Well, thank you all so much for joining us on Let's Move to Portugal. It's a pleasure for me to finally get to catch up with you all after exchanging emails and getting a back story on your story. Why did you decide to move to Portugal? What were some of the determining factors in moving to Portugal for you? Well, in 2018, a very good couple of friends of ours had asked us to go to Barcelona with them on a two-week vacation, and I had never been to Europe before. Marcus had been to Germany many years ago in a service. So after some discussion, we decided to spend two weeks with our friends, Mary and Joe, in Barcelona and had an incredible time. Just an absolute amazing time between the food and the architecture and the culture and the people. We just felt really drawn to the city. So while we were there, we did some small day trips. We went to Sitges. We went to Montserrat. So when we came home, we thought, you know what? In three to five years, when I'm 59 and a half, we're going to move to Spain. So through a series of events, we ended up in Portugal. And I'll let Marcus talk a little bit about why we ended up in Portugal instead of Spain. So what had happened? Bill had gotten downsized at his job and took a package, and we lived in a rural area in Pennsylvania. We were lucky enough to be able to do our jobs semi-remotely. So living in a rural area was easy. But then when Bill had to change companies, the choices were very limited where we lived. And so we would have had to have moved to an urban center like New York City or Washington DC for him to find equivalent employment. And then we started really thinking, OK, well, we have to move, or do we? And we just moved to Spain now. And in the end, what happened was we went through interviews with our financial planner and all of that, and we decided on a budget that we could start executing today. And that would take us through to our normal retirement disbursements. But then after we told all of our friends we were moving to Spain, it ends up that Spain is not

Well, thank you all so much for joining us on Let's Move to Portugal. It's a pleasure for me to finally get to catch up with you all after exchanging emails and getting a back story on your story. Why did you decide to move to Portugal? What were some of the determining factors in moving to Portugal for you? Well, in 2018, a very good couple of friends of ours had asked us to go to Barcelona with them on a two-week vacation, and I had never been to Europe before. Marcus had been to Germany many years ago in a service. So after some discussion, we decided to spend two weeks with our friends, Mary and Joe, in Barcelona and had an incredible time. Just an absolute amazing time between the food and the architecture and the culture and the people. We just felt really drawn to the city. So while we were there, we did some small day trips. We went to Sitges. We went to Montserrat. So when we came home, we thought, you know what? In three to five years, when I'm 59 and a half, we're going to move to Spain. So through a series of events, we ended up in Portugal. And I'll let Marcus talk a little bit about why we ended up in Portugal instead of Spain. So what had happened? Bill had gotten downsized at his job and took a package, and we lived in a rural area in Pennsylvania. We were lucky enough to be able to do our jobs semi-remotely. So living in a rural area was easy. But then when Bill had to change companies, the choices were very limited where we lived. And so we would have had to have moved to an urban center like New York City or Washington DC for him to find equivalent employment. And then we started really thinking, OK, well, we have to move, or do we? And we just moved to Spain now. And in the end, what happened was we went through interviews with our financial planner and all of that, and we decided on a budget that we could start executing today. And that would take us through to our normal retirement disbursements. But then after we told all of our friends we were moving to Spain, it ends up that Spain is not quite as easy to move to when you're older. If you have health issues, Bill's diabetic, we're both overweight, getting insurance coverage in Spain was not easy for us. So that led us to think, OK, well, where else can we go? And we started doing more research, and Portugal came up. And we had never been to Portugal, but Portugal kept bubbling up to the top of every list. So we said, OK, well, maybe this is, we already decided we were leaving. And once that decision is made, mentally, there's just no going back, right? So we had already left the country in our heads. So we said, OK, I guess we're going to Portugal. And we had plan B and plan C and plan D in our head. But Portugal came up to the top of the list, and we took a trip there in July. After we had already sold our house, sold our cars, liquidated everything we owned, moved into our friend's summer house while we waited for our visa to come due, I mean, we did do some research. We watched every YouTube video available about Portugal, including expats everywhere. So thank you very much. So yeah, we just, we went in July. We got our NIF. Back then, it was a lot easier. Where we were coming from, you only needed a three-month rental to get your visa and all that. So the