The longest part of the process was getting the FBI records check, which took a little over 2 months. After you have that, the visa takes about 6 weeks and you can move to Portugal. The permit doesn't take any time. You just have to go in and apply and they mail it to you. If you were to start today, you could be in Portugal in 4-5 months. Then you could get your permit a month or two after you get there (You need to get your documents in order first, such as having a PT bank account with your money in it.)

You have to show you have enough income to live for a year. I think it's good to give them the impression that you are wealthy and are just coming to live and spend money. I know that's the impression my lawyer gave them. But if you have $30K USD in the bank, it's probaby enough.

Disclaimer: Dealing with Portuguese beaurocracy can be maddening at times and they are constantly changing regulations and protocols. Don't trust anything you read on the internet, even from official web sites. It also depends who happens to be working at your window at the immigration office. They are not used to getting applications like ours. They are used to dealing with people who either have work or are looking for it. It's not likely, but possible, that you could get the visa and then be denied the permit once you get here. Most of the people that I dealt with along the way were very reasonable.

From what I have read on the internet for non-EU residents you have to apply for the visa outside of Portugal. Is that still true? Also, do you know if you can apply at a third country embassy? For example, could an American apply at the Portuguese embassy in Mexico City or would they have to do it in DC?

I'm sure you have to go through the embassy in DC. It's all done through the mail though, so I don't know if it matters if you're not physically in the U.S. I really can't answer that. Dina Silva at the D.C. consulate was pretty helpful with questions if you want to email her. Her info is on their web site.

Any good sites to find real estate?

Thought I'd contribute my little bit as I'm also a foreigner (from the EU though) living in central Portugal for over 4 years now. Generally I agree with most of what has been said but they are a few things which I've seen which are either totally wrong or in some cases I'd at least raise one eyebrow to.

Firstly thanks to D33P for offering his time to do this in the first place. I never realised there were so many places to play. I've only been to some of the main casinos in Portugal myself. As far as I can tell the big problem with playing live poker here is the games start so late. In Estoril the cash games don't start until after 9 p.m. and usually they have only 1 table of €5/10 NL Hold'em. In Espinho (South of Porto) the cash games start even later and it's a €2/5 game - occasionally they can have 2 tables here.

So for me live cash game poker isn't great here - afaik if you want to play during the day time at a casino you need to go over the border to Spain. I know for instance that the games start at Madrid around 4 p.m. and go on till the early hours of the morning. If there's a casino or poker club in Portugal like this I haven't heard of it but I'd love to be proved wrong.

I'd agree that internet here is pretty good. Though in my case my house is actually a little isolated and I can't get a telephone line so I'm using 3G for my internet, fortunately I have an excellent 3G connection.

Absolutely true. If you like tournaments there's plenty going on.
Here's a schedule for 2012 http://pokerpt.com/calendario-torneios-ao-vivo.html that has still to be further updated as it's missing 12 events form the Solverde Poker Season, also many people from the north of Portugal go over the border to Casino La Toja in Galicia for their tournaments.

Yip basically anywhere away from Lisbon or even more so the Algarve, which is the most expensive part of Portugal the cost of living gets a lot cheaper. Though now with all the extra tolls on the road due to the economic crisis if you want to drive any significant distance it can get quiet costly.

I'd raise an eyebrow to this . As someone who can knows quite a lot of Portuguese I struggle when chatting to a Brazilian - it might be the same language but the accent, intonation and pronounciation are very different. So someone say from the USA who has been thought Brazilian Portuguese and is at conversation level I think likewise will struggle initially with Luso Portuguese.

You are spot on with everything you say but I don't know where you got that temperature information from. Average daily high in the shade during the summer here in central Portugal (I'm just 10 km from the geographic centre of Portugal btw) is 26 degrees C and that's just the average daily high. It's often above 30 degrees during the summer and occasionally though not often hits 40. It's true it rarely drops below 0 but it can happen, especially during a colder winter like the previous 2 years, at night time it was dropping below zero quite a bit then, this year that's not the case.

One point to note though that the temperature even in summer time can drop a lot at night time. So in this fairly mild winter that we're having where it's getting around 14 to 16 degrees, for instance it's a max of 14 where I live today but it's forecasted to drop to 3 tonight. Similarly in the summer time you could have a scorcher of a day but later on in the evening you can get chilly in just a t-shirt.

If nice weather is what you're after then the Algarve (the least Portuguese part of Portugal btw!) has imo the best weather it's got the mildest winters and since you're near the coast normally the summers are not overly hot. The next region up from the algarve the Alentejo however can get some real extremes of temperature.

