Gentle Reminder

When we arrived in Viana do Castelo we secured a tiny apartment a block off the ocean beach on the south side of the river in a community called Cabedelo.  It was the the back-yard cottage of Flora, who is a 70 something year old beauty; timeless beauty with all the hoped-for attributes that seem to stack up on some people…charm, wit, brains, humor, grace and enough English to let us know she appreciated us.  Her husband, Jose, was in intensive care in a hospital some fifty kilometres away and had been for months and months.  Flora drove to his side nearly every day and she suffered the angst and bewildering sadness of one who will surely lose a spouse…a spouse she revered.

We got to know her over the months, got to know her two boys, daughter and grandchildren as well.  They were gladly in our lives and we’ve become fond of them…see them whenever we can, consider them friends.

The months rolled on and Dr. Jose was in his 19th month of dire ill health when, last week he suddenly rallied and there were great cheers that this tough and brave man would emerge from the wearying tunnel he’d been in for over a year and a half.  

Yesterday evening he died.  In the Portuguese tradition his funeral was today and now, this evening his remains are already in the ground some metres up from the river he lived on for so many years.  Neither my wife nor I can recall a person less deserving of ill fortune and grief than Flora, but here it is, heaped upon her in spite of her stalwart vigilance and loving care for Jose. 

His funeral was in a big local church that seated about 200 of the 300 or so people who came to pay their respects to Flora and her children.  The church was of course ornate and filled with the horrifying accoutrements of the Catholic faith… gold-leafed scenes of an execution, eating flesh, drinking blood, swords, shields, arrows, alcoves, hidden choirs and towering vaulted ceilings twenty metres up…as if already approaching heaven.  There was a lovely-sounding call and response in Portuguese, I think, although it could have been Latin, in which none of the consonants could be heard and the result had the same magic as of a Gregorian Chant.  

There were no dry eyes today, as this man was loved by his community and he was a substantial member of his community, but the most poignant moment for me was when his granddaughter came toward the alter as the casket was being wheeled out and reached forward and touched the corner of her grandfather’s casket.  She then folded into my arms and I told her I was sorry she had lost her grandad. 

Thank you, she said said simply…already, at 11 years old, finding a place of grace and strength to take her generation forward.

Linda and I had dinner on the beach this evening at a favourite restaurant and we held hands a little more than usual and toasted more simple pleasures than is our wont.  We sat there across from each other with the full knowledge that someday one or the other of us must face the same grief, but with splendid hope that it will not be today and with any luck not tomorrow either.  

Traffic; Moby Dick When Least Expected 

That hideous business at the mosque in New Zealand flattened me to the point that I have not felt much like writing of my eventless life, but perhaps eventlessness is what we should all strive for.  At any rate, I am feeling somewhat recovered and routine life in these magical northern reaches of Portugal has leavened my spirits.  Now I’m ready to go on…

The surface roads in rural Portugal, not the wonderful huge and elegant tollroad motorways, but the winding narrow, village streets and byways that meander through the valleys and up and down the hills, are peopled with the damndest array of vehicles you can imagine.  There are ancient two-stroke motorbikes, seemingly Zundapps mostly, that are ridden by elderly men or elderly couples who are invariably dressed in dusty browns and grays and whom we call the Gray Riders, Grey Riders for the Brits.  These intrepid men have 1950s style half-helmets and they throw up a canvass fronts-piece over their torsos in case of bad weather as they wobble along in a cloud of blue smoke.  Usually one or both riders have a plastic bag of goods swinging from their arms.  Not one of them has ever exceeded 18 kilometres per hour.  They seem to ride mostly on the far right side of the road except when the far right side is someone’s stoop or front door.  Also not one of them has a working muffler…Gawdamitey they are loud.

Then there is the usual gaggle of Smart Cars and the cute little Fiats, Peugeots and Citroens but wait!  These cars are mid-sized in Portugal.  The really little ones are only a knot or two faster than the Grey Machines and they are about two-thirds the size of a Smart Car. 

They look like a circus act.  And not only cars, but trucks; trucks designed to carry two people and maybe 100 kilos of load, but that are invariably overloaded nearly to the point of capsizing.

And not only trucks, but farm tractors ranging from garden-tractor size with a sheep or two in the back to immense four wheel drive super tractors pulling vats of grapes or tons of logs; they also are not speed demons.

