First of all, we’ve noticed that people, by and large, get along ok. Sure, some people like each other more than others, and there’s always someone who is just going to get on your nerves; that’s just people. But still, for such an increasingly large cluster of (primarily) American immigrants it can feel surprising just how tranquil these get-togethers can be. Chewing on it, though, it becomes clear that we aren’t really a random sample. First and foremost, if you’ve moved here then you are someone who isn’t particularly afraid of “the other”; I mean, I guess you could be but then you’re also a masochist. You’re someone who has at least enough sense of adventure to be willing to leave your home country. You probably don’t think of other cultures as automatically inferior to your own (again, probably; yes, I’ve met exceptions, sadly). Then, you have the privilege of being someone who has either accumulated enough of a nest egg to retire or you have a job that affords you supreme flexibility in where you work from. Yes, it’s true that living over here is cheaper than in the US by almost any metric, but there’s still a minimum hurdle to clear as far as moving expenses and traveling are concerned. So before we dig any further, we’ve get a common basis of (likely) similarities.

That’s not all of it, though. There is something ineffable about Braga, or at least we haven’t effed it yet. Lisa and I are a little bit of an outlier in that we moved here before we had laid eyes on the place, but: our first night here (not counting the night we arrived) was December 1st, and that was the night of the official tree lighting downtown. We were invited to an immigrant event and, despite being jetlagged, we wanted to get out feet wet asap. So, we plotted the trip to the selected cafe in google maps (this sounds so ridiculous from our vantage point of 7 months in, but hey, day 1) and started walking. It took basically that walk for us to fall in love; there, and back. Heading into the pedestrian zone, with the open grass areas, plazas, wide sidewalks… the families strolling along, the lights that we put up here for holidays both grand and humble, just the general ambiance of the whole thing, it was tangible how different a world we were now in.

Our story, it turns out, is far from unique. Many of our friends tell us they had similar experiences (like, most of them). It has come to the point where it is included in the standard advice many of us give out when people exploring a move to Portugal stumble upon Braga and ask about it in one of numerous facebook groups. “What’s with Braga? Should we go there?” That sort of thing. We almost always tell them that they won’t need more than a day visit to decide whether it should be on their short list or not. There’s no doubt that people must exist who were lukewarm about the place at first but grew to like it, but that’s so foreign to our experience that we don’t even know how to describe that to people. We have seen, time and again, that people on their scouting trip either pass through with nary a word spoken, or else they almost immediately begin peppering us (there’s a pretty active Braga-specific fb group) with questions because they’re incredibly excited about the idea of living here. And we just smile and nod, and answer their questions

I swear, we should own stock in this town.

We left off last time teasing the series of milestones that passed us by on a near-daily basis. A little context: there has been some advice going around in immigrant* circles that suggests you be content if you get one thing accomplished in a day. Between the language barrier, the culture shock, and just trying to live your life, getting one thing done in a day actually does feel like you had a good day. Our first shop in a grocery store took about two hours, and we went out with a granny grocery trolley’s-worth of vittles. Add in getting there and getting back, deciding where things would go in the Tetris-like kitchen we currently inhabit, and then actually eating some of said vittles (just to say we did it, honestly) was absolutely all that was going to happen that day. So what else does an accomplishment look like around here?

On our first day in our actual apartment (as opposed to the AirBnB we stayed out for the first couple days) we met our real estate agent there. He showed us in and we got our first real look at the place.

Both of us were RELIEVED.

The apartment looked so much better in person than the photos had led us to fear. (Funny side story: It turns out we both felt that the place we’d chosen would be adequate, that we would be able to “get by.” Neither said this to the other, not wanting to bring each other down.) For one thing, the photos left us wondering if we had to enter through the backyard, and whether there really were two bathrooms — was one down in the cave? Turns out this is a lovely apartment, recently remodeled, with hardwood floors and high ceilings, just up a flight of stairs from the front door. The cave is behind the retail area (empty) below us. We have neighbors across the hall (in the front of the building, with balconies on the street) and above us, a total of four units. Our backyard, while seriously overgrown, is huge. The furnishings are fine, and we can rearrange everything to make it all work.

Lisa did note that there seemed to be some water damage on the floor and in a couple of walls, and there was a definite “musty” smell to the air, but didn’t see any mold. (This is what’s known as foreshadowing.) We put the funky smell down to the unit being closed up for months and figured it would get aired out soon enough with our being here.

Our only “oh dear” moment was when we realized the place had no cooling/heating units, something we’d completely overlooked in our discussions with our realtor. It was on our list of needs when we were putting it together, but somehow not in what we asked him for. Our mistake, totally, and it pushed “go shopping for home goods” to the very top of our list. The last thing our real estate agent did for us after helping us with utilities and going to lunch was to drop us off at the mall; woo, shopping! We muddled our way through home heating options, and after we’d settled on a couple we paid for them and arranged for delivery. We inquired about the charge and was told it would be 2 euros. Wait, what? 2 bucks (yeah yeah) for home delivery? Oookayy… Sure enough, *the next morning* they arrived via postal delivery. This place is nutty sometimes, I tell you what.

And that’s it. That’s what a day’s accomplishment can look like. Future days have included climbing such mountains as “order lunch to go”, “turn on the television”, and “make a recognizable sandwich.” As our proficiency slowly develops in communicating (faster typing in google translate, or actually learning some words, take your pick) these things become less intimidating and we have hopes of knocking down two or three tasks in a single day. Time will tell, and we shall report the results faithfully.

* the prevalent term is “Expat” but we’ll get into why we don’t like the term (but aren’t prepared to go to war over it) later.