Name: What’s it like to grow up and live in Lisbon, Portugal? | Young and European
Uploaded: 2025-09-06T01:05:36.000Z
Duration: 8 min 37 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

To-infinitive

Every time I travel, I feel so lucky to come back to this city.

Sentences with adverbs of degree

The superlative

I think it's one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

And the more I travel, the more I'm sure of it.

Lisbon is popular with many other travellers as well.

But for many locals, Portugal's capital is hardly affordable.

What's it like for young people to grow up and live here?

I'm 23 years old and I was born in Lisbon.

I've been living here all my life and I'm going to show you a day in my life.

Beatriz recently moved to a suburb of Lisbon.

She used to live in her parents' home in the city centre.

She can now afford a room of her own because her boyfriend was able to buy an inexpensive apartment from an acquaintance.

OK, so basically this is a typical Portuguese household.

Recently, my boyfriend bought this and I'm helping renovating because this was not renovated.

We painted the whole things and put all of the furniture.

There are quite a few things that I can say about the kitchen.

So first of all, espresso machine, really important.

Beatriz is having breakfast with two of her three roommates.

They share the kitchen, living and bathroom and the housework too.

This is also something I've realised there's not in a lot of European households, which is the tradition of drying the clothes outside.

At least a lot of people tell me they think it's really weird in Lisbon or they're fascinated by it.

And it's just, we have a lot of sun and actually this is ready to take off.

In Portugal, young people move out of their parents' home at an average age of 29.

In Lisbon in particular, that has to do with the rents rising much faster than the wages.

So my parents recently moved to different homes.

But they were looking for about two years before they could move out.

And we only moved out because we were expelled by our landlords.

And that is something that is happening to a lot of people I know who grew up in the centre of Lisbon or in historical areas.

After finishing her studies, Beatriz tried to make her way as a freelance actress.

She's had to endure long stretches without getting roles.

Currently though, she's preparing for a film role for which she's been cast.

A lot of the actor's job is to be seated, reading and studying.

Like this one, I already studied this text.

But the director has some references here in the script, either names or musicians.

And then I have to start thinking of the character and the emotional beats.

In the afternoon, she has to head to the old town.

She's late, but luckily, so is the train.

Almost all European countries I visited had better public transportation than Portugal.

We just don't have a decent amount of trains or buses.

So they're not as regular as they should be.

Until she turns 24, Beatriz has a free monthly ticket.

The government tries to create incentives and tax breaks to motivate young people to stay in Portugal.

One in four people born in Portugal is now living abroad, a higher proportion than any other EU state.

After the 2008 financial crisis, mainly young people immigrated.

The majority of families lost almost everything they had saved or had to sell houses or lost a lot of things and never came back to the same quality of life they had.

So the middle class is disappearing in Portugal.

Around 20% of Portugal's 15 to 24-year-olds are unemployed.

Beatriz works a second job as a tour guide.

I started to do the tours two years ago or so.

I do them usually two, three times a week.

It depends on the amount of bookings we have and also on the amount of acting jobs I have.

Beatriz shows her city mainly to foreign visitors.

The city is beautiful from the floor to the sky.

Sometimes you're looking at random buildings and you have beautiful tiles or random scented marble or beautiful balconies.

So she's always here doing these crazy stuff.

She doesn't limit her tours to the main sites.

She makes an effort to put across something of the feeling for life in Lisbon.

Everyone also calls it Rua Cordosa, which is Pink Street in Portuguese.

The tour puts in stops so the visitors can sample Portuguese specialities.

Beatriz tells them a little about their history and the local cuisine and its culture.

And then there's the hardest option, that is a nossa.

And we usually say with this, like, singing.

I really like to feel that I'm showing my country, that I'm telling history, that I'm ennobling, in a way, the food and the flavours.

Because I really like Portuguese food and I really like Lisbon.

I just want to give that to the people who visit it.

After dinner, the tour continues through the old town.

The next stops are all about traditional Portuguese baked goods.

We're going to taste pastéis de pentúgal.

Beatriz also talks openly to the visitors about things that concern her in Lisbon.

The way her city is changing and mass tourism and foreign investors are pushing out the local people and small businesses.