The North Wind blew again

What’s this about wind?

If you’ve been following this blog for several years (and if so, thank you!), you may recall reading our post from 2021 – The North Wind Blew.  It told the “origin story” of our move to Portugal. 

In that post we explained that the “North Wind” analogy came from Chocolat, one of Mary’s favorite movies.

In the movie, Juliette Binoche’s character, Vianne, lives a nomadic life – moving to a new place when she feels the north wind blowing.

We had felt our own north wind, and it prompted our big move to Portugal, in 2021 – the middle of the pandemic.

And now, guess what?  The north wind blew again.

Where to now?

On September 23, 2024 we’ll start a 4 day journey that will end in Clarkston, Washington, just across the Snake River from Lewiston, Idaho. (Lewis and Clark, get it?) Never heard of it? Neither had we, until our son and daughter-in-law moved to Lewiston.

A year ago we decided we wanted to move back to be closer to our family.  Very specifically, we wanted to live near our two year old grandson, Guy William. We want to watch him grow up and be active participants in his life.  And we wanted to be an easier distance from our two daughters back in Indiana – that was the icing on the cake. We just had to wait until now in order to get out of our lease.

Living in Portugal has given us the experience we wanted to have.  Now we’re preparing for a new adventure in a new place.

Reflecting on our time in Portugal

For many years we wanted to live outside the US.  It wasn’t for the political reasons that motivate many people today.  We wanted to experience life in another culture.  

During our working years, we had traveled extensively and often said to ourselves “wouldn’t it be interesting to actually live here”.  Mike tried repeatedly to get an expat assignment, with the company where he worked, but never got one.  

Once we retired, though, we made it happen.

What’s been good

Here are a few things that we have especially enjoyed about living in Portugal.

• Making new friends. We have met many wonderful people here. Some have been our neighbors. Some we met through this blog. Mike has made new friends through the weekly men’s coffee group he attends and through his various volunteer gigs. All of them have enriched our lives in different ways. We will miss their physical presence when we leave, but hope to stay in touch virtually.
  
  
• Living in three different cities – Porto, Parede, and Lisbon.  We came here intending to live in several areas of the country, and then, maybe, settling somewhere.  The three places we have lived are very different and each was interesting in its own way. 

• Traveling to other parts of Portugal.  We visited the Algarve region in southern Portugal and several cities in central Portugal – Setúbal, Nazaré, Obidos, Coimbra, Aveiro.  Everywhere we went taught us a little more about the long history and vibrant culture of the country.
  
  
• Traveling to other countries.  With inexpensive airfares and no border restrictions in Europe, we enjoyed traveling to Spain, Greece, Sweden, Italy (twice!), Slovenia, and Austria.  And earlier this year we did a short trip to Morocco in Northern Africa. 
    
• Café culture.  There’s almost nothing better than sitting at an outdoor table on a warm evening, having a caneca or a vinho branco, and laughing with friends.
  
  
• The variety of dining options.  Whether we’re feeling adventurous or just want some comfort food, we have enjoyed sampling the multitude of restaurants here, especially in Lisbon.  Sitting at the table for as long as we liked.  Almost never feeling pressured to pay the bill so they could turn the table.
  
  
• Walking everywhere (even on rainy days!).  At slow speed we could appreciate the little details of the neighborhoods where we lived and the places we visited.  

• Using mass transit.  In the cities, we have regularly used the metro, buses, and commuter trains.  For longer trips, we’ve traveled on low-speed trains,  high-speed trains, and long-distance buses.  We have (mostly) not missed owning and maintaining a car.
  
  
• The rich blue sky. Looking up on most days and seeing the color that Mike calls “Iberian azul”.

A few things we won’t miss

We have always tried to maintain a positive tone in our posts, so you might have the impression that life here is all pastéis de nata and vinho verde, though not at the same time (usually). There are, however, some aspects of our life here that we’ll be happy to leave behind.

• The friction of daily life.  Everyone complains about the bureaucracy, and we had our moments of frustration, too.  But in a place where we don’t always understand the unwritten rules or customs, just getting everyday tasks accomplished often takes three times as long.   (See “learn the language” below).
  
  
• The “head cracker” in the kitchen.  Mike won’t miss the massive stone shelf and supports above our stove.  But he’ll have the knots on his head to remember it by.
  

• Never feeling like we’re on vacation. When traveling to a foreign country, you expect everything to be different – language, money, transit options, etc. Part of the fun is navigating everything that’s new and different… for a short time. But we’ve found that when we travel around the EU, we experience the same kind of friction as living in Portugal. So we never really “get away”. Sometimes on vacation, we don’t want to have to think!
  
