Six Months In...

And the clusterfuckery is exactly as we anticipated

As I sat down to write this post, my intent was to take a look back and reflect on our first six months in Portugal. But as has been the case lately, the overarching pandemonium continues to take up real estate in my brain no matter how hard I try to ignore it. If you read far enough, I do get to my first six months... I promise.

That pandemonium is of course the clusterfuckery that is occurring in the US right now. If you listen closely, you can hear the faint whistle of the Republic's last dying breath. The past three months is proving to be just as chaotic and insane as we expected when we made the decision to leave the US back in June of 2022. For the past several years, we have both felt like we were living with OTSD¹ because of the clusterfuckery that led to where we are now. Perhaps a bit overdramatic... But is it? We had hoped to escape it to some degree by fleeing leaving, but alas, no matter how much we try, it is still deeply embedded into our daily lives.

The view from the back deck of Casa Vicent, a bar/restaurant in the heart of Porto is fabulous. The structure on the lower right is the back of Sao Bento Train Station. The 13th century Sé do Porto is beautifully lit on the upper right.

Everyday brings new shocking, but really not all that shocking, news. We have cut back dramatically on our media diet, even deleting The NY Times and Washington Post apps off of our phones so we would no longer be interrupted with notifications of more shit piling upon the heaping pile of shit already there. We will not be renewing our annual subscription to WaPo, and after being an NY Times reader for the past 25 years, I am working at building up the courage to cut our subscription and let it go. I will miss the news of New York City itself, but it is on the chopping block.

Instead of mainstream media, we have become fans of our daily email from Letters from an American written by Heather Cox Richardson; Steady, the semi-weekly writings of Dan Rather (about as old school media as you can get, but very on point). We also are fans of the absolutely brilliant Brian Taylor Cohen's YouTube channel, although we do not watch everything he posts, but he is very much in tune with how we feel. And my final media source is the podcast The New Abnormal with Danielle Moodie & Andy Levy.

Yes, this may still seem like more than enough media, but as hard as I try to bury my head in the sand, I just can't. I can't in good conscience ignore the world around me and plead ignorant. I almost envy those who can go about life and be oblivious to world events... But then it is just that obliviousness that got us where we are.

Looking back at that late June day in 2022 when we decided that it was time to flee leave the US, we set a goal to arrive in Porto before November 5th, 2024. We succeeded! Those who know me know that I am the tortoise and not the hare. Slow and steady wins the race. But this in many ways has been the biggest race of our lives, and we absolutely followed through. While the anticipated chaos was the driver of our move, we are nonetheless now living as refugees immigrants in a foreign country. Perhaps not refugees in reality as we had the luxury of being able to decide where we wanted to go and the ability to do so.

Our First Six Months...

We arrived to our new home in Porto just over six months ago at the tail end of July. To be honest.... We are very satisfied with our choice... Even the low points haven't been all that bad. Yes, packing up and leaving everything you know behind for a new life across the pond is a profound change, but this leap of faith has been the next right action for both of us. Yes, we still feel barraged with the crazy and insane bullshit going on in the US, but we also remark every single day how grateful we are that we made this change, and took this risk.

Living in a new country has meant coming to terms with the reality that our lives will be very different. We have no option but to let go of the many daily things we took for standard back in the US. But at the same time, we are learning a whole new way to live. We have done our best to view this new life as an adventure. The Portuguese people have offered nothing but warmth and kindness, some of them immediately offering sympathy when they find out we are from the US.

Sunrise over Jardim do Marquês de Pombal last week. This was shot at about 7:30am while I was on my daily 5k+ walk.

I had hoped (we both had hoped actually) to be much further along with our Portuguese language skills. Alas, we are hardly further along than any tourist would be. I'm embarrassed to admit how poorly I have done with learning Portuguese. I know several dozen words, and recite my NIF at the checkout, but I cannot get beyond the basic greeting (Olá , Bom Dia, Boa Tarde) and thank you (Obrigado) when I am at a store. We are committed to sign up for a year-long course starting later this year.

Fortunately for us... Many people do speak English, and when they don't, they have always been patient as I struggle with translating via DeepL on my phone. When shopping, we often take photos of labels and translate with our phone to determine what it is we are buying. I have made a few stupid (on my part) mistakes such as buying a carbon monoxide detector instead of a smoke detector (they look almost the same).

