SFTF Italia o Portogalla Pt 3 – Ten days with International Living

Taranstales

October 17, 2018

Nine days of sunshine gone by, five hotels experienced, rides taken in at least four different coaches, the knowledge of three local guides thoroughly tested, at least two house purchases initiated and one very tired but totally dedicated tour leader looking forward to a few days of well-earned R & R, all combined to mean that thirty-six willing participants could face the ominous black clouds showing up over the mountains above Mijas with complete indifference. For the next day we would all be rising from our sixth different bed, grabbing our tenth tour breakfast, making fond farewells to our several new-found friends and going our separate ways; the heavens could open and threatened lightning could crash, but our tour was ended and nothing could take from us the memories of new places explored and potential new home-sites discovered. 

But what had the past ten days of “life according to International Living (IL)” really achieved? Were Celine and I actually a whole lot wiser about the benefits that might be gained by re-defining ourselves with new lives in either Portugal or Spain? Did the tour leave us with a useful impression about life in either of those two countries, or did it merely whet our appetites to learn more for ourselves? 

Our fellow travellers had a wide variety of reasons for their presence in our midst. Some, like us, were seriously interested in the idea of starting a new life in a new country and had a definite penchant for the Old World so well represented by these particular two countries. Finding a surefire investment property inspired some to tag along, though without a clear interest in actually setting down new roots for themselves. And a few had very little experience of foreign travel and saw this tour as an opportunity to safely expand their horizons. With such a diverse audience it was always going to be difficult to satisfy all tastes!

The meeting point for us all was Lisbon, the capital of Portugal and the type of city that does attract tourists but is primarily very much a place where people work and lead quite ordinary lives. For that latter reason it is a delightful place for one to walk around and to imagine oneself becoming part of the life of the city, and not an eternal tourist. Unfortunately for Celine and I, that was not the feeling we would get from much of the rest of the tour. It is of course the intent of our hosts to seduce their charges with the delights that are on offer in the regions they are promoting; for many who are visiting a country for the first time, it is the places where foreign tourists congregate that are the biggest draw. I suspect that is the reason International Living chose venues in Portugal’s Algarve region and Spain’s Costa del Sol as the main hubs for our delectation.

However, for me as an Englishman it was not very exciting to be visiting areas that are both rather uncharmingly known as “Little England” to the locals, and where English is spoken more commonly than either Portuguese or Spanish. Indeed Francesca, our Spanish guide in Costa del Sol, recounted a recent visit there to a dry-cleaners where they spoke no Spanish at all, and Celine and I were served in a cafe in Marbella by a lass from the East End of London who also spoke not a word of the local lingo! I find this to be a very sad reflection on the many, mainly English, ex-pats who are so obviously uninterested in the customs, culture and food of the country wherein they choose to live, and are unperturbed by the process of deculturisation that they are a party to. And why the obsession with golf courses, those large tracts of land set aside for the exclusive use of the minority that are a source of environmental pollution and water wastage?

Yet in spite of these negative feelings, we both enjoyed many aspects of the tour. It was a novelty for us to be driven everywhere and have so few decisions to make; and our fellow travellers provided us with plenty of entertainment, both intentionally and unwittingly. Indeed the camaraderie was very appealing and we thoroughly enjoyed chatting with everyone, and learning why, or indeed if, they were contemplating a new life in the Old World. For us, life in Europe holds few surprises and returning there from America seems a fairly logical progression in our lives. It must be very different when you have grown up being told that your country is the centre of the universe, and discovering so much that is strange and rather threatening. Of course it is to help people overcome those misgivings that Il arranges tours such as these and I am sure that many of our group felt comforted by what they saw and were introduced to, however much I might like to disavow them of such feelings.

On the positive side, by no means every place we visited was tainted with the smell of fish and chips, lager louts and menus in English only. Some of the small towns, particularly Ronda and, to a certain extent, Evora and Tavira, appeared positively “liveable” and made more than a few of us open our eyes to the possibilities they might offer to us prospective ex-pats. The visit to the wine cellar of Jose Maria da Fosca, one of the oldest wineries in Portugal, introduced us to the fascinating ancient art of oenology, whilst confirming my belief that muscatel was rather too sweet even for my sugar-loving taste buds. We saw some beautiful countryside with rocky mountain backdrops, we stood on a clifftop at the most westerly point of mainland Europe and we visited the first bullring to be built in Spain.

We enjoyed a brief stay in Sevilla and on our last couple of days were pleasantly surprised by the elegance of Malaga, enough for me to mentally disenfranchise it from ‘orrible anglicised Costa del Sol. 

Luckily Celine and I had spent a few days on our own in Portugal before we joined the IL tour and this provided us with a much better idea of what that country might have to offer. [See previous post “Italia e Portogallo 2018 Pt 2 – Lisboa no rio Tejo”]As is our wont, we often stopped to chat with a few of the locals and in some ways in a few minutes gleaned more from those chance conversations than we learnt in three days with IL. This is not meant as a put-down, as our tour presenters and guides very ably gave us loads of information; yet somehow it wasn’t always what we wanted to hear. Life in a country is not all about visiting tourist sites and experiencing the history of the place; it is about day-to-day living with one’s neighbours, it’s about making friends with the locals, in fact, as one or two of the ex-pat “faculty” made quite clear, it is all about becoming a local oneself, however long that may take. Yes, before taking the plunge it is important to know the tax implications of a move abroad, and what it takes to become a resident, and to learn whether or not the local health service will look after us. But we can learn all that from reading the numerous articles to be found on the internet, both from International Living and others. We can also read a thousand and one personal stories by those who have already set down new roots, and listen to the same stories from the same people as we sit in a conference room; but somehow they only serve to whet our appetite and are no substitute for gaining our own personal experience of everyday living in the country of our choice.

In past journeys where we have made our own arrangements, travelled using our own wits, shopped for our daily necessities and explored as the whim has taken us, Celine and I have had truly memorable experiences, have laid ourselves open to temptation several times and have fallen in love with some quite surprising places where we found ourselves by happenstance. Sad to say, but none of that happened during the IL tour, even if we did spot for ourselves one or two properties that might be said to show great potential. Somehow, being led by the hand and fed with a diet of somebody else’s idea of what living abroad should or could comprise, has not been exactly the satisfying experience we had hoped for. What was worse, the small selection of properties that we viewed were all in the category of “good investment” but none could seriously have been considered as places one might actually want to live in oneself, that is where one could become a local. Thus we came away with no real feeling that we wanted live anywhere that we had seen.

Since our parting of ways with our fellow travellers, we have returned to Italy, and this is being written in an old apartment high on the hill on which stands the ancient town of Todi in Umbria. The pigeons are cooing on the rooftops level with our balcony and the valley below is shrouded in one of the heavy early morning fogs that are characteristic of this area in the autumn. Yesterday we drove through rugged green hills to medieval Orvieto strategically located on top of a volcanic plug of rock, and the day before we visited the wonderful Etruscan city of Perugia; on Saturday we enjoyed the festivities of Todi’s La Disfida di San Fortunato in and around the Piazza di Popolo, and another day we were delighted by the nearby valley town of Bevagna and slightly disappointed by the more touristy hilltown of Spello. Quite simply, we are once more enjoying doing our own thing and feeling relaxed and content to be back in control of our own destiny. But tomorrow we will again be putting ourselves at the mercy of another organised promotional campaign, over three days in Pescara, a small port city on the Adriatic coast of Abruzzo, a region of Italy that is still largely ‘undiscovered’ by ex-pats such as ourselves. Live and Invest Overseas (LIOS) will be our hosts this time, and with a format that is more conference than bus tour, but will include a couple of days inspecting real estate options in the vicinity, we remain optimistic that we will glean some positive vibes about life in La Bella Italia. We are keeping our fingers crossed, and not wishing to favour one organisation or the other, I will be reporting back on that event as well. . . .