rules have changed, obviously. But we got our NIF, set up our bank account, set up our rental. And we decided in February we were leaving the country. And in October, we were moved into Malaysia. So it was really a rapid transition for us. Interesting story. We were in Barcelona in October of 2018. And we actually moved to Portugal October 1st of 2019, just one year later. I can arrive here with six suitcases. We literally sold everything that we owned and started over. So why we wanted to retire early. And that's the short answer, right? We wanted to retire early. And doing that in the United States is almost impossible. Whereas here, it's totally possible. Okay. So first of all, Marcus, thank you so much for your service. We really appreciate that. Why do you think so many Americans start with, hey, let's move to Spain? We hear that all the time. And Kaylee and I, we actually first got our journey abroad started in Spain. And I'm curious to hear from you, why Spain? Well, we had some experience there. We'd spent a couple of weeks. The people are very lively and for the most part, very welcoming. The food was great. The architecture was very interesting. We thought living in Barcelona would be great because we were a half hour train ride to Sitges. You know, we're near the ocean. The weather's good. There's a lot of cultural events happening. But I think culturally, I think it just has better press too. Like it's bigger and there's more people know about it. Right? Portugal is this little country in Europe that most Americans, and to admit, most of us are geographically challenged, right? We've all heard of Spain. Many Americans just don't even know Portugal exists. I'm sure they do now, but go back five years and start asking that question. I think people just didn't know about it. I'm curious, Josh, what you think though, because I do believe it's true. Culturally, the Spanish people are a little bit more outgoing and a little more lively where the Portuguese people are very friendly and welcoming, but a little more reserved. At least that's our experience. Yeah, absolutely. I would say that that's true. I mean, from my experience, the interesting thing about Spanish and Portuguese from my point of view is that you do have that idea or that feeling that Spanish people have more energy, they're livelier, they're more open, and Portuguese seem a bit more conservative. However, I find that at least in Madrid, because that's where we knew a lot of Spanish people, it's a little faker. It's a little like cosmopolitan and your relationships with people aren't as deep as what you would find in at least in the north of Portugal. Now, I think maybe the same could be true in Lisbon where maybe you're dealing with capital, European capital mindset people where the relationships aren't as deep and meaningful. Hopefully there are some expats in Lisbon who would prove me wrong. I hope that's the case, but I find that the people we meet from Portugal seem to be more genuine even though it is definitely harder to have a deeper relationship with them compared to meeting another expat or even Spanish people that are really open and outgoing and lively. Yeah, that's how I feel. Yeah. So we spent two years in Lisbon and we really liked it a lot. I mean, we bought a small apartment. We were a 20 minute metro ride to the airport and our initial plan was to travel and see Europe and then five months into it, COVID happened. So that kind of crushed our big plan, right? So here we are at a 55 square meter apartment. Luckily, we had a nice terrace to spend some outside time. But the first quarantine was kind of fun. We were having video happy hours with our friends and by the second quarantine, it was not fun. Yeah. Second quarantine was in the winter. It was a cold, wet winter. So going outside wasn't an option. And so we just sat and watched as politics went crazy in the United States, even crazier than it was. We had nothing left to do but just sit and watch it. And it was just, it was infuriating to be stuck in a building. And really what it came down to is Lisbon, as much as the culture is fantastic, the light in that city, I still, it's magical. Every time I go there and I just look around at sunset and the buildings start to glow and it's, it is an amazing place to be. We made some really good friends there. I'll be one of the people that challenges you to say deep relationships may not happen in a capital city. Please. We made some really good Portuguese friends in Lisbon who still come to visit us out in the country today. And it was a great city. But what we realized about ourselves is that we are actually rural oriented people. We came from a rural area. We said, let's move to Portugal and let's move to a big city all at the same time. It was overwhelming. And half the time we couldn't decide why we were overwhelmed. Are we overwhelmed because we left the United States because we're living in Portugal or because we're living in a city, which if you don't come from a city, it's very overwhelming. So for sure. And we were newly required, you know, so we had, and we retired, had a lot of time on our hands. And that time we thought was going to be spent traveling. Obviously changed. Yeah, yeah. There was just a lot of change happening all at the same