A year is a nice, round figure, and a significant amount of time. We use it as a metric of introspection. In a year, you can do a lot: learn a language, make a family, reassess your definition of grey. I did all these things over a year in Porto, Portugal, and on this past New Year’s Day — my expat anniversary — I ambled through the streets to see what I knew of the cidade Invicta.
A year ago, I’d arrived at the São Bento rail station at night and checked in at the Torel Palace. To start fresh, I did the same again. Waking under the ornately stuccoed ceiling in my suite, hearing the clatter of a fish delivery van through the window, I felt as foreign as if I’d just arrived. Back then, I was alone, feeling portable and insignificant, able to go anywhere, do anything, with just a small bag on my shoulder.
Then, as I did now, I set out walking. The best streets of Porto’s old town are gloriously narrow, wedged by façades with lace stonework and blue azulejo tilework. It had poured on my first day in Porto, and it was threatening to do so now; shards of rain were punctuated by warm bursts of sunlight.
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Portugal is known for sun, but winter on the Atlantic, whichever side, is unpredictable. It’s what gives Porto life an edge; the wind is wicked cold, and the homes poorly insulated. In that weather, it’s tempting to sit on one’s rear all day; the cafés and chophouses encourage it, with their one-euro beers and three-euro pork and cheese sandwiches. But, as in any urban place, it’s better to walk.
The Igreja do Carmo church showcases Porto’s distinctive blue azulejo tilework.
Yana Marudova/Unsplash
I retraced the route I’d taken as a gawking new arrival: up the sloping Avenida dos Aliados to the Praça da República. Two of Portugal’s revolutions started in this square, but the night before, I had been among a jollier crowd, watching the New Year’s fireworks burst in national red and green.
I meandered down Rua da Boavista, past Diu restaurant, where I dine weekly with friends, past the music conservatory where I practice weekly with an amateur orchestra, to the Boavista roundabout. Friends had made my life better here and easier, too, guiding me to the best places, taking me chestnut and orange picking, and out for seaside walks.
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The sloping banks of the Douro pull Porto toward the river, and I let gravity do the same to me, under the crooked sycamores of the Jardim da Cordoaria, past the Clérigos tower, to the Parque das Virtudes, and finally to the water via a spine of rock stairs. The Douro was grey-blond under the broken clouds.
There remains a certain barbarism to Porto, a place of half-light and traditions. Locals take pride in being called tripeiros, or tripe eaters. Tripe cooked Porto-style, along with eels and papas de sarrabulho, a kind of blood soup, are still standard on menus, adding a touch of the medieval to meals.
These are culinary delights when done well, and it’s a pleasure to sit at a table with no picky eaters. It was here I ate my first goose barnacle, gizzard and chicken’s foot. But no amount of food can merge a person into a culture.
One of the facts of living in a foreign country is that you are never considered a local. I might eat or learn to speak like a tripeiro, rounding my vowels and waving my arms about, but something else would always give me away. “I’ve lived here for 30 years,” a British friend said to me. “People still ask me if I’ve tried bacalhau.”
The Portuguese are used to having strangers among them. They are kind and generous — the urge to try the codfish isn’t a chide, but an encouragement not to miss out on anything. It may be impossible to fit in, but my friends had pushed me to know what they know. They, more than the city, had been there for me.
I followed the river west, to a small esplanade where the café tables sprawled. I settled into one I knew well, a small tasca called Pepino. I hadn’t become local exactly, but I knew the lay of the land. I had friends, and love, and opportunities to grow; this is what I left home for. I signalled the waiter and ordered myself a hot plate of tripas à mode do Porto.
