Why We Chose Portugal & What It’s Really Like

Why We Chose Portugal & What It’s Really Like

meet Chris a laid-back Family Man from the Midwest whose job presented an opportunity of location Independence my wife and I we just said like hey where do we want to live now is there anything actually stopping us from thinking internationally how they overcome the fear of moving abroad I mean if we hated it we could always go back you know how did they identify where to live we started looking just throughout Portugal what are all the options and the big three for for us were he even had a well-traveled friend influence him and she said that her favorite city in the world is Portu how’s he finding Portuguese Society you know they’re they’re all very nice but you’re just not going to get into like the the close F Circle yeah but having kids in a Portuguese school really just kind of fast forwards that how do things compare to his life in the US you can’t do that hardly in the US right uh again I I I never had anything against the United States I really love the United States all right Chris let’s start at the beginning where do you come from and how long have you been in Portugal okay I was living in Kansas City before I moved here I grew up in Alabama and then spent some time in Wisconsin and spending quite a bit of time in the midwest in in Kansas and and Missouri and so that’s that’s kind of what I know of the US for the most part and where where I’m going to be comparing a US life the Portugal life is going to be from from that perspective right on so not really big city ities but like mid major cities yeah yeah mid major cities yeah all the cities that the Portugal people want to live in I haven’t really lived there okay yeah right on yeah so I I’m right in the middle in the Midwest and and the South so I’m familiar with those two places and I also enjoyed living at those places also okay so before I moved here I I enjoyed both Alabama and I enjoyed uh the Midwest so okay yeah what made you want to change then what made you want to go abroad and and leave the Midwest yeah I’m not sure there’s any real particular thing that you know I really didn’t like it was just we had an opportunity I I got a job that was remote okay uh like like so many other people who move here yeah and remote before remote was cool or uh I think I I like rode the wave about perfectly just right whenever it became kind of really popular okay that’s when I that’s when I you know jumped on also and got a job like that and so uh my wife and I we just said like hey where do we want to live now yeah and so we we considered a we weren’t even thinking International at first we were looking at various places you know across the US and I I make good money but you know I still didn’t want to live in a place like California I mean this is so expensive yeah and so that would have been great it would have been you know the weather the beauty that’s there I would have really appreciated that but yeah just the cost of living is kind of crazy right um even with a good job like like you know what I have so we looked around quite a bit and we found several places we were looking into and then at one point we just asked ourselves uh you know is there anything actually stopping us from thinking internationally right and we we kind of thought about in our honeymoon we had gone to Costa Rica and of course it’s amazingly beautiful there yeah and you know we really enjoyed it there so we’re like you know that’s the first place we kind of looked into and when we looked a little bit deeper you know it’s beautiful it’s it’s kind of awesome there’s actually quite a bit of crime there a lot more than you would think if if you just if you just uh you know visit that’s true it seems great but apparently for The expats Who live there they face a fair amount of crime actually yeah and so I said uh okay let’s look let’s see what else there is and so we looked at several different places a lot of the popular places and then uh places in Eastern Europe you’re going to get a big bang for your buck over there also right um but I found usually in Eastern Europe again you you have a little more crime problems more frequently not not big but when you compare it to Portugal it’s bigger than Portugal yeah definitely and so yeah we we stumbled across uh Portugal I think what it was I watched a video uh and by the way when we’re looking at all this we had never stepped foot into Europe neither one of us had yeah into Europe into Europe yeah period and actually and as a matter of fact we did not touch European ground until we were like move here okay yeah no scouting trip no scouting trip all right yeah we’re kind of wild yeah I guess we are I guess so yeah I don’t I think I’ve only met one other person that actually did it that way okay I if we hated it we could always go back you know we wer we were going to be tied down for any reason so sure we felt pretty safe doing that yeah it was funny it was actually I I watched a video of uh the this old neighborhood in Lisbon called Alama which we just recently uh yeah we Rec actually I finally visited It For the First Time very recently after living here for two years yeah yeah it’s just this really old European neighborhood um there’s barely any room for cars to drive around there yeah and you have you know I don’t know four or five story buildings kind of everywhere very old ones and I thought it was awesome just being able to walk through these little neighborhoods every was like hugging you you know and feeling you like you’re you’re in the world you know 500 years ago yeah and I thought that was just a really cool and you know I was like Hey I want to live there that looks awesome yeah and Rachel was like that looks cool I like that yeah and it’s kind of funny too because what my