time. Yeah. So to give the listener a point of reference on kind of the timeframe that that second quarantine hit, that would have been the very beginning of 2021. Yeah. Just after New Year's. Yeah. Yeah. The whole country went into lockdown. Right. Yeah. So that's when I just started looking online for rural properties. I mean, we have a lot of Facebook friends that had moved from the States to more rural places along the silver coast. And they were still out walking their dogs and kind of living life where we were stuck in an apartment and didn't leave our block. You know, it was, we enjoyed having the 40 euro per month Metro pass that basically took us everywhere. But then when COVID happened, we're like, we're not going on public transportation or any sorts. So there we were with no car, no transportation. It just felt like the walls were closing in and we needed to just do something. Yeah. And we bought a car in July of 2020 because we knew we weren't going to go back on public transit because we had COVID in February when we got back from Madrid and we know how bad it was for us. Okay. We were not interested in getting it again. Got it. So we bought a car in July. We paid more for parking than we did for health insurance, which is still like blows my mind, but we put it in a garage and we wouldn't even drive it around Lisbon because that was intimidating enough. So we would still take cabs inside Lisbon, but we started leaving the city. So we would take a couple of days and go to a different place that summer when things opened up a little bit during the summer. And that's when really it hit us like Portugal is such a beautiful country. Everywhere you go, there is something to see. So Lisbon is not Portugal. Lisbon is just Lisbon. And well said. That's something where I think a lot of ex-hats need to realize and get over. Portugal is more than just Lisbon. Yeah, that's really well said. And I think the same can be true for when people say the USA is New York City or Los Angeles. Right. Yes. Those are the places that a lot of tourists go and that's what they think. But a majority of the people actually have this kind of middle America lifestyle. That's more of the average of the American experience. Very interesting. So I'm very curious to know, did you have several towns or villages that you fell in love with or was there one specific place and then that's why you decided to move there? When I started looking at properties online, the first thing I thought was, well, we need to be near a major city. And it's either going to be Lisbon, Porto or Coimbra. Mostly because of health care. Not knowing that a year later we would be very reliant on that health care and we can talk about that later. We thought Porto, although we love the city of Porto, it just has a different feel for us than Lisbon. We felt that it was too far north. So we kind of drew a circle around Coimbra, like a 45 minute radius and looked at properties within that circle. And that's where we found this house that's in a very small, tiny mountaintop village called Salgaro da Lomba. It's close to Figaro da Srine and it's halfway between Coimbra and Tomar. And this area is mountainous. It reminds me of where we came from, just geographically. So it's green, it's mountainous, steep valleys and rivers and so it just reminds me of Pennsylvania in a lot of ways. So it has this feeling that I, you know, obviously I'm not at Pennsylvania, but it gives me that comfortable feeling of living in an area like this. We went out and got ATVs again, or motocuatros as they're called here. So we can jump on dirt roads and ride for hours. It's fantastic. I mean, the cool thing is that we can actually take the ATVs out to dinner. You can ride that mud on the road. But we frequently take them to the mountaintops and the vistas are just incredible. We've sort of recreated our lives from Pennsylvania here in the mountains of central Portugal. Okay, so let's touch on the kind of shift in cost of living and we can also tap into kind of the health care costs since you brought it up. So you spent a bit of time in Lisbon, then shifted to a smaller town. What were some of the cost differences that you noticed? Well, the apartment that we purchased was 55 square meters. It was about, I would say it was a one and a half bedroom. With a 40 square meter terrace. Let's add that because that has a lot to it. We bought that for 285. Ended up selling it two years later for 295. You know, with all costs considered, we lost some money really by the time we paid the realtor's fees and all of that. We bought the 90 square foot old stone house that had been renovated 20 years ago. 90 square meter. I'm sorry, square meters. With a guest house that had 30 or 40 square meters for 165. Now we're going to put 50 into it easily by the time we take care of all the maintenance and that kind of thing. So you know, all said we'll be in 200 probably. And this has almost three quarters of an acre of property. And it's got a bio pool and orchard. And so this particular property, compared to what you get in Lisbon, I mean it's not even, it's apples and oranges. You're from the capital to moving to half an hour outside of another major city. It's just the price comparisons for real estate, it's, I can't say half, but I feel like it's