Ola meninos ou meninas,

sooo, i have been too lazy to write something on here lately, sorry 😅
I liked the last few weeks a lot. I feel like i really arrived, i enjoy the freedom and life i can have here. Work is getting better and better. The feeling of getting good at something new, that i actually find interesting, is awesome. I feel like i improve on a daily basis, and my results so far seem alright too. My colleagues are fun and work goes by quite fast.

So some weeks ago a friend from Germany visited me. We had some nice days. That friend kind of strengthened the idea in me to get a skateboard. So i bought one and we had fun some – trying to – ride the board. At the coasts the promenade is just perfect for riding all kinds of stuff as the surface is very smooth. Been awesome and works way better than expected. So we just hanged out, drank and ate here and there and had some nice days. I felt kind of sad for him because the weather was very mediocre, but whatever, it has been nice. Visit me again bro, next time with 35 degrees ☀️

The Easter weekend i have been on a short trip with 3 colleagues in the Algarve. We rented a car and stayed in a town called Albufeira. We had an 2-3 hour drive. At the start we had quite some thrill already, as there was a gasoline strike going on in Portugal, Spain and Italy while being on that trip. What meant it was not too certain to get gas at every gas station. What made it even more complicated, we had a diesel car which not every gas station is selling at all in Portugal. But as you can imagine, we found some after a while, and we did being on the way home. When we arrived we went straight into the city. The area is quite touristic, so you see what you expect in a seaside resort. Lots of Restaurants, Bars, Souvenir Shops, etc. The Area has some amazing cliffs and an amazing coast in general. There will be some pictures obviously.
For me the highlight of that vacation was renting mountainbikes in Lagos and riding those bikes on the cliffs. We climbed a pretty long drawn out hill and had an awesome downhill ride! All while having great looks at the ocean. Been nice! We were talking about doing a trip to Spain/Marokko at one point. Would be cool if that works out.

This weekend the weather got way better again, so it kind of feels like Portuguese spring/summer really started. Today, the warmest day so far for me in Portugal with ~26 degrees , i have been at the beach with friends and we could even enjoy the cold Atlantic water. The waves are crazy big here sometimes. It’s fun. Really looking forward to try surfing.

So half of may will be my brother and parents visiting me, which i am really looking forward to. Will be cool to show my family my life here. For next Saturday i booked some surfing lessons for me and my brother. I wonder how hard that is going to be like, but i am certain it will be fun.

Ok, that’s it for now again, i hope you guys are all alright. What’s happening back home? If you have any questions, please ask!
Have an awesome week!! 🙂

Ola People!

Not writing anything the last few weeks had several reasons. First of all: 3 weeks ago i hurt my back again. We played football and out of nowhere, no foul or weird move involved, i felt that something is wrong. For those who don’t know, i had a slipped disc some years ago and it kind of felt like that again. Which scared me. That day it got worse and worse to the point that i slept only like 2 hours that night, while overdosing on painkillers. In the morning i informed my manager and asked for help on what to do, as i did not (and kind of still don’t) know how the health system works in Portugal. That brought up a new problem, i did not have a social security number yet which is like your health care number in that case and is needed to get treated. My manager asked the Human Resources department for their help but they did not receive it from the authorities just yet. My manager then arranged an appointment for me with a doctor from the company i work for. Those doctors (he might be the only one, not sure) are basically only there to provide justifications and prescribe medicine for employees when they have a flu-like infection from what i have seen. So all he did was prescribing me some stronger painkillers. I would have wished for a MRT or something at that point in some hospital as i thought that i might have a slipped disc again. That would not have worked that fast anyway but just taking some more painkillers did not feel particularly nice. No offense against the doctor by the way, he just could not help me with me not having a social security number. I got signed of work for 3 days to rest and try to relax my back. That also results in a lesser salary this month, which is kind of weird when you are used to the German social system. It got a bit better during those days but sitting in work still been pretty painful for some days, but i did not want to miss even more of the training. From there on it slowly got better and better but im still feeling it. Last week the social security number arrived by post but i feel like this will get alright this way too. What should the doctors do anyway? When i had a slipped there has not been much of treatment either. Last week i started to do some work outs to strengthen my back which seems to work and makes me feel better. All of that was frustrating and resulted obviously in not doing much exciting stuff i can tell you about. Still, enough of my back-pain-misery.

Last Friday we finished our training with a test call. So today we officially graduated with a cake and a certificate and started to work. The training been trash to be honest. It could have been way shorter. This will be a lot of learning by doing and researching while being on a particular topic when it is needed as the system is super complex and changing with a crazy pace anyway. So i am looking forward to actually work now and start to feel competent regarding the system but that will still take quite some time sadly. Still, i solved my 1st case (together with a colleague) today !🎉 The customer had a problem understanding how his promotion code worked and why he got charged. That was a super easy case though and it will get a lot harder from there. The job seems super interesting though and like a real challenge right now and might qualify me for something i could really like for my future.