The speed demons are the people in the big modern saloons who must, absolutely must pass every car they can that will not result in certain death.  Only-probable-death constitutes a passing lane.  The idea is that the normal Portuguese driver simply can not bear the thought of not being first in line, of not being ahead of whoever’s in front.  To encourage the vehicle in front, these desperate speeders follow at about six feet, OK, two meters, behind you.  In the rear-view mirror you can actually see their blood pressure go up by the furlong.  (I don’t really know what a furlong is.)  With all this passing and weaving in and out and blasting of horns, these maniacs get to the next stop light only a few seconds before the line of farm implements and Gray Riders they nearly killed a block or so back.  And the Gray Riders sneak along the shoulder and regain the lead position at every stop.  

But the leviathans the size of Moby Dick are the most amusing.  And terrifying.  They are modern busses and they are simply too big for the streets.  Traffic must give way, back up if necessary.  They are the scariest because the roads are winding and around any bend you can come face to face with one of these monsters bearing down on you well into your lane.  It is unclear to me how I’ve not taken the mirrors off our car yet, nor have been killed.

We’re still puttering along, though and may eventually get our car and moto properly registered in Portugal…there are rumors, rumours for the Brits.  

Meanwhile the local markets are in their glory. It is high produce season and the little village markets are in full swing. Think dour-faced gypsies selling polyester socks sprinkled with centuries of ethnic hatred amid long tables groaning under the treasures of the farms….the farmers jolly and proud. Spitted lambs and pigs offered up on soft rolls and they’ll give you a marketing sliver if you just walk by. Oh my. 

We bought an heirloom monster tomato at one of the cheerful stands and it took two stout farm women using a hand-truck to get it into our car.  Now, normally I don’t write about tomatoes, but this ain’t no mild, grow-light, hydroponic, Presbyterian fruit neither.  Have never experienced such complexity of flavours and richness…of course I aided the sensation with a few shreds of bacon, some salt and pepper and the mayonnaise.  Always the mayonnaise, but through it all there was that marvellous, village-market tomatoness.  

Enough about my Mediterranean diet; just know that life be good. 

A Sweet Evening of Disbelief

For three weeks I have been sick.  Both of us have.  The overlap of the flu that hammered us lasted over a month elapsed time between both of us feeling good to feeling good again and it was so virulent and powerful, we both fully understood for the first time in our lives that this stuff could kill you.  It has knocked us down to the point of emergency room visits and courses of antibiotics to deal with secondary infection.
And I know why we succumbed.   It turns out that uprooting one’s life and shlepping one’s stuff thousands of miles away, culturally, physically emotionally and psychologically is a more difficult thing to do than we had anticipated, than we could have known.  Even though the place we landed is magical and beckoning, beautiful, welcoming, gracious, steeped in history and complete with a big ocean crashing ashore, to force-fit that much sea-change in one’s life is asking for trouble.  Is asking for illness.  
Now that we know this we are getting flu shots for next season.  Problem solved. 
Except that it isn’t.  The big-shouldered wooded ridge line that commands the view from our veranda is about 500 meters in elevation.  The distance across the valley is probably five kilometers and I can just make out individual trees on the skyline.  The sky is clear and blue and the commercial jets leaving Porto streak overhead in legions to the rest of Europe, their contrails parallel, to the world beyond this continent, maybe some of them to New Zealand where as a young man I rode my bicycle the length of the country, sailed their boisterous waters and fell in love with a country so gentle and picturesque that it seems to offer the whole color spectrum all in the various possible greens.  A country so gentle and mannerly there is the expected offer of lunch to a traveler one might find hitch-hiking.  A country and a people so bludgeoned last week they are aghast and there is no possible understanding of this kind of cruelty.
Would that we could somehow evolve out of hatred and out of fear of otherness.  Would that we could live our lives only concerned about flu-shot decisions and the parallel contrails above the individual trees on the skyline across the valley.

