This weekend we traveled to Porto to collect the keys to our new rental home in Portugal! Saddle up for a longer post!
Espinho chaos
We traveled to Porto on Friday morning. We had arranged with the estate agents that we would collect the keys in Espinho at 17.00. Travel, for a change, was rather smooth. We found ourselves in Espinho well before that time, giving us some time to take in the neighbourhood a bit. We walked around a bit on the beach, and had lunch at a surf club before we finally got to see our rental place from the inside.
The first person there was the landlord. He was very enthusiastic, but didn’t speak a word of English, and our few words of Portuguese were… lacking. Still, he managed to let us in and show us around enthusiastically and proudly before our translators arrived. From then on it was CHAOS. We didn’t get a lot of time to take it all in in peace and quiet, but we just decided to go with the flow.
There was the small matter of paying the rent, approving the contract, and after that we got into the practicalities. The estate agents, both our own and the landlord’s were VERY helpful (and continue to be). They immediately offered to help us arrange our utilities while we were there, bless them. These are both useful to have sorted as soon as we move in in about a month.
Getting key stuff sorted #1: Either very Quickly…
So, we set off back to Porto, to the ‘Loja do Cidadão‘. This is a ‘Council shop’ where you can sort out almost anything to do with living in a city, including electricity to your house. Our estate agent helped us set things up and translated, although the energy company’s employee also spoke perfect English. While we are very keen to learn Portuguese as soon as possible, it is really nice to sort these essentials in English!
After we set up the energy account we called it a day. We went to our AirBnB and after changing into some non-travel clothes, we set out for something to eat and a beer to drink. Searching for and discovering new places can be a great adventure too. However, after the long day, we decided to go to a familiar places and order familiar food and drinks. We had a lovely Francesinha and Pica-Pau at Brasão do Colisseu which also happens to be Cervejaria Brasão; they have their own beer! Around the corner from there is Letraria, the brewpub of Brewery Letra where we had a few drinks and left around 1am, finally feeling like we had properly celebrated our new home!
For Saturday, we had one main goal: open a Portuguese bank account. Having one will open a lot of doors to us. Not only is it just very convenient to have, you also need it (within a month of starting the contract) to get an internet and tv subscription; quite important if you work mostly from home.
Getting key stuff sorted #2: or very slowly…
We were recommended Activo bank, and specifically the branch in El Corte Ingles in Gaia, which is some kind of Harrods (or hell…). That was supposedly the quieter one. True enough, it was rather quiet at the bank (not in the store), but the waiting times were still quite long. Longer than we’ve ever experienced in the Netherlands or the UK. That’s not the employees’ fault (who get a lot of bad reviews online…) but all due to ‘the system’. Opening a bank account just takes a lot of time, especially if you are not a Portuguese national, and you’ll just have to go with the flow. We had a waiting time of just around an hour. After this, we could start our own hour-long process of (trying to, spoilers…) opening a bank account.
The lady that helped us was brilliant. Kind, patient, her English was very good, and she kept apologising for the wait and how long it would all take. We had to go through many bits and pieces and provide quite a bit of documentation to prove who we are and what we do for a living. It was the documentation that ended up being a bit of a hurdle. With everything set up and ready to go after approval, the document-checking team needed to forward our stuff to the ‘expert team’, something that takes more than a day to be completed.
So, if all is well, we have done all of the hard work needed to set up a back account. It’s now up to them to approve it. Hopefully we’ll receive an email about that soon!
In the evening we had a lovely meal with Joost and Carolina. Joost is an old university friend of Rene, and he has been living in Porto for the last 11 (?) years. I had never met them, but it felt as if I had! Such a lovely evening (and Bacalhau !) and really looking forward to inviting them at our place once we’re settled! And visiting the Super Bock factory of course!
Key household items to sort first
On Sunday, we finally had the time to go back to the house and figure things out in peace and quiet. But first, we needed to do some shopping. When we arrive next month, we will have to go without our stuff as the removal company will take about a week to get our stuff from Bradford to Portugal. So, we’ll need a place to sleep, a way to make some food every now and then between take-away/restaurants, and a place to work and eat when needed.
There were also some essentials that our AirBnB is lacking too and that we would also need at home, such as a proper tea pot and some proper tea mugs, so we decided to buy those as well to use during the week. So off to Continente (thanks for the recommendation Carolina) and Decathlon we went right after breakfast. We managed to tick off everything off our list. From table to inflatable bed, to some basic pots and pans and mugs.
Next stop: Espinho!
Using the keys (properly) for the very first time
We finally got to use our keys properly on Sunday afternoon around 2pm. They still worked. It wasn’t a scam. After getting in all our stuff, it was time to start thinking about how the **** all our stuff would fit in. Moving from a 4 bedroom house with a downstairs open plan living area of around 70m2 to a much smaller 3-bed appartment isn’t as straightforward as you’d like without renting extra storage.
Even though we have already given away and sold quite a few things, it will still be a bit of a puzzle to fit everything in the new place. Sure, this rental place is going to be temporary for only a few years at most. But… we still would like things to not feel cramped.
Room by room we measured so that we could draw up a floor plan, which in turn we would draw up in Floorplanner.com while using our full arsenal of swear words (awful, awful website…) and nearly throwing the laptop out of the window.
In the end we managed quite well. We now have a good idea of where everything needs to go to make the most of the space and keep much of our furniture for when we eventually move to a bigger house. The only thing we’ll need to do is buy an external shed to store all our garage inventory. Things like tools, our table saw, the lawn mower, and more.
After doing some research, it’s probably going to be something like this from Worten. It looks durable and dry, which is good. And… it’s something easily reused as well in another place.
Key take away: It is what it is
As you can read, we had a rather eventful first few days in Porto! They will probably continue to be eventful as there are more things to sort and find out! It will all take time. And… it appears to be the Portuguese way. So, our motto for everything that takes time is going to be ‘it is what it is’. We’ll go with the flow whenever we can! Although, that’s nothing new, really.