Born in the parish of Sande and São Lourenço do Douro, in the municipality of Marco de Canaveses, Vera Almeida has been living in a small town in Paris for nine years. She left at a very young age, just 21, in search of a new experience. “I didn’t feel well in Portugal, I needed a change of scenery and money was also another reason. In fact, it was a combination of factors but, above all, it was time to think about myself. So I came with a schoolmate, who had already lived here for three years,” she recalls.
The language was unknown, the beginning “is never easy”, but “little by little” he adapted to a reality different from the Portuguese one. “One of the things I found hardest was not being near the beach. In Portugal I went there often and here it is rare”, recalls Vera Almeida.
At 32, and nine years after leaving her homeland, she says that being an emigrant “is good because it’s also a new experience. If I went back I would choose to leave again, I don’t regret the choice I made at all. I needed to think about myself”.
As for future dreams, he says he prefers to “live day by day. I don’t think about what I can do in two years, for example, and I don’t do long-term projects. I live one day at a time”, says Vera Almeida.