The most ideal sequence of living conditions, in my honorable opinion, is to grow up as a child in the countryside, move to the city during your later teenage years until you want to start a family, and then retreat back to the countryside. Perhaps repeat this cycle in your middle years.
Living in the city has its pros and cons
As a child, you want to be able to move freely. Even if you get your first screen presented in the cradle now; as a child, you still want to use your body; to run and play. When I grew up as a city kid, that was still possible. As long as you sat at the dinner table with clean hands and everything was in one piece (body and clothes), you could do whatever you wanted after school. Wonderful freedom!
When my (city) children were growing up, we went to one of the nearby playgrounds every day, because traffic had already become so bad that they could no longer just run around the street like I used to. There, I could sit and read while they explored (the social) world in a safe enclosed area. Now, city children can’t even play in playgrounds because their parents have to work. No time to sit there and read, and keep an eye on them.
In Portugal, relatively many people live in the city
Lisbon has a lot, a zillion, as we used to say as children, playgrounds. Porto has 39, with plans to create 13 more. We always compare Lisbon to Amsterdam, and Porto to Rotterdam. Every dutch person knows that people chat in Amsterdam, and work in Rotterdam. In Porto, they also sell shirts with the sleeves already rolled up. No time to sit with your kid in a playground.
Coimbra, with its 106,768 inhabitants, has around 20. Usually a small place, enclosed with colorful planks, with a slide, swings, and a few more things like that. There probably are no sandboxes anymore because of cat poop, and therefore dangerous. We have become a bit more cautious with our youth.
But anyway, reasonably livable as a working parent(s) with child(ren) if you want to live in the city. In the countryside, you can count the playgrounds on one hand. In the adjacent village, a small place has been made at the bottom of the church square, the size of six stamps, where a slide and a swing are vying for space. Alqueidão has one. Paião has one.
It’s not really necessary, because there’s enough space, and usually not much traffic.
Why have I rambled on about this for so long? Well, because having children changes your life in a non-normal way; you want the best for them, and you want to give them everything they need. Don’t you? Huh? That is, besides your love, good food, and clean diapers, also fresh air and freedom of movement. Moreover, you can maintain a certain situation, or just detach from it, out of responsibility for your family.
In our case, it was detachment. Back to nature. Someone else might just want to stay living in the city because of the facilities, the hustle and bustle, job opportunities, and career prospects, but move to a child-friendly neighborhood. In the large portuguese cities, there are many of these kinds of expansions, full of apartment complexes about 4 or 5 stories high.
Many parents both work; the children go to daycare at a young age and play outside there. Nothing new under the sun, you might say, except that almost a third of the population lives in Lisbon, and a third of the approximately 84,650 newborns are emigrants. Returnees from Luxembourg, for example. Brazilians, remote workers, and people from the former colonies Angola and Mozambique.
They all want to live in the big beautiful city of Lisbon
And a few in Porto, or one of the slightly smaller cities Braga, Coimbra, Leiria. The housing prices in Lisbon are going through the roof (haha) but there aren’t that many people who think of it or can afford to move to the countryside. With or without children, because that is of course not the only reason you would move.
Yet, there is a growing trend of people choosing to live in the countryside, especially among young people and qualified professionals, including online entrepreneurs. This movement is motivated by a search for quality of life, work-life balance, and the ability to work remotely, which allows for greater flexibility in choosing a place to live.
Moreover, the growing popularity of “digital nomadism” in Portugal, especially after the pandemic, has attracted people from all over the world, including the portuguese themselves, to rural areas that offer sufficient digital infrastructure and quality of life.
I’ve lured you into my tlion’s den of thoughts and considerations, dear readers, this week. We are busy with the first floor of Casa Principal, and between sweeping, smearing, scrubbing, and painting, there is a little mill in my head constantly busy with: “Who will the new tenants be? Who would I like to see here?”
Then the above messages are very hopeful, because I would prefer a middle-aged couple, no children, but with a business, who can really appreciate and need the space.
But we’ll have to wait and see about that until the time it’s going to be ready.
Can still take a while….
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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.