Author: Mike

[This was a work in progress, tweaked slightly by Cookie for sharing here]

Random, randomer, randomest

An enthusiastic reader asks: “Just how random are these notes, anyway.” Clearly, pretty much! This is not at all a travel blog: “Yesterday we went here and did this; today we went there and did that.” The notes are more stream-of-conscious reflections on assorted discoveries, sights, flavors, wonders and experiences, that don’t happen until they happen.

Travel vs. Touring

Coming onto 3 years since Cookie and I launched our adventures in Europe, I see big differences between touring and travelling. Thought I’d gather some perspective before trying to describe how they appear at this point.

Touring is an activity, a pastime, maybe a temporary diversion from life as usual. Travel can be an ongoing adventure, an opportunity to live a life that’s personally interesting, distinguished from boredom: a slow death via unkind cuts.

Travelling, for however long, is anything from a hobby to a way of life. Touring is observing something. Travelling is soaking it in, making the taste and texture a part of your life. Touring is checking out cool new cars. Travelling is long, luxurious test drives. Like the difference between a diet and a real, permanent change in how you choose to eat. A new everyday life vs. a short break from your old everyday life. And it’s as permanent as you choose to make it. Travel offers pacing versus scheduling. A chance to take it all in in deep, deep breaths. If this is Tuesday, it must be Tuesday.

Roman memory

As we have gone absolutely nowhere and done absolutely nothing recently, I wanted to relive this oddity that somehow missed an earlier edition.

Returning to our airbnb, after a fabulous dinner in Rome, late one evening, an unusual apparition floated ahead in the fog. An ominously glaring neon sign read ASS19. What on earth, we giggled, do they sell at anASS19 store? (Full disclosure: we had certainly polished off a bottle of red over dinner.) (It was a big bottle!) What an odd riddle to cap the evening. A last backward glance into the misty shroud showed ass19 to be missing. In it’s place lurked a suspicious looking neon sign promoting PIZZA [Laughed our ass19s off all the way home.]

Not why we came here

We left California to see Europe, not to spend months hunkered down in an apartment. It’s a great living space with a wonderful ocean view, but it’s not why we’re here. Still, there are worse things than gazing at the ocean in a soft breeze on a sunny day. Even if you aren’t going anywhere for a while.

Sadly our fluid, freely traversed world may become a thing of the past. Will it be because behaving responsibly in a pandemic is boring?

Nearly 600 miles off the coast of Morocco lies the island of Madeira. Visiting here last September was part of our travel-without-crossing-borders program brought on by the virus. Like Valença and the Algarve, we were just visiting. No way did we expect to be so artfully seduced!

Coming from Porto to Madeira is swapping climates: New York for San Diego. Porto winters can be tough on us California weather-wimps. All around the calendar, temps are usually a dozen or more degrees friendlier.

What is it that’s so very cool about living on an island? Maybe it’s feeling you can sense the curvature of the earth from your veranda. Our new place is on a hillside, a tad west of the capital, Funchal, maybe 1/4 mile from the water. Ocean view is about 110º of horizon from due west to south east. Frame-worthy sunsets most evenings so far.

Boxes emptied and gone, our furnishings are sorting themselves into let’s-see-if-we-like-it-there places. Shipping company lost nothing and broke nothing. Wow! Not the cheapest but pretty damn good!!

Fresh seafood fan? If you’re very, very good maybe you’ll come here when you die. New arrivals in the fish market still look surprised from recently being hooked. You can get pretty much anything, caught the evening before, and cooked to perfection. No mussels this big and fresh on Venice beach! Monday’s not your day because the fishermen don’t work Sundays.

On the northwest coast of the island is the ancient fishing village of Ribera de Janela. For hundreds of years the fishermen have asked the Madonna’s blessing on their evenings’ endeavors, by setting rounded stones in the vocanic rock 30 or 40 feet beneath a small shrine dedicated to her. Practical above most things, they find this works as well as paying the padres 50¢ a whack lighting candles in the church every night.

Madeira, it turns out is one of the safer places to wait out the virus. Just a few hundred local cases with only 2 fatalities so far. Before anyone accuses us of smart or careful planning, I’d like to plead dumb luck.

Stay safe!
– Mike + Cookie Durnerin

Um Feliz Natal a todos, e a todos uma boa noite!

This just in….. a dear old pal and his wife are mending well from a bout with the virus! Happy to hear when glad tidings seem short.

As Portuguese infections decline, Cookie and I will resume our adventures this summer. Later this month, we spend 10 days in the extreme south of Portugal, known as the Algarve region. In September, as circumstances permit, we’ll spend 2 weeks on the island of Madeira, just shy of 600 miles west of Morocco in the Atlantic.

