes the ball will go up inthe air and it's set for an
amazing smash that could look like it came out of the sports
(11:07):
highlight, and a guy will hit the ball as hard as he possibly
can straight into the ground in complete failure.
But that action is not necessarily about the sport,
it's sometimes about getting ridof the frustration that he's
carried for the rest of the weekand now he's got the opportunity
(11:28):
to get rid of that. And then we will all have a
laugh at him and then he will laugh too.
And then we'll have a drink after the game and everyone's
feeling better and he's in much better shape going home to his
family. And I think having that
opportunity for us all has been such a blessing, really.
It's true. We need those outlets.
And I think before we found Paddle, most of the socializing
(11:51):
that we were doing was do you want to meet for a drink?
Do you want to meet for food? Meeting for a drink?
Meeting for food is fine, but but it's so much nicer to me
when we meet for sport and we play some sport, we play some
paddle and then have the drink afterward, or we play some
paddle and then have the food afterward.
I love meeting people at the gym, meeting people for paddle,
(12:13):
meeting people for an activity before the food or the drink.
I just think that my mind is more clear.
I enjoy myself more and we open up so much more.
When you just meet for a drink, you kind of talk about the same
things. But when you meet for paddle
first and you're sweating and you're moving and you've done
(12:34):
something that you thought was amazing and then you did
something that was so ridiculousthat everyone had to laugh at
you. It opens up a different part of
your brain and it really does allow you to and relax and talk
more deeply about your life. Yeah, I would agree.
And I think more than that as well is that we end up going to
(12:56):
some interesting places. We meet people who we never
thought we would would have met.Yeah, we experience things that
we would have never experienced.We've got a couple that we play
with in a town that's maybe 20 or 30 minutes outside of our
hometown who we play with maybe once a month.
And we would never go to the town that they live in if it
(13:17):
wasn't for US playing paddle with them on that once a month
occasion. And it's really such a treat to
be able to say, well, we've got friends in a tiny little village
that we would have never maintained a relationship with
those people if we weren't playing that paddle game.
And you know, I know for us it'spaddle.
For other people that could be kayaking, it could be playing
(13:39):
tennis, it could be going on hikes.
But having that healthy, positive activity to build some
type of social community with and keep yourself active has
been so transformative for us since we arrived.
And when we arrived, we had no idea the sport even existed.
Exactly. I think that's the whole point
of this happy surprise is that it's a sport that we never even
(14:01):
heard of and we had no idea existed, and now it's such an
integral part of our lives. We are literally playing paddle
3-4, sometimes five times a week.
Yeah, no, it's, it's really beena, a fun journey.
It's really been nice to to pluginto that.
All right. What's your next one, Ryan?
Happy surprise. Happy surprise.
(14:22):
In the mid 90s, my mom perfectedher sponge cake recipe and
really just a plain white cake that she would bake maybe once
every couple of months. And it was not even frosted.
It was just made in a cooking pot and put in the oven and used
(14:48):
as a baking tin. And it was so comforting and it
was so simple. And the day my mom made her last
sponge cake for me was the last day that I ate that sponge cake
obviously. And for the rest of my life, I
sat and thought, well, I will always remember that cake as
(15:09):
being the best cake that I had ever eaten just because if it's
nostalgia and what it meant to me.
And I gave up ever having that cake.
And then Fast forward to me starting my new life here in
Portugal. I went down to the local Pingo
Dose, which is the little supermarket across the road from
(15:31):
us, and I saw they had a confectionery treat a little
cake for sale for $0.60. $0.60. And I thought, you know what,
I've lived here for so long, letme start eating more of the
pastries that they offer in thiscountry.
And I bought this particular little cake and I took it home
(15:53):
and I ate it, and it was exactlythe same as my mom's sponge cake
from the 90s. And they sell hundreds or
thousands of these things at every little bakery and corner
cafe in the Portuguese world. And it's called cake, but it's
(16:14):
spelled QUEQUE, so we call it KK.
KK, it's a bit sassy but but yes.
And they've got this delicious KK that they sell in the
supermarket. At any time you can go in and
buy this and it tastes exactly like my childhood.
What's your next one, Liz? All right, so my next one is
that small towns in Portugal arefull of so much more personality
(16:40):
and vibrancy than we had expected.
I think it's really interesting when you talk about where do you
want to go in Portugal and people are listing off these
bigger places and these bigger cities and even bigger, like
touristy places that people really enjoy going to.
(17:01):
Our favorite places in Portugal are probably the places that we
had never heard of before and the places that are so small and
so unique. Like Luso stands out to me,
which is a tiny, tiny town in the north interior of Portugal.