half or less what you would pay in this city. But as you know, prices are going up everywhere in Portugal. So I think, you know, we had a realtor tell us a couple of weeks ago, if we sold this with her, she'd list it for 250. So I don't know if it would sell for that or not. So I think that's the biggest price difference, right? The cost of food and other things are probably similar. Yeah. You know, we were pretty good at finding out where all the menu to do your restaurants were in Lisbon. So we could eat, you know, for 8.59 euros for on a menu to do that. Back then before the war in Ukraine, because prices have gone up everywhere. But we have a few out here for 8.59 euros, you know, that includes everything, as you know, from bread and olives all the way through wine and dessert and coffee. So from that perspective, I would say it's similar. Yeah. Prices, I would say are a little bit cheaper out here, but not always. We eat groceries, we're cheaper in Lisbon than they are here. Right. It's eating out. You can find more bargains out here for eating out, but that's really it. What about the diversity of restaurant options? Do you find that's difficult? So I find that I've gotten much better at cooking ethnic food at home. So if we go to Coibra, Coibra has sushi and Chinese and, you know, like all of that stuff. What's hard is even Lisbon, the Asian food scene is a little bit one note. Like we love Thai food, we love Vietnamese food, and that's just not big in this country. Not yet. Right. There might be one or two restaurants, but it's not common. But Indian food, all different kinds of Indian food, different kinds of Chinese food there. That's all over Lisbon. Italian all over Lisbon. In Coibra, you can find that. But again, like Thai food and Vietnamese food is hard to find. Mexican food is getting better, but tough. Yeah. You know, we lived in the Arroyo neighborhood of Lisbon, right in the center of the city, very close to the Arroyo Mercado. It's a great neighborhood. So within a two block radius, we had three grocery stores, the Mercado. We had a Maillochon right downstairs from our apartment, which was convenient during quarantine. Not so convenient every day when the truck pulled up at seven o'clock in the morning outside of your bedroom window. You know, was tooting the horn because everyone was parked illegally in the truck unloading zone. So things like that, I don't miss about the city, but being able to walk to all of the grocery stores, the restaurant, 10 farmacias, the restaurant, you know, the different neighborhoods and the different architecture. I do miss those things. But for me, living here where there's just fresh air and we have a view of the mountains from our sunroom. And I will say this, just to circle back to restaurants, the Portuguese food here, like if you go out into the countryside, every area of Portugal has its specialties. And I personally think that the Portuguese food outside of Lisbon is better than what you find in Lisbon. So if you like Portuguese food, which I do, we went out to Tumor this morning to go to a market and we stopped at just a random place for lunch. I had the best lamb and it was eight euros and 50 cents for a huge plate of stewed lamb. It was incredible. And that is, I just feel that kind of food is as good, if not better than what you find in Lisbon. And at a great price. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so you were talking a bit about walkability in your old life in Lisbon. Do you have the same kind of walkability where you are now? Or do you find yourself overly reliant on a car? Definitely overly reliant on a car. I mean, we can walk through the mountains and the woods and there's really not a destination that we can walk to. There's not a restaurant. There isn't a grocery store. We couldn't walk to the center of the Saúde. So a little bit of for context, right? The village that we live in is only about 12 houses. So there's no infrastructure in our village. The closest cafe is three kilometers away. And then from there to get to a grocery store, it's a 10 or 12 minute drive, which is not awful, right? It's only a 10 or 12 minute drive. But to walk, could we walk down there? We could. I mean, but it would be an hour to walk there. And you're not shuffling back with groceries. You know what I'm saying? It's just, it's a different, completely different lifestyle. For sure. I find this really interesting. So I think a lot of people have a misconception, and it's probably due to tourism, right? You come to Portugal, you visit Lisbon, you visit Porto, and maybe a Braga or a Coimbra, and you think, oh, well, you know, Europeans, they live this lifestyle of walking and they're not reliant on cars. Most I think, actually, no, all of the Portuguese people I know, they own a car. They drive everywhere, even though like a lot of places they go, it's very walkable. Have you all found that as well? I would agree with that. And as a matter of fact, we kind of had this attitude when we first moved to Lisbon that, oh, we don't own a car anymore. We're taking public transportation, you know, we're helping the environment, you know, all of that craziness that you tell yourself. And we were walking everywhere, and we were a little bit thinner, and I don't know if that's the right