wife’s name is is Rachel and what she out of a city and what I wanted out of a city were kind of different okay um she enjoys she definitely enjoys the city life she likes having some she doesn’t want to live anywhere rural for sure okay and I think I’d be I’d be kind of okay it wouldn’t be too bad you know living rally but so yeah we wanted to live somewhere whether was in a city um I kind of like the ocean I like the beaches and and Rachel kind of doesn’t like those things okay you know she doesn’t like hurricanes alligators you know Seafood yeah so so Florida was out Florida was out yes that was one of the things I was considering and she was like nope no Florida we cannot do that okay so what was cool was that we found just a lot of places actually for in Lisbon and then Porto both were really good candidates that we found both of us kind of got actually kind of what we wanted yeah no alligators here right and plenty of coffee shops right and we get this you know just really cool like kind of European city life that we enjoyed and I get to be close to the ocean and the beach which I I just I love the atmosphere and just the combination of those two things are just really amazing yeah we we live it here in Porto and when we were making a decision of where exactly to go within Portugal uh of course uh that neighborhood in Lisbon was the thing that caught our attention at first right but we started looking just throughout Portugal what are all the options and the big three for for us were uh Lisbon and Porto and then funa MH I knew this was going to come up yes yeah what Drew you what Drew your R of funa just the beauty of an island life I’ve been to uh Hawaii a couple times and I’ve always enjoyed you know I loved uh especially the island of Kawai that’s kind of more tropical and uh the very Lush and Green Island and mad gets the closest to that um as far as like what kind of Portugal has for sure visited yet uh yes okay yes and as a matter of fact when I visited you know I was expecting that the beauty of the the outdoors that they have there yeah um what I was really shocked by was just how impressed I was with the city of funa itself right okay um I thought it was just so cool to have sort of that it’s it’s like uh I think subtropical is officially what it is in the climate zone it’s not quite tropical like Hawaii is but but it has still has quite a bit of that feel and it’s it’s warm and it’s the island life and then you have like this you kind of have this cool little old European city on that yeah and I thought that was just I thought that was just the coolest thing but it’s it’s kind of a small island right and good luck getting Amazon packages there me I mean you can but it’s going to take quite a while yeah and so some of the nice amenities that we’re used to uh were going to be kind of difficult to to get on an island like that sure so my wife especially was like no I don’t I don’t want that Island life yeah so I said okay that’s fine that’s fine so we kind of focus on on on Lisbon and Porto and you know I have previous experience in Christian Ministry okay and so wherever I went I wanted to make sure that I could like pluck into a church pretty quickly okay for one I don’t think that’s important for me just like spiritually and for our family uh beyond that it’s it’s of course would be a really great way for us just to make friends in community yeah have Community because we weren’t really going to have any of that when we came here it was just going to be like the family basically sure so we had had a um we did get in contact with people in Lisbon and got in contact with some people in Porto I couldn’t get anything back from from uh funa okay so that was that kind of helped eliminate them also but the people I liked the most were the ones I talked to here in Porto and at the time that I chose Porto I think I feel like the rent prices were about half as much here as they were in Lisbon yep so that was very convenient also yeah because you were probably looking around two and a half years ago that right more or less okay I think Porto’s kind of caught up maybe since then or they not caught up but it’s not it’s it’s closer it’s not that 50% less yeah and I also just had a nextdoor neighbor who was a big world traveler okay and you know she’s kind of all all over the place and she said that her favorite city in the world is Porto wow yeah okay so just it’s an awesome City it is it is and yeah I love it here so just those two things all kind of convinced us that this would be a really good option for us so this is kind of what we settled on was Porto and when we when we first moved here it was kind of interesting because I I suspect we did it in a way that very few do now and I’m actually not even sure you can do this anymore okay but the the people that we contacted here were missionaries from the United States okay you know typically you have to go through this whole sort of mess where you have to actually have own a place right before you even move here or have a rental contract and there’s a chance of course that if I understand this correctly that they could they could say no to you and you’re stuck with this rental contract it’s possible it’s possible okay I haven’t heard of that happening yet I we haven’t either we haven’t either no but I guess it’s you know possibility when I was looking at it was a scary possibility very awkward so at the time we could just stay with these missionaries and they were happy they had a big house they were happy to let us stay with them for you know a month so we stay with them a month while we scattered out a place to to live awesome and so yeah it was it was a great deal and it was great to just have the community and you know with them they they’re a great fun family they had kids I had kids so yeah they