I’ve had an idea burbling in the back of my mind for awhile now, and since attending language classes has kept us a little more pinned down than usual this seemed like a suitable time to indulge. There are certain moments in life that eventually get packaged into “A Tale” rather than just “a story”. You tell it practically the same way each time you share it, and you tend to share it a lot. Each new person you meet, they’re going to hear your Tales as part of the get-to-know-you process. The important bits of the story have long since been chosen, and the fluff has either been trimmed, or at least marked in your memory as things that can be cut if time is short. So, for those of you who haven’t already heard the Tale, here’s us arriving in Braga.
We arrive in Lisbon with our four duffel bags and four medium-ish boxes and meet out pre-arranged transfer driver. His name escapes me; what I do remember is that over the course of the roughly four hour drive he slowly breaks cover and reveals his Chega! political leanings. Was it weird that our driver espoused anti-immigration views while simultaneously shepherding brand new immigrants to their new home? Why yes, it was! In any case, I sort of changed the subject by asking him how to properly pronounce our address (“Rua Don Pedro Quinto”) and practicing with him for what felt like forever.
First impressions are… well hell, we’ve all heard the aphorisms. My first impression of Braga was, I’m embarassed to say, not great. Keep in mind, we had never been to Portugal, never mind this city; photos can only do so much work. It was very late, like maybe 10 PM minus a bit. Our first stop in town was to Mercadona, a grocery store, because we’d discussed wanting to wake up with some basic provisions. Nothing like a grocery store on a new continent to make you feel alienated, lemme tell you. From there we went to our Airbnb that was situated just around the corner from our soon-to-be home, an arrangement we’d settled on when it was pointed out we wouldn’t have power or gas until getting the utilities turned on the next day.
The street that our Airbnb was/is on, Rua do Taxa, is about 50 feet from where we now live, and we walk it all the time. It’s fine. But on that first night, tired and probably a little apprehensive (in the “what have I gotten myself into” vein) it does not make a great impression. It is not quaint, or charming, or picturesque. There’s no interesting architecture on it, no landmarks. (None of this is true, actually, except for the stretch of it we were on that night.) Both sides of the street are concrete 3-5 story tall mixed used buildings, businesses at ground level and apartments above. Everything about it is a little scruffy. I genuinely begin to sweat the fact that this whole move was, in the end, my idea. We meet our host, who was warm and gregarious but, as tired as we were, this just bounced off of us. We try to settle in and mostly succeed, after a brief kerfluffle where we nudged a dial on the gas stove, causing a miniscule gas seepage that had us scrambling for our host’s contact number.
We rise in the morning and ponder breakfast. Right across the street from us, on the corner of Rua do Taxa and Rua Don Pedro V, is a little cafe of the sort called a pastelaria here. I brace myself and head out the door, cross the street, and pop in. Now, there is much discussion in immigrant forums (and elsewhere) about the prevalence of English speakers in Portugal. Listen up – it may be ubiquitous in places like Lisbon or down in the Algarve, but you’re flipping a coin every time you encounter someone in Braga. This city doesn’t have an airport, it doesn’t have a seaport, and it’s the terminus of the trains. No English speakers accidentally show up in Braga, or go there because that’s where they landed. I tell you all that to now explain why it is not at all surprising that a couple of people who opened a pastry cafe in Braga probably did so comfortable in the fact that they wouldn’t need to speak any language other than Portuguese. And I tell you that to explain that everything else I relate to you, I will be translating from the charades that occurred that day.
So I pop in. I peruse the pastries of the (we now recognize) ubiquitous variety you find here. Crescent-shaped pastries that are definitely not croissants as you know them because they more closely resemble brioche. Cream filled not-quite-donuts. Pastéis de nata. Other things. Through a variety of pointing and questioning looks I sort out a tasty little selection of pastries and some bottles of juice (we had not yet learned the joy of constantly-available fresh-squeezed orange juice) The nice man helping to mind the counter (we later decided that this is a family business and he’s probably somebody’s father) rattles off a price which I absolutely do not understand. That’s no problem, I had grabbed the trusty credit card on the way out the door. But no no! he explains, they do not take cards in this shop. Whups.
I explain that I need to go to my abode across the street to get cash. (Remember: pointing and making faces.) He conveys that this is certainly no problem at all. I begin to hurry out, in a bit of a rush because my bride is waiting for breakfast. The man manages to stop me and, somewhat incredulously, asks me why I’m not taking the pastries? I point out that I haven’t paid yet, and he looks at me like I’m a particularly slow child. Ok, well that’s very kind of him. I gather things up and scoot back to the flat; I set things down on the table while grabbing up the collection of euros we had begun to accumulate, explaining to Lisa that the nice fellow had sent me out with our breakfast temporarily gratis. She agreed that I needed to get back and settle with him. I dart through traffic and hop the steps up into the shop, where I am met with an even more incredulous look than the first time. “Why,” he very clearly was asking me, “didn’t you eat your breakfast first?!”
And this was just our first lesson about the differences in culture between here and the United States.
