I have been fortunate enough to find opportunities to keep my writing skills honed while learning more about my newly adopted country, Portugal. The online magazine Portugal Living Magazine has a wealth of articles with useful and fascinating information for those interested in moving here or people who can glean practical tips for everyday life.

The latest issue is now available and below is a glimpse at the recent piece I wrote about Coimbra, Portugal’s third largest city, one-time capital and home to its oldest university. (page 44 in the current issue.)

Another of my articles that appears in the current issue of Portugal Living focuses on a unique type of team-building called Equine Assisted Training. Individuals and groups benefit from learning leadership techniques and group management styles through a series of exercises with horses. Working for the folks who run the EAT courses was what brought me to this part of central Portugal as a Workaway.com volunteer in 2018. A year later I was lucky enough to find my dream house in the same village. I still help out with the horses. (on page 32.)

Portugal’s history includes its share of battles and adventures and you can imagine those distant days with a visit to some of its many castles and palaces. Before I settled in Portugal, I took the opportunity to visit some of the main tourist destinations, Lisbon’s Castelo São Jorge, the Moorish castle in Sintra, the Templar castle and Convento de Cristo in Tomar and the walled town of Obidos.

But since I settled here two years ago, I have rarely ventured out to play tourist – until the past week. On Monday, I took the train down to Lisbon and transferred via urban train to go to Queluz. This is on the outskirts of Lisbon, near Sintra which has many tourist attractions. Queluz is famous for a palace, the Palácio de Queluz which started life as a hunting lodge. The transformation began in 1747 under Dom Pedro who married his niece, the future Queen Maria I in 1760. It’s considered one of the finest examples of rococo architecture

Vast and rambling, it is reminiscent of the Palace of Versailles outside Paris. You can easily spend a couple of hours wandering through the elegantly furnished rooms. Outside there are extensive formal gardens with pools, terraces, fountains and statues depicting characters from Greek mythology – and some pretty weird-looking fish!

The palace also has its tragic side. Queen Maria I was apparently so grief-stricken by the death of her son José from smallpox in 1788 that she eventually went mad.

Medieval Adventures

Delving further back into Portugal’s history, a visitor can easily discover Roman ruins and the many defensive castles built during the reconquest from the Moorish invasion in the early Middle Ages and from dynastic disputes with Portugal’s much larger neighbor, Spain.

About 40 minutes drive north of where I live, in central Portugal, is the town of Penela. The small town not far from the famous university city of Coimbra, is home to a medieval castle perched on top of a hill overlooking a vast farming and forested area.

Be prepared to do some climbing as you walk up the narrow streets of the town to the hilltop castle. Remember, this was a key defensive spot. You can walk along the narrow crenelated stone ramparts and look down the dizzying drop to the valleys below. A the highest point, there is a huge stone surrounded by walls with niches equipped with slits and small holes where fighters could fire arrows and lob whatever they threw in Medieval times. At the base of the structure are a life-size replica of a trebuchet and a catapult, weapons used to hurl objects at enemies in Medieval times.

Follow my Rosalie in the Red and Green blog for more information about the great adventure of daily life in Portugal!

This year the weather gods were in a good mood for the annual grape harvest, or “vindima” near my village in central Portugal. Typically, a couple of dozen volunteers show up and spend the morning snipping bunches of grapes then enjoy a wonderful meal provided by Manuel and Erminda, the couple who host the harvest.

Word went round that the event would be held on September 18. So, my neighbor and I showed up at the couple’s country store at 8 a.m. and followed a truck along a winding country road to the first vineyard. There, our host handed us each a pair of secateurs, or clippers, and a bucket and we headed off to join the others among the grape vines.

Snip, snip, snip and the bunches fall into the bucket. When the bucket is full one of us takes and empties it into a large plastic container, or “caneca”, which is about 2.5 feet high and around the same in diameter. Every now and then, a big burly guy would hoist the caneca onto his shoulder and march off to empty it into the back of one of the waiting trucks.

As we worked, the sun gradually became hotter, our hands became sticky with the sweet-tasting grape juice and my ears became attuned to all sorts of new expressions in Portuguese.

By around 1 p.m. we had finished the first two vineyards and we headed back to the home of Manuel and Erminda where they had set out tables in their basement, the “adega” where they make the wine. A wonderful meal of hearty soup, bread, olives, their own strong red wine, and a main course of fried fish and salad, had us all in a jolly mood. After the meal, the 15-year-old son of one of the helpers serenaded us with Portuguese folk tunes on his accordion. What more wonderful way to spend a Saturday!

The university of Coimbra is the oldest in Portugal and one of the oldest in Europe. Among the many traditions it is known for are the groups of students who sing a special kind of Fado.

Fado is a style of song typical of Portugal. In Lisbon it is associated with mournful lyrics featuring themes of the sea and “saudade”. Loosely translated from the Portuguese, it means longing.

In Coimbra, the fado sung by students (fado de estudante) is more about poetry and unrequited love. It grew from the serenades given by students at ceremonies marking the beginning and end of the academic year. It is accompanied by a tear-drop shaped guitar called, the “guitarra de Coimbra.“

Students in Coimbra can often be seen around town in long black capes. EV Legters, an American writer who has lived in the city for four years said that prior to Covid lockdowns, they were a highly visible presence.

