Slow Down, You Move Too Fast

breaking old habits, navigating culture(s) shock, and the liberation of o aperitivo

Fountain of the Poets, A Dos Negros

There’s something to be said for living in a place where not everyone is glued to their iPhone, even as I am glued to mine. The day I looked up from my iPhone to find a French man taking his pants off, I knew I needed to make a change.

The first time I saw an iPhone in action was at a swimming pool in Bend, Oregon. We were visiting friends and sitting poolside while our little kids took turns jumping off the diving board. In one fell swoop, my friend C took a picture of one of her daughters mid-air, and texted it to the grandparents, who lived in the Chicago area.

That hooked me.

I’ve loved my iPhone as a camera, a communications vehicle, a place for my monkey mind to settle, and especially a multitasking hub. But I’m in a slower place now, where people seem to focus on doing one thing at a time. It feels important to respect that and try to follow suit. For me, that’s much easier said than done.

Poet tribute in Santarem

I tried putting my phone aside while waiting for the nice lady at the bank to issue my ATM card. I ignored my impulse to take care of other business while waiting for the nice man at the car place to prepare the documents for the car we were buying, and instead had a conversation about his favorite lunch spots.

But the day I discovered the French man with no pants on, I had faltered.

I was distracted by notifications on my Apple watch, while playing pickleball. My property manager needed me; my realtor needed me. So I finished the game, in which I played worse than usual, probably because of all the distractions, ignored the calls to join another game, and retreated to a back room to make phone calls. When I looked up and saw the avuncular French man removing his sweat pants, I was embarrassed and said pardon, explaining I was doing three things at once. He was kindly unbothered and I was relieved to see he had shorts on underneath. Needless to say, he resoundingly beat me in our subsequent match.

I’ve never been big on mindfulness, but I vowed that day to put my phone into Do Not Disturb mode before stepping onto the court, as a sign of respect for the pickleball community that I have chosen to join, as well as for myself.

Looking up from one’s phone has its benefits. (Photo taken with iPhone).

It turns out, I’m navigating a number of new communities, as one does when one moves or starts something new, so the concept of “culture shock” is broader than I expected.

In any given week, we will have encounters with or hear stories about people from Portugal, Mozambique, Belgium, France, the UK, Canada, Latvia, Brazil, Bangladesh, India, Ukraine, and more. We’ve hung out with pickle ballers, wingfoilers and kiteboarders, religious people, a pro-Brexit Brit, some possible MAGA sympathizers, and some very nice vegans. We’ve been to Portuguese grocery stores, a Spanish grocery store, a French grocery store, and Indian and Chinese markets, with the German store, the South African and Russian stores yet to be discovered and Brazilian and African stores probably in our future too. I belong to a lot of chatty WhatsApp groups.

I think I already told you (but can’t remember which post it’s in) about that game we played in my Foreign Service training, where you get plunked into a new culture and have to figure out the rules and social morés. It’s like that here, and then some.

Cross-cultural communication takes patience

My favorite fish-out-of water experience happened last weekend. J was wingfoiling, so I decided to drive to a showroom event in the countryside, just out of town. There would be wine and a chef and most important, some things I was interested in looking at.

At this point in my life, I’m pretty comfortable going to events by myself. I still don’t have the dress code figured out here, but I was safely dressed in Saturday casual — jeans, sports shoes, a nice shirt, and a white corduroy “shacket” that I thought looked pretty spiffy. (I have been aspiring to achieve simple European chic, but it’s confusing. Recently, at a Lisbon museum, I spied a French woman wearing Hokas. Sacré bleu!)

But the event was awkward and I stuck out like a sore thumb - the only American among a group of reserved Northern Europeans, the only person alone, the only one in Hokas, etc. etc. I pride myself on being open and friendly and approachable and on being able to make conversation with just about anyone, but I was getting nowhere with this crowd, not even when I tried to talk about the food. I had flashbacks to being the “new mom” when my daughter joined a competitive soccer team, being frozen out by the other moms on the sidelines. They didn’t trust me with my assigned task of finding the team a dinner venue when we traveled to a game in Portland until I found us a haunted pizza place with a resident ghost. I drank beer and ate sausage pizza there with the friendly uncomplicated dads, while the wary moms sipped wine and ate their pizza with cauliflower crust (Carbs? Sacré bleu!) and begrudgingly watched our daughters (who had lost their game) have a great time, their loss long forgotten.

To ease my discomfort at the event, I accepted a big glass of wine and eventually a little cup of meatballs in sauce, and took another walk to look around the place and try again to join a conversation. It was futile, so after a decent polite interval, I thanked the hostess and made my way out the gate.

As I walked back to my car, I noticed a big dollop of red pepper sauce all over my spiffy white shacket. I replayed my awkward exit conversation with the hostess and wondered what she thought about the strange American, oblivious to the bright red stain on her shirt. I also wondered why she didn’t say something and offer to bring me to a sink to wash it out, but that’s just how we do things in my culture.

It all comes out in the wash

Bounce back, baby, bounce back. You can’t let embarrassments like playing shitty pickleball, interrupting a guy who is trying to take his pants off, saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing, or looking foolishly sloppy stop you from putting yourself out there. Most people are forgiving. Most people mean well. Most people can put themselves in another person’s shoes. Most people have a sense of humor.

Which brings me to my favorite low-risk way of breaking ice with new people - the French refer to it as l’apéro. Here in Portugal, it’s o aperitivo, and it is, you guessed it, the “cocktail hour,” when you eat snacks and sip libations with people you already like or people you want to get to know better because maybe you’ll like them too. I think almost every culture has a version of of this, which makes it ideal for finding common ground.

The best thing is, it’s low-risk and low-stress, iPhones are optional, and it’s hard to embarrass yourself.

It’s raining hard today and I am very grumpy because some things are moving slower than I would like them to and I have been chafing at constraints. I spent the day at home with my cats and ailing aging dog, cooking, menu planning, and listening to joyful Jon Batiste.

I can see in the distance that the clouds are starting to clear. In a few hours, it’s our turn to host our easy-going, down-to-earth neighbors for o aperitivo, a highlight of each week.

Maybe my food and libations will be good, maybe they won’t. O aperitivo, or whatever you choose to call it, is a judgment and self-conscious-free zone and I am here for it.

The Best Aperitivo Snacks I’ve Recently Cooked

Comté Sesame Twists

I’ve become a super fan of

Rebekah Peppler

, who writes about living and cooking in France. Her book, Le Sud, is one of the three new cookbooks I allowed myself to add to my collection and bring to Portugal. I’ve since purchased À Table and Apéritif on Kindle and have been so taken with À Table that I ordered a hard copy from Amazon Spain. Rumor has it that it is waiting for me in a “Locky” locker at the Portuguese mail agency.

The French grocery store here, Le Clerc, has a number of things to make l’apéro or o aperitivo easy to pull off. Frozen puff pastry is one of them.

Tonight, I’m making Rebekah Pepper’s version of tapenade, radishes on buttered bread, and a savory comté and leek clafoutis from Apéritif.

Here’s Rebekah’s recipe for Comté Sesame Twists, (from À Table) which was my last o aperitivo contribution. Though you can eat them at room temperature, I definitely recommend consuming them shortly after they leave the oven.

For my contribution to a recent dinner party, I made poivronade, a roasted red pepper dip, as an homage to the stain on my white shacket. I also made olivade noire. Though I painstakingly pitted all the olives, apparently I missed one.

In the “oh well” spirit of o aperitivo, I apologized and moved on.