word. Thinner, thinner, as the British people say. We were more fit. Yeah, that's good. So now we have to make ourselves get up in the morning to go for a walk into the woods or something. Yeah. Not that we don't like to do that, but there's no destination. It's not like, oh, I'm going to walk to the local grocery store to get my grocery. That just, you know, doesn't happen. Okay. I think you're right. Most Portuguese people we know do own a car. Yep. So it sounds like you all are living a different life in terms of headspace as well. You've traded the city for a more rural life. And has that kind of helped out with mental health and being more connected to outdoors? I think so for me. Yeah. Yeah. The city has had a lot of challenges, but not the challenges that we expected. Purchasing the property has been an entirely different experience. And we're two years in and we still don't have the supertour for the property. We yeah. Yeah. The big guys. Why not? That's the reaction. Why not? That's a story for an entire episode. Right. And we could totally like do an episode on what to know and what not to know when you're buying property in rural Portugal. We've got time. Let's go. Let's talk about it. Okay. So I'm going to give you the short version. This house and the next five houses in a row in our village were purchased 20 some odd years ago by an Englishman who moved here and rebuilt these houses from ruins. We've seen pictures. They were indeed like fall down ruins and he completely rebuilt them. He lived in this house and he sold the other houses successively to other people coming from Britain and bought them as holiday homes. And then he ran the entire complex as a holiday destination. Right. So while they weren't here, he would rent out their homes for them. They would come a couple of times a year or so forth and so on. I just want to preface this conversation by saying we don't have the scriptura and I don't want to create any legal issues on top of that fact. We do have a lawyer who is helping us through this and everything is in place for the sale to go through. But there's just been a lot of complication. A lot of delays. I'm going to keep it totally PG. Can you explain what a scriptura is? Yeah. In short, the scriptura is signing the deed, signing over the deed from one owner to another. So what happens is we're looking at properties. We fall in love with this place. We do a handshake deal with the owner. He tells us a lot of things about the property and the adjoining properties, which turned out not to be true. So through a very long process, the truth does finally come out. We were able to settle a lot of it. But the end result is, is that in Portugal, it's typical in a village for there to be a village house and on the outskirts of the village to be a little plot of land that is assigned to that village house. And that would be their garden. Right. So many times Portuguese people or Portuguese houses don't have an attached yard. The yard is on the outside of the village. So this gentleman from England had purchased all of these little pieces of property, but didn't do a good job in putting them in his name and catching up with the paperwork 20 years ago. And it sat unsentenced for 20 years so that when he sold it to us, as you can imagine, it was just a nightmare from a paperwork perspective. So there's seven articles of land that make up the entire property that we will eventually own that we live on. Right. Including an urban piece of property where the house sits. Right. And then rural pieces of property, one where the guest house was built somewhat illegally and where the bio pool sits. So you can imagine that all seven pieces of property were owned by five different families. One family, someone died. And then, you know, the Portugal laws around the property goes to the inheritance, the children and etc. etc. Right. So there's there's all these different properties. While we're trying to get them transferred, we come to find out that one of the owners had died. So the man from England who bought that property, who paid for it and had a receipt that he paid for it, never went to the local township government to get a transfer to his name. Well, in Portugal, how that works is you both go to the local government to get a transfer. Well, now one of the people involved is dead. So now now you have to involve his widow and all of his children. There's a lot of legal rigmarole that goes along with transferring property here. And if you let it sit undone, it does not get better. It only gets worse. So he let it sit undone for 20 years. And if you further complicate things in rural Portugal, it's not uncommon that the land is not necessarily registered with the local camera. So it's kind of understood by neighbors that this stick in the ground is where my property starts and yours begins or ends. So there was a little bit of that. And then the final complication, the previous owner had gotten sick, which is why he was trying to sell the property in the first place, moved back to England and he passed away in August of last summer. So now his heirs have to legally sell us the property. So that's added probably another six months. Yeah, because of inheritance laws. And so we had we could use an attorney in the process. We used a real