“There were students in robes everywhere, playing and singing. They sound so sincere,” she said. “They can bring tears to their eyes about the nostalgia, their love of the university and its culture.”

Coimbra university is also known for its multi-day parties. The Festa das Latas, or Latada, in October, marks the initiation of new students to the university. Traditionally new students dragged tin cans tied to their legs, “lata” means can in Portuguese. The Latada starts with student groups singing a serenade in front of the Sé Nova, the“new” cathedral. The term new is relative. It was a former Jesuit church founded in 1598.

The other main celebration is the Queima das Fitas, or burning of the ribbons. This is held early in May. It too kicks off with a serenade. This one is in front of the Sé Velha, the old cathedral, a massive Romanesque structure which dates from 1162. Students wear ribbons of different colors representing their faculties; yellow for medicine, red for law, and so on.

Both ceremonies are also an excuse for parades through the streets of the city and many nights of parties that go on to the wee hours of the morning.

Portugal is gently gearing up for local elections which will be held on Sept. 26. I say gently, because I have been used to the increasingly savage cut and thrust of US-style election campaigns where character assassination is pretty much the name of the game.

Here in my part of Central Portugal, campaign billboard signs began appearing a few months ago. Most of those I’ve seen are a restful shade of green, rather like the color of a hearty pea soup.

A week ago, a flyer arrived in my mailbox from Bruno Gomes, the Socialist Party candidate. Portugal has multiple political parties. The Socialist Party (Partido Socialist) is a major party, whose leader is António Costa, the current prime minister. Gomes is campaigning to become president of the municipal chamber – essentially the mayor – of Ferreira do Zezere.

Portugal has 308 municipalities which are centered in a town and have jurisdiction over the villages in the rural area around them. As local government units, they consist of the Municipal Chamber (câmara municipal ) of elected members who have executive power, and an elected legislative body called a Municipal Assembly (Assembleia Municipal ) whose members meet five times a year. At a lower level, villages have their own governing unit called a junta de freguesia.

The flyer I received from Gomes, was inviting potential voters to a meeting on 4th of July. Portugal allows EU citizens resident in the country to vote in local elections. Since I am a dual passport holder, my second one being Irish which is an EU country, I could theoretically register.

What struck me as so refreshing about this flyer, was the calm, measured tone of the candidate’s platform. Under the heading “A Time for Change”, he lists nine proposals. They include things like support for families to cover the cost of childcare, simplifying the processes to approve new businesses and those needed to issue building permits. They are, essentially, sensible ideas that could really benefit people. What a concept!

I am glad to be living in a country where candidates can talk about the issues rather than smearing their opponents. So, although the I probably won’t attend the meeting on 4th of July, I will think of it as a different way to celebrate.

When I heard about Portugal Living, the new online lifestyle magazine being launched in Portugal, I got very excited. I’d been hoping to do some freelance writing after I settled here nearly two years ago, but to be honest, I hadn’t made much effort to find any opportunities.

Thank goodness for Facebook groups. I have joined many of the different groups aimed at expatriates living in Portugal, or people still planning to move here. They are valuable sources of information from people who have practical knowledge of the pros and cons of daily life here.

Bruce Joffe, the publisher of Portugal Living, who has been living in Portugal for several years, is a pastor and former director of communications at Printing United Alliance. He lives near Castelo Branco in Central Portugal. He decided that the existing online and print publications aimed at English-speaking expatriates were too focused on the Algarve region in Southern Portugal. His goal was to have news and features from other parts of the country, especially Central Portugal.

The first issue of Portugal Living appeared online this week and it will continue to come out each quarter. My article (on p. 16) is about a young businessman based in Castelo Branco who specializes in installing solar PV and solar water heating for domestic and commercial clients. So, it hearkens back to my first six years at the Albuquerque Journal where I was on the business desk covering energy and communications, focusing a lot on renewable energy. June 6 marks the three year anniversary of my retirement from the ABQ Journal. It has been such fun to get back into reporting again!

April is known in Portugal as the month of a thousand rains. This year was no exception. While we enjoyed bright sunny weather almost the whole month of March, April arrived with a downpour and the weather remained unstable for several weeks. But the best part of all that rainy weather – you got it, flowers! Red, white, magenta, yellow, purple, lavender and blue, in a profusion everywhere you look.

I usually walk several kilometers a days with my energetic young dog, Divina. The past few months I have been able to venture further afield to explore trails in areas around the small town of Alvaiázere. This little town has a whole series of trails that fan out around it.

Closer to home, there is a Shangri-la type valley which has a tiny hamlet called Quebrado do Meio. If you walk between the few, mostly abandoned, stone houses of Quebrado, there is a path that leads to a Roman bridge. It is still in good condition. You can walk over it and on the far side is the ruin of an old mill. Although much overgrown, you can still see the old millstones, the size of truck tires, and a huge wooden beam which must have served as a sort of spindle to hold the millstones.

Now we are well into May and the weather has gradually warmed up. Grasses are nearly chest high, people are out clearing land, tiny star-shaped olive blossoms drift under the trees looking like a dusting of snow. And there are flowers everywhere: scarlet poppies, tiny orchids, wild lavender and thyme that gives off its pungent scent as you tread forest paths.

So much to love about this place.