First impressions dump on our first month in Portugal - First Part

First off on the first impressions dump is frankly not a shocker. The food and drink has been much better than in the US. Restaurant food, café food, grocery store food, fruit shop food, pet shop food are all good across the board. Fresh food is fresher, packaged food is fresher, sugary food is less sugary, salty food is less salty, chicken is more ... chickeny, well you get the idea. There has however been one item that's put a real frown on our collective brows - milk. After 15 years living off the nectar that is Costco's Kirkland Signature Organic Milk, I have to say the milk that's predominantly available here has been a tad underwhelming. The reason I suspect might be that the method used for pasteurizing milk, UHT, means that it's shelf stable for a longer time without having to be refrigerated. This makes sense in Europe as energy costs are significantly higher. There are refrigerated milk offerings that use the flash pasteurization process common in the US that is just that little closer to our beloved Kirkland Signature Organic, but it's been more than a month and we still miss it. I'm hopeful though that once we get over our withdrawal symptoms, we'll be just fine. Plus, in the grand scheme of things it's just a tiny bit of spilt milk, so best not to cry about it.

The all important second point - everyone we've interacted with in stores and banks, and various other locations has been great. No one has kicked up a fuss about us not knowing the language and try their best to make things happen. I don't think it's a snap judgement when I say the folks here have a naturally high patience threshold. This translates to a high level of customer service and is of particular help to us as foreigners who can't speak the native tongue. It's also extremely helpful that we've been able to find someone who speaks English in pretty much every place we've gone to, even here in Leiria, away from the tourist hotspots and large cities. While we're doing our best to integrate into the local society by learning the language as fast as possible, it really helps being able to communicate in English in the interim. And if rudimentary Portuguese and English from either end don't work, we've been able to successfully use Google Translate or DeepL to complete said tasks. There are very interesting cultural reasons why a good percentage of Portuguese speak English quite well. I'll talk about this in a future post but regardless, the Portuguese are some of the warmest and most welcoming people we've met.

Third: The bureaucracy that we were warned about has so far been invisible. We've managed to complete a number of important tasks including registering our three pets with the local authorities, setting up our bank accounts, buying a car, and most importantly signing up for the numerous frequent buyer programs at stores without any undue hassles. Even our interactions with government entities such as for our visa or other processes in preparation for our move here have been smooth. We have noticed that certain things take a little more time than comparable tasks in the US. For example our debit cards took about seven business days to get to us. Back in the US, it might have taken us perhaps four to five days, but this is an extreme case of nitpicking. We still have a long ways to go and various government agencies to navigate but so far so good.

We do have more to talk about on our first impressions dump after our first month in Portugal so keep an eye out for the sequel.