they really had fun uh getting along so yeah so that was kind of how we first got over here and how we how we just I guess found the well settled on a place and then also actually made the actual transition which I don’t think I’m not even sure if you’re allowed to do that anymore I think you might have to have a rental now well I think you can still do the sponsorship route Kay Kay the one to ask on that for sure but I’m pretty sure that sponsorship route still works but it’s very difficult unless you know someone to get a sponsor cuz you’re not just going to go like in the Facebook groups and be like hey somebody sponsor right exactly for the most part I don’t think they would want to take that responsibility because there is some of that interestingly enough when Kaylee and I moved here uh we also looked at the sponsorship route because we didn’t want to sign a a rental side unseen yes fortunately this was in a in a moment where it was easier to find rentals whenever we were looking so rentals weren’t flying off listings in 48 hours like they are now yes so we knew a guy from kayle’s parents neighborhood that I was playing soccer with him and his son a ton Portuguese guy and I was like do you think any of your family members who live still live in Portugal would sponsor me he looked at me like I was crazy he’s like no man they don’t want to take that risk like all right fair enough so then that’s when we ended up getting the the rental our okay all right let’s talk a little about uh what you’ve noticed in the past couple years with Generations because I say this because I remember the day we met uh we were hosting a Meetup at dwars which is now actually a different restaurant uh but they’ve they’ve changed but I remember meeting you there and thinking wow there there’s this like young family of five that has has just moved to the city like just arrived you’re very kind of energetic working professional not someone who was retired or semi-retired uh the way the group kind of was whenever we first moved here and I thought this is interesting and it seemed like you were at kind of the beginning of the wave of younger working professionals that were moving to both maybe less to to Lisbon there were that was already happening but to Porto itself what have you noticed wow that’s interesting that’s funny to hear that from me because all I know is what happened after I got here okay so I would assume that it was just always this way but apparently it wasn’t so that’s that’s really interesting to hear you know I’m working most of the day so my my wife is the one who has the kids and and of course she likes to get out of the house and you know play with a uh let our kids play with the kids and stuff like that so give us the ages of the kids yeah so we have three kids one is now five one is three and one is one years old and he was born here in Portugal so my my wife was very brave to come over while being I don’t know 5 months pregnant something like that yeah so that that was quite quite quite a thing yes so yeah so it’s awesome that she was that’s right so she was pregnant that’s right so you had you had two already and then there was yeah okay that’s right so you weren’t five yet that’s right yes since we’ve been here um especially my wife Rachel she’s been able to make friends and our kids have you know new friends that are their own age yeah they can go play with you know your daughter included of course yeah and uh yeah but it’s not just not just you and your daughter there are others also and also at church you know as well we have a number of families there I don’t yeah all the families there aren’t definitely aren’t Portugal EI I me Portuguese either right we have a number of families there who have um children that are around their age that are expat as well yeah well I feel like you guys more than we uh know people that are closer to our age demographic like our friends kind of are broader in in in the age demographics or Generations whereas it seems like most of your friends are like under 40 yeah I don’t know any old people is that right yeah I’m I’m trying to think about it now yeah I mean just of course our friends that we made from church yeah but even them we don’t we don’t ever like go out and eat or anything with them okay you know it’s usually the younger people yeah and of course we don’t ever go to the playgrounds with them so yeah right so what does a young family do then for for fun how does it feel in terms of safety because we talked about safety earlier and not wanting to move to different parts of the US cuz they were unsafe then also the slightly higher crime rates in Eastern Europe so what’s it like here yeah you know I guess really even in the US Safety was never a big concern of mine actually Midwest is pretty chill actually per capita the crime is actually higher in the midwest than it is on on the coast oh it is okay which is crazy yeah okay yeah actually uh I think the year I left Kansas City there was about a murder a year about a murder a day okay the time yeah okay um so but despite that you know you depending on where you lived it it was very there was a big difference you know one part of the city you’re you’re nothing to worry about another part yeah it’s quite dangerous it’ll touch your life yes it will okay yeah so I guess despite living in Kansas City it was never much of a concern of M my my wife however yeah she was much more you know concerned about that especially if for a kids going up in school I hear a lot of people Americans coming over and they’re like that school that the kind of the fear of like school shooting and stuff like that yeah is is very prominent I guess I know who knows for whatever reason for me I I don’t don’t worry about it too much okay um but despite that yeah it’s it’s amazing how how safe it