  
• Filing tax returns in two different countries.  We’ll have to do this complicated process one more time, for 2024.  And then, after that, we’ll probably understand how it all works.
  
  
• Bacalhau. At the risk of offending any of his Portuguese friends, Mike will simply say that he never developed a taste for the dried, salted codfish that might be the national dish of Portugal. They say there are over 1,000 ways to prepare it. Mike tried four of them, and three disappointed.

What we would do differently

As we’ve reflected on our experiences here, it’s been easy to get into a game of “woulda, coulda, shoulda…”  But here are a few things we might do differently if we were starting this adventure over.

• Learn the language.  In Portugal, English is taught in the elementary schools and almost everyone we’ve met who’s under 50 will tell you that they speak “a little” English.  (And then they’ll usually dazzle you with their fluency.)  We have been able to get by with a limited vocabulary – Bom dia (good day or good morning), por favor (please), obrigada / obrigado (thank you for Mary / Mike).
  
  Our experience has been that knowing Portuguese is not a necessity to get by here.  Until it is. 
  
  We’ve had some recent experience with ambulance drivers, and the staff in the public hospital system (a story for another day) where being at least semi-fluent would have been very helpful.  We know a smattering of niceties, maybe 1,000 nouns, and can puzzle out a restaurant menu. But that knowledge doesn’t help much in a crisis or difficult situation.
  
  After we made the decision to move back to the US, a year ago, we lost most of our motivation to learn Portuguese.  But our lives here would have been richer and more interesting had we made a better effort. 
  
  
• Keeping a home back in the US.  Our last house in the states was pretty high-maintenance and we didn’t want to try to keep it up from a long distance.  We also didn’t want to feel tentative about the move.  We were going to be immigrants, not expats.¹
  
  So while we didn’t burn the boats, we sold the house, gave away all the stuff, and bought one-way tickets.
  
  But if we were to do this again, we would downsize into a small home or apartment somewhere that could hold some of our “stuff” and that we could use as a home base in between extended trips abroad.
  
  
• Being “part-time expats”.  This is an idea, along with the “home base” above, that we are seriously considering.  Instead of moving to a new country, we’re thinking about longer trips – 2 to 3 months at a time – to several places.  Traveling slowly.  Maybe a month in Paris, followed by a month in Berlin, then a month in Vienna.  Then back home.
  
  We want the extended stays in order to get a feel for the rhythms of life in a place, a chance to experience how people go about their daily lives.  Where do they shop for groceries?  How does the metro work?  What happens around here on Saturday night?  And all of it without having to sort through the mind-numbing and time consuming processes of establishing residency.
  
  Staying longer should also help us limit our long-distance airline flights to one time per year. That won’t eliminate our carbon footprint, but it will help us control it.

So our 2025 travel plans may look different. 

Looking ahead

Twice during our lives we have radically downsized and started over in a new place.  This move back will be our third time.  It’s foolish to say it will be the last.

We have a lot to look forward to.  Most exciting is the chance to be real-time grandparents.  Mary and Mike get to become Bee-bee and Pop-pop in the flesh, not just on FaceTime.  

We will be settling into a new community.  But unlike when we arrived in Portugal, we have at least visited this area once.  And we know the language.

There will be opportunities to explore the western US, Alaska, and Canada.  Those are trips we are looking forward to.  A trip to Japan is on the wish list, too.

Our time in Portugal has given us a new perspective on living in the US.  We looked at things with different eyes each time we visited family “back home” over the last three years.  But we expect much of what we see in our new location will be familiar.  And, of course, there will be some regional phrases and traditional foods that we’ll have to get used to, and some events that will be new to us (like rodeos?).  

Last week Mary said “I miss the sound of my own language”.  That shouldn’t be a problem.  

Some things won’t change

Our focus here at The Cook and The Writer will remain the same – trying to tell good stories about good food and interesting places.

We have a queue of Europe stories that we haven’t told yet.  We’ll get to them, along with pieces about what we’re seeing / hearing / tasting in our new location.

Mary recently read Steve Hoffman’s book, “A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France” ², in which he describes how he and his family moved to a small village in southern France for six months. At the end of the book, Steve talks about what he learned about “time and how to live in it”. Instead of thinking of time as a linear progression, always moving forward and obsessing about “making progress” on something, he saw the people around him living with a circular view of time – based on the cycle of the seasons.

That’s what we’re looking for as we come back.  Living the cycle of seasons with our family. Hopefully demonstrating some competence. And making certain there’s a “travel season” every so often.

We hope you’ll stick around to see what happens next. You never know when the North Wind will blow next.

Until next time / Até a próxima vez

Mary and Mike

The Cook and The Writer

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