Living & Working in Portugal

Rating:
Summary: Does it tell you what you need to know?
Review: I had recently read this book when I had a road accident in Portugal. Fortunately what followed was the opposite to what I could expect based on the book I had read. The book had left me with a picture of badly equipped hospitals and poor health care. On the way to casualty I feared the worst. To my amazement I received prompt attention, service was very efficient and courteous. I feel that this must be known in fairness to the Portuguese people who may be trying their best and in fairness to people like me, the foreigners, who may be unduly discouraged from enjoying this charming land. On health matters, as on others 'Living and working in Portugal: all you need to know to enjoy life in Portugal' may frighten you away rather than tell you 'what you need to know'. On accident emergency services, and other matters, this book may be relying more on preconceptions, not on facts. better take it with a grain of salt!

Rating:
Summary: Not what I was looking for
Review: Perhaps this book is more for a student's gap year abroad, not for the older person who is thinking of buying property and working in another country. To tell the truth, I found this book wastes lots of pages stating the obvious and patronising the reader. I have found a more adult book with more useful information in Harvey Holtom, Working and Living: Portugal. I would recommend this one instead.

Rating:
Summary: Like a big lemon with little juice
Review: This book tries to impress but the truth is that it is rather basic. You have to read lots of pages with information that is pretty obvious before you get some juice out of it. I prefer Live and Work in Spain and Portugal, by Victoria Pybus and Joshua White. It is much more to the point. It does not waste your time with irrelevant prose.

Rating:
Summary: Better on the web
Review: This is my experience. I have been living and working in Portugal. Before leaving the UK I bought this book for guidance but did not get much.

It contains a lot of trivial info like you must remember to take light clothes if you go in summer! It manages to fill its 264 pages, excluding the index, most of them with irrelevant info.

It also has an attitude, it talks down to you all the time. It is amazing that such a superior book has so little to offer!

Eventually I turned to the web and got more useful info than in the book. And for free!

Once in Portugal I also found out that many of the addresses in the book are wrong or are for something quite different to what is listed in the book.

In short, too much of an attitude and not enough of what you really need to know!

Rating:
Summary: Misleading!
Review: When I bought this book I thought it was going to be light and informative reading. Particularly impressive was the amount of forms and other 'real-life' items, though some a bit out of place like restaurant food lists. The book had warned me that I would have to complete tedious and complicated forms for everything, sometimes in triplicate. I was a bit apprehensive (my Portuguese is progressing but not perfect yet). I took photocopies of the forms shown in the book, rehearsed how to fill them in, and took my draft to a number of official places where I had to register for several purposes. The officers were quite amused. I was then told that some of those forms were decades old and most had been out of use for at least ten years. Most is now done electronically and there are assistants to help anyone (like me) who may need a little help. Another disturbing side of this book is that it gives you the wrong name of the places where to go to for official matters. At first you think what the book says is based on well-informed experience. As you read it, and try to apply it in the country, then you get quite a different picture. This book looks jolly at first but leaves a bad taste in your mouth.