estate agent that was representing us, which is a rare enough thing in Portugal. And we had figured out that there would be complications. We just didn't know how bad it was going to be. So we set up some protections for ourself. We had time limits and snaps in the contract that would create certain procedures. And so what ended up happening is we still have all the money or most of the money. We haven't paid for the property, but we're allowed to live in it because of the way we broke the contract. So after a certain amount of time, if he didn't have a paperwork ready, we were still allowed to live in. So we live here. We've been here for a year and a half and we have the money waiting to pay him. We'd love to pay him and get it done. We just were waiting for him to get his paperwork. I feel like we've just regurgitated a lot. No, no, that's fine. You can tell we're a little frustrated. Yeah, but no, no, no. Does it come through? Do you have any questions? So you're cash buyers, so there's no mortgage that's needed. You were going to be living rent free anyways. You're living rent free now. The CPCV, which is like, let's say the security deposit of the property. That would be kind of the best way I can translate that. It's a contract basically saying that you'll buy the property and you put a bit of cash down 10%, 20%. How much did you put down? It was 20,000 euros. And we kind of, well, we didn't anticipate all the problems. We knew there was going to be some complications. So keep in mind that there were three cultures involved in the sale of this property. The Portuguese culture, the British culture, and the American culture. All three extremely different ways of buying and selling property. So we sat down with our trusted friend and realtor in Lisbon who helped us out with this and made sure that we added certain clauses to protect us in the CPCV. And by the way, that has to be written in Portuguese or it's not legal. So he helped us with all of that and made sure that we have protections in place. Okay, good. So the best advice we would give somebody is to make sure that you have representation and you're dealing with people who know what they're doing. Because even when you do, things can still go wrong, but at least you are in a position where you're protected. Yeah. So, Jess, you had asked about mental health. That's why you paused. That's honestly great. Yeah. Living on the mountain in the fresh air and driving my ATV around the mountain is an escape for me and it is completely saved my mental health. Having the bio pool is another thing. Our pool is situated in such an incredible way that when you're in it, you just see the mountain vista. It's almost like an infinity edge. The view is amazing, which is another reason why we fell in love with this property. But to be brutally honest, the first six months I was that sleeping, having my American mindset about what a real estate transaction is supposed to look like and noting to us and knowing how it went in Lisbon was just completely different. So I had to six months in say, look, I need to either chill out about this or it's just going to be a horrible experience. So I've kind of learned to develop more of a Portuguese attitude about it. From some of the locals, even some of them will say this is taking too long, but a lot of them will also say, hey, this is what life is like in real Portugal. Yeah, I got it. Okay. Real quick on the bio pool. How is it clean? How often do you all use it? Is it used for a swimming pool or is it more for looks? I'm going to let Marcus talk about that because he's the pool man. Yeah. So essentially what it is, is a cement hole in the ground that's filled with water and around the edges there's plants and the plants filter the water. There's a pump system and whatnot, but the plants are used to filter the water. You have to be very careful about what you put in it because if you kill the plants, now you have problems. So the plants, you have to use specific types of plants and the right variety of plants and the microorganisms that live on the roots of the plants eat all of the nutrients in the water. And because the water is very low in nutrients, none of the bad things can grow in it. So it's certainly not potable. You're not drinking it, but it is completely safe to swim in. The water's crystal clear. So it's eight feet deep. So it's just, it's beautiful. So yeah, it's solely there for swimming. Last summer during the two week heat waves, it was like 40 plus degrees Celsius over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. Oh yeah. I think I spent six hours a day for two weeks in that pool. It was a lifesaver because we don't have air conditioning and we'd rarely use it here on the mountain anyway. We can start using it probably this month. Water's a little cool and we'll use it through the end of October. It's really kind of cool. I've never owned one before. We've had swimming pools. There's no chemicals involved. Yeah. It is more work than the normal pool because you have to manage the ecosystem. So you're always like making sure the plants are okay, cleaning out any extra algae around the plants and watching the pump system. It's like having a fish tank, right? So there was no fish in it. You know how a fish tank is like a lot of