As loyal readers of elderberries know well, I have a bit of a thing for Lisbon. It started out as a light fling. I had the occasional reason to visit, and familiarity bred deeper affection. It’s a place that makes my soul sing. Figuring out why is an interesting exercise. I’m here for some teaching and speaking, a non-committal alternative to moving and settling. An affair more than a marriage, which satisfies the same search for alternative selves and ways of being.
So many friends at this age, especially in my internationally-mobile-global-hybrid crowd, begin to think of where they want to settle for their latter years. I’m teaching on an INSEAD programme this month aimed at retiring CEOs who will be wondering where is home when you’ve spent a lifetime rootlessly roaming - and inter-culturally marrying. My kinda of folk make kids who are as rootless as I am, loving the ease with which they feel at home anywhere. It isn’t until later that you realise the cost of your globe-hopping. Kids and friends all over the place, and no obvious place to land. It becomes a choice, and how to choose is often no easy task.
I asked my friend Chris, who moved to Lisbon two years ago, to explain his own choice and how he’s experienced putting it onto practice. We were talking over a cocktail in one of the lovelier terraces in town, overlooking an expansive view of the ‘25 of April Bridge’ and the Tages River framed by wide open skies and green mountains. Lisbon’s red bridge makes you think of the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, but actually, the company that built Lisbon’s bridge is the The American Bridge Company - which also built the not-red San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge. OK, I’m going down one of those fascinating internet rabbit hole about the bridges (did you know that Lisbon also boasts the longest bridge in Europe, coming in at almost 10 miles? That’s the Ponte de Vasco da Gama.)
Now that I got that out of the way, I actually wanted to talk about choice - and coffee. To answer my question, Chris was comparing how coffee is served in London and Lisbon. In Lisbon he says, whatever bar you wander into, upmarket or down, you will be served coffee in a pretty china cup and saucer. Usually for around 1 euro. The assumption is that you will sit, drink, and be a while. At least the time of your sip. There are terraces all over town, in every street, to show you how. They are filled with people of all ages, sitting, chatting, communing. Being. Usually together.
In London, he remembers, coffee is served to you in a cardboard, supposedly ‘recyclable’ cup, with a lid. The assumption being that you are way too busy to sit, and you are going to go on rushing through your day, cup in hand, using the caffeine to keep you going - and doing. Coffee shops don’t have terraces (the weather doesn’t help). Most of them are owned by big chains like Costa, Starbucks, Pret à Manger and are designed to maximise throughput and profits. They barely have any seats inside. If they do, people are often working, wired up on a laptop with earphones in. And the average cost of a cup is over £3. It’s a big competitive market full of big players jostling for pinched pocketbooks by offering a small, supposedly affordable taste of ‘luxury’.
Chris is my age, so has come to Lisbon with the goal of slowing down. He’s a recovering American workaholic, like so many of the expats now choosing Lisbon as home. He lives near the sea, works a few hours a day remotely, and walks every day along the coast. He says he is fitter, more relaxed and happy. He is, he says, learning to be.
There’s a seemingly equal mix between older retirees attracted by a myriad of tax incentives the country dangled in front of their neighbours, and a global bunch of young digital nomads who can work from everywhere and find Lisbon an appealingly affordable alternative to New York, London or, increasingly, Beijing. So many of them, in fact, that even the gentle Portuguese are starting to grumble. As housing prices skyrocket at the sudden infusion of foreign cash, investors and expats, the government has quietly shelved some of the ‘golden’ hands they were holding out. It is the downside of a very successful strategy (I’ll be interviewing the man behind it on the podcast soon…).
Different cities have such different auras, of course. Hubby is currently reading Happy Cities: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design and NICA, the UK National Innovation Center is doing a lot of work on defining the Longevity City. But in the end, cities seem a complex mix of personal preferences, the community that comes together and the broader national and even international context of what’s going on.