(17:22):
And, and it was stunningly beautiful and we had such a good
time there. And the only reason we stayed
there is because we happened to find a cheap hotel that was dog
friendly and we were like, oh, that looks nice, let's go there.
And then we were blown away by the small town.
And that has happened to us so many times to the point where
(17:44):
now I'm not choosing where to goin Portugal based on the town
anymore. I'm choosing based on a hotel or
an Airbnb and choosing a property that looks kind of cool
and then we just explore whatever is nearby when we're
there. And I think it's been such a
cool way to see the country because I, I never would have
(18:06):
heard of most of these places. And I'm not looking for any kind
of stereotypical experience. I think there's real beauty in
arriving in a place and knowing nothing and being like, OK,
let's see, like, what do you have to offer?
And then we are almost always pleasantly surprised.
I think it's been huge for us inhow we've experienced this
(18:29):
country because all of a sudden it went from, well, we're going
from point A to point B for thisexperience.
And now it being everything frompoint A to point B is going to
be the experience. And I don't know how many times
you've stumbled into a place that we didn't even know existed
(18:49):
and find something really like, wow, I can't believe that
exists. Did you see how stunning that
was? You see how interesting this
was? And there isn't even any mention
of it on Google Maps or any reasonable mention of it on
Google search results or anything.
So much of this stuff isn't evendocumented, and you would only
(19:09):
even know that it's there by going there and experiencing it.
And I'll go further and maybe bea little bit controversial, I
would say, and kind of celebratethe fact that it isn't readily
available to everyone. Yeah.
That it isn't publicized and puton some type of BuzzFeed list
(19:32):
and that they aren't 10,000 really bad Instagramers telling
the world to go to each one of these places because I really
feel like that's the fastest wayfor those places to get
destroyed. I'm so tired if I'm honest of
going to places and paying 25 times the price for a cup of
(19:55):
coffee because this wasn't someone's Instagram reel.
They've got 35 billion views. I'm so tired of not being able
to take a seat and have a small meal at a place because I can't
get a table there because. Someone who was very loud and
colorful on Instagram said this is the best something in the
(20:17):
world ever. And you know that whole, you
know that whole that whole spiel.
For sure, and in Portugal there are so many tourists, especially
in the summer. Lisbon is packed with tourists,
but as soon as you go to the interior of the country, as soon
as you leave the coast, you can find these towns that really are
(20:39):
small and quite Portuguese still.
They're not made for tourists anymore.
They're still. Because that's The thing is that
I, I think that what's nice is that a lot of these small towns
have these really cool attractions about them, these
really cool characteristics. But what's really nice is the
(20:59):
fact that those little characteristics might not be
enough to develop massive infrastructure around it and
bring the whole world there. So are you really going to
travel from Lisbon and travel two hours, let's say during the
summer into an area where the temperatures upwards of 45° for
(21:19):
you to swim in a little tidal pool fed by a mountain stream?
It's an incredible experience. It really is.
But I don't know if it's worth doing the two hours to go and
get there. And I'm kind of glad that you're
not going to do it because I'm willing to go do it because it's
such a unique and special experience.
And yeah, I know it's, you know,if, if anyone's out there saying
(21:42):
Ryan's gatekeeping, you know, I'm going to have trouble
disagreeing with you all. Right.
Well, what's your next one, Ryan?
So many children around the world are so annoying.
It's a plague. It's a problem that we have
discovered across this planet. So many parents saying no, I
(22:07):
would Our children will never hear the word no because we
heard it when we were kids and it damaged us.
And so now these children are all terrible.
But in Portugal, one of the things that really I was not
expecting was how children are treated by their parents and
(22:29):
general society as being integrated into the experience
that we all share in a particular place and they are
held to a standard that makes sure that we're all OK.
Parents are so even tempered andreasonable with their children
(22:49):
in what I've seen in making surethat they behave well and even
when a child does lose control at times.
Because children are children, they aren't really dealt with in
any extreme way, but dealt with in quite a cool, calm and
collected way so that everythingcan continue almost as normal in
(23:10):
whatever situation that happens to be.
So if you're at a supermarket and you know, little Joao, who's
three years old, is not getting the sweetie that he wants and he
starts crying and it does happen, Number one, that crying
isn't very extreme or very like violent or anything.
Yeah, it's not accompanied by like, throwing himself on the
(23:30):
floor and kicking and screaming.Thrashing about or anything like
that. And even with the little bit of
reaction little baby Joao's giving his mom, Joanna is just
going to have a quiet word with him and say, listen, this is
what's going to happen. This is what's not going to
happen. And little baby Joao is back on
track, you know? And I've really come to
(23:52):
appreciate that. I think that there's almost
something to learn about that because not only does it make
such a big difference at that age for everyone, but I think it
also goes such a long way in creating children who become
adults eventually, who still have an even sense of temper and
an even way of looking at the world and some reasonable level
(24:15):
of emotional and impulse control, which really is good.
