A special Portuguese soap

Koos P. was here for five weeks and left again yesterday. “My wife lets me go away for two months,” he says with a smile, “as long as I bring back Portuguese soap.”

For me, he brought back Groningen* rapeseed soap

Fields full of little yellow flowers, which are pleasing to the eye and good for various uses. Lamp oil, margarine, animal feed (even concentrated feed, as an alternative to imported soy), and then, soap. The Romans were already doing all sorts of things with rapeseed, but the people of Groningen have been doing so for a very long time too. Perhaps not as long as the Romans, but that’s not a fair competition.

It comes in a sweet, round, transparent plastic box, and upon opening, the entire bathroom smells wonderfully of flowers. “Nice soap, Koos!” While cleaning a cottage, we find a package of Portuguese soap. Forgotten by the last renters. “Wow, look at that, that is exactly the soap I need to bring back for my wife!” Koos exclaims in surprise. How lucky can you be.

Nice soap swap. Groninger versus the Portuguese

Tjere’s also a brazilian one, but then we’re talking a completely different kind of soap.

Koos is a portophile, a lover of Portugal. That is because a friend said to him a long, long time ago: “Come on, I’m going to Portugal, come along!” That was in 1978, in an old Citroën 2CV, with a guitar on the back seat. They ended up in Porto. It was just four years after the revolution; everyone was elated and happy. So nice to be free, to go wherever you want, and to say what you want without being afraid of the neighbors or the consequences.

“We ended up in a café where a lot of young people were sitting, discussing all sorts of things, but mostly making music,” Koos recounts, “that is how I met José & Paula, and a few more people. We’re still friends. We went swimming in the Douro, chatted in the café, played guitar in the park – a great time.”

“The Portuguese are very good at making music, that is really their thing,” he says, “and they are also very good at chatting and partying.” “Yes, but people work hard here too, you know. That is sometimes forgotten – and then they earn less as well.”

He picks up his Portuguese guitar – not one of those pear-shaped ones with twelve strings, but a normal model with six, and starts strumming. It is his passion and his life. In that respect, Koos belongs here completely. He’ll probably end up being portuguese in his next life.

For now, he has to make do with the portuguese soap (and the portuguese music of course)

• Groningen is a province of the Netherlands in the north

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(Disclaimer: I’m a bit tired of the keyword stuff and Google’s dictatorship. So here they are, and I’m also hoping for the cleverness of AI in this matter that it will still be found and read, but that I don’t have to force myself to use the right terms in the title and headings. #Portugal #Feno #soap )

We moved here in 2000 from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, to the Termas-da-Azenha, Portugal. We started to rebuild one of portugals cultural heirlooms: Termas-da-Azenha, an old spa.You’ll find mosaics and paintings everywhere. Since Covid we rent the houses for a longer period of time, not as holiday houses anymore.

Each week a little blog about what is happening around us. An easy read. A few minutes in another world. A little about what it going on in Portugal. If you plan your holiday to Portugal, it might be a nice preparation.

In the weekend we publish it on Bluesky, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram.