One of the beneficial, but disturbing, effects of moving to another country is the discovery that a huge number of things that you always assumed were true all over the world…aren’t. Growing up in England (Have I mentioned before that I grew up in England?), I always thought I had a fairly good general knowledge. Good grief, I was even selected as one of the four members of my school team to compete on TV’s Top of the Form. And then we came on aliya, and I discovered that what I had always assumed was general knowledge was not only Bourgeoisie-centric, and mid-20^th-Century-centric, but also Occidento-centric, and even Anglo-centric. Very humbling, let me tell you.

But, of course, this phenomenon is not confined to general knowledge. The shock of my discovering that there are countries in the world where they drive on the right was immense. OK, I exaggerate, but you get the idea. In rather the same way as young children tend to regard their family, however dysfunctional, as normal, so we – or at least I – tended to think of the way things were done in England as not only the way they should be done (obviously), but also as the way they are done around the world.

Well, let me tell you: it ain’t necessarily so. We have now lived in Israel for over 33 years, and I long ago reached the point where not only do I fail to understand any of the British cultural references I read and see in the media, but I am also no longer certain which of my ways of doing things come from England and which from Israel.

So, I was prepared for the culture shock of Portugal, and I thought that, in this post, I would share with you just three of the surprising, and sometimes impressive, ways they do things in Portugal.

Let me start with the first one I discovered, on my initial drive from Lisbon to Penamacor. The last leg of the journey is along a country road with a 90 kph speed limit. The road passes through several villages, and the speed limit comes down to 70 kph on approaching a village, and then 50 kph within the village. As I drove through the first village I came to, the traffic light ahead of me turned red. When I stopped at the light, I wondered why the authorities had bothered to put a light there at all, because there was no cross street or pedestrian crossing. After half a minute, the light turned green and I carried on.

When the same thing happened at the next village, I was even more puzzled. Once again, the light turned red as I approached, and I cursed my bad luck.

At the third village, the penny dropped. A speed camera had detected that I was driving at slightly over the 50kph limit, and automatically triggered the traffic light to turn red. The traffic light had been erected solely to penalise speeding drivers, and to deter them from speeding.

We discovered another creative solution to a widespread problem when we went to Castelo Branco, the provincial capital, to transfer the electricity contract from the old owners of the house we had bought. The offices of EDP (Energias de Portugal, formerly Electricidade de Portugal – Who said Portuguese is a difficult language?). are very plush, and the staff are dressed in smart uniforms that make them look like flight attendants. In Penamacor, and even in Castelo Branco, while all the office staff and bank officials dress very smartly, the customers are in jeans and casual shirts. Perhaps the man in the street dresses more smartly in Lisbon, and the contrast is less striking.

Anyway, after a fairly short wait, we were seen by a very helpful lady, and the bureaucracy was handled swiftly and painlessly. At one point, she asked me whether we wanted to increase the electrical capacity in the house from 3.45 kW to 6.90 kW. Now, I don’t know about you, but I have no idea what these figures represent in terms of average domestic consumption. I’m sure there are people who can recite their peak consumption over each of the last three years, but I don’t believe I know any of them. Anyway, Micha’el told me that he had encountered no problems with fuses being tripped, and I suspected that any increase would require rewiring, possibly installing triple-phase, and, doubtless, considerable expense. In my head I could hear Flanders and Swann singing The Gasman Cometh (If you know them, you don’t need me to tell you that it doesn’t get more English than Flanders and Swann; if you don’t know them, follow the link above to complete your education.) In short, we both agreed that we really didn’t need to increase the capacity. There is, I find, tremendous, if short-lived, satisfaction in coming swiftly and confidently to a decision on a matter about which you know nothing. In retrospect, I wish we had flipped a coin, and had a 50% chance of being right.

Incidentally, if you’re wondering why Bernice wasn’t involved in this decision, it’s because she was three doors down, looking in a shoe shop. No surprises there, as some of you may already know. (I thought about adding here that I have always suspected her middle name might be Imelda, but I have grown too fond of living with her to risk writing that.)

Only a few days later, when we had bought a couple of heaters for the house, did we discover that there were combinations of appliances that did indeed trip the fuse, and we spent a couple of days discovering just what our possible simultaneous combinations of washing machine, oven, kettle, heater and so on were. It started to feel a little like the puzzle about the farmer/merchant with a small rowing boat/raft, a cabbage, a rabbit/goat and a fox/wolf. (How interesting that the cabbage seems to be the only constant in this ménage à cinq!)

We then discovered, by means too tortuous to go into here, that, if we chose to increase our capacity, this would simply involve a clerk in the electricity company changing one value in their central computer system. No rewiring, not even a technician call-out to the house; just a couple of keystrokes at a terminal. However, our monthly fixed charge would be increased as a result, though not by very much. Needless to say, we chose this option.

My understanding of this system is that it makes it possible for EDP to avoid the peak-consumption-period power cuts that Israel, for example, occasionally suffers. During a spell of particularly hot weather in Israel, the surge of demand (principally to run air conditioners) may be more than the electricity company can meet, resulting in a power cut, sometimes over a significant area. In Portugal, EDP knows what the maximum possible demand is (the sum of each customer’s capacity) and can ensure that the infrastructure can meet this demand. The higher charge paid by customers who want greater capacity can contribute toward the cost of providing the infrastructure that will satisfy that demand. This seems to me a very equitable system.

Which brings me to this week’s third contestant – the humble front-door key. I grew up with Yale locks, the standard in England, with a spring mechanism that locks the door automatically when you close it. This is intended to be remarkably convenient – you don’t need to remember to lock the door when you leave the house, and, if your hands are full, you don’t need to fumble with the key on your way out. It can seems less convenient at 6 AM, when you are shinning halfway up the drainpipe in your pyjamas and slippers, hoping you can still fit through that bathroom quarterlight, because you just stepped onto the porch to pick up the delivered milk bottles, and heard that suddenly less than reassuring clunk of the Yale slipping solidly back into place.

In Israel, the standard is more like a bank safe door, with sliding cylindrical bolts that do not lock until you turn the key.

In Penamacor, the mechanism is mounted on the inside of the door, the house side rather than the street side. This means that the key has to reach through the entire width of the door and then some, to engage with the locking mechanism. This means that front-door keys need to be very long: indeed, inconveniently long, if you carry the key in a trouser pocket. And so, in a fit of Iberian ingenuity, the Portuguese have devised the telescopic doorkey. You slide the key closed to fit it into a trouser pocket, then expand it to insert into the lock.

Believe me, it only takes a couple of weeks to transition from ‘How on earth are we supposed to work that out?!’ to ‘Of course; everybody knows that!’ It’s just another small step in our adjustment to life in Portugal.

If you want to follow Micha’el, Tslil and Tao’s journey of adjustment to life in Portugal, you can take a look at their youtube channel, where they seem to be posting a new video every week. (You might even get the urge to subscribe, like, and spread the word.)