Shooting a photo from the Uber ride.
Today we finally met Gail Aguiar, our guardian angel in Portugal. Gail is a Canadian of Phillipino decent married to a Portuguese citizen that has been living here for 4 years. She has been an ExPat in other countries prior to this. She writes a Portugal blog that is fabulous and has a side business assisting foreigners relocating to Portugal to navigate the system. She has helped folks from a wide variety of countries and circumstances. I found her by way of a discussion on an ExPat facebook site and then reached out to her through her blog & she agreed to help us.
We were to meet Gail at the Financas (government) office at 9:00. Unfortunately, our Uber driver was stuck in traffic. 8 minutes away turned into 30 minutes. Then, he told us it was only his second day driving for Uber. Before that, he worked in a jewelry store. He followed his GPS but got very confused. He had to make a U-Turn in the middle of a major street during rush hour. But, no one honked or flipped him off! Then his GPS sent him up and down a street where we had to fold in the side mirrors to squeeze through. Just to end up back where we had made the U-turn previously! We felt so bad for him as he kept apologizing over and over. Gail got to Financas first and pulled a ticket number for us. We arrived 30 minutes late and they were only 2 numbers away from calling our number so it all worked out.
Going to the Financas office is a lot like going to our DMV. We presented passports, proof of our address in the U.S., and Gail acted as our “guarantor.” Even though we got the “worst” agent there (per Gail), we were in and out relatively quickly and now are Proud owners of NIF numbers – which you need to open a bank account, buy property, rent, and just about anything you can think of.
Our next appointment was at noon at the Activo Bank (an online version of Millennial Bank) to open an account. We grabbed some coffees and pastries first since we had no breakfast. We were Not so lucky at the bank. Even though Gail has a connection there who grabbed and prepped some of our paperwork, and we had an appointment, it still took us 2 and a half hours of waiting in line to finally get our account set up. Every other person in line was a young student Brazilian. Gail said they are leaving the mess in Brazil and all moving to PT in droves. We suspect the bank was having computer issues but did not want to admit it. We finally got our 2 bank cards (which they print on site.) You have one that is like a traditional ATM card. Except that they also use their ATM machines to do things like pay the electric bill, buy things online, and much more. The other card is like a pre-paid credit card. When you want to buy something online (like from Amazon), you transfer money to that card then use it like a credit card. The next step was to deposit a little cash (euros) in the ATM to open the account. But their machines were not working so we had to go to the big brother Millennial bank down the street to make our actual initial cash deposit. All this put us way behind schedule to meet the attorney. We arrived at his office over an hour late. But, familiar with Portuguese bureaucracy, he was understanding.
The attorney, Francisco, reviewed our rental agreement for the place we will have for the first 5.5 months and got it approved by the Washington DC Portuguese consulate. To get a Visa to come to PT, you have to have a long-term lease. He also briefed us on how buying real estate in PT works. Very different than in the US. He seems very nice but very diligent. He will look out for our interests.
We then had a late lunch with Gail since it was after 4:00 and we were all “hangry.” It was really good in a cute tiny place. Then she walked us to a metro stop and tried to explain the Porto transit system to us (which is completely different than the Lisbon system.) We bought passes but they did not work (I swear we de-magnetize everything) so Gail gave us a couple of her passes so we could get home. We also bought 2 tickets for the next day for the hop-on-hop-off sightseeing bus so we could get an over-view of the city. We agreed to meet again on Thursday north of the city near where she lives to explore communities outside of Porto (but on the metro line) together.
We were so tired after this day & late lunch that we didn’t leave the apartment or have dinner. So glad to have checked off getting our NIF numbers and opening our bank accounts. We went back to the apartment and I was able to transfer money from our bank in the US to our bank in PT to cover the first 2 months rent + 1-month security deposit which we will need Friday when we sign the lease. We are very excited to see the rental apartment then and meet Helena our landlady.
Such a busy day, I took relatively few photos.