maintenance? Same thing with the bio pool, just on a bigger scale. Okay. So taking a broader look at your all's experience in Portugal, what were some of the other challenges that you faced making the transition back in 2019? Probably for me, the biggest challenge is the language. We did take the government sponsored class of 150 hours in Lisbon, which was really, really good. That class seems to be offered throughout the country, but various people we speak to have had various experiences from really good to not so good. And mixed results as well? Yes. Yes. Okay. So we did pass the class. We have our CIS certificate, which is required to apply for citizenship in five years. So I think the language barrier for me, I don't know that I'll ever get to the same level of Portuguese as where I'm at in English. You know, understanding certain idioms, understanding certain phrases, certain ways people communicate, certain jokes that don't make any sense in English. I remember being invited to a party every summer where it's all Portuguese people. And the first summer, that party was a little painful because some of them spoke English, but you know, some Portuguese people are very careful about their English. Like they're almost ashamed that it's not good enough, so they won't speak English. I mean, they'll help you on the street if you need help or something. But when you're in a social setting, if they feel like their English isn't up to par, they don't necessarily go out of their ways. The second year was just out of Portuguese class, so that party was an entirely different experience. And then this third summer, I felt like it was a good mix of Portuguese and English. People were comfortable with us because they knew us for three years. But still, I think the language... I'm going to go back to Marcus's experience at the hospital. As his spouse, I was supposed to call the hospital every day to make an appointment to see him. And Portuguese face-to-face is one thing. Portuguese on the phone... Right. It's much more difficult. Yeah, it's so easy. Yeah. And it was very frustrating. So I kind of got to the point where when I got to the hospital, they allowed me to make an appointment in person for the next day. So we've had to create workarounds like that sometimes. Yeah. So I think that the biggest transition, though, with the language is making deep connections with people. And we did make Portuguese friends, but our Portuguese friends, most of them speak fluent English. Right. And so it's a good transition for us, but we usually end up speaking 90% English when we're with them. And we'll switch to Portuguese for a little while, but then it always ends up going back to English because it's so much easier for them than to hear us butcher. I mean, we can work our way around a restaurant, the grocery store. We're good with that. Oh, yeah. They are right there. Yeah. My restaurant Portuguese is like C3. Like I am there in restaurant Portuguese. And Josh, you know how they drop vowels sometimes or just like letters? Sure. So I always tell this story. Our first month here, we had an appointment. We were living in Lisbon, had an appointment in Malta Estúrio, which is near Caxcaix. Right. So we have to take the metro to the regional train. We get off the metro and I asked the conductor, I said, is this the right train from Boios to Malta Estúrio? He looked at me, said, Malta Estúrio? I said, no, Malta Estúrio. And he kept saying, Malta Estúrio. I said, I don't know where Malta Estúrio is. I wasn't making the connection at all. I thought it was another place somewhere. And then he kind of laughed and said, I'm joking with you. It is Malta Estúrio, but we say Malta Estúrio. It's two words that get married together and that can throw you for a loop when you have to get somewhere. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Well, Marcus, what about you? What was the biggest challenge for you? Well, you know, if we take it back to 2019, like the biggest challenge for me was transitioning out of work into retirement, which is its own set of craziness. But then moving into a big city for the first time and also us spending 24-7 together, right? Like this is a new dynamic. I mean, you know. That was it. I didn't expect the third one. Come on. Yeah, I found it. But no, it's a new dynamic. All right, let's try this. It's 55 square meter apartment. Right, exactly. So what happens is you become to depend on each other, which we, our relationship has gotten so much deeper. I mean, we've been together 18 years, but the last three and a half have completely changed us, you know, and leveled up our relationship because you have to depend on each other in a way that you just don't when you're living in your native country. Bill and Marcus, I'm so happy to hear that over the past three years, a little more than three years, you guys have really found your feet in a different spot than you thought you'd be. Initially thinking you were going to be in Barcelona and you've ended up in a rural town in Portugal. It's been fascinating chatting with you. Thank you guys so much for joining us. Sure. Thanks for having us. You're welcome to come out and visit us on the mountain sometime. Yeah, we will take you up on that offer. Okay. Nice talking with you, Josh. Thank you. You too.