I think you see it at every stage because yes, you're not
seeing tantrums from the three and under crowd, but you're also
seeing 8 year olds, 789 year olds who are able to go to the
supermarket by themselves and goto the beach with their friend
(24:37):
and they have a lot more freedomand they don't abuse it.
And then you're able to see groups of teenagers get together
and have a wholesome night of karaoke before they go to their
grandma's house for dinner. And I think that there's really
something to be said about not being so controlling of these
(25:02):
children that they're getting introuble for every single thing,
and also not being so loose withthese children that they can get
away with anything. And I think it's really created
this great balance because what you're saying, I agree
completely. The level of respect that
children have for all other members of society seems really
(25:25):
high, and I think that they do have a good amount of freedom to
see who they are. Yeah, I think that's really a
great thing to, to to experience.
And one of my favorite things about that is watching young
people, teenagers, hang out withthe older family members because
(25:47):
I remember in my day being so, like, embarrassed and mortified
of needing to hang out with the old people everywhere.
And like, Portuguese children just don't have that in general.
I love being able to witness real families spending real
quality time where they're all invested.
(26:09):
No one is feeling embarrassed orshy because they're holding
grandma's hand up and down the stairs at age 16.
They're there. They're invested in that
experience, and I love it. But I think that, you know, the
people who are responsible, the parents for creating this really
deserve that credit. Completely.
Next one, Lizzie. All right, so my next is that
(26:31):
Portugal is a small country and nothing's really more than a
three hour drive away from Lisbon.
But it's so much more diverse than I expected it to be, with
different cultures and customs and weather and terrain.
And you really can get a quite different experience with a
(26:52):
short drive. In our episode Don't Move to
Portugal unless we did tell you that there is generally no air
conditioning or heat in Portuguese houses.
And one day it was around 40°C, which is 104°F.
And I was looking at the weatherand trying to figure out when it
(27:13):
might cool down a bit. And I noticed on the weather map
this little dot of a different color, and it was in a town
about an hour away, and it said that it was only 30° there,
which is 86°F. So this 10°C difference, 20°F
difference is massive, especially when you're just
(27:34):
sitting there melting. And I said to Ryan, do you think
it's true? I did not think it was true.
I think it was lies. I think that it was an
inaccurate with a map. He did not believe it at all and
I was like come on, come on, let's just go and let's see,
Let's bet. If it is actually 30° there, I
(27:55):
get €20. If it's not then you get €20.
The money wasn't the thing for me, it was the pride.
It was knowing that I was right,the victory.
In that, I wanted the money. I also wanted the pride, but I
wanted the money. And we get in the car and we
start driving and it's 40° and we drive for about 15 minutes
and still 40°. We drive for 10 more minutes and
(28:18):
now we're almost halfway and it's 41.
And now I'm really starting to sweat because I'm going to lose
this bet and I do not want to lose this bet.
But it said that it was 30°. It has to get cooler.
It has to, and we're still driving and we're still driving
and now Ryan is talking a lot ofsmack.
It's getting hotter. It's not even, it's not even
(28:39):
slowly getting cold. It's getting hot, like it's
worse than it was when we were at homeless, damn it.
And we keep driving and then allof a sudden when we're about 10
minutes away, it goes 393837. And I'm like, right, right.
Look, look, look, look, look. Because it's displayed on the
(29:00):
dashboard of the car and we could both very clearly see it.
And now we get to about 33, and that's when Ryan starts to
sweat. It was not not my finest moment
and I still believe there was witchcraft involved in this
whole thing. And we keep going and we keep
going. And as we drive into the sign
that says welcome to this town, it changes over to 30° and I was
(29:26):
victorious. And it actually was a 10°C
difference with a one hour drive.
And it was incredible because that 10 degrees Celsius, 20°F
was the difference between beingquite miserable and being quite
comfortable. Yeah, we ended up actually
having quite a nice day that day.
We were able to walk around, we had some ice cream, we had a
(29:49):
pizza. We sat outside.
It was actually quite pleasant. Whereas where we were coming
from our hometown, things were, I mean, like the, the, the road
was melting a little bit. That's how hot it was getting.
So things really did take a drastic turn just 60 minutes
away from our house. And I think that's something I
definitely didn't expect when coming to Portugal, that you
would be able to get to something that felt so different
(30:11):
in such a short time. Yeah.
