From one dusty, off the beaten track part of the world to another the Golden ¼ wooden cube passes. Just north of Lisbon along the Atlantic ocean you will find a humble video store with a avid BGG owner. He has movies and a table set up for games: what more could anyone want? I have always had an affinity for Portugal as it seems like a kind, outgoing, and frisky country, where I could wile away my days. The Portuguese gaming scene seems to be growing by leaps and bounds and Luis Blogs have tracked their development.
http://spielportugal.blogspot.com & http://oblogdocosta.blogspot.com
Even though I cannot read Portuguese, from the pictures I can tell Luis and friends are the type of gamers that would be welcome in my club any day.
I met Luis, and a number of Portuguese gamers, when I was working on a design for a Spice Trade theme. Luis and some other generous Portuguese gamers came to my aid with Portuguese ship names and information in about a day, well beyond anything I had anticipated.
Without much further ado, let me give a nod to that small sea faring nation who, without all their brave ancestors efforts, I would not be able to sit here in North and read his replies. Keep up the good work Luis and thanks for all the help. Should you or any other Portugese gamers find yourself in Colorado, you have a place to stay!
You will find his Geek world here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/user/fs1973
Here he is in his own words:
Quote:
First of all I want to apologize in advance if you find any errors... English is not my native language.
About me than...
I'm 34 years old, single but spoken for :P and i own a small DVD rental store in a small Portuguese village called Vieira de Leiria. If you're on vacations near me, just give me a call. I have a table on my shop always ready to play some games
Besides my wonderful Ana, i have two passions in my life: movies and board games.
I always played videogames and board games. The first board games that i played were CHESS, BACKGAMMON, MONOPOLY, PETRÓLEO, ACÇÕES EXAME and RISK. For many years during my teenage i played these games. When i went to College i started to play Card Games like POKER and KING. In the late 90's, me and my friends returned to board games and we picked-up again games like RISK, and soon after we discovered SETTLERS OF CATAN. During the year of 2005, me and my gaming group discovered BGG and that was definitely a milestone in our lives. I became a member and discovered a new world... the kid in me was reborn
I'm a small collector and I like to trade games. I love BGG and all the geeks and my passion for games increase every day.
Me and my gaming group created Spiel Portugal, a team of 5 players that play every week and review games, which we publish in our blog. The main idea is to promote the hobby between those who love games and those who don't even know that they exist. Our team was responsible for the first Portuguese national meeting of boardgamers, which was a success and since than we have seen the hobby grow day by day in our little country. More meetings were made, more gamers joined the Portuguese community, more websites and blogs in Portuguese about boardgames were created and we are very proud of that.
We created this year the award ?Jogo do Ano? (which means, ?Game of the Year?) and the first winner for the 2006 prize was IMPERIAL by Mac Gerdts. You can see in our blog the award we sent to the designer, whom I met in Essen this year.
Our blog is written in Portuguese and although we have a google applet that translates it to English, the outcome is not good enough. For that I’m sorry, but we will try to create an English version of the blog.
I would like to give thanks to Wade for the invitation for this GotW, that means a lot to me and to the Portuguese community, which has been increasing over the last two years.
two years
Posted Mon Nov 19, 2007 12:24 am
You have done a good deal to help further the hobby of boardgaming over here, so congrats again on being Geek of the Week, you deserve it. 
