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.

It’s been quite a three-weeks! Here are some of the lights, high and otherwise. Sorry for the multi-parts, but this would go way too long otherwise. Think of it as our holiday gift to you (heh).

We had almost no trouble at Lisbon* Airport (LIS), other than one brief kerfluffle caused by John carrying the bag with all of the critical documents in his cart of luggage and Lisa pushing a cart full of all our boxes, making it look like she was bringing something *other* than luggage, and then — this is the critical part — us getting separated. John was left standing on the far side of customs and immigration, wondering where his wife was. Fortunately, he was able to pantomime with a friendly guard (albeit not friendly enough to let him back in) and he remembered just enough of his lessons to say “a minha esposa...?” and the guard generally indicated that she was stuck down the hall, but a couple minutes later he waved and smiled and pointed, and out Lisa came a moment later. Oopsie. Our per-arranged shuttle worked out well, although during three hours of idle chit-chat it became increasingly clear that we should veer away from political topics. Apparently we were 10% too friendly, which caused our driver to feel comfortable enough to let his guard down about an hour in, aaaaand… let’s just say that his opinions were quite a bit further to the right than we were comfortable. He was polite, a good driver, and took us to a grocery store for basic provisions, so we have no complaints. Just, you know… sports. Sports are always good small talk.

We spent our first two nights in an AirBnB about 100m (look at me, going metric) from our actual home. This was based on the very prescient advice from our real estate agent that there was no reason to assume that power and water would be working in our new place, and indeed it kind of wasn’t. Nevertheless, we were essentially in our neighborhood. I’m sure we’ll write volumes about it over time, but here’s the skinny: we love it. Our goals when looking for a roost in Portugal were that we wanted not to need a car, to be close to the downtown area that’s largely pedestrian-only and, where it’s not, it’s very pedestrian-friendly. With our agent’s considerable help, we nailed it. We are a 5 minute walk in a straight line from the downtown area; out our door and turn right. Meanwhile, on our street we have butchers (plural), fishmongers (plural), a handful of what I’m calling bodegas for now, barbershops, a hardware store, multiple electrical shops (appliances, odds-n-sods like extension cords and plugs etc…), and pastry shops.

A lot. of. pastry shops. Pastelaria is what you call them, and dear Lord they are everywhere. (This is not a bad thing.) The Portuguese clearly have a sweet tooth in the morning, at least based on the difficulty in finding an un-stuffed, un-glazed croissant. If chocolate-covered eclairs are your thing, however… By the way, they are definitely John’s thing, so he’s happier than um porco in merda. Two quick-ish pastelaria stories: 1) on day one, John went down to Pastelaria Caravela (learn the name, we’ll probably be writing about this place for years to come), ordered up a few things, and went to pay with a credit card; all of this in Portuguese or pantomime, there was no English to be had. The gentleman behind the counter promptly gestured that they didn’t take cards. “No problem,” John gestured and mumbled back, “I’ll be write back with cash.” The man seemed to understand, smiled and nodded, and John turned to leave. “Hey,” the man communicates, “you forgot the pastries.” John explains again (he thinks) that he’s off to get the money, but the man clearly understands that part, just not the part where John doesn’t take the pastries. Ooooooookay. So John rushes to their AirBnB, sets down the pastries, and tells Lisa that he’ll be right back, he needed to get cash to pay because they don’t take cards. Lisa accepts this as a very natural thing to do, of course. John rushes back and goes in to pay. In response to which, the man eloquently gestures, raises eyebrows, and says with tone of voice if not words (John still doesn’t speak Portuguese after all) “why the hell didn’t you eat before coming back?” Story 2) We went to a shopping center to get some basics, and it was lunch time and we were hungry so we plop down in the food court. John does a quick circuit of the options and comes back to report to Lisa. “There are 6 options. 3 of them are pastelaria.” This seems less unusual the longer we are here.

To end part one, a bit about our apartment. The short version is that we are very pleasantly surprised when we saw it. We had rented it based on photos we had seen, and the honest truth was that a) we were running short on time until our visa appointment (when we had to produce proof of securing a residence) and b) had actually seen very few options for a variety of reasons. Turns out both John and Lisa had been harboring thoughts along the lines of “eeeennnhh it looks ok, I’m sure it’ll be acceptable, and we can put up with anything for a year.” So, with pretty low expectations, we were impressed by several things. While it is absolutely a small place, it is laid out in a pretty comfortable fashion. It has been recently renovated so while the building is no great shakes, the apartment itself has modern finishes, updated appliances… the whole 9 meters. We had been worried that we wouldn’t actually be able to get it dark at night because of these otherwise-quite-lovely sliding glass doors that were everywhere along the back of the place. No problem, they all have automatic ceiling-to-floor blackout shutters; it feels like we’re closing the blast doors on Hoth every night, but it certainly makes the place cozy. Combined with its knock-out location, there’s a lot to like about the place.

Granted, getting the place up and running turned out to be both complicated and difficult, but I’ll save that for next time. Can I write a tease or what, y’all?

*Fellow immigrants, Lisa and I know that “Lisboa” would be more appropriate if we’re trying to fit in, but we also assume that most of our family and friends that read this don’t know that, and we don’t want this to be more opaque than it will already be. We’ll get there, promise.