I mean, I think that's a big thing that a lot of people don't
realize when they move to a place like Portugal, the variety
of sort of biospheres and the diversity in how the, you know,
the country's put together, but also how close it is.
So, you know, where we live is abit more central in the country.
(30:33):
So we've got a unique, I don't know, habitat that we live in.
And if you go north, it's a lot greener.
There are these forests, it's a lot wetter, there's a lot more
rain. And then if you go further South
or down to the bottom to the Algarve, you're almost walking
into sort of a Moroccan, North African kind of climate, and
it's completely different. And even within those areas, you
(30:56):
can go to different places within those three different
areas and the interior or the coast, and it gets even more
different, you know, And I thinkthat's such an amazing thing to
live in such a small country with so much diversity.
And I absolutely love it. And you don't need to travel
very far to go and experience it.
You can do something different every weekend.
(31:16):
And that's what we've been doingand we've gotten the opportunity
to see and experience so much variety it's been.
Really cool. It's been really great.
And what's your next one, Ryan? So when I first heard about
Portugal as a potential place for us to live, Liz said to me,
(31:37):
I just want you to know no one speaks a word of English in that
country. You are going to be so screwed,
Ryan. Good luck to you pal.
To be fair, I had really only been to a very small part of the
very northeastern tip of Portugal where not a lot of
(31:57):
people spoke English. And I was assuming that the rest
of the country was like that. And I just said to him, I wanted
to warn him that he would need to learn Portuguese and he would
need to learn it quickly. So she used that tiny experience
to terrorize me. And yeah.
And so she said, no, look, you know, you need to know how to
speak Portuguese, man. That's not a that's not a
(32:20):
negotiable. You're going to struggle if you
go there and you don't know how this language works.
And I was prepared for that, honestly, when I first arrived.
And it took a while for me to suss out what the actual
situation was. And even if Liz was 100%
correct, I would have needed to have figured out what that would
have meant for me. And you know it.
(32:41):
It took some time and then I discovered that pretty much
everyone under the age of like 40 speaks English incredibly
well and in certain situations they quite enjoy speaking
English. They enjoy practicing their
English, they enjoy teaching youPortuguese, they enjoy having a
(33:03):
little giggle at your efforts atthe language, They ask for help
in their English, and they're just nice, nice people.
And I really wasn't expecting somany people to speak English.
That was the big surprise for me.
And I think even to this day, I'm really sometimes quite
annoyed by the fact that so manypeople speak English from
(33:26):
Portugal because it really sometimes holds me back from
developing my Portuguese skills.So I would go to a restaurant, a
coffee shop for a haircut or whatever it might be, and start
having the conversation in Portuguese with my admittedly
terrible Portuguese. And the person who I'd be
speaking to would just be very quick to switch to English
(33:47):
because they just want to save themselves so much stress of
needing to listen to me Babble like a little baby Portuguese
person. And I, yeah, I don't know.
I'm, it's, it's, it's bittersweet, You know, it's,
it's easier for me, of course, when things are done in English.
But I know that it holds me backfrom integrating further into
(34:07):
society. So yeah, English is a lot more
widely spoken out here than I ever expected, and certainly a
lot more than Liz told me all. Right, Ryan, what's next for
you? Quick one, accessible, delicious
fresh fish. It is not something that I grew
(34:28):
up eating, it's not something that's really available for most
South African people in general,and I feel very sad for not
having enjoyed fish up until moving here.
And in Portugal, you're able to go down to the market, you're
able to go down to a good restaurant and get some of the
best fish that you will ever experience over the course of
(34:51):
your life. And I would encourage anyone who
hasn't eaten much fish in life to actually give it a go if and
when they come to Portugal, because you build up a habit of
saying no to fish because you never really ever ate it.
And so you miss out potentially when you come here and you don't
gravitate towards this actually amazing thing.
(35:13):
And I would say this, you know, I'm not a, I'm not a big fan of
encouraging people to spend excessively.
But if you do get the opportunity to come to Portugal
and you go to a good fish restaurant, get the biggest fish
that you can afford, because thebigger the fish, generally the
better it tastes. And you can share it.
(35:33):
Obviously you're getting a bigger fish.
You're going to share it with four people, six people.
If you can get a group of peopletogether and order a giant fish,
you are going to have an amazing.
Meal. It's so luxurious.
Honestly, Liz and I today when we're in Portugal, we look at
getting fish as being such a treat.
(35:54):
I don't order steak when we go out, I don't generally order
chicken when we go out. If we're going to go out for
dinner, I'm going to say let's go get fish because they'll cook
it so well, the fish will be so good and we'll get the best fish
we can get at the time and I feel like it's such a treat.
