I moved to Portugal - Part 1

It has been more than 5 months since we got to Portugal. Yeah! We moved to Portugal. Here it follows a small summary of our Journey so far:

At the last quarter of 2021, I was handed a job proposal to move to Portugal. I was very happy at my previous company and, though I was thinking about moving overseas ever since I was a little kid, Portugal wasn´t actually my first option.

I always leaned more torwards north america, and I was even enrolled in a few job interview processes to United States and Canada. For some reason, Portugal was a little more agressive on looking for and hiring candidates.

The process started on early October and by mid December I already had my working visa and we were only waiting on my wife's passport to be ready.

We moved to my parents' house in January 2022 and after a month or so, we took our first international flight to the old continent.

After a 9 hour flight, we landed in Lisbon international airport at 6:30am on March 4th. Besides a huge temperature drop, from Belo Horizonte's 37 to Lisbon's 8 degree celsius, we had another big changes right out out of the plane.

Even sharing the same language, at first (and even today to be honest), Portugal's portuguese is way different from Brazil's. We also came to realize that the very way of communicating and little day to day smallest things were way different than we thought.

First impact

A few minutes after we entered our room, I caught myself looking from our room's balcony and asking myself:

What have we done?

I don´t know if you have already gone through such a huge change in your life, but, giving up so many things and being so far from home and from our loved ones, might be a little overwhelming at first.

When we were going through the process of getting our documents, selling our stuff, quiting our jobs, back in Brazil, it seems that the idea that we would be an ocean apart from everything we knew to that point, wasn't really yet settled. But when you really arrive at your destination and your mind beggins to realize it, it takes some effort to get used to it. Thankfully, my wife has always been the strongest when it comes to mental steadiness. She has been of such a huge help and I'm thankful for it.

Looking for a place

Besides fighting the sudden different temperatures and the language barrier, our first challenge was to find a home.

We came to Portugal with a two-week Airbnb stay and from the second day we were here, we already started to look for places and call real state agents. Then we had one of the hardest things to deal with so far: the fact that a lot of brazilians who previously came to Portugal, didn´t leave us a good image.

A few situations occured such as, when you talk via text messages with a person and everything seems to be well with a possible rent, but then when you call them, and they notice your accent, they find a way of not going forward with it.

Another very difficult thing to deal with, is the fact that most places ask for a lot of rent payments upfront, and also guarantors to make sure you will pay your rents. This doesn´t make much sense when you come from another country, usually, not having much known people who would be willing to be your guarantor. Anyways, depending on the landlord and the kind of work you do, it makes it easier to get a good deal.

Documentation

Well, as expected, one of the hardest things when you move to another country, is the documentation. Thankfully, the company I'm working for, was already providing me all the legal advices necessary, related to the documentation and processes that you have to do even before you arrive in Portugal, so I came here with everything which is necessary to get my documentation in the country. That doesn't mean everything will be easy. One of the most curious and sometimes enfuriating aspects of Portugal is that, because of bureaucracy, they lack standards. Sometimes, someone from SEF (Foreigners and Borders Service) could ask you for x documents, whilst other could ask for 2x, or half x. In some SEF offices they could ask for a 4x4 picture whilst others have a digital camera in place so they can take your picture in the spot. That's one of the main reasons why, most companies, ask you to take every possible document in the earth to the SEF office, so, if they ask for it, you have.

Another very weird thing is that Portugal has something called 'Niss na Hora' (Niss on the spot). Niss is the number for your social registration. You need that to pay your taxes and have it back whenever the government say so. Though the name is 'on the spot', it took me almost 2 months to get it, because they changed the service from online to offline. Now you actually have to go to the office and someone will give you the number 🤷🏽‍♂️

I could go on and on about all the ins and outs of the maze that the Portuguese immigration is, though it's one of the easiest ones in Europe and probably in the world, but let's move to some other topics in the next post.

See you there.