The Rip-Off

I'd planned to spend my first months in Portugal renting a room from two of my dearest, oldest friends, but they turned out to be late-stage alcoholics who flipped between two modes: 1. "We hate that you're here and hope you drop dead", and 2. "Why are you so skittish around us? What's wrong with you? We're your friends and we love you!" I found every excuse to get away: travel, chowhounding (familiarizing myself with every restaurant south of Lisbon and north of Alentejo), park visits and cafe hangs, but I discovered (this is actually useful information!) that you cannot fill up all 168 hours of a week like that. So I spent 6-8 hours a day sitting in my car. There was a tree I liked, so I parked in front of it. Good times! I had to accelerate efforts to find my own place, so I auditioned a series of realtors, each worse than the last. As ditzy as they may be in USA, here it's worse. They're like used car salesmen. There's no code of conduct local realtors even pretend to uphold. I…