And that really is such a surprise for you because living
in South Africa, you never went out for fish.
(36:17):
That was not a thing that you did.
No, I'm very glad and I'm very grateful I get the opportunity
to eat good fish as often as I do these days.
We are slowly trying to get better at making it at home.
But you know, that's a big confidence thing.
And we've done, we've done it once or twice.
Yeah, both times successfully. And hopefully as we, as we grow
(36:39):
in confidence, we'll do it more often.
OK, what's your next one? Let's.
All right. My last one is that Portugal is
so unbelievably dog friendly andthis is something that I
expected some level of dog friendliness coming from the USI
think I expected to be able to take the dog to a few places
(37:02):
here and there. I think from South Africa you
weren't really expecting to takea dog anywhere.
We. Don't take our ducks, No.
But in Portugal, Henry can basically come everywhere with
us and I think it's so amazing. And also, people really treat
(37:22):
their dogs like family in a different way than I've seen in
the US. So in the US, people treat their
dogs like family in that they'reconstantly buying things for
them and feeding them the best food and making sure that
they're very well taken care of.But they often leave them at
home to go to places because they wouldn't be allowed in
(37:44):
Portugal. Henry's allowed in the shopping
mall, Henry's allowed in all restaurants.
He's allowed in 90% of the places that we go.
And most dogs are not on the lead because they're so well
trained and so well behaved and,and they interact really well
(38:05):
with each other because they're well trained and well behaved
and they're not a problem. And I think that because of
this, everywhere is welcoming todogs, even places that might
have a sign that says no dogs. We show up with our dog and
people are like, oh, no, don't worry, he's fine.
Like come. On there's like some discretion
(38:26):
around the whole thing. It's not like this giant wild
animal that you've dragged in from the Bush or anything like
that. It's this tiny, handsome little
gentleman, and he's very charming in the way that he
looks and he behaves. So he gets a little bit of
special treatment here and therefrom everyone.
But now I would agree, Portugal's really good when it
comes to to taking into account the role of animals in our
(38:48):
lives. Can I say one more thing before
we move on to the next section? I did want to say that, you
know, we're sharing all of thesesurprising and wonderfully good
things that we experienced in Portugal and I'm really glad
we're talking about it. But I also want to say that I
know that there are a lot of people who might listen to this
and very quickly bring up exceptions of, oh, you know
(39:12):
what? You ate that cake, but I had
cake once and it was terrible. Or, you know, like you, you're
speaking so highly of Portuguesechildren and I know a Portuguese
child that's terrible. And, you know, and I and I know
that that's what's happening. And, you know, I want to draw
attention to the fact that so much of the media that we
consume and that's forced down our throats really is
(39:34):
highlighting those exceptions and creating false impressions
of what a place is like based onthose terrible exceptions that
are being pushed into our faces.And I know that there are a lot
of people who get triggered and engage in knee jerk behavior
that is very negative, that's attached to negative depictions
(39:58):
of what's going on around the world.
Really. It's not just Portugal.
And I would say bear in mind that not a lot of people take a
lot of time to talk about how nice the fish is in a place.
Not a lot of people take time tocreate content or make videos or
create a podcast or sing a song about how nice the fresh orange
(40:20):
juice is at the supermarket. And that's the problem is that
there's no balance. And so please, if you are aware
of there being exceptions to thestuff that we're saying, we know
it too. But we're actually talking about
what we see on a day-to-day basis.
And maybe it's not so bad that we feel that there's good stuff
(40:42):
about society, too. Let's move on to the next
section. I love it.
So now we're going to hear from some other expats in Portugal.
So first we have Jane, who is Welsh but spent 30 years of her
life in Hong Kong before moving to Portugal.
And Jane says that Portugal actually felt like it was a home
(41:04):
because it was so much like Macau.
And it was familiar because she felt like she already knew a bit
about Portuguese culture becauseshe had been to Macau so often.
And I think that's so interesting because you don't
think of all of these Portuguesecolonies that have kept parts of
(41:24):
Portuguese culture. And I know this is a whole
conversation on colonialism and how terrible it was, and we're
not condoning any of that by anymeans.
But I think it is interesting tosee the parts of the culture
that stuck and the parts of the culture that were able to stand
(41:45):
the test of time. Oh, I would agree.
One of my favorite things about Portugal is the interesting ways
that have contributed towards the world's cultures.
I know that as you say, I know that there's all of this
conversation around colonialism and I and I get that there's a
time and a place for that, but Ireally, I'm so taken aback
sometimes when you hear about the story that vindaloo carry is
(42:10):
from Portugal. It's a It's a portmanteau of
wine and garlic that creates that the.