I'd agree with most of what sly caveat says - I realise taste in womenz is a personal thing and while there are some good looking women in Lisbon - as a generalisation I'd have to disagree with them being phenomenal. Try Hungary for phenom womenz! (I'm not Hungarian btw)

Defo agree with the language thing too, to fully enjoy life there you're going to have to learn the lingo - not an easy language either imo but good luck and persist with it - and if you can find yourself one of those phenom Portuguese women then that should help a lot .

Also I'm attached but I really get the impression that Portuguese are very much into things Portuguese and that goes for relationships too. I don't get the impression that Portuguese women are going to be overly inclined to get involved in a serious relationship with a foreigner, of course there's always going to be exceptions and I guess you'd have a better chance in a more cosmopolitan area such as Lisbon, though tbh I wouldn't be surprised if you have more joy with other foreigners there

http://www.remax.pt/

http://casa.sapo.pt/Imoveis.aspx

http://www.century21.pt/

http://www.era.pt/pg_home.aspx?lang=pt

start here.

My comment on Portuguese women being phenomenal was made after my first week here. I was staying in Saldanha and there must have been a modeling convention in town because I have never seen so many beautiful women in one week in my life. It has definitely regressed to the mean since then. There are some beauties here, but no more than anywhere else I guess.

Nice first week then .

Maybe you still had your tourist hat on also - things (such as women) almost always seem better in a place when you're on vacation there rather than living there.

Are you still in Portugal then?
I'm going doing much more of the live tourney circuit this year so if you plan on playing any of these I might see you around. There's quite a few events happenign this month in the Lisbon region alone - though I have played against you a few times so not sure if I want you playing in the same live events

Yes, I've relocated here so will be here awhile. What are some of the live events going on? I'm sure others following this thread would like to know as well.

www.pokerpt.com is the best place to check afaik for what's happening in the Portuguese poker scene.

Here's a list of what's happening in Portugal this year http://pokerpt.com/calendario-torneios-ao-vivo.html

another portuguese sound for you guys to enjoy.

orelha negra: a cura

Do they have short term stay apartments at a reasonable price (around €300 a month) for 3-4 months, with internet and access to a pool? I would like to check it out for a short stint.

What part of Portugal? If you're talking about Lisbon, you will be able to find a cheap place like that, but it's going to be old and not baller at all. Probably no central air or heat and very doubtful it will have internet. You can forget about the pool. Even the nice apartment buildings don't have a pool. When I was looking for a place I don't think I looked at one that had a pool.

If you are looking in a more beachy touristy area, then you are going to have more short-term oriented rentals with a pool and internet. You're probably looking at paying that price for a weekly rental though, not a month. No idea about other cities like Porto or Coimbra.

i dont care about area, just the above requirements, thanks for your answer!

That is from another thread. Is that true?

You'll find it almost impossible to get anything for €300 for that spec. If you truly have to have a swimming pool then probably the closest option you can get is a house in the countryside. You should be able to get something semi decent for < €500 a month or less if you gave up on the requirement for swimming pool. Even in sunny Portugal though you'd only be using a pool from June to early October at best and it'll be difficult to get a short term let of a house with a swimming pool over this period as people can make a lot more from holiday letting over the summer months.

I find once you live somewhere and not in holiday mode anymore people rarely use their swimming pools so I wouldn't rate them as a must-have.

If you want to know more I'll speak to you when I see you in Seoul in 2 months

.

I read that too... in short it looks like BS. The only bit that I think is quite possibly true is that company are meant to have a monopoly and might very well want the government to crack down on online gambling - in fact I think I read on a portuguese poker forum that this was the case, however so far any action from the government is limited at best and I don't think extends to getting ISPs to block sites, frankly they got far bigger concerns.

My own experience of it - I'm not a sports bettor usually but have never had any probs doing it online the few times I've had. I know bwin have been forced to stop advertising here. In regards to poker all the regular sites that are available anywhere else in Europe are available here. I've never had any issues, and my ISP is the main national one TMN. I haven't heard about other people being blocked, if it's happening I'm not aware of it. The way legislation is going though that could all change somewhere down the line. If I had to guess and it's just a guess based on the way things work here (slowwwww) it'll take a while to be regulated - perhaps more than 2 years, but I think it'll ultimately get regulated here. I wish they did it EU wide, instead of piecemeal country by country, give the money earned to the bailout fund or some other worthwhile cause like Berlusconi's whoring fund

yeah tbh just a sign of how fragmented the EU is now- you really do wonder what we`re paying all those MEPs for now. Spain, Portugal and Italy never gave a flying **** about rulings in the european courts and EU law- no surprise they`re taking illegal moves to clamp down on the gambling. It`ll be 15 years at least before a pokerstars.eu at this stage

I'm the Brit and the gyopo is American, the NZ'er is married to a Korean so his Korean is v good which is useful. I think we'll be the only guys from Daejeon so just shout out Daejeon (pronounced day-jon) randomly and one of our ears will pick it up!

