4 Strange things Portuguese people do

After my post about 8 Things Foreigners Find Strange About Portugal, I wanted to give you a heads up about other strange things Portuguese people do. It’s really nice to see the face of a foreigner when we try to explain each of them. Let’s go.

Rules of parking spaces

Pictures from a post about “Parking like the Portuguese”

I’ve got so much to write about this! When there’s a huge event, there’s always a car that will park on the side of the road (illegally). After that, more card will follow behind! The drivers will say things like “if Police wants to ticket me, they will have to ticket all these cars!” or “The city council should know to increase the parking spaces around this area” to justify their behavior. It’s an amazing phenomenon.

If someone finds out that a Police officer is delivering a ticket, that person will often complain to the Police officer, like it somehow was not his fault that his car is parked illegally.

You’ll know there’s a new office in the neighborhood when there’s a lot of cars parked illegally. Portuguese people would park their car INSIDE a store, business or their workplace if they could. With this in mind, walking between a parking space further away and your workplace is horrible. It’s way better to park on a sidewalk because “you won’t disturb anyone” and “people don’t even use the sidewalk anymore”.

Just so you know, our police normally enforce the parking regulations by delivering tickets to the cars. Even still, this doesn’t stop encouraging people to park where they can.

If something is broken, don’t fix it

I remember a microwave at my school that stopped working. After 3 months, they finally replaced it. At my grocery store, the meat grinder is broken for months! They even joke by saying “it will be fixed by Christmas, hopefully”. Even at my place, my microwave plate doesn’t move, but that’s fine by me.

Some think we are all cheapskates, and that’s ok! We just need money for booze, gas and food. So, if you live in a flat with something broken, just remember we are all that way.

We use our car to go across the street

When you account the time it takes to get the car out of the garage, driving from A to B and then park at B, it might take more time to drive than just walking there. However, we are very lazy and it’s easier that way.

We wait until the last minute to do important things

When we receive a bill from our insurance, electric or water company, we have 10 days to go to an ATM and pay the bill. Most of my friends will wait UNTIL the last day to pay for it.

We have 3 months to fill and deliver our taxes to the government. Workers will know that, on the last day, there will be a HUGE line of people that want to deliver their taxes. People on that line will often complain they are impatient and they don’t understand why aren’t there more workers on the booth.