1 year in Portugal: Expectations vs Reality. Is it Worth The Hype?

hey friends this is yulia and welcome to my channel here talk all things moving to canada living in portugal learning languages and much more it's been a year since my husband and i moved to portugal and i decided to look back at the video why we left canada and see if the expectations met the reality so let's see together how the past year been and make sure to watch this video till the very end because i'll be answering your questions the biggest reason for us to move to europe was to travel because flying from canada might get very pricey like very pricey so over the past year we've been to i don't know 10 countries or so because traveling within europe is super affordable compared to canada the tickets are literally 30 euro 40 euro if your book in advance because if you book for like next week they're going to be super expensive in june we decided to go to a music show to spain we calculated tolls gas car maintenance whatever it was like crazy but then we just found tickets for a plane for 40 years and i'm like we're flying like why would we drive spend so much time and energy and gas and whatever if we can just fly but the thing is the hotels and the hospitality industry are still recovering from covet so the prices are still high i would say because for a weekend in spain we pay like 6700 euros but but it's getting back to normal because i was researching our christmas trip and i could find hotels for like 700 for a week which is amazing because it's christmas and it's a week not like three days if you're planning to travel i would say wait a little bit more and then the prices will be normal the second reason why we moved to portugal was being closer to the family to our relatives we wanted to go visit russia belarus but this one failed if you follow the news you know what's happening in the world so no vacation at my grandma's for me no vacation at my husband's relatives place so that one failed but in january my mom came to visit we went to hungary to portugal so at least something and it's less flying for her because flying to canada would be like plus like six or seven hours when we were moving to portugal we thought the cost of living would be lower to be honest with you all the friends who went to portugal they were like oh the prices are so nice everything's so affordable like the hotels are cheap food is cheap like easy when we moved here the prices they were just ridiculous like now it's even worse than a year ago because the prices in lisbon are the same like prices in montreal but again the minimum salary it's like two different worlds rent is high food similar utilities i think it depends on what you're comparing because utilities here for example hydro we pay around 80 to 100 per month euro in canada we paid like 30 to 40 canadian dollars which is like 20 30 euros per month for hydro but at the same time we're saving a lot here on the cell services on the internet because in canada those cost a lot and if you're planning to move to portugal i would say do your own research because people have different budgets people have different needs some people okay live in a room for 300 euros others are not okay living in an apartment for 2k because it's like too small to something not too bright whatever so there are a lot of options available on the market in lisbon but the prices they're getting higher and higher and i spoke to a friend and she's like i'm looking for a studio i can't find anything lower than eight nine hundred last year for that money i think you could easily rent a one bedroom what surprised me a lot was portuguese people while some people are super nice and welcoming and friendly and they would like talk to you for hours invite to their places there are a lot of interesting portuguese people online every time i say something about portugal i get hate like go back to canada go back to russia because of you the rent is high we have like no job the minimum salary is garbage i have nothing to do with low salaries and the lack of housing it's the portuguese landlords who rent those apartments out for 2k for 3k for 9k it's not me i'm not like i'm not paying 9k for an apartment it's portuguese landlords who do that so it frustrates me a lot because i've never had that experience in my life on my russian channel people would be hating but it would be like you know oh i don't like your t-shirt on my english channel like canadians americans they'd be like you're not quite right or i hate your lipstick but it's also okay when i started posting about portugal people just like well that's not true well go back then why you like filming videos about portugal but this is my experience a local's experience will be always different from an expats experience if you talk to a canadian person they would be saying the same things portuguese people saying low salaries no affordable housing blah blah blah and then if you ask expats they would be sane lots of jobs good salaries a lot of housing so the country doesn't matter it's always about locals and expats those experience are super different and i don't understand why people can see it the next one i knew was gonna be hard and it's the seasons while my husband enjoys going to the ocean on a christmas day going to the beach enjoying this heat waves i honestly struggle a lot and now i'm kind of feeling it again if you haven't seen my video about my struggles with the seasons and whatever moving to portugal go watch this video after but it's like i underestimated how hard it's gonna be without winter without fall without my like pumpkin spice lattice without my stuff that i'm used to yes some of you might say oh it's consumerism it's america yes but you feel the holiday you feel like i don't know you feel like you're in a movie i don't know you have this beautiful golden leaves and it's like super nice and chilly and like this crisp air i cannot even like describe it to you it's just it's different i don't know some people move to portugal because of the weather because they hate winter they hate fall they hate spring they just love summer all year long for me not a fan not a fan i'm planning my christmas trip already i'm like almost almost done planning it so i'm gonna just go for a month spend some time with snow with christmas trees with like you know this chilly weather and just you know chill another thing that i was not prepared for was the slow lifestyle i knew that southern people are kinda you know slow i guess but it's just a whole different level so everything is a mania which is tomorrow like you need to fix a door i'll come amania and then amman yeah nobody comes and you like but i'm sorry where is where is the the person yeah for example we got the acs installed it's been two weeks of ammonia and one of them is still leaking i don't understand like i come from a culture from a country where you pay money you get your service here you pay your money and you get it amen yeah i'm truly fascinated by the slow living and how people enjoy their lives and like they don't care about those you know careers like whatever you know the typical american culture like the hustle culture but at the same time like there's so much more potential like you can literally fix the ac today get your money and then go tomorrow do something else and then people are like oh