seems here at least to me it seems very safe I heard one story about I think a guy actually getting in the middle of a fight and getting stabbed this some months ago yeah but the fact I would even hear about that like it’s like a noteworthy thing right and that tells me that just that just tells me how it is here you know like in Kansas City if you get you know the police would be like uh yeah we’ll write a paper about it good luck you know so you know it’s like we had our hands full with murders it wouldn’t get reported on in the same way no it certainly wouldn’t be in the news and your friends wouldn’t even know about it you know got it yeah so so I mean that just kind of tells me just how infrequent stuff like that is okay and even from the statistics that I saw what crime does exist violent crime is extremely extremely low MH so the crime is like just petty stuff maybe some vandalism or you know pickpockets and stuff like that yeah which even even with that I mean obviously you know you see a lot of graffiti in the city but as far as Pig pocket I haven’t I haven’t witnessed or talked to anyone who’s actually personally yeah faced anything like that sure same same for us yeah yeah oh wow yeah how long have how long have you lived here I forget uh three and a half years coming up on it’ll be four in October man yeah yeah that’s amazing I mean even in Kansas City I lived in a nice neighborhood in and houses would still get broken into cars would still get broken into and stuff like that so we do hear about that here okay car break-ins uh home theft stuff like that not among we haven’t heard that so much among like the xack community that we’re involved with but our Portuguese friends granted they’ve got a longer duration living here but you know so there’s a higher probability that something’s going to happen to them or a friend but yes those exist here those problems I’d be interested to see just like a graph of like you know is there a high cran part and of Porto and like a low crime part of Porto right i”d be interested to see that oh yeah yeah I don’t know either no idea yeah okay so safety is is much less of a concern here and let’s talk a little bit CU we’re we’re kind of we’re talking about family so let’s discuss what’s it like having kids that are getting into school age that process you’re you’re in the early days of that what’s that like right now as you search for a school for your kids well for us we wanted our kids to learn Portuguese learn to speak Portuguese well so that was our biggest motivation to putting them into the school you know at a younger age than you typically would in the US we put them in school like at 3 years old okay and if it weren’t I mean if we were living in the us we’d you know our kids would still be at home yeah but here yeah just to learn language yeah we we did for Valencia yeah wanted to get her in so she could start learning the language uh and then we found just how beneficial it was socially but I think like a lot of a lot of Americans we tend to maybe have our kids grow up the way we grew up which means that you stay at home until about 5 yeah and then you go to school yes but then here in Portugal it seems like kids are are off by like one and they’re already kind of doing a crash or some sort of preschool yeah and getting socialized that way yeah well it’s just part of the you know just the society is very different like almost all the wives work here so you got to have a daycare sure so whereas in the US we even now you know a lot of a lot of women stay home and raise kids still okay so I I think that’s kind of the big difference that’s probably I would guess that’s the main motivation behind like how that kind of works out but it is interesting how you know the families here of course are very close-nit more so in the US because I think we just probably because we move so much in the US and I think that happens a lot less here so it it is difficult to kind of like get into you know being friends with people in a sense that native Portuguese people right you know they’re they’re all very nice but you’re just not going to get into like the the close friend Circle but having kids in a Portuguese school really just kind of fast forwards that 100% yeah absolutely and even for me even it’s a like a speedrun it’s a cheap yes yeah you you kind of get right in there yeah um even for me and my Portuguese is very bad still okay yeah which is interesting because you’re a linguist yes but you haven’t you Haven had time to put the effort into yeah I know I get it yeah even I mean yeah I would know quirky things about language but still learning them still takes a lot of work just L lots of work in time yeah yeah and yeah this is I found Portuguese to be kind of a difficult one at least European Portuguese okay to be definitely challenging yeah so that has been some barrier to being I guess closer with the parents that are there okay but anytime I have a question and you know we go to a private school and so I I would I suspect that the parents tend to be more educated probably sure okay and uh they all know English you know they speak English very well even the ones I imagine even parents well probably everyone under the age of like I don’t know 50 or 40 would probably speak English pretty well even if they’re not that well educated I would right suspect so yeah that’s that that has really helped us to meet people and kind of understand the culture integrate a little better yes yes yes all right let’s switch gears let me ask you this what do you love about portal oh man so so it’s the first thing that always Pops in my mind is the weather okay it’s funny we talked to Portuguese they’re like oh yeah the weather’s so bad here I’m like no Kansas Kansas City has like the worst weather in like the United States okay um yeah it’s it’s always they’re amazed when I tell them how hot it is in the summer and then how cold it is in the winter right and how like about we might have like one month of like nice weather worth of nice weather kind of every year and here almost year round it feels pretty good to walk around outside yeah I agree and I I just love that I love that the lifestyle that that kind of opens up to you and when you want to go anywhere you you are going to be outside if very mind because you walk a lot here yes I enjoy that too just the the lifestyle like that I found the people here have all just been very nice they’re they’re great people I love how family oriented it is also um people love families and you know at this point I think the quite a number of population here only kind of vaguely connect with the Catholic Church okay but they have such a strong Catholic history I think that’s just still there generationally after generation it’s still there and so families are just very important here and I think that actually drives just a lot of what I like about the culture like you know we have nice good strong families it was funny I was I was telling um I told some friends recently that we uh we’ve been at at the the private school that they had a celebration for like Father’s Day mhm yeah and the fathers were allowed to actually go to the school you know and and so every father was expected to go to the school and they had some little you know fun little games they play with the kids yeah and I was like you can’t hardly do that in the US just because a lot of a lot of families are kind of you know a lot of kind of divorces or parents aren’t around as much and and things like this and whereas here it’s just not like that sure at least there’s a lot less of that a lot less of that to the point that a school feels was just fine saying hey we’re going to ask all the fathers to come to Father’s Day you know right you can’t do that hardly in the US right but I think that works itself that kind of works his way out I think it’s part of like you know kind of what makes things I don’t know you just find the people here just are just very very nice people and I noticed that the kids like in my son’s school as well like they’re just they’re all cool kids you know they’re very they’re fun it’s amazing how kind they are to one another right and uh yeah yeah the way the kids treat each other is pretty remarkable it’s really neat to see like there’s not at least at the age I think that our kids are there’s not instances of bullying yet that we see whereas I I I have seen it in other schools that Kay and I have worked in all right so you answered about what you love what about what you dislike dare I say hate about Porto what do I hate um you know I don’t know if it’s a Porto thing necessarily but you just got to do a lot of government stuff we do want to move here okay you there’s a lot of paperwork to file a lot of Hoops to jump through and you know like I said I don’t know if it’s any any worse than anywhere else and of course it’s the fact that we’re moving from from one country to another so you’re going to have a lot of extra stuff to do y um but man like we’ve been here two years now this is one of the reasons that I just haven’t got into the language a whole lot because I always feel like man we still have to do this and this and this and this thing and I feel like I feel like the end is within sight yeah um but we still still have uh I got you feel like the the the goal post keep moving uh not not quite okay yeah I don’t I don’t think so no yeah know but uh yeah so I mean even right now I got like three things that I’m I’m working on you know to kind of get finished up bureaucratic things yeah bureaucratic things okay yeah taxes and school stuff and then uh I have uh more residency stuff coming up okay so but you know once I get through those I I might be in good shape for a while for a little bit Yeah and then you can work on the language yes well Chris at xet where we believe that living abroad transforms lives how has living abroad so far transformed your life oh my goodness goodness I don’t even know where to start I mean just just living within a whole another culture gives you just a whole new worldview and just being being able to see what’s out there in the world and being able to see what other people are like in the world I found that very fun very refreshing again I I I never had anything against the United States I really love the United States but I I have it’s great just to go out and see what else is out there yeah and uh we’ve been very pleased and it’s quite likely that we’ll stay here for a long time we just enjoy it that much awesome man if you want to check out other neighborhoods here in Porto or Lisbon these the two playlists for you so you can be inspired like Chris was when he checked out alfama now let’s let’s get moving bye

Josh from ExpatsEverywhere sits down with Chris from The United States to talk about why he and his family moved to Portugal. His wife, Rachel, was pregnant when they moved and they had their third child in Porto. What caused this young family to leave the midwest in the US and move to Portugal? How are they integrating into the community? Is it easy to be a remote worker in Portugal?

* ABOUT US *
Josh and Kalie left the US for a life abroad in 2009 and haven’t looked back. They have lived in Spain, South Korea, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, and are currently in Portugal. Yes, they realize they only moved to countries starting with the letter “S” until they spoiled that streak with their move to Portugal. Follow ExpatsEverywhere as we aim to get information to you through expat interviews, city breakdowns, expat life, travel, vlogs, and more.

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