The Dream Differs

If this winter is indicative of the weather in the north of Portugal, we’re in the money.  We commiserate with our friends in Oregon and Washington shivering under 14 inches of snow with more on the way, and don’t think for a minute that we do not understand extreme weather.  In the early morning last week it got down to 52 degrees Fahrenheit.   There were thick gloves, fur-fringed Arctic parkas and lined, knee-high boots all over Viana and you could see your breath, for God’s sake!  The days, however, seem to warm up to the high sixties so that a light wrap is sufficient.
This morning is crisp, with a light breeze under brilliant blue skies.  The weather seems to pattern as follows: a day of rain, maybe two days of rain followed by this drop-dead gorgeous, balmy sunshine for a week or ten days.  I can take it.  My dog who has very short hair can take it.  My wife rides her horse outside.  We are surviving.
And there is wonderful news….for the past several months we have been in the process of closing on the sale of our Lake Oswego house and the purchase of a spacious, handsome house on the town square of Barroselas (you wouldn’t believe how it is pronounced).  Well, both happened; no more contingencies, no more waiting.  The old one is theirs, the new one is ours…we could take Crayons and write on the walls if we wanted to.  We could buy draperies.  We could unpack boxes or even read the manual to the pellet furnace.  
Forget joy from the manual; even in English it seems to have nothing to do with the furnace which is “Fully Automatic”  We are deep into the intrigue and mystery of the Automatic part which is accompanied by the headstrong bullying parts.  Actually it gives our lives a slight tinge of third world adventure to see smoke coming out of the chimney that actually heats the house.
And all our stuff arrived from its ocean journey, much of it unbroken, gouged, scratched or punctured and two of the five husky commandos who showed up with our goods to schlep furniture out of the container and unpack boxes seemed completely sober.  
It turns out the third world vibe is closer than a pellet stove, and that perhaps dreams may differ.  The moto with its friendly sidecar is freshly insured and on the streets…what a wonderful machine, although it gave me a moment of angst two days ago when I pulled up to a stop light in Darque, where most of the Gypsies live, across the river from Viana.  Going across the street with the light were two elderly women (older than me), both of them thin and very dark skinned with fierce deep-set, black eyes, Gypsies almost certainly, both scarved and dressed in heavy black clothing, pushing a big hand cart piled high with limbs and bits of scrap wood.  The only difference in their big wheeled cart and one they would have owned in 1600 is that pneumatic tires have replaced the iron rimmed ones or the solid wooden disks.  
Their furnace is almost surely not automatic and the look of hopeless envy they gave the sidecar rig as they pushed their heavy load toward the village made me ashamed.  It also made me resolve to understand the best way to share our good fortune with our own village, and our good fortune is immense.

Realizing the Magnitude

We have been silent for several weeks.  No entries, no updates, no enticing details of a powerful ocean and exotic seafood…nothing at all because we’ve been ground down by the mind-deadening, Sisyphean task of making our way through the incompetence and torpor of various bureaucracies, both governmental and private.  
The shipping company we chose in blind faith (my bad) turned out to be as full of untruths, half-truths, truths that would evolve into untruths, avarice and cheesy greed as can be imagined…saying one thing, taking it back, saying another thing, denying it, failing to mention important details, hiring slack-jawed, mouth-breathing, maybe criminal/certainly incompetent sub-contractors and on and on as our spirits sank and our costs rose and then more than doubled from the original glib quotes.  And still our household goods are on the docks near Porto.  The car is in Lisbon.  
The Portuguese Consulate in San Francisco is feckless and insouciant beyond description…with people like these in positions of authority it is little wonder that their nation was skewered by the economic recession of a decade ago and then passed over by the recovery.   The Consulate produced a fallacious Baggage Certificate (a necessary document that describes who we are and what we are importing) that had been cut-and-pasted from several different sources, only a few of them us, was full of bone-headed mistakes and was as useless as a Chicken Crossed The Road Joke.  But of course the Consulate doesn’t like to communicate directly with those they “serve”; they take no phone calls at all and normally will only respond to emails from institutions, “fixer-companies” and those they already know.  Finally, after months of dithering, they responded directly to me, saying that the fees that our “fixer” had told us to pay were not enough and that they would not correct the documents they had screwed up until the fees were paid in full.  Then they said all the documents were ready, but that there was insufficient postage for our self addressed return envelopes and that they would not send the corrected baggage certificates to us until we got them the proper amount of postage.  (Can you feel a little frustration here?  A smidgen of discontent?)  
We got them their postage, at which point they took credit for their fine work, wished us a happy stay in Portugal and invited us to get back in touch if there was anything they could do for us.  There are things they could do for us, alright, starting with painting our house and supplying us with free gas for a year, maybe two.  I’ll let you know when they show up.
Meanwhile our stuff, our car, everything that didn’t find a new home in the sad garage sales of last year, is sitting on the docks near Porto…sitting on the docks garnering huge dunnage, storage, inspection and container fees.  And the guru assigned to help us get our stuff through customs did her undergraduate work with Larry Moe and Curly.     
This Odyssey of woe was fortunately leavened with the good cheer of our new friends here in Viana and the generosity and expert skills of several people along the way both in America and in Portugal.  There is Neil, our financial advisor who is steadfast; our Portuguese attorney, Daniel; our bankers, Sara in Viana and Andy in Lake Oswego; our land lady, Flora; our dear spiritual counselor and Portuguese swear word coach, Nuno; and in the spirit of Nuno, a UPS employee in Porto named David who engineered a work-around to get our postage and pre-paid return envelopes to those hale fellows at the Consulate in San Francisco in only 24 hours!  No wonder we had such an easy time of landing men on the moon….there must have been Davids all over that mission. 
This world needs Neils to show us the way, all the Saras and Andys it can muster, Nuno’s to the tenth power, Daniels to restore the reputation of the business of law and faith in mankind, Floras to show us true strength; and Davids to remind us what we all could be if we tried, if we’d only listened in the fourth grade.  
And then there is my wife, who is the glue on this mission, the majesty of this adventure.  The one who reminds me, “Remember, I’m your only friend over here.”
The lessons we’ve learned, sometimes painfully, are several fold; the ones that jump right out are:
  1. If you are going to uproot your life and move to another continent, plan it carefully and keep it simple…sell your furniture except for the most precious life-milestone pieces.  Sell your car.  Bring your motor bike with a sidecar.  Bring your art if you make art.  Bring only the books that have truly made a difference in your life.  Bring your dog.  Don’t forget your dog.  Learn as much of the language as you can before you arrive.  Let your in-laws visit.
  2. Listen to those who have gone before, to the expats who have blogs and who chatter on the expat sites.  They know whereof they speak when they talk about steeling one’s self for the low times…it aint all good seafood and pounding surf.
  3. Ask these expats about their experiences with shipping companies, In-country banks, customs brokers, emigration assistance companies, attorneys…all the professionals you may need.  Will need.
  4. Rent when you get here.  Buy later if at all.
  5. If it is Portugal you’ve chosen, open yourself to the magic of the Portuguese people, to their generosity, their genteel grace, but wherever you’ve chosen, bask in the love and good will of the friends you’ve left behind. 
  6. And then come on over. 