I rewatched quite some Game of Thrones the last weeks. That has been awesome! Who else is hyped for 14th of April?! It’s going to be amazing! What an epic series. One of my roommates is really into GoT as well and its going to be super nice to watch it together.

That will be it for today. I seriously hope i have something nicer to talk about next time. However, some random pictures at the end again:

🙂

wtf?

Some giant ass bug

Best lunch break ever with a Dutch guy i saw at a tournament and recognized in work again.

Have an awesome day and do not hurt your backs. It sucks, even in sunny and very nice Portugal.

Some new content!

so Saturday was a blast. I saw a lot of Lisbon and walked approximately at least 15km throughout Lisbon. A roommate and me started in the morning at around 10:00 and went to Oriente. From there we did a tour described in a Marco Polo travel guide. The tours topic (kind of/ i didn’t read it myself) was architecture of more recent buildings. Those buildings looked cool but it didn’t impress that much. But afterwards we took a ride with a gondola right besides the sea. That was cool and totally worth it. I couldn’t finish that tour as described in the book as i wanted to go on a street art tour which started in a totally different corner of the city. So i went off to go to Praça Luís de Camões. I arrived way to early and had quite some time to check out the area. The streets were full of cool buildings and shops. Right at the meeting point i drank a coffee for 1,40€ while sitting in the sun and listening to some music. Around 3pm i finally saw someone with a sign regarding the tour. It was Anna? (sadly im not super sure about her name) our tour guide. She is Portuguese and lived in Lisbon since the 90s and has some really deep knowledge about street art. She told us a bit about the topic in general and then we wandered from piece to piece trough the city. She knew quite some facts about each individual piece, its been pretty impressive. Even about random looking tags she knew something about sometimes. Look at those amazing pictures.

Aren’t those amazing? The Trip was free btw. Everybody donated something but its free if you want it to be.
Shoutout to LisbonStreetTours, i really liked it. The collective yesyoucanspray even organizes some workshops from time to time. Really looking forward to participate there!

So while being on that tour i fucked up miserably. I locked my phone by trying 3 incorrect PINs. I just somehow forgot, because i did not need it for quite some time. That kind of messed with my mind, because i did not know if i had taken that piece of paper with the PIN/PUK with me. But that didn’t prevent me from having a good time. After the tour i just wandered through the city, grabbed something for dinner and drank some beers.

When i got home the 1st thing i was doing was looking for that piece of paper and guess what. I did not bring it. I was like fuck, this will be quite a hassle now. But then i remembered the control center app from my mobile provider. And after regularly logging in i could just get the PUK in the app. I felt so lucky. Good job 1&1!

That’s it again, i hope you like what you read and saw. Have a supreme week! 🔥

And some random pictures at the end:

Hello you guys!

for those who don’t know me: I’m Kevin, 25 years old, and originally from Hof, Germany. Last Saturday i was taking a big risk and moved to Lisbon. All of my life i had this idea that living in the warm south of Europe could be nice and now i finally did it. And for now i feel very rewarded for that decision! Everything seems nice so far and i am happy I made that move.

Let’s start from the beginning i guess. In December i found an advertisement for a job in a Facebook Group, which said something like “looking for German Speakers in Lisbon”.

I clicked on it and everything sounded quite cool and made an “application” pretty much right away as i wasn’t really satisfied with my previous job anyway and actually applied for some other jobs in Germany already. From there i had some contact with different recruiters for different jobs at the company. After a final interview i got hired for a project i really like. My job here will be basically (tech) support for an online advertising product. Right now i am taking a training to get knowledge about the product. This will take 4 weeks and 1 week of so called “nesting” which is basically working but in an “safe and watched on” environment. After that my course is going to go live to help customers with the product. My company provides me an shared apartment with 4 other people which all seem very nice as well. The apartment is located in one of the outskirts of Lisbon: Oeiras. I have 30 mins to work from here, 10 min to a giant mall (which has some insane opening hours, 10:00-23:00, but i like it a lot!), around 20 min to the beach. Everything by feet, but im thinking about getting a bicycle or e scooter something. And its not too far to Lisbon i think. Actually i arrived at Lisbon Airport and never “found the time” to go to Lisbon again. Doing stuff with roommates just been more appealing for the last few days. But some parts of Lisbon i will try to discover on the weekend!

The other topic of this blog is going to be Magic the Gathering related. For the last around 15 years i am playing MTG, which is a strategic trading card game. I never played like really intense or wanted to be a pro or anything but it’s just something i am very passionate about. In Lisbon i gonna be able to finally play some more and i won’t have to travel very far to actually play a tournament as i “needed to” back home. In here you’re going to see some tournament results/reports and some thoughts about decklists here and there . I’m not really sure yet.

btw, im doing all of this with just an iPad and a Bluetooth Keyboard. Still not sure if i can do everything i want to without an MacBook/Laptop.

Another aim for this blog is just to get more into digital stuff and try the advertising product i will be supporting later on.

For now, that’s it. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment. Thank your for reading! 🙂

Greetings Kevin