we don't have enough money well maybe you should do everything by the way if you're looking for an app for all those like fixes pet wash i don't know ac installation there is an app called oscar i literally called the guy 20 minutes the shelves are installed so if you don't want to wait till ammania just get the oscar app super easy also available in english what really surprised me about portugal is that people speak english a lot when we were moving here many people said that it's going to be hard for you if you don't speak portuguese and portfolium that's not enough that's not enough i can start the conversation but then portuguese people will continue the conversation in english because they want to respect you at the same time i want to respect them so i speak portuguese and it's like you know you speak portuguese they reply in english and it's this like interesting communication but everywhere we went and we went to many places in portugal from like braga to faro portimao like to a lot of places people speak amazing english because i think they learn english in schools then all like the movies they all in english with portuguese subtitles and i guess there are a lot of tourists that's why people are kind of forced to speak english honestly i was not expecting that i literally thought i would come to portugal i'll have a month to learn portuguese and then speak portuguese only but now i'm trying to like balance those two and now to your questions so a lot of you asked me about yulia which one is better portugal or canada and guys it's getting harder and harder to answer this question because i love canada i love montreal but there are a lot of things in portugal that are way better than in canada for example healthcare for example all the services like in canada there is no app that's gonna come and fix your thingy in 15 minutes if you want to order like something from a corner store forget about it well you'll have a grocery delivery like two days from now but the same day like 15 minutes from now impossible banking system like i love it how you can send money with the sms or the best part is i learned like literally last week you can send money to an atm so let's say you need to give your friends some cash they go to an atm enter your code and withdraw money like what's going on honestly i've never seen that in my life so for me and of course traveling traveling is like super affordable love it so for now i'm enjoying my time in portugal do i see myself living here for the rest of my life no miss uh will die without snow miss julia will die without fall i can handle this situation for like five maximum seven years but for the rest of my life no do i see myself living in canada for the rest of my life maybe maybe i feel like there are a lot of countries that i've never been to maybe there are like better places than canada and portugal so who knows who knows another question about canada portugal was do you prefer to live in canada or in portugal feelings wise feelings wise montreal like zero questions zero doubts montreal i just cannot explain the city is a whole vibe if you've never been to you should go and feel it for yourself because montreal is different from the rest of the canada it's just like i don't know i just love this city it has everything i need it's not like super huge you can walk everywhere by the way someone asked me how walkable is portugal lisbon lisbon is pretty walkable i would say but it depends where you go and where you live because if you live uphill and then you need to go downhill it's fine but if you want to go home like my knees were like bye-bye miss you later bye-bye we done just get those you know fake kneecaps and you're good to go because honestly my knees were killing me and i walked in both cities both montreal and lisbon are super easy to navigate you can always take uber or bolt or a bike so i would say they're like on the same level of walkability or reachability or navigation some people wanted to know about building social circles about meeting people in portugal well for us it's been i guess okay we go to meetups we go to different events we talk to people online so if we see there's a connection we'd be like hey guys let's go out for a dinner or like for a walk or whatever so it has not been a problem at all there are a lot of events for like i.t people web 3 crypto for foodies for anything basically one event that i couldn't find is an event for designers so if you guys know any designer events like product ux graphic whatever let me know because i really want to connect to my fellow designers in lisbon but i couldn't find anything like related to that at all one of the questions was from my friend and she asked me how is the december january period in lisbon and i would tell you it's freezing it's horrible because it's cold outside it's cold inside it's just not pleasant but do you want to know how to spot a tourist if you see someone wearing shorts or a skirt or a dress in december british or french tourists 100 so i guess it just depends where you're coming from because when we went to romania it was minus 20 celsius there we came back to lisbon it was plus 17 and we were like we're gonna sit on the patio no coats no nothing the next day we were like is freezing in here my friends some people also ask me about education in portugal and i have good news for you because i'm planning to film a whole video about education in portugal because i've heard it's free and you can get citizenship so make sure to follow this channel to learn more about education in portugal but overall i heard good things that's not super expensive let's say like canada but at the same time there are not that many job opportunities i would say so i'll make a whole separate video and the last two questions what do you dislike of being in portugal and number one no seasons number two no music shows compared to montreal because here literally two bands come a year and i'm like yeah cool so we have to go to different countries different cities and people might say oh but that sounds so fun yeah but it costs a lot so go into a show 100 euros per ticket or like 1k for a weekend it's like you know it's a 10 times difference and the second one is what's your future plans and i have honestly no plans whatsoever the plan for now is to stay here enjoy europe get passports and then then i don't know i don't know honestly seven years ago i plan to come to canada stay get my canadian passport but that failed so ever since then i stopped planning anything and i'm like let's go with the flow we'll see where we end up being and this is it for today i hope the video was helpful interesting you learned something new and i see you guys next week bye [Music] you

Channel: This is Yulia

Views: 188,355

Keywords: life in portugal, portugal d7 visa, d7 visa portugal, d7 visa application, d7 from canada, moving to portugal from canada, d7 visa portugal 2022, d7 visa portugal process, visa d7 portugal, this is yulia, виза d7 португалия, d7 portugal visa, move to portugal, d7 portugal, life in lisbon, portugal expectations reality, portugal, move to portugal from usa, why you should move to portugal, moving to portugal, living in portugal, expectation vs reality, retire in portugal 2022

Id: ILOAiRdzifw

Length: 15min 48sec (948 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 24 2022