Bean and allio are wine and garlic.
That's it. I didn't know that.
And samosas and. Samosas are Portuguese, they're
not Indian. I mean they are Indian now, but
that was the introduction and there's so many of these
interesting things. I come from a place in South
(42:31):
Africa called Kwazulu Natal. Natal means Christmas, and
that's Portuguese in Portuguese,and that's associated to the
travel around that particular part of the world by Portuguese
sailors hundreds of years ago. And you know, it's such a
fascinating thing. And when Jane talks about Macau
being so similar to what mainland Portugal is like,
(42:52):
that's really so fascinating. Wow.
Our next one is also from Jane and she says we moved to
Stubball without any knowledge of the place or where we would
live and it turned out to be themost perfect place for us.
So it was taking a chance and itreally working out for us.
And I think this one is so amazing too, that some people
(43:15):
are going to plan every single part of their move abroad and
they're going to take six years to meticulously figure out
exactly where they're going to go and what they're going to do.
And other people like Jane and like us, are going to be a bit
more spur of the moment about it, a bit more spontaneous.
And I think that when you roll those dice, it is great to hear
(43:40):
from someone else who rolled thedice and it worked out.
Yes, you know that it's it's a it's a very high stakes game
playing that. And really, sometimes it's nice
to see it working out for peopleand giving hope for wherever it
is that you might go and that, and I mean that even for people
who for whom it doesn't work onetime because the next time you
(44:02):
tried, it might work because it sometimes can be that random.
And I'm super glad it worked outfor Jane, because she's awesome.
I know we love Jane. She's.
Such a great lady. All right, my turn, Gareth,
who's also from Wales and a great paddle player.
He talks about finding out that Portugal is so relaxed, more so
(44:23):
than Spain and the other countries he knows in Europe,
especially the UK. The vibe is definitely more
family orientated and more personal.
No one speeds you along and is happy to have a chat, which is
frustrating for other people, but it's so great if you're not
working and you have that time. And I think that's really such a
good point that he he made thereof time of the relationship
(44:48):
between Portugal, Portuguese people and time.
It is a double edged sword. There is incredible frustration
when you need to move really quickly sometimes and that's not
the natural speed of the country.
But then when you do have a moment where you want to soak in
being alive and living and feeling and breathing, I don't
(45:14):
know, I've got to say, I think Portugal might be up there in
being a spot where you can be pretty damn human in realizing
your own existence, experiencingthat in its fullness.
And even when in that depth is good and bad in the sense that
it might psych you out because you're going to need to ask
(45:36):
yourself some very real questions because you'll be
alone with your thoughts becauseeverything's moving that slowly.
And it can be something that might allow you to answer some
of those questions and teach youabout yourself and allow you to
experience your own existence ina very new and interesting way
if you're coming from somewhere else.
It's true. It forces you to slow down, and
(45:58):
I think that you can react to that with frustration or
acceptance. Well, both, I feel sometimes,
yeah, yeah. Because I think there's some
days where I get very frustratedat the Pingodess line where I'm
buying my KK and someone's talking nonsense at the at the
tailor and, you know, I'm waiting to get back home to eat
(46:19):
my KK. And then there's other times
where late on the same day I'm sitting and I'm eating my KK and
no one is on my, on my, on my case trying to get things done
and I'm just able to enjoy it. And I feel like I'm not able to
enjoy it that way in many any other places, you know?
So yeah. All right, Next up, we have
Anna, who is originally from Serbia and actually the reason
(46:42):
that we moved to Stubal in the 1st place because she was living
there, invited us over for a barbecue and the rest was
history. And Anna says, I think even if
bureaucracy is slow, I was surprised that people that we
had contact with were always kind and helpful.
I think that this one is a really great point, because as
(47:06):
frustrating as the bureaucracy in Portugal is, and it is, and
everyone will tell you that it is, the people that you're
dealing with throughout the process of that bureaucratical
disaster are generally not jerks.
No, I think, I think everyone accepts the awfulness of the
(47:30):
bureaucratic process together. And in a in a very frustrating
and weird way, There's some beauty around it.
The people who are behind the desk are not happy about being
there. You're on the other side of the
desk, you're not happy about being there.
You're both frustrated that the policy and the system that
(47:50):
you're needing to use is terribly outdated and
inefficient, and it's making life difficult for both of you.
And everyone is just trudging through the mud at the same
speed trying to get to where we're going.