Americans are emigrating again, as they did after the 2016 election. The number of US emigrants to Portugal has more than doubled over the last 15 years. About 10,000 now live in Lisbon, up 239% from 2017. But Americans aren’t even in the top ten of immigrants, which are vastly dominated by Brazilians and the Nepalese displacing China for 10th position in 2022.
Brazil (233,138)
United Kingdom (36,639)
Cape Verde (35,744)
India (34,232
Italy (33,707)
Angola (30,417)
France (27,614)
Ukraine (26,898)
Romania (23,967)
Nepal (23,441)
There are so many wonderful and terrible elements to every city I love and have lived in. The New Yorker recently published a piece about how insane it is to try and get a table at a top restaurant in New York - or, rather, why you can’t get one anymore. (Because scalpers and their AI tools are buying up dinner slots as soon as they come online). Paris is centrally managed and designed by a powerful mayor, Anne Hidalgo, since 2014 pushing forward a long-term vision of where the city is going - increasingly green and inclusive - with lots of pieces getting built for next summer’s Olympics. She was awarded the 2023 ULI Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development in recognition of her vision for a more inclusive and sustainable Paris and the global impact of her policies. The first female Mayor of Paris, she’s credited with having reduced Paris’ carbon emissions by 40% in a decade and increased affordable housing. London just comfortably re-elected Sadiq Khan for a third term, a proud symbol of the city’s cosmopolitanism despite a nasty smear campaign by some increasingly desperate Conservatives.
Lisbon is gentrifying by the minute, and renovations are everywhere. As are some spectacular new architectural wonders, like the electricity company, EDP, new headquarters. Old palaces are becoming luxury hotels and condos (check out The One). Tourists inundate the city’s charming, hilly centre, and fill its coffee shops to the brim. But the vibe is still gentle, and the signs insist that no laptops are allowed. Restaurants and shops are small, independent and inventive. Also affordable. The wine is wonderful, the service uniformly friendly and unhurried.
Yesterday, I accidentally stumbled on a designer from whom I had bought a favourite, colourful raincoat - twenty years ago. She’s an older woman now, but the clothes remain vibrantly experimental. She and her shop feel a bit like the city as a whole. Unpretentiously hip, fun and ageing so very beautifully.
One of the key choices of later life is where to live. Ryan Frederick (on my 4-Quarter Lives podcast here with an episode called ‘Where In the World Should I Live Next?’) wrote a whole book about how to think about the issue and evaluate your different choices. Geography is often an under-estimated chapter of choice. Especially in multi-national couples and families.
But in the end I remind myself that while flirting is fun, my whole family (husband and kids) don’t share my tastes in towns. They like me in London, and who am I to complain? Walking by the Lisbon symphony hall, I note there is one concert in May and another in June. In London, one’s biggest cultural challenge is to choose from the vast array of offerings … every single day. And seeing the sheer numbers of tourists that flood this town in early May, I wonder how protective I would feel if this were my home.
So teaching and occasional house-swapping it is. I tell myself I can get Pastel de Nata in London now. And I’ll just have to learn how to leave the laptop behind.
Love it! Thax for finding and sharing Carmen!
Yes, I do have strong ties and reasons, but still is being a difficult landing, with a beautiful home and environment, but a cultural shock.
Here I send you the story, which BTW, I didn’t know😏.
It has been one of the most popular expressions in Galicia (the north part of Spain above Portugal) for decades, although its influence has now reached all of Spain. A slogan as melodious as it is sarcastic.
The "thank goodness we have Portugal left" is the cry of war and resignation every time the situation on this side of the Minho becomes difficult. It was heard during the Nunca Máis protests.
Its uses are thus mixed between politics, sociology and the cultural arena. But where did it all begin? Who popularized the rhyme?
The first written reference dates back to October 1984 with the release of Sinister Total´s third studio album (a Vigo´s pop rock group born after the dictatorship ended). "Vigo, capital Lisbon" was the title of another song that its colleagues from Os Resentidos would launch a few months later. In this way, the two great icons of Vigo punk-rock of the 80s came together in an expression that, four decades later, is still more valid than ever and knows no age (taken from a local news paper)*. ✔️