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You Can't Take it With You

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“ To be content with little is difficult; to be content with much, impossible.” Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach In Portuguese language class recently, we practiced conversation by responding to question prompts. At one point, the teacher asked each student to describe our favorite material object or possession. My American friend, a not-quite-retired physician who has been living in Spain and Portugal for the past two years with her husband and teenaged son, paused to reflect. She then asked to pass on the question. Thinking her reticence was due to the language barrier, our instructor re-phrased the question, then suggested possible responses, “Maybe your car or your smart phone?” My classmate waved the thought away with a scoff. Our teacher skipped to the next student, a 40-something British man who had been living in Hong Kong for several years with his young family before relocating to Braga. He was also stumped and mumbled something unconvincing about kitchen tools. When my turn came ...
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Portugal Jail

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            April 25th: Anniversary of the peaceful Carnation Revolution that ended fascism in Portugal in 1974 Moving to another country involves quite a bit of uncertainty and a whole lot of patience. Jack and I applied separately for our long-term stay visas in Spring 2025. That process alone required stacks of documents and a trip from Boise to San Francisco to prove our worthiness of living in Portugal. It has never been a particularly quick process but with Portugal's current immigration system backlog, it can take several more months (at least) after visa approval to be issued a temporary residency card. That magical card proves that we are legally allowed to live in Portugal and allows us to travel freely without concerns of re-entry to our new country of residence. We resigned ourselves to the fact that we would have to stay in the country until the glorious day that our residency cards finally arrive. At our house, we refer to this in-limbo...
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Why Portugal? Why Braga?

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You may be wondering, of all the places in the wide, wild, world, how did we end-up in Braga? While Portugal tops the list of international destinations for U.S. retirees and digital nomads, Braga is not usually the first Portuguese city mentioned. Years ago, Jack and I were both attracted to Portugal for a mix of sentimental and practical reasons. Finding the right city for us took a bit more time and soul-searching. You might call it the most enjoyable research project ever. Jack and I first visited Portugal in the year 2000. Then in our early 30s, we were drawn by my family roots and the relaxed, healthy, Mediterranean lifestyle. As a travel destination, it seemed relatively undiscovered by American travelers (none of our well-traveled friends had been to the Azores or even Lisbon) and it felt special and remote. We dreamed of living there one day when were less consumed by career and family responsibilities.   When we vacationed in Portugal more than twenty years later, we had ...
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Lost in Translation

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Once fall arrived, so did thoughts of returning to school. My focus shifted from bureaucratic tasks to one of my main goals in moving to Portugal. I hope to—no, I will-- become a competent Portuguese speaker. As a retiree with plenty of free time these days, I see language learning almost as a job. Despite many humbling moments, I enjoy it enough to regard it as a hobby, too. To get a head start, I played with apps and signed up for online tutoring well before moving. It didn't take long to realize that learning a foreign language in my late 50s would be no easy feat. Popular language apps like Duolingo and Babbel use only Brazilian Portuguese which has fundamental vocabulary, grammatical, and pronunciation differences from European Portuguese. Most movies and TV shows I found in the language were geared toward Brazilians and until very recently, the mobile version of Google Translate used only Brazilian Portuguese. My mistake in investing time in mainstream language learning too...
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