Family Ties

As mentioned in one of my earlier posts, our move to Portugal after a 20 year stay in the US was prompted by a number of reasons with each one weighted differently in our calculations. There were a few that were a lot more important than others and drown in their own self importance that they require their own blog post. One such uncommon motivation was family. With my parents being in India, it is about a 25 hour trip to get from Chennai to Austin! No longer an enjoyable experience at their age. My In-Laws meanwhile live in the US so it made sense to look for some place in between. A place that would make it equally easy to travel east or west, north or south. A place called Portugal.

During the spring of 2022 while neck deep in trying to figure out our Portugal move, little did we realize that we might have family much closer than expected. To add some context, over the last few years there's been an increase in migrants from North America to Europe. You might have seen a number of news articles or youtubes about dilapidated properties in remote towns being bought on the cheap and remodeled, or retirees looking to enjoy a European lifestyle in their later years. While these are the more flowery stories, there are other plain-janes like ourselves who choose to move for a more wholesome lifestyle while still in their working years. Admittedly, ours is not a common story, but it is increasing in popularity as remote work has become almost normal these days. As this chart, courtesy of Bloomberg shows, immigration from the US to Portugal has jumped quite a bit over the past four years:

While ~7k Americans currently living in Portugal is still a relatively small number, the rapid rise over the past 4-5 years indicates a keen interest in building this cross-Atlantic link. Which brings us back to the uncommon motivation mentioned above for our move - to be a little bit closer to family. Well it turns out we're going to be a whole lot closer than we thought. Following our lead, one of our uncles has also decided to move to Portugal from California after we broke the news of our move to him. Unlike us though, he will be hopping between continents on a regular basis but will be enjoying a good chunk of time in Portugal in retirement. The funny thing was that a move to Europe was on the cards for him for a while with Spain being of particular interest. After our move here though, Portugal ended up as his go to destination being lured by the weather, welcoming people, great food and drink, not to mention a chance to enjoy landscapes like this in Nazaré:

Nazaré Panorama

A quick stop with potential recruits at Nazaré, a surfing paradise.