Think Globally, Source Locally

I need to buy some vitamins.

There’s a pharmacy around the corner run by Claudia and Sofia and they are lovely, but my Portuguese is still limited and pharmacies are a little different here. The pricing is on the shelves and in some stores the price is above and sometimes below and that particular shop is so small that I feel I can’t just walk in—I’m going to need to buy something, even if it’s something I don’t want or need.

The prices are probably the same as the bigger pharmacies. Or near enough. But frankly, it’s hard comparing labels in Portuguese. It takes time and focus, something that’s a bit hard for me when I’m feeling self-conscious and intimidated in a store. Even the most welcoming of stores.

My friend em has no trouble walking up to a pharmacist in any country and talking symptoms and asking for recommendations. I will wander around for two hours rather than ask someone for directions. I will knowingly allow the Uber driver drop me off in the wrong spot without a word, tip in cash, and leave a five-star review. Until I know you, eye contact is extremely limited.

That’s just the way I roll.

On square wheels.

It’s easier for me to jump onto Amazon Spain, order what I need, and have it delivered to my door in a couple of days.

It’s a pattern that we expats fall into because it helps us avoid the discomfort of not knowing, of having to ask in our halting Portuguese or hope that the person we are asking speaks English. It is more convenient than trekking store to store in the hope of finding what we need, especially when success isn’t guaranteed.

Winning the Scavenger Hunt

Things are also sometimes hard to source here. I’ve already gone over the whole baking soda thing. We are used to the boxes of Arm and Hammer, priced quite reasonably. It took me months to figure out that the baking soda in many of the stores is packaged in McCormick style packets and a very small amount is about a euro. I am used to dumping that stuff all over surfaces as a cleaning product and keeping a box in the fridge for odors and you know, using it like there’s no tomorrow. I can now buy baking soda by the half kilo for a couple of euro when I hit the Mercadona over in Spain. That’s a good size bag. The baking soda isn’t quite the same. It works the same, just a different texture. That’s fine. I’ve adjusted.

Over the years, I’ve managed to find almost all the hard-to-find things that expats go searching for: Heinz ketchup, quality linens, Glengoyne Scotch (Just me?). Coffee with friends yesterday revealed that we still haven’t found a good source of—ahem—knickers in Portugal. (Portuguese women are tiny!)

I’ve also found new favorites and go-to staples. Things got a whole lot easier when I literally learned to think outside the box and realized that it’s not just the brands, colors, and labels that are different here: The packaging is different. Sour cream comes in little, seven-ounce yogurt-sized cups. The best coffee creamer I have found is in preserve packs. Buttermilk comes in those little preserve packs, too. Hot dogs come in glass jars.

For the most part, I have won the great Portuguese grocery scavenger hunt.

But not totally.

My latest hunt has been for vanilla extract. I find it from time to time in the Bio section of Lidl or Aldi. I know that Pingo Doce carries vanilla extract but I still haven’t determined if it is real or artificial and I prefer real. You’d think that the price would be the tell on that—real vanilla extract in the States can run anywhere from three to five dollars per ounce on average. The imitation vanilla runs about a dollar an ounce.

Here… first we’re dealing with milliliters. So, you know I’m screwed already. Four ounces is about 118 ml. And I can get that for around €26. Which is about $30 today. Around $7.50 an ounce for the real stuff (actually the really good real stuff) but at this point, the mills-to-ounces, euros-to-dollars calculations are giving me flashbacks to standing in the toilet paper aisle of Target trying to figure out which super-economy pack is actually the best deal. (Don’t give me side-eye; we’ve all failed at toilet paper math.)

I am actually MAKING vanilla extract but it is a minimum three-month process and six months is better. In the meantime, I’ll hit the Pingo Doce and buy the suspected imitation vanilla.

Fallback or Last Resort?

There are still times I turn to Amazon Spain to get what I need. Can I find it in Tavira or maybe even hitting the big mall in Loule? Probably. But that’s going to involve a bit of travel and a time commitment. I do not enjoy shopping. I go in, get what I need, and leave. (The exceptions are charity and book shops.)

Are there things you can only get by ordering online? Possibly. It’s ridiculous to do a multi-city hunt for netting or a certain type of hook. But you don’t have to go straight to Amazon, either.

I have found that the store websites offer lots more options than the brick and mortar. It only makes sense, doesn’t it? The website is not constrained by physical boundaries. When I needed a new laptop, I checked the local Wortens, but didn’t see anything that hit the intersection of what I wanted as far as specs and a good price. A couple of weeks of patience brought me to Black Friday season and I ordered a snappy new laptop from Wortens online—a laptop that I could not find in their store.

The same goes for lots of other things—household goods, car accessories, office supplies. (Index cards are hard to find here. Guess what? The stationery shop is happy to order them for you!)

We tend to hit Amazon (or Walmart or Target) as the go-to instead of as a last resort. Living here, I try harder to source goods at the very local level—I do a lot of my shopping at the little grocery markets around town. I have learned which grocery stores in Tavira carry what specialty items I need. I still need Amazon for a few things. If I find another source that is more local, I will switch.

As a writer, I’m definitely not going to turn my back on the largest seller of books in the world. My books are available there. But they’re also available on multiple websites, including my own bookstore hosted by Payhip, Mind’s Eye Publishing. It’s not big and fancy (yet), but it cuts out most of the middleman. (Middleperson?)

We’re seeing a lot of consolidation of huge corporations right now and it should give you pause. I am reminded of the old saying, “Think globally, act locally.”

I confess, it took me a few years to locally source 95% of the things I buy on the regular. Probably because I don’t ask people for help. I am getting a bit better about it, really… Not really. Sometimes you just are who you are. BUT… eventually, even people like me can make it work. And if I can do it, you can, too.

I’m going to head out to the local pharmacy now and get my vitamins.