After a long absence, I can finally do the MacArthur thing on this blog ("I have returned."), not least because I'm also now sitting in another nation where the people don't initially speak my language and some of them wonder why I'm here. We have made the move to Portugal and my first impressions are that, long-term, we probably made the right choice, even if short-term frustrations and confusion have made the opening week less exhilarating than it otherwise might have been. Moving is always a disruption and a trans-Atlantic move to another culture is moving². We gave up a lot of comfortable and familiar things and people to come here and the upside is that almost all of the people that we've met have been so welcoming that it gives the initial sensation of comfort. And the word "things" doesn't really embody the material stuff. We're still waiting on a couple pallets full of those "things" so this temporary absence is very far from a crisis, albeit sleeping without a mattress has been getting less and less thrilling with each day that goes by. I'm all about camping but generally when I plan to do so.
The most interesting aspect to all of it has been, of course, those welcoming people. The vast majority of Portuguese that we've encountered speak English and often do so without prompting as soon as they see the likely "American" blank face when either they speak or I'm about to ask a question that I don't know how to properly produce without sounding like Twoflower (i.e. somehow if I speak LOUDLY AND SLOWLY they'll understand me.) But they're quite used to both tourists and ex-pats here and the typical pidgin sign language of "Want this?" and "Yes" gets everyone by. It's just always amusing when we walk in with our American-accented "Ola!" and they immediately respond with perfect English, like in the interesting Italian restaurant we stopped into the other day, where we started saying the Portuguese on the menu and the operator immediately stopped and said: "English? Yeah, that's no problem." Said restaurant was interesting because it seemed to be set up on a "fast food" model where you could get fresh pasta, like gnocchi carbonara, but didn't present the American fast food "vibe", as it were. It also wasn't a chain, but is instead just one outlet in Santa Clara (across the Mondego River from Coimbra) doing its own thing.
One of the other upsides was coming to a football-mad culture, where game nights are distinct outings for a lot of the population. We were out during a Monday evening that happened to be when the Primeira Liga was staging all of their games as the season nears its end. Coimbra is heavily-populated by Benfica and Sporting fans, albeit Porto wasn't playing that evening, so there's no way to tell the real ratio. We sat in a local joint, known as The Sports Bar (Portuguese humor may be underrated), to watch the second half of their match as they tried to stay in consideration for the title they've won more than any other club and the anguish of their supporters was evident when the result did not go their way. I know those feelings intimately and they don't change across cultures or locations. Meanwhile, the local semi-pro club, Académica, is playing for promotion into the second division (i.e. the fully pro ranks) this Saturday. We have tickets. If you're not going to support the locals, then why are you there? (Besides, it might be more appealing to watch than Liverpool, at the moment.)
And it's the locals that are of the highest concern in many ways. We went to a concert the other night and were greeted by a couple walking around the facade of the building like we were. They recognized Americans (blank face?) and asked why we were visiting. We said: "We just moved here." The reaction was obvious: "Ahhh...." (slight pause) "Well, welcome!" There are a lot of people like us here and it's an open question as to whether that's a positive thing for the local environment. I'd like to think it is, since adding more to the mix is the same essential element that has made the United States and modern American culture what it is, despite the efforts of the idiots to deny it. Indeed, that modern American culture is evident everywhere here, as you'll often see people walking around wearing clothing with slogans in American English and the aforementioned fast food has also permeated the environment, as one of our neighbors tried to explain our mutual address to someone else by starting with: "Do you know where the Burger King is? We're just up the street from that." That "just up the street" concept is a huge upside, as well, eager as I was to get away from our dependency on a car to do much of anything outside the house. We are a few minutes walk from two major shopping malls (they still have them here), both of them with grocery stores and a smaller one of the latter is one block away. We've been here 8 days and have already walked home with groceries a half-dozen times, which is a wholly unAmerican thing for much of our suburbanized, car-oriented situation in the States in recent decades.
It's also a popular sentiment amongst the expat group that we met up with yesterday. It was an interesting mix of people who'd been here for years or had only recently arrived, like us, many of them chatting about all the cool things within walking distance of their homes. It was also another subtle reaction moment, when one of them asked if I was law enforcement, since they'd briefly seen the word "Justice" tattooed on my arm. I smiled and showed the full piece, which is a Diego Rivera-like rendition of a fist crushing a dollar sign, with the raised fists of red and black others within it and the words "Equality" and "Justice" basing and capping it, respectively: "No, I'm a Marxist." was my response. I could read the surprise and then wariness in the faces of a couple of them, which is a pretty typical reaction for average Americans, most of whom don't really know what that political philosophy is other than "bad." But a couple of them saw the humor in it and we moved on. It was encouraging to hear later from another of our expat compatriots describing Michigan (his birthplace, as well as mine) as: "Well, there's Detroit and then Ann Arbor and then it's all Republicans until you get to Chicago." That's pretty accurate and another sign of the detachment that modern groups of Americans feel for each other. We'll have to see how we fit in with all of these new groups here and if I can shake the "invader complex" after a while.