More good news: one of our very best friends heroically volunteered to oversee emptying our storage pod. Before leaving California 27 months ago, we put away a “starter kit” of furnishings, in case we decided Europe wasn’t for us after all. Who knows for sure you really will enjoy a new way of life, once you actually live it?

Very cool! We’ll no longer need to clutter a long-delayed visit sorting out old stuff from past lives. Max time for family, friends and California cuisine!

Risks Considered

Of course we resent being kept by the virus from exploring here. It’s what we came here to do. Earlier this year – – pre-bug – – we spent a little time in London and northwest Spain. We were possibly quite lucky to get out of both those places infection free. Who knew?

Maybe a round of golf will serve as a metaphor for a life. Here I am, chipping up to, what?….. the 15th or 16th green? There’s not a lot of time to waste. Losing even a few of the remaining healthy months you have is a very big deal!

Though many believe the risks are minor, it’s foolish to run them unnecessarily. I really do want to see European soccer (futbol) games with my grandsons and to dance a jig under the northern lights with Cookie.

All we can do is try to play it smart and see how the canaries come through the coal mines. I wish them well, truly!

Stay well and stay safe!

All the best,
– Mike + Cookie Durnerin

I assure you it’s just as boring here as it is where you are. Quiet, orderly streets. Fares for nearly deserted busses and metro cars are suspended. You ride free, if you need to. Portuguese social security is shoring up most peoples’ incomes.

Grocery stores remain orderly: small groups of masked & gloved customers at-a-time. Similarly equipped cashiers wiping down their stations with sanitizer every few checkouts. Shelves remain well-stocked, with few unessential exceptions.

Eye contact appears now mostly on the down-low. And clerks are noticeably more enthusiastic about helping you, if you wear a face mask.

I suspect the recent long weekend ban on movement between towns, was more aimed at avoiding the annual tidal wave of Easter holiday Spaniards, than anything else.

Here, in our 8th week of distanciamento social, isolation from family and friends is growing noticeable. Except for having to cancel a lot of well made plans, we’d be in California right now.

Sure, FaceTime, Skype and Zoom cover a lot of the bases. I’ve even joined my Orange County poker pals for a couple of tournaments online. Even so, virtual laughter just doesn’t pack the same punch as cracking up in person with the people you care most about.

Today our local authorities announced a gradual lessoning of the shelter-in-place orders. If case numbers spike, they caution, the more stringent measures will be reimposed.

Right now we’re hoping this fall we’ll be able to make good on plans to visit California.

All the very best!

Stay healthy!
– Mike + Cookie Durnerin

Looks like we’ll be moving our Califonia visit from May to October. Concern was more about getting stuck someplace than anything else. Did you see the video of all those poor homeward bound Americans crammed into overflow lines for hours and hours at the 13 airports? Brilliant! Talk about non-social distancing. If they weren’t infected before, they likely are now. “Hi GrandMa, we’re home!”

Cookie and I are pretty healthy and we work hard to stay that way. There’s just no guessing which countries will restrict who from coming and going. While neither of us has any of the underlying conditions that make the virus so hard on many people, we don’t need to get caught up in the craziness. If you plan to travel anytime soon, change your plans!

To be a survivor, you have to act like one.

View from here

We are getting all the same directives you are: social distancing, no hand shaking, extreme handwashing and so on. Fewer people out and about. Bars, night clubs and gyms closed. Restaurants ordered to acommodate 1/3 fewer patrons at a time.

Grocery trips are interesting: fewer people than usual but quite orderly.
You are greeted with hand sanitizer and plastic gloves. You enter in small groups as others leave. The number of shoppers is held to a reasonable constant. Shelves were stocked to about 80% of normal; no signs of panic or hoarding yet. Pretty orderly……. so far.

Slidin’ in Under the Wire!

In other news, Portugal has finally caved to pressure from other EU countries (Lookin’ at you, Sweden!!) to end it’s “unfair competition” by recinding it’s traditional tax break on pensions from other countries.
New expats receiving temporary residence visas after the end of this month will no longer qualify. Our visas arrived last July, so we are apparently grandfathered in for the next 9 years.

All the very best,
 – – Mike & Cookie Durnerin

Retirement brings your foot up off the pedal. No more external pressure to do anything you’d rather not be bothered with. Which day of the week it may be is so galactically less important than what you have planned.

