Inside the center there are a couple more caf�s, another one with a restaurant, several home furnishing stores, a tailor, two hair salons, a nail salon, some place that does 'body treatments', a school uniform store, a couple of artsy-fartsy places, two office-y type places, and a store that sells a platform decorated like a sit-n-spin with a waist-high set of handle-bars jutting off to one side. The idea is to stand on the platform, grab the handles and "shake the weight off." (Who says Portugal is behind the times, eh?) In addition to that, there are at least thirty vacant shops.

I'm not joking. There are far more empty retail spaces than actual shops, and this is a center that's been around for quite a while and is well established. Some friends of mine live in some apartment buildings built above a type of outdoor mall. Same story-- more vacancies than occupations. It's common: there is a ton of retail space available around here. It's the economy, I'm told. These spaces once were full, and some day they will be again.

But look at what's left. You can't spit without hitting the plate glass windows of an interior design store, filled with outrageously priced designer furniture and extravagant gee-gaws and knick-knacks. Who buys this stuff? There is hardly a big influx of affluent immigrants. There is a BMW dealership across the street, and an Audi dealer in the other direction. Both are next to vacant office space, both are doing well.

In fact, the Portuguese drive some really, really nice cars, and seem to always have the latest model. And not just in our town, which is reasonably well to do-- I've been in some less wealthy areas at night and there seems to be fancy cars in front of almost every house. I'm also aquainted with some folks that drive astonishing cars when they're barely able to support themselves.

Considering that housing is expensive (especially factoring in what you actually get for your money), and the relatively piss-poor wages, where are they getting the money to buy them? A lot of people have a second job-- and that's just to ensure a reasonable standard of living. That is, it takes the money from two jobs for a person living here to have the same lifestyle as a person living in London in the same line of work, even though London is a far more expensive city.

I've been told that they borrow money for fancy cars against their houses, and that having equity isn't always required. Given that the roads are appalling and very hard on autos, if your car breaks down (especially the German cars) it will probably cost a month or more's wages to be fixed, and the alarming accident rate, your car is likely to be totaled at any time-- why would a person do this? Why would a bank lend you the money if you didn't have equity in your home? And, whether you do or not, is it even legal?

Obviously, it also has to do with values and cultural mores. Elvis and I are thinking about getting a car, but if we do it will be something small and somewhat disposable, preferably used-- which makes it difficult, as there seems to be a dearth of decent used cars here. But, once again, I digress.

The odd thing is, despite all that vacant retail space, they're building more! Buildings are being converted into retail space everywhere you look, a lot of them quite fancy, with half empty shopping areas right next door. Who do they expect is going to populate these shopping centers? Where are the businesses going to come from?

I've been puzzling over that one since I first moved here.

My drycleaner is in the increasingly desolate shopping center by our apartment building, in the -2 cave. The two ladies that run it are nice people. Once, for example, I hadn't been there for over a week, and the younger woman (the one in charge that seems to be going on), spotted me in the hall and came running from the little caf� where she was having her coffee break. The other woman had accidentally overcharged me the last time, and she wanted to apologize and give me the extra money back.

Apparently, she reads minds, too. They used to ask for my name when I brought laundry in, but they stopped doing it quite a while ago. I didn't think much of it, just that I had become a regular and that they remembered my name. A short while after that, though, I noticed what name they were putting down: Senhora Foreigner. Which I thought was kind of cute. I was thinking about that the other day, while the younger lady was assembling the drycleaning I had come to collect and totalling up my bill when suddenly she asked me what my name was.

She wrote it down. I wonder how long she'll remember it? A long time, I hope, because as I was leaving, I saw the sign. It's fairly large, brightly colored, and posted in a prominent position.