The infamous bureaucracy of the Portuguese government hasn't been all that bad for us (yet). Everything we have needed to do has gone relatively smooth. There is only a single hurdle I need to jump over. I need to exchange my Pennsylvania drivers license for a Portuguese drivers license. But before I do that, I need to obtain some certified documentation from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. That is turning out to be a bigger task than I anticipated. I did try to address this before we left last summer, but I waited too long, and there wasn't time to complete it before I left.

As for our neighborhood… Our homework paid off and we struck gold. We may not be in the prettiest part of Bonfim, but we are only a ten minute walk away from the stunning tree lined streets of the Bonfim we fell in love with on our visits. The upside is that we are also ten minutes away from the multitudes of tourists, which means we are definitely living amongst the locals, and are very grateful for it. We are about seven minutes away from the Metro, we have a Continente Bom Dia and a Lidl for groceries, both a fairly short walk away.

This is the view from my desk in my studio where I do my writing and art. I am still unpacking, but these objects are a few items I have memories wrapped around over the past. I am especially fond of the Rainbow Fatima. The Empire State Building is from my very first visit to NYC.

As for our apartment, it has been truly wonderful. As an adult, I have never lived in an apartment with a balcony or outdoor space², and now we have three balconies, although we really only use one of them. We also have more square footage (meterage?) than either of us have ever had in an apartment (the house had slightly more, but it was spread over three floors). I have written before that we both are in love with our apartment, and have no desire to move anytime soon.

There is really only one caveat... There is no heat, never has been. We have two oil filled electric heaters (one in the living room, one in the bedroom) and two small portable heaters we move around as needed. Our electric bill went up about 250% from where it was last fall. Fortunately it is still a fair amount less than we paid for natural gas to heat our uninsulated 175 year old house in Philly. We are adapting... I wear a hoodie at home most of the time, and sometimes a knit cap to keep my head warm. I will happily tolerate a wet and semi-gloomy winter for the glorious summers of Porto

Looking forward as we move past the halfway mark of our first year, I am continuing to unpack endless boxes of stuff we brought over. Just yesterday, I came across one of the two remaining missing boxes, leaving us with one missing box, and a few things I packed but haven't located yet. I am a very slow unpacker, mostly due to the fact that five years post cancer³, I lack stamina, and after an hour or two of working on unpacking, I am wiped.

We picked up some paint for the living room. As renters, we don't have the luxury of painting every room a different color (as would normally do), but one room will suffice for now. I also have some plans for reversible decorating for our primary bedroom, and some other areas. All will be revealed as we get more areas completed.

When we look back at where we were before the move, we have ZERO regrets that we took this giant leap. We both believe that had we stayed in the toxic cesspool that the US has become, we would be in a much worse state. That said, we are indeed in an unprecedented time.

Parting Shot:

Those who know me know that I often communicate through pictures. I have over a quarter million photos on several hard drives (including about 150k photos of New York City). I have always strived to find beauty in the mundane. This phone booth on a plaza on Rua de Fernandes Tomás is clearly a vestige of the past… But I find tremendous beauty in this.

1. OTSD - Ongoing Traumatic Stress Disorder. Basically the same as PTSD only it is ongoing and there is no known end in sight.

2. Growing up in suburban California, having a yard was a given, but as an adult, I lived in small apartments in the heart of big cities (Seattle, Chicago, Manhattan) ranging from my 225 sq ft apartment in the West Village to my 500 sq ft loft on State Street in the Chicago Loop. None of these places had any outdoor space. Location always eclipsed space, and it was only after Yoav and I got our first apartment together that I had any space. We had a small backyard at our house in Philly, which was a first for both of us. We used it a lot, but it was still awkwardly accessed and felt cut off from the house.

3. Looking back, I realize I haven't written much here about my cancer diagnosis in 2019. Perhaps I will expand on this in another post, but the short of it is that I had Esophageal Cancer and underwent major surgery (involving a radical change to my internal plumbing) in December of 2019. I had my five-year CT scan last month, and I am still cancer free. I survived, but my stamina has never returned, and likely never will... I am also nearly sixty years old, which also contributes to my limited stamina.