While Cookie and I had a great place in southern California, looking at the same (admittedly beautiful) surroundings every day filled me with dread. Now, each day I raise the shades on the breathtaking sight of the Rio Douro winding it’s way through Porto and beyond to the wine country. I literally do catch my breath. My heart skips a beat, still, after 14 months.

Language

Learning Portuguese is coming along, s-l-o-w-l-y. I tell people we have a teriffic language teacher who, unfortunately has terrible students. There’s that retired thing again. I don’t get many believers when I tell them learning Chinese was easier.

At a recent gathering of expats from all over, I met a young woman from Taiwan. I was foolishly pleased with myself when my Mandarin flowed almost as readily as it did when I taught in China a few years ago!

ATMs: the seamy side

A current con the banks here are running pops up when you use your debit card to withdraw local currency from your bank in America. It nails anyone without knowledge of the exchange rate between the US dollars and Euros or British Pounds. (For convenience, picture a euro as a dollar bill with a dime sitting on it. The pound would be that same dollar with 3 dimes sitting on it.)

The atm shows a window offering a choice between an unguaranteed exchange rate and a guaranteed fixed rate, pictured under a US flag. Trouble is, the fixed rate is guaranteed to screw you out of double the going exchange rate. And, if you reject the fixed rate a later window requires you to reject it yet a 2nd time to avoid the scam.

Long overdue visit

This spring will be 2 years since Cookie and I began our grand tour. Time with family and friends will be very welcome. We’ll arrive in May to spend for a few weeks of seeing everybody we can. We all will have changed a little. I’ll confess to feeling more interested in hearing stories than telling them. Four or five all-too-brief weeks, then back to Europe in June. More of the adventure. How long will we keep this up? As Cookie reminds me, “You’re not 70 anymore!”

This unusually long interval has been consumed with establising a home- away-from-home here in Europe: finding a place to live; learning our way around; making new friends; getting medical coverage and all the day-by-day do’s & don’ts of setting up in a new place.

New movies from the US arrive quickly here. Cinemas in the bigger shopping centers are as, or more, modern than those at home. Unlike Spain, France and others, Portugal doesn’t overdub movies from America into their native language. Movies and TV in English with Portuguese subtitles sure help with learning the language.

Street legal!

Celebration!! After months of jumping through bureaucratic hoops, our Portuguese temporary residence cards arrived.

Most European nations adhere to what’s called the Shengen Agreement regulating movement of non-citizens. Casual tourists or vacationers aren’t so affected, as their visits tend to be less than 90 days at a time. But if you’re a fulltime traveler, a 90 day limit out of the last 180 is a real show stopper.

As legal (temporary) residents of Portugal we can now wander all over Europe as freely as EU citizens. No visa hassles! At airports we can use the line for EU passports. After Brexit, the Brits will have to queue up with ”the others.” That should prompt a few wishes they’d have voted the other way. You think? Hmm?

We have chosen Porto, in northern Portugal, as our base of operations to visit as much of Europe as we can in the next few years. It’s a beautiful, vibrant city located ideally to explore Spain, France, the Med Islands, Morocco and more.

For all my whining about bureaucracy here, Portugal really is one of the easier places in Europe to secure temporary residency. I read somewhere other EU countries complain that Portugal should end it’s tax-free program.

Language Barriers?

Cookie says I have a knack for languages. I think I’m just not intimidated by communicating without benefit of a shared language.

It’s completely unnecessary to let a lack of language stop you from exploring the world. Our travels have shown us just how pervasive English is, in Europe, China and many other countries as well.

Too lazy to learn a few key phrases… “where’s the bathroom?” or “do you speak English”? Just watch for young people staring at smartphones. Most of them will understand you.

The heart and soul of a country is its culture, and the key to a culture is its language.

Every wish for a great holiday season and a super ’20!!

All the very best,
 – – Mike + Cookie Durnerin

Look around at the people you see in train stations or airports. Most are either of 2 kinds: the ones with tickets and the ones without. Some are going somewhere and others are going nowhere. People without tickets just seem sad and lost.

I think the key to anything is having plans. Plans are like tickets to exciting attractions: the big game, or a great new show on Broadway. Don’t let retirement just sneak up on you. Assuming you’ll just retire someday and somehow be happy, could be asking for trouble.

Have something you want to do and work your way towards it. Anything you think is cool. Write a book. Grow a garden. Travel around the world. Life is an attraction. Plans are the tickets.

Seriously, dude?

On a recent Skype call a friend caught me by surprise: “Only rich people like you and Cookie can afford to retire in Europe.” Rich people? It never occurred to me that anyone assumed us to be well-heeled hoonyaks blissfully squandering our billions abroad.