With Regards2Portugal, I dont need my own pool, but a communal pool is fine. Just want to turn up, have a couple months there, chill in the sun, grind some poker at night, lounge around at the pool, have a few beers. Generally want 4 months because I intend on going to SEAsia from Oct-May and get outta there for rainy season.

I could go further into it but it's not the politics forum so don't want to go off tangent on this area, but yeah suffice to say it's a pity the way the EU has gone in recent times alright.

By the sounds of this the Algarve is your only realistic option. I'm far from an expert on the Algarve tbh. In general it's more expensive there than the rest of Portugal due to the high percentage of ex-pats that live there. But imo it does have the best weather - milder and less rainy winters and if you're near the coast normally (2 summers ago Algarve was scorching) not excessively hot like other regions can be. If you were to share with others then €300 a month would be doable I imagine, I doubt if you could something niceish just on your own for that sort of money.

I've also been asked via PM a couple of questions which I'll answer here

1. if bwin was only forced to stop advertising, but still accepts bets from Portuguese IPs?

AFAIK this is the case. I read two articles http://pokerpt.com/forum/post303101....t=bwin#p303101 , http://www.dn.pt/inicio/portugal/int...ent_id=2234839 (obviously these articles are in Portuguese - so use a translating tool - should be able to give you the gist of it) which suggest to me that Bwin have been forced to stop advertising and sponsoring here but nothing I read suggests that they have been forced as yet to stop operating here. But let me be clear I haven't placed a bet since last summer so I'm not a big sports bettor and it's possible that things are happening that I'm not aware of - I do know people who are regular sports bettors and haven't heard that they have to stop, but I will ask.

2. Which areas of Lisbon would you recommend when looking for an apartment (would looking for a modern, furnished 1bedroom apartment up to 800-1.000 EUR per month incl. all utilities).

I'm not at all an expert on Lisbon especially in terms of the good areas to live. I only go there to visit 4 or 5 times a year and stay centrally. For 800 to 1000 euros I think you can find yourself a nice one bedroom apartment no problem though and at that price it should virtually be by default in a good area. If you want to go out and party it up - the main area for this is the Bairro Alto - this is within walking distance of the centre (though a steep walk as it's on a hill - like much of the old city)

The best thing to do really is google estate agents (imobiliarias in Portuguese) there - www.remax.pt is one of the largest estate agents and many private renters use sites such as olx http://lisboacity.olx.pt/casa-partam...luguer-cat-363 - of course to contact private renters you'd need to communicate in Portuguese. A good way to enjoy a cheap trip to Lisbon imo is to stay in a good hostel there then you could check out the different areas and get a feel for what would suit you - Lisbon has some of the best hostels going. just check them out on hostelworld.com or one of the other hostel booking sites.

it is not true.
even tough scml has the monopoly of gambling in portugal.

sorry about not updating as much as i could, but im having same real life issues atm.

but you can ask what you want as usual.

Hi, I'm coming to Lisbon from Helsinki, Finland as an exchange student for 5 months in the beginning of February and I have few questions. Are cash games rolling every day at Casino Lisboa? Stakes? How good are the games? What kind of tournaments? Or should I rather go to Casino Estoril?

Do you know anything about my school Universidade Nova de Lisboa?

What Portuguese people generally think about Finnish people after this and all...? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXw5f...layer_embedded

Thank you!

dont know for sure about the cash games in casino de lisboa.

they do have tournaments and a lot of sattys for those.

in casino estoril there is always a running game of NL200 (with an electronic dealer) and an upper room where they play NL1000 or higher by request.

i guess games are pretty soft if you have experience.

also lots of tournaments and sattys for them.

your university is a great one and has a great reputation. it is also located at the heart of the city.

most educated portuguese people admire a lot the people and the way they organize society in the scandinavian peninsula.

girls are also mad with that biotype, so you should do great here.

Thank you for the info! Sounds great Can't wait to get there!

If I would go to the university in lisboa would I be able to study there without knowing portugiese?