And I think that there have beenso many times where I've even
connected with people who are trying to help me as best they
(48:13):
can in accepting the fact that, like, yeah, we don't know why
it's this way, do you? And, you know, we're just, we're
just doing what we can. And you have a bit of a laugh
sometimes, you know. So next step we have Milos,
who's married to Anna and is also from Serbia.
And he says that people in Portugal have a relaxed vibe.
For example, when they go out, people are chilled and relaxed
(48:36):
and aren't really in a rush. And that is really such a
quality experience to to go through because it's not just a
case of it being on one particular evening where
everyone's relaxed. It's something that you can
actually bank on, which I think really changes the way in which
you experience things. One of our favorite things to do
(48:57):
is to sit in the town square andhave a cup of coffee or a small
beer. And if you just sit there long
enough, maybe like 1520 minutes,someone that you know is going
to walk past and they're going to definitely be able to stop
and have a drink with you and talk about what they've been
doing for the day and where they're off to and what they're
(49:18):
going to be doing this weekend. And that's one of my favorite
things about the place. Yeah, me too.
I think there's been so many times where we've been sitting
in that square and not expectinganything and then you see
someone and end up spending 4 hours with them because it is
this real vibe of no rush, relax, chill and let's see where
(49:41):
the night will take us. Yeah, no, it's really an awesome
thing. The other thing that that Milos
raises is he says that Portugal still has unexplored territories
and it's still not completely taken over, For example, how the
coast is. And there's still so much more
to explore. And I think that's so true.
And it ties in very much with what you were talking about
(50:02):
earlier, about there being so much diversity in such a small
place. Exactly.
So much to see, so much to do. And so much of it is dependent
on you taking the time to actually go, rather than just
following the beaten path that'soften laid out for so many
people who come to this country.And it really does feel so
special when you go to a place that is unexplored and you get
(50:26):
to explore it. It's really, it's, it's one of
those fresh examples of travel people who know, you know, if
you know, you know, one of thosethings where you sometimes go to
a place and you realize that, hey, you know what?
This isn't part of the travel tour that is being sold to
everyone. And it's this special feeling
that you get where you know thatwhat you're experiencing is
(50:49):
truly special. And there's so much of that
available in Portugal for the right people, I guess.
Thank you so much to Jane and Gareth and Enna and Milos for
sharing. That was really great.
We agree with so many of these and also just love to hear your
perspective. So thank you again.
Thanks guys. All right, last up, we have our
(51:12):
Would You Rather and this week is a Would you Rather Portuguese
edition. Ryan, Are you ready?
I hope so, Liz. All right, would you rather take
a first time visitor to Portugal, to the north or to the
South? This is controversial, I guess.
Hey, yeah. OK, so here's my answer.
(51:33):
I would take this new visitor tothe north of Portugal.
I would take them to the north of Portugal because they need to
see Porto. They need to see the Dora River
Valley. And I feel as though those are
still uniquely Portuguese experiences which are holistic
in the culture. OK.
(51:54):
As opposed to, and this is whereit gets bad, the Algarve, which
is in the South where I think that it's Portuguese light, I
think that it's Diet Portugal. I think that it's Portuguese
flavor. I don't think that it's, I don't
think that it's as authentic as I would want it to be to show to
someone brand new. And by saying that, you're
(52:16):
saying that a lot more English is spoken.
There's a Tesco, it's there's a British supermarket.
In there, go with training wheels and you know, and if
that's your, if that's your jam,absolutely.
We enjoy going down there. For sure.
Regularly, it's a great place tobe, but if you're coming there
and it's your first time and youwant to know what this country
is about and I have to choose between North and South, I'm
(52:38):
going to take you north. So here I'm going to agree with
you that the North is more Portugal and the South is more
Portugal light. And my answer to this, would you
rather is going to be a bit of acheat, but it depends on the
visitor. Because if it is a visitor who
has never really travelled before and they are an English
(52:59):
speaker and they're quite scaredof being abroad, taking them to
the South where English is spoken by almost everyone.
They can get their familiar foods, they can get their
familiar hotels, they can get their more familiar your
experience while still getting some Portugal, they're going to
have a great time. Versus if you have someone who
(53:21):
it's their first time in Portugal but they are a bit more
of an experienced traveller, then I'm taking them to the
north to see some of the more authentic Portugal experience
like what you talked about. Or they could just stay at home,
get some Nando's, sit in the sunand you know, that would be it.
But. No, but the South has some
(53:43):
beautiful things as well. The beaches in the South are.
Incredible. They've got the grottos, they've
got those beautiful Cliff, cliffside beaches.
It's gorgeous. And I think I point taken, I
think you're onto something there.
Okay, Next up, would you rather eat aros Pato or baccala brass?