Camaraderie

A few days ago Linda and I went to some little town upriver with the Viana Remos rowing club for a holiday lunch and man oh man do these people know how to Lunch. We started at 1330 and left the joint at 1740!
There were 24 of us, all at one long table, architects, professors, attorneys, surgical nurses, public school teachers, musicians and several other brands of professional accomplishment, but athletes, every one. An august group. Then, after a few bottles of wine and the fried chicken gizzards, breaded pig-parts and cod biscuits had made the rounds, one end at a time, each end of the table would break into full-howl bawdy song while everyone drummed on the table top (I just drooled and pounded the table). This prompted the choir at the other end to respond with something even louder and more risqué.
It was hilarious. They were blushing, yelling and laughing so hard it set off my cosmic laughter response and both Linda and I hooted along with the crew, tears rolling down our faces. I have rarely felt this much camaraderie among a group, and never among a group of adults and certainly never while eating little cubes of breaded not-otherwise-specified pig-parts.
We are so happy to have found Remos! We are so happy to have found Portugal.

Mr Active

Today is my son’s birthday. He is 33. He has the world by the tail and is currently in Germany visiting his girlfriend. They met several months ago in a Jaguar Rehabilitation Reserve in Costa Rica or Belize or one of the other snake and mosquito-infested Banana Republics…I forget which one. There were never any Jaguars at this preserve, but there were monkeys and on a regular schedule, Sheffield and his girlfriend would rendezvous there supposedly to celebrate the release of a favorite monkey back into the wild. (I believe most monkeys came back into Rehab straight away, the living being easier there.) Of late they have not felt the need of a monkey-release to visit each other and now just hang out somewhere in the world for a few months at a time, writing to me frequently about how wonderful the food is and how misunderstood pit bulls are.

Then Sheff misses his gaggle of pit bulls and flies back to Seattle for some R&R. He’s very tender-hearted toward his pit bulls, all pit bulls, in fact, and in all conversations works in the truth that they are terribly misunderstood. They occasionally mistakenly kill a few cats or bite a neighbor on accident, but those times are anomalous, stemming from some misunderstanding or suspicious quick movement on the part of the cat or the neighbor.
A week from tomorrow Sheff is coming to Viana do Castelo to spend Christmas with us. It will be a true pleasure to throw my arms around this big slab of a man. My main man.

