The arrival of the furry duo

One of the biggest deals in this whole moving operation revolved around getting Keiko and Lexie to Portugal, as described in Episode #5.

They finally made it here on 7 August, an almost three-week break from when we saw them last. As you can imagine, Kristie and I were eagerly looking forward to being together again.

Now, a little prep was necessary. We had to do some shopping to get a dog bed, a litter box, food, treats, toys, etc., etc. Don’t forget, the container won’t arrive for some weeks yet, so supplies were limited to what would fit in the suitcases (I did bring the laser pointer toy, though).

The biggest logistical hurdle, however, was transport. Because of airline regulations for minimum sizes, Lexie’s crate was big, but Keiko’s was downright huge – 36” L x 25” W x 27” H. So, we needed to figure out how to get these from the airport to the apartment.

We talked to the folks at the Cristal Hotel about this, and they were able to give us one option – someone knew a person who knew a woman who could get a van-sized taxi. The problem with this is that we didn’t know exactly when we’d be ready to head home, since the instructions from the shipping company was that the process of clearing customs could take from three to six hours (really? Whew!).

Naturally, having a taxi waiting for an indeterminate amount of time wasn’t too practical. The driver (through the info chain, because they didn’t speak English) indicated that what we should do is take the metro to the airport, and then just call them directly when we were ready to leave, but this made us nervous – what if they then weren’t available? And we never could quite get a firm idea on how much this was going to cost, either.

Alternate plan – rent a car. We had talked about this anyways, and there were a lot of arguments in its favor. Not only would we not have to worry about waiting on a driver we weren’t 100% confident about, we’d also be able to use a car to make some of the house-stocking trips a lot easier. You can put a lot of IKEA stuff in an SUV!

We picked up the car on Wednesday the 3rd to give us a little time to familiarize ourselves with it. The car rental company, Sixt, wound up upgrading us to a Volvo XC90. This is truly a nice car – extremely comfortable and luxurious, and BIG, which was important, although which had unexpected ramifications …

We found out about those ramifications the next morning when we pulled out of our building’s parking structure onto the street. We feed out onto a narrow little street at a sharp 90-degree turn which becomes more challenging when you factor in the cars parked illegally along both sides. It took me about five minutes of inching up and back before I was convinced we would make it up to the corner without side-scraping anyone.

In general, driving in Portugal has turned out to be nowhere near as challenging as I expected – the roads are nice, and people don’t drive all that crazy. We’ve missed a couple of turns and round-about exits, but with navigation that recalculates almost instantly we’re soon back on the trail.

The worst moment was visiting Corte Inglês. The drive down, simple – parking in their big underground parking lot, simple. As I’ve mentioned, there are four subterranean floors to the store. In addition to underground parking, they have a car wash and mechanic’s shop down there!

But once again, it was trying to leave that caused the most mental anguish. I followed the exit signs, but we kept going around in circles. After a while, I started following other cars – if they parked, I picked another one, and eventually found someone who led us to the light.

And once again, as we entered a narrow little tunnel heading upward in a tight corkscrew, I was completely convinced I was going to leave scrapes all along the side of the car … we didn’t, but it was a hairy experience.

At last the big day comes. The flight from Frankfort where the pets stayed Thursday night gets in at 11:15, and we are at the cargo counter right on time, where we are told it will be 15 to 20 minutes before they are collected off the plane.

The cargo area is a madhouse – there are forklifts whizzing around, guys with lifters moving stacked palettes left and right, trucks pulling in and out … if these are slow times, I wouldn’t want to be around when they’re busy!

After about a half hour, I’m waved inside to fill out the shipping forms and pay. The woman then hands me my stack of paperwork and tells me to go to the second floor Customs office. All conversations are taking place in a jumble of bad Portuguese on my side and varying levels of semi-comprehensible English (or no English) on the side of officialdom, so you can be sure things are getting lost in the exchanges.

As we get up to the second floor, we’re greeted by a gentleman who asks us to follow him, who takes us back to the ground floor – evidently, there was some paperwork the first woman forgot to give us. He then takes us back to customs and hands us over to a woman there.

She looks over our paperwork and tells us to go to the third floor, but when we get there it’s just a long hallway of closed doors. Since the kids were on Lufthansa, we’re looking for anything that might give us a clue, but we’re baffled.

Just then, our guide from earlier shows up and motions us to go into a room. Evidently, this is the main logistics office. A young lady there looks over our paperwork, and then leads us to yet another room – TBT, the company that is actually responsible for the final mile of delivering the pets to us.

I fill out some more paperwork, at which point the clerk tells us that the pets now will go through customs, and we should come back in about two hours.

Luckily, the cargo terminal is right next door to the Porto airport, so we meandered over there to have lunch and wait. We both had reading material since we had been warned about the possibility of an extended experience.

The airport is nice – it’s overall about the size of the Portland airport. It is, of course, mostly empty, and many of the restaurants are closed, but we were still able to get a sandwich.

We start walking back to cargo at 2:15, and the clerk calls while we are on the way to let us know they’re ready. We go back to the third floor, where we’re asked to pay 70€ for the customs fee. The clerk leads us back to the first floor to the MultiBanco machine.

If you read the article about banking, you know that they use these machines for a variety of purposes here, including making payments to people or businesses. Basically, you use them instead of a checkbook – they don’t have paper checks any more, for all intents and purposes.

Unfortunately, this was before I had a working Portuguese debit card, so I couldn’t pay using the machine. I eventually took out 70€ in cash and handed it to the guy – highly irregular!

OK, now we’re ready to get the pets. I have to run back to the parking structure and get the car, while Kristie waits at the designated spot. As I pull up, though, our clerk is there with some more paperwork, and asks me to come back to the first cargo desk, where I have to pay an additional 25€. Evidently, the cargo system and customs system don’t communicate with each other – that or I’m paying the first fee again – who knows at this point.

Anyways, third receipt clutched firmly in hand, we go the delivery point, and zoom! Out comes a forklift with Lexie and Keiko’s crates stacked on it. Lexie started hollering as soon as she saw me.

We quickly carted the crates over to the car, and I got Keiko’s collar and leash on as quickly as possible. Kristie waited by the car for a minute while the dog and I went on a quick bathroom break – there was some grass across the road, so she was able to do her business.

With the rear seats folded down, we still had to break down Keiko’s crate before it would fit in the car – I told you, the thing’s enormous! But we got everyone aboard and headed back to the flat without any further incidents.

Lexie’s crate needed a major disinfecting when we got home – her pee-soaked bedding was pretty nasty. We got it cleaned up, and put both crates into our storage area, and I frankly hope they never see use again.

Surprisingly, although WE were completely stressed, after all their adventures the kids seemed very calm. Yes, they were happy to see us, but not frantic. I expected Lexie to punish me a bit, but that really didn’t happen. Yes, she ran under the bed when we got home, but she was out after 10 minutes and exploring her new abode. Keiko actually seems to enjoy riding the elevator downstairs to take her breaks.

Happy ending, all around. Oh, and by the way – I’m trading the rental car in for something smaller!

Next Episode: Getting back to work!