Serendipitous

Well, today turned out very differently to what we'd imagined...

After the market, we went to the police station to report the attempted burglary, as our neighbour had urged us to, even though everyone knows they can't/won't do anything - but just so it's recorded.

Walking home, I was accosted by a young lad who asked me, in broken English, if I spoke English - wanted to know if he could get a taxi or an uber to Évora. The answer is no. I asked how in the world he and his even younger girlfriend had managed to get to Mourão. Neither speak Portuguese. Long story short, they had managed to get out of a bad situation with two Romanian brothers, who are using folk from Moldova to work on olive plantations. Taking their passports off them, and not paying them. Thankfully, he speaks reasonable English, and after a month, threatened to go to the police, so their passports were returned, and now they were trying to get home. 

Ended up taking them to Évora, having lunch with them, and getting food for their bus trip back to the Netherlands, and then putting them in a hotel, when we found out they were planning to sleep on the street. We parted with big hugs. Here is the text they sent me:

We thank you Soo much for everything i remember this day every time in my life (heart and rose emojis). 

It was our pleasure, Cristian and Maria. Didn´t like to ask for their photo, so you have a phone selfie of us in the shopping centre, where, since we were in Évora, decided to watch "The Banshees of Inisherin", beautiful, dark, amusing in places. For those who've watched, you will notice Mike still has his thumb in this photo...

Gratefuls:
- a man we don´t know paying for our coffees at the market (we only found out after he´d left, and Cláudia didn't know him either)
- having the time and the means to help two young folk in trouble
- watching a good film (but I didn't use the cinema toilets today)

(We got the names of the Romanian brothers, and will see what we can do...)