Strong and Shredded Lands

The news is that we are back in the hunt for a house.  The one we made a bid for in Serrelies went off the tracks due to the greed and guile of the sellers and their realtors…we so wish them well.  But that turns out to be fortunate circumstances because, across the river and over a ridge, we found the perfect house set in tidy walled grounds, looking at a mountain ridge to the south, three kilometers across a valley of red-tiled roofs of grand villas set among august vineyards, and off to the right the ocean, in mist and distance. Of course one must walk out on the second floor veranda to see the ocean from this house we so desire, but what a pleasure that is. This house is perched on the edge of the town square of Barroselas, a hillside farming village with roots in the Bronze Age.  The house is only about 20 meters from the closest chapel, but 40 meters from the nearest cafe and only twice that far from a storied bakery…life may be good there. 


In 1220, Vila de Barroselas is praised, “…its valleys, well protected, the strong and shredded lands speak for the diversity of trees and cultures of the potentialities already little used.”  Lyrical way of saying it is drop-dead gorgeous with good vineyard potential, but may need a little work.  Unlike our house-of-interest which is recently built with all systems working quite nicely, thank you.


It seems that grapes have been grown here and wine produced here since our women wore wimples and their men, pointy shoes and leather smocks on their way along the worn paths to the communal wells and cisterns of the valley.  Have to admit it delights me that the worn paths and roofed springs, cisterns and wells are still here and are still being used. 
But then, as now, there is the ocean in the mist, breathing and sighing, cooling the valley, giving life to potentialities already little used.
And who could imagine what forms those potentialities would take?  Since the late 1990s, Barroselas has been the venue for three days of Heavy MetalFest…bands from all over the world!  (I wouldn’t make stuff like this up.)


We may have to go all the way to Porto to get our black gear and spiked collars, but we’re gonna be there.  Wanna join us?

Trixie

Most of  you know Trixie, our joyful goofy, three year old Vizsla.  A friend recently said of her, “She hasn’t a mean bone in her body; she’s a good natured woman.”  Good natured and no mean bones, yes, but Gawdamitey she’s an absolute sack of frightened bones!  Terrified bones.

 
We’ve just spent the entire night up and down trying to comfort her to no avail as racy little thunder cell after cell roared onshore and lit up the sky in huge, jagged, exploding streaks, dumped rain in sheets along with howling wind and then in about three minutes went quiet and calm, but there was no intermission in Trix’s mind.  Our efforts quickly deteriorated from comfort to restraint.  It is gut wrenching to see her so panicked, almost catatonic, and rife with doom, yet be unable to provide her any relief. 

Drug her you say?  I can send you a list as long as my arm of “calming” drugs we’ve tried…nothing.  Thunder Shirt?  She ate it.  Cannabis  drops?  Stoned maybe, but still scared beyond reason.  She is wired the way she is wired and we will live with it, stumble along from time to time, but we must try to live with it.

Motoring Into Spain and Rowing Up The Lima

A couple of days ago, thinking that a few quiet hours to myself would be well spent by a drive into Spain, I took off on A-28 with great expectations. Believe in my near-conscious brain I formlessly expected I might run into haughty, corseted Spanish beauties with roses in their hair, looking with dark eyes over their fans, perhaps a matador or two…suit of lights and all that, a brace of Andalusian horses, certainly ancient windmills with jousting wounds, a few Basques innocently carrying bombs and quite likely Hemingway. eating an onion sandwich while counting his grenades.
And surely if I’d gone up through Caminha and stayed near the coast, all my expectations would have come to me, but I started out on A-28 and almost immediately dithered off numbly into the mountains and crossed the Spanish frontier inland by 20 or 30 kilometers. Crossed the frontier into the land of huge belching cement plants, rows of roadside trash and one truck repair cavern after another. I haven’t seen such squalor since my last trip through Tacoma.
It is very interesting to me that the Portuguese side of the border is so orderly and the Spanish side so chaotic. I wonder if that will prove a cultural phenomenon. Everyone I’ve spoken with about Spain raves about the food and glamor though, so I’ll go back for sure.
Back in Viana, I discovered the local rowing club which is just peachy keen. I say local, but the club is an amalgamation of two former clubs and between them the huge shell house and display cases are stacked with trophies from success in national and international regattas. The shell house contains 60 or 70 shells, yawls and ocean boats of every description and purpose and it is like walking through heaven if you are enamored of the sport. There are two types of membership, Competitive and Casual. I’m about as Casual as they come and indeed have some trouble walking sometimes, but once I sit down, Look Out!
Assuming I pass the obligatory class tests and get assigned to a geezer boat, there will soon be an 11 kilometer row up the Lima River and back in the company of other shells and support craft.
Who would ever have guessed I would be afforded the privilege of pulling an oar in a four or an eight, in the company of brilliance and in a setting of such magnificence. I believe this is part of the advice from a dear friend who said, “Don’t forget to enjoy the process.”
Dandy process.