O, would that it were true!!!! Life could be a dream, sh-boom. Allow me to painfully point out Cookie and I retired on a very fixed income of social security and a teacher’s pension. Did I say “very fixed?”

Actually many desirable places around the world feature much lower costs of living. In Portugal our income goes 35-40% further than in southern California. They’re so happy we spend it here, we get 10 years tax free.

You really don’t need a car here. Our spending on trains, planes and uber is a small fraction of the auto-related costs we were stuck with in California. Medical and prescription costs are substantially lower too! It all means much more freely diposable income and a noticeably higher standard of living. If you’re rich, so much the better. I wouldn’t know personally, but life can still be a dream, sh-boom.

All the very best!
 – – Mike + Cookie

Cookie and I boarded the Celebrity Reflection in Fort Lauderdale to embark upon our European Odyssey. After 15 days leisurely crossing the Atlantic, visiting the Canary Islands, three ports in Spain, and Corsica, we landed in Rome. Following roughly five week explorations each of Italy, England, Romania and Croatia, we came to Portugal.

It was nearly six months of pulling up stakes every week/month or so and moving to a new city or country. It was clearly time pick a place to linger awhile. Portugal has been perfect: friendly people, interesting food, great wine and terrific public transportation, among other goodies. We have taken a 3 year lease on a lovely apartment in Vila Nova de Gaia across the bridge from city of Porto. We enjoy beautiful views of the River Duoro and Porto.

We have become quite versed with visa limits in the EU: 90 days per country. Then it’s time to leave for another 180 days before returning). No problem for the casual 2 or 3 week-at-a-time tourísticas, but it’s a major headache for extended travelers like us. Ever eager to avoid hassles, we have applied to the Portuguese Consulate for a temporary residence visa. When granted, we will be free to move around the EU like citizens.

Over and above other native charms, Portugal is the perfect jump-off spot to explore other countries in Europe, the Med and North Africa. Travel inside Europe is relatively easy and affordable. We seriously intend to make the most of of our time here!

Best Travel Partner Ever! 
I have been asked how our relationship has fared under the demands of months of non-stop travel. Cookie and I came up with a device that works really well to avoid the squabbling that can result from a relationship under pressure. We arbitrarily decided anything that ‘happened’ on odd numbered days was all her fault, no matter what. I took blame for whatever calamities occurred on the even days, NMW.

It worked splendidly until her birthday came around on an odd numbered date. [It usually does…] Can you believe she actually expected a fault-free day of grace? We had a terrible fuss!

No – Seriously, the reason it works so well is how appropriately it holds up to ridicule all the petty little non-issues that couples often bedevil each other with.

Uber Survival Guide:
I usually find chatting with Uber drivers interesting, informative and fun. One cautionary I’ve learned the hard way is not to presume too heavily on their command of the English language. They have stock words and phrases they say, in different languages, over and over every day. However, some questions can be disastrous. I have learned that asking about some nearby town or how to pronounce the name of a place on a passing highway sign can cause confusion. I have occasionally found myself on the way to an unintended destination. Always an adventure!

All the very best,

Mike & Cookie Durnerin

Clearly we needed more of a “permanent” address than an airbnb for arrival of a winter clothing shipment from home.  Our airbnb host Tiago kindly offered his office location for delivery.  Turns out his workspace is a communal office sharing area for solo entrepreneurs and small startups.

Of course the huge box arrives with a COD customs tab of €142.  That’s $163. if you’re keeping score at home.  Some young woman (no affiliation with us or our host) opened her wallet and paid to accept delivery for people she’d never seen or even heard of.

Glowing with gratitude on a brisk early winter’s day, I wanted to thank her.  A gratuity seemed out of place. So I confided to her the secret meaning of the letters F-I-A-T on our uber vehicle. Her laughter lit up the plaza.

Speaking of kindness from strangers, back in Rome we found a Mailboxes Etc. near our airbnb.  Giorgio the manager kindly agreed to keep a 20 lb. box of personal items for free, until we found a temporary home that could accommodate them.  We sent him a shipping address 6 months later and the box caught up with us, no problem.

I’m not at all suggesting these things wouldn’t happen at home.  But it is quite heart warming to a stranger in a strange land.

We have now had 3 Portuguese language lessons with our teacher Lucia.  Sessions are 90 minutes and cost €15 for the two of us. We are of course experiencing all the usual language learning foolishness.  I think the best idea is to just try, just speak. Go for it!  If you stall around waiting until you can pronounce everything perfectly with pristine grammar, nothing happens.