Well, why don't you tell us whatthose things are this first.
(54:04):
Of okay, so arospatto is a duck rice.
So in Ryan terms, it's almost like a duck biryani but with
different spices. Let's not get carried away here.
I see where you're coming from. And then bucalo, brass bucalo is
codfish, so it's a salted cod and it's mixed with scrambled
eggs, thinly cut fried potatoes,some onions and some black
(54:29):
olives. And it looks kind of like an
omelette, but the taste is it's fish, It's mainly fish and
potatoes, and the egg is more like a binder.
It's it's a really interesting dish.
And quick story on that, on the second day that we lived in
(54:50):
Portugal, we got pulled into some person's restaurant who
said we've got the best Bacaloa brush, you should eat this.
And we said OK. And we had never had this dish
before I. Think it might have been our
first Portuguese dish that we actually ate in this country,
and we ate it and it was phenomenal.
Incredible. It was one of the most delicious
(55:10):
things I'd ever eaten. The potatoes were crispy, the
cod wasn't too salty, the onionswere caramelized and incredible
and brought this sweetness to it.
It was so good. And we have never had Bakalawa
brush like that since it's. Been but I keep ordering it and
so and. So we know what it could be, but
(55:32):
it hasn't been that good since and it's been many, many years
now. I have since given up so I don't
order that anymore. I have not and the answer to my
would you rather is Bugalow brush and I'm going to keep
hoping to relive. Continue to live a life of
disappointment while I eat my arrows Pato, which is duck rice.
It's it's a it's duck rice is nice.
(55:53):
It's solid. You know what you're getting.
It's generally prepared the sameway.
And and that's my answer, man, I, I wish you the best of luck
with your bad Bugalowa brush. I this is ongoing.
What's our next one? Last one, would you rather go to
a Pimba show or a photo show? So these are two different kinds
(56:14):
of Portuguese music. So straight from Google.
Pimba is a genre of Portuguese music characterized by its
upbeat, often humorous and sexually suggestive lyrics and
it's simple melodies, repetitiverhythms using instruments like
an accordion and some synthesizers.
And the term is derived from a hit song called Pimba Pimba by
(56:35):
singer Emmanuel versus Foto. Foto is a traditional Portuguese
musical genre known for its mournful, melancholic style and
lyrics that express themes of fate, longing, swarad, love and
loss. Typically sung by a solo
vocalist, A Farista foto is accompanied by a wire strung
(56:57):
acoustic guitar and the unique pear shaped Portuguese his
guitar. The word photo comes from the
Latin fatum, meaning fate or destiny.
I am going pimpa, pimpa, pimpa, pimpa.
I think it is hilarious. I love it.
The action at a pimpa show is sogreat.
(57:19):
I was working for an NGO that had a little bar food stand
during a concert of Pimba and I was getting to serve beers and
sing Pimpa at the concert and I had a phenomenal time.
You know, I was going to choose Fido, but I know that Fido has
(57:41):
the ability to play on my natural pessimistic, melancholic
tendencies. So I'm going to go with Pimba,
too, just because it keeps me moving.
It keeps me alive a little bit. Because once Fido starts
playing, yeah, you know, man, that music does its job.
(58:01):
Beautiful, but it's so sad. Oh.
And it's, I mean, I don't know, sad is what I said is I don't
know if sad is the right word. Does Yeah, you know why?
Because sad. Sad is like Death Cab for Cutie.
That's sad. Fodder is is rolling around on
the ground being sad. You know, the dramatic like, no,
everything is wrong. The world is going to end.
(58:23):
That's what Fodder is and I and I and I, and I do enjoy it
because I do think that it's interesting and it is beautiful
music. And honestly, the people who are
performing father these days areso talented musically.
That's true and I really enjoy that.
But I think maybe sometimes to counteract the Swadad Pimber
(58:46):
might be the tonic for it. Well, everyone, that is our show
for this week. It's about the biggest positive
surprises we got after moving toPortugal.
And I really hope you enjoyed it.
And we want to say thank you again so much to Jane, Gareth In
and Mila for sharing. And we always are so happy to
(59:07):
hear about other people's experiences in Portugal and
around the world with all of thethings that that are part of
this life that we all share, which is such an adventure.
Please reach out to us and shareyour experience.
You can find us on Instagram at Expats Listen or you can send us
an e-mail on expatslisten@gmail.com.
(59:29):
We can't wait to hear from you. Please rate the show, leave a
review, tell us what you thought, leave some stars for
us. We'd really appreciate it.
Share. Subscribe.
It really goes a long way to helping this show reach the
right ears, and we'd really appreciate that.
And until we speak again, goodbye.
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