Good News and Celebrations

Really Good News

I received a two-year residency permit! With my card in hand, I join Tim as a legal resident of Portugal for the coming two years, after which we can renew our residency for another 3 years. Tim received his card almost 4 months ago. The discrepancy in time? One of the mysteries of Portugal bureaucracy. (No complaining.) With these precious identification cards, we can now leave and re-enter Portugal at will. We can travel in the European Union without visas. We qualify for the public health system. And we can check out books from our local library. Life is good.

Festa dos Tabulieros - Festival of the Trays

Between growing vegetables and flowers, taking Portuguese lessons, immigration-related paperwork, and socializing, we manage an outing every week. One of our recent favorite adventures was the Festa dos Tabulieros, one of the oldest and most emblematic festivals in Portugal. We spent three days in the small city of Tomar, which celebrates this festival for almost two weeks.

Walking the cobblestone streets in the medieval center of Tomar is always enchanting, but during this festival it was other-worldy and magical. The residents decorate their narrow streets with hundreds of thousands of paper flowers in selected themes. The community unites to deck the halls, so to speak, working intensely from October into the July festival days.

My favorite street décor expressed Love, Peace, Liberty, and Human Rights, which featured rainbows, hippy vans, slogans, and dreadlocks – all of hand-made flowers. The sound of the hanging paper flowers waving in the breezes evoked a mysterious and fantastical world sense as we walked down the streets.

This remarkable festival is celebrated only once every four years, and people come from all over the world for ten days of parades and festivities. We were lucky that our friend Trasie managed to find an apartment for four of us to stay several nights. We stayed on a decorated street just steps from the main parades. We managed to witness the staging for one of the major parades.

So, what is so special about the parades? Well, let’s start with hundreds of women who balance over 44 pounds stacked high on their heads. Each tabuleiro is a sort of gigantic crown that includes 30 loaves of bread on wooden rods attached to wicker baskets that are decorated with paper flowers, leaves and stalks of wheat, and occasionally topped by a dove. The entire “crown” is often taller than the woman balancing this enormous burden.

I was astonished to realize that their parade route can be several miles on uneven cobblestone streets. How do they stay upright? What if one of them stumbles? Do they all topple over in a domino-like catastrophe? Just getting the tabuleiro on top of their heads without toppling the entire structure was impressive.

More to come: Garden of Love, Beaches, Caves, Coffee, Wines, Apples, Roman Mosaics, Windmills