Visiting a country for the first time is a lot like a blind date. The stakes are low. Maybe things will work out, maybe you’ll have a cute fling, maybe you’ll fall in love. Maybe it’ll be a disaster. That’s primarily how I’ve been traveling. Someplace I’ve never been? Why not? Worse case I get a good story out of it.

Portugal is more like an arranged marriage. I’m here as the final step on a long¹ process to get a residency permit. This is the first time I’ve set foot in the country,² and I find I’m seeing everything through different eyes. I’m both more and less critical than usual. I want to like it — I’ve sunk far too much effort and money into residency not to like it — but at the same time I’m wary of putting on rose-colored glasses. I keep asking questions like How do I feel about this? and Could I live with this? or Am I comfortable here? Relaxed? Am I happy?

I’d describe my initial impressions as cautiously optimistic, if understandably a little shallow. I’m aware there’s a lot more to Portugal than Lisbon,³ and a stopover of a couple days isn’t nearly enough to tell how I’d feel in the long term anyways.⁴ But I’m finding myself clicking with the city more than I might have thought. The restaurant scene appears solid.⁵ The temperature’s mild enough to walk around late October without a jacket after dark. There was a upscale supermarket with a sushi bar in it. The Metro is cheap and busy and efficient. The architecture is nice.⁶

These aren’t great reasons to move somewhere or any indication you’ll be happy if you do. But they’re at least small indicators that it’s not going to be a huge adjustment. If all else fails, if the rest of the country is nothing like the capital, I think I’ll like Lisbon enough to make a go of it.

People I talk to seem to think it’s weird to decide to live somewhere you never been. But is it, really? I know plenty of people who packed up and headed to the East Coast or West Coast sight unseen once they had a job lined up. And I can think of lots of people who fell in love with a place over a long weekend only to discover they hated it after uprooting their life to live there.

So an arranged marriage it is. The benefits are obvious. This seems like a wonderful place to settle down, if at any point I want a place to settle down. I’m prepared to fall in love later, in my own time.

After worrying about the immigration interview for the better part of a year, it was nothing. I met my lawyer at the immigration office in Lisbon with a stack of documentation, went inside, and sat for an hour while my lawyer met with the immigration official and went through all the paperwork.⁷ At the end I was called in, said hello, had my fingerprints scanned and my picture taken, and left. I had known this was mostly a procedural visit, but this was very anticlimactic. Better less drama than more, I suppose. Now I’m just waiting for the gears of bureaucracy to turn and at the other end, in about three months, a residency card should pop out the other side.⁸

I spent the next day wandering around, visiting the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian⁹ before catching a cab down to Baixa and wandering around through the morning, stopping by Cervejaria Trindade — ostensibly the oldest beer hall in Lisbon — and ending up at what’s reported by many to be the best pastel de nata shop in Lisbon.¹⁰

I booked a ridiculously early flight out in the morning¹¹ so I’m typing this up the night before I leave. It’s been a good first visit. Short, business-like, but not unfriendly. King Henry had an arranged marriage with Anne of Cleves on the basis of what turned out to be a very deceptive portrait and was severely disappointed at first meeting. This went far better.

And something happened the last day which felt significant. I had my card for the Metro in my hand and went up to the turnstyle to scan myself in, only to discover the machine wasn’t working. I was only baffled for a moment — like the London Underground, they’re set to either let you enter or leave, not both, and I had misread the indicator — but in that moment the woman entering next to me reached down, set a hand down on mine, pointed at their turnstyle, and tapped themselves through, all without breaking their stride.

It was such a small gesture, but felt so natural and casual. I needed help, they saw I needed help, and they provided it without needing to be asked or waiting to be thanked. It’s just what you do. Who wouldn’t?

And as much as I want to live someplace with decent restaurants and nice architecture, what I really want is to live someplace where people act like that, where you look out for each other not because you know them or you might want something from them but because you’re there and they’re there and they need help. I haven’t felt that way in the United States since forever. I felt that way in Portugal.

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Footnotes

¹ Unreasonably so — this should have taken 6-12 months. What with COVID acting as a force multiplier for Portuguese bureaucracy, it’ll end up taking 18-24. Court cases had to be filed — not by me — to unblock the visa process.

² Had there not been a pandemic, I would have naturally have visited before applying for residency.

³ I’m particularly interested in Coimbra, which as a university town sounds like my vibe.

⁴ Until I get my residency card every day I spend here is a day I can’t stay elsewhere in Schengen, and since I’ll be able to stay as long as I like once I have that in hand I’m deliberately not taking time to really explore the place.

⁵ As a long-time New Yorker, I just rarely cook for myself, so this is kind of critical. Portuguese food isn’t especially vegetarian friendly, which is why I was relieved to see such a diverse array of restaurants in Lisbon. Chinese, Indian, Italian, Thai, a lot of burger places, a lot of pizza places, a lot of cafés. I whiled away the nervous hour before my visa interview eating red velvet pancakes and drinking a hot chocolate with a shot of Baileys at a place specializing in American brunch. I passed a dive bar serving vegan hot dogs. There were a lot of options.

⁶ It reminds me a lot of Buenos Aires, with more Art Deco flourishes. It’s got the same feeling of shabby gentility, of being well-maintained on a budget that’s too small to do it properly.

⁷ I was dispatched midway through to photocopy every page of my passport, which I had already done except 1) I had printed them up multiple pages per sheet, which isn’t allowed, and 2) I had done it before leaving the UK, meaning it didn’t have the stamp showing my entrance to Portugal.

⁸ The Portuguese immigration service is supposed to be reconstituted at the end of the year, but I’ve been assured that’s likely to be delayed and my application is far enough along in the process that that’s unlikely to slow it down anyway. Maybe it’s even true.

⁹ One of the best museums I’ve ever been to. It’s small, but Gulbenkian had eclectic tastes and you get a helicopter view of the history of art from ancient Egypt (including a cat’s sarcophagus with a sculpture of a mother cat feeding kittens on top) all the way up to the early 20^th century (and ending with a dazzling collection of Art Deco jewelry by René Lalique).

Even more impressive, just about every artwork I saw in there was stunning. For such a small collection it’s amazing. By the time I reached the Islamic rugs — Gulbenkian’s family was textile dealers — I was starting to have trouble breathing. It was all just so overwhelming. I didn’t fully recover my senses until the pretty but vapid paintings of the 18^th century.

The modern wing was closed for refurbishment. I’m not exactly disappointed I’ll need to go back.

¹⁰ Manteigaria’s — they’re served fresh and warm and you can sprinkle a little cinnamon and sugar on top, as God intended.

¹¹ 8am, so I’ll be up at 5am. A shortcoming of almost always traveling on budget airlines is you’re often stuck with terrible departure times. But it is direct.