Moving From India to Portugal: Thing you need to Know 🙇‍♀️

5 min readSep 16, 2022

Research About Place📍

Whenever you have a plan to settle somewhere, the first thing you need to do is, try to go all over the website, and search on LinkedIn if anyone is in your connections (please don't bother them with a lot of messages 😉) but try to ask about city and think if it's matched with your requirement.

A lot of websites are available where you can check the cost of living.
Once you decide that a place is good, and you can easily adjust there, then I will jump to the next step without wasting my time😉
You can research according to your need where you want to stay (city centre, or nearby places). The city centre is costly as compared to other areas.

Search About Room🏠

regarding Idealista, you can get the contact of the owner from this site and call once you reach Porto.
Airbnb , for temporary (till you decide on the flat ) is easy to book from INDIA.

Remember, Airbnb is more costly as compared to T0/T1 houses.

The good thing about the house is, that you don't need to buy anything. All the essential item is available in the room (the owner need to provide them).

Essential Item From India🛒 🎁

My suggestion is you can buy a hot water kettle (from here it’s costly) because winter in Porto is just mind-blowing🥶, and you will definitely need it.
If possible, you can purchase a pressure cooker as well. It’s hard to get from Portugal or AmazonSpain.
If you have space in the luggage, you can carry a bedsheet and blanket or buy them from here.
If you like to prepare food, my recommendation is you can buy Mixer Grinder, again here it's costly.
Carry the Universal Travel Socket Adapter, it’s important here because a European plug is not compatible with three pins.
Try to get €2000 at least with you because you need to give 2–3 months in advance to the house owner.
You can check some of the websites where easily they are exchanging INR for euro with good price rates. I preferred bookmyforex
always carry at least 2–3 jackets.

What not To Carry❌

Food Item — Frankly, here in super mart you will get every fast food which you used to have in India. Instead of food Items, pick something which is useful for you.

Kitchen Item — no need to carry plats or any related stuff for the kitchen, Room owner will provide everything.

D3 Visa Process👩🏻‍🚀

If you came through D3 VISA, here is some process which is necessary to follow : —

1. Check SEF Appointment and place (Lisboa or Porto).2. Arrange all the documents with the help of the company where you   work.3. Be on time on your SEF appointment Day.4. Take care of the address (check multiple times), people always do mistakes and because of that, they are not able to get their residency cards on Time.5. If your residency card is taking more than a month, then please coordinate with the SEF. Once you will get the Resident card, you just need to follow some of the steps — 6. Password Request — Go to the Finance portal and register for a password.7. NIF Address Change — Once you will get the password, then log in to the portal and take an appointment for the nearby NIF office.8.  Once your address will be changed, then please Apply For NHR (Flat 20% Tax Deduction).

Always take care of the below points —

Give full attention to all the Notices that you will get from the CTT by post. Here any love letter from CTT needs to pay within time or else you need to pay 3–4 times the extra amount.
If you have a plan for CAR from the company, then, please read the contract many times. Here are lots of things you need to know like-Toll Tax, Car Tax, gas type for car etc…
Sign carefully — if you sign on some document, then you are responsible for that.

Important Appliance for Home♻️

Water Connection

Internet connection — MEO/VODAFONE — Always remember if you are signing a contract for 1–2 years, you can’t change the internet provider, within the contract time.

Mobile SIM — MEO , Vodafone etc.

You can visit the nearby place, and instead of online, better to request the connections offline.
Your owner or colleague can help with this. Always remember, Portuguese people, are the most polite people in this world.
When you reach here, it might be possible that Jio SIM will not work on an international network. So you can prefer Airtel.
Here we have so many Indian groceries, it's costly as compared to India, but most of the things are available here.

Now, Alert Time🆘

Never-ever keep the belongings in the car.
Wherever you are, always take care of your bag, mobile, and laptop (especially electronics items). Don't take this sentence easily. Because you are not in your own country, so you need to be alert all the time.
Don't carry too much cash with you.
Portuguese people are very kind and polite, try to talk to your colleague to understand the city.
This country is very restrictive in terms of law, so before doing anything you should know the LAW.

If you have any issues and need to connect to the cops then go to any nearby police station, the only issue is many of them don't know English, so you may have to struggle (better to go with Portuguese-speaking people), but most of the time Cops will refer to you to the tourist Police Station.

Travel Guideline 🚀

Obviously, TRAIN, METRO (for the city), and BUS are available as a mode of public transport.

We have Four options —

PAY BY CASE — nothing new, the fixed amount is €2
INSTALL ANDA APP — only available on Android App (for this you need Portuguese credit or debit card).bydway This app is best.
Go to the Bus Station HUB (ex- Trindade) and you can get the bus pass. It will be valid for Metro and bus. Charges will come to around €46.
BOLT /Bird is available here (you can download the app(it's available on Android and IOS both).

Last but not least — by walk😀 , with NO COST 🤪

Rough Estimation Monthly Cost for 2 people

Rent for T0/T1 is around €500–€650Food Expenses — around €200–€300Electricity/Water/internet — around €150Mobile Bill — around €15–€20Car expenses — €70–€90

Porto is a Nice, Peaceful city. Here competition is less, the IT sector is less than comparing to Lisboa. If you want to settle here or stay for a longer time, then this place is for you❤️

Let me know if you are already in Portugal and want me to add some more points.

Thanks for reading…

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