IndoKochers Abroad

Winter Visitors, local connections

One of our favorite things to do is hosting visitors and showing people around Portugal. We have one-day visits to Porto and Lisbon down to a science (as long as you’re willing to walk), and we can explore our home turf of Coimbra and the local area for days. Other relatively-unknown gems l…

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New and Interesting experiences

The email query from my aunt and uncle arrived late one evening, asking about which airport was best to fly into when coming for a visit. We told them to avoid the Lisbon airport when possible, and that the Porto airport allows for easy access. About 3 weeks later, we were picking them up at the Porto airport.

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Too far (?), too much, too fast

Too far (?) Back in January, a nice couple from Meerkerk, Holland, Hans and Josien, contacted us through People Like Us and proposed a three-week home exchange for late summer. Video calls were made, plans were settled. We both planned to drive and meet for lunch somewhere in cent…

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Summer fun

We’ve had a busy and pleasant summer so far here in Coimbra, Portugal. Despite the persistent heat dome over Spain and Italy, Coimbra has mostly been spared, given its location near the coast, where it sits in a temperate micro-climate. We’ve had warm afternoons in the high 20’s and low 30’s, wit…

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Connections and reconnections

We celebrated our one-year anniversary in Portugal on April 27th. We have added this date to our annual calendar as “Portugal Day.” We celebrated by packing to get ready for our trip to Porto, where we reconnected with some AFS friends from Indonesia & Germany who were headed out on a “

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Luck is where you find it

We were walking back to the car from a shopping excursion to El Corte Ingles in Lisbon, when Efti exclaimed, “oh no!” “What?”, I asked. My mind was wandering as we walked along the pleasant sidewalk under the shade trees. “That!” she pointed. We looked where she was pointing, and could see that Feijão was surrounded by po…

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Travels in Andalucía

Now that the new apartment is (mostly) completed – renovations are complete, all the switches are wired up correctly (thanks Lew!), stuff is finally all put away, art is hung on the walls, and we are finally healthy – we decided to embark on some adventures. We are currently taking a Portuguese government-sponsored language course, which had a break for…

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Não faz mal

Não faz mal means “no problem”, “no harm done”, “no big deal”, or “it’s ok” in Portuguese, depending on the context of how it is used. It is also almost a philosophy for staying calm. When there’s a mistake made, or a problem, many times não faz mal is employed to keep things calm. It’s one of the things we enjoy about being here: It is laid back, peopl…

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Bali or Portugal?

Dateline: Bali, Indonesia. We're writing from a recent family reunion after three years away due to COVID restrictions. It was great to see our Indonesian family in person. Bali is an amazing place. It’s only one island among the 17,000+ plus (or 18,000+

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Splash baths and no kitchen sink

Efti has had a regular habit since last fall: she wakes up and immediately peruses various Portuguese Real Estate websites, searching for places to rent or purchase. This habit landed us our great rental apartment in Quinta das Lagrimas in Santa Clara, Coimbra, and it also helped us locate an apartment not too far away that we ended up purchasing.

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