SOME LOVE STORIES BEGIN IN THE WRONG CITY. VICTOR MONGIN AND MARIO QUINA MET IN HONG KONG ON A BORROWED WEEKEND, AND A WEEK LATER ONE OF THEM WAS ON A PLANE TO THAILAND. FIFTEEN YEARS AND SEVERAL CONTINENTS LATER THEY LANDED IN CHICAGO WITH A MILLION SUITCASES AND NO INVITATIONS. NO FRIENDS, NO RECOMMENDATIONS, NO PLAN BEYOND EACH OTHER. WHAT THEY BUILT FROM THERE IS A LIFE SO DISTINCTLY THEIR OWN THAT THE CITY EVENTUALLY CAME TO THEM.

Mathew: Before we get into Chicago, I want to go back. Both of you have lived everywhere. Thailand, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Lisbon. Where do you even consider home at this point?

Victor: It's funny because Mario and I were actually talking about this before we got on. And we kept coming back to the same answer. Home is not really about a particular location. After fifteen years of moving, it's really about where we can both build something together. It's going to sound a bit cheesy, but it's wherever we are with each other. Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bangkok, now Chicago. The city changes. That part doesn't.

Mario: Which is a very convenient answer when your job requires you to move every few years.

Mathew: How did you two actually meet?

Victor: We met in Hong Kong. Mario was living in Shanghai at the time and came over for a birthday weekend with friends. We didn't know each other at all. We bumped into each other, had a great time, and then a week later I was on a work trip to Thailand with one free weekend. And because things had gone so well, I just said, don't you want to come join me? And he came. And that was that.

Mario: He asked a stranger to fly to Thailand to spend a weekend with him. I said yes. That probably tells you everything you need to know about both of us.

Mathew: And then COVID hit while you were both in Shanghai together.

Victor: We had about nine months of long distance first, flying back and forth between Shanghai and Hong Kong every weekend. Then I gave up everything and moved to Shanghai. And it was the week before lockdown began. So there we were.

Mario: People always say going to IKEA together is a real test of a relationship. I say try COVID lockdown in Shanghai. If you survive that, you can survive anything.

Mathew: And then somehow you ended up in Chicago.

Mario: I applied for a role opening the Portuguese Trade and Investment Agency's Midwest office. I was almost certain I was going to get Toronto. That was the inclination from our head office. We were fully prepared to move there. And then, surprise, Chicago. And honestly, we were thrilled. There's such a strong design and architecture culture here that felt right for what Victor was doing with AIM. So we arrived, the two of us, completely without connections. No friends, no recommendations, no invitations. Just a million suitcases in the back of a cab on the Kennedy Expressway in August. I remember us just looking at each other thinking, is this really happening? Are we really living here?

Mathew: What was that first stretch like?

Mario: Honestly? Not always easy. You have nothing on Friday and Saturday. No plans, no invitations, nothing. We walked everywhere, went into restaurants completely blind because we had no recommendations, just wandering into wherever looked fun. We did some very silly social media challenges because it was just the two of us. And I always say, you know you've made it in a new city when someone invites you to their house for dinner on a Tuesday night. Not a Saturday party, a Tuesday. That took a while. But eventually that invitation came.

Victor: Chicago has the scale of a major global city but the friendliness of somewhere much smaller. That was the first real impression. People here will stop and talk to you in a park, ask where you're from, what brought you here. In a lot of global cities that just doesn't happen. It takes time to get inside the community, but once you're in, people are genuinely warm.

Mathew: Why does it take time though? Because I hear that a lot. I grew up in the Midwest, lived in LA and New York, and even coming back here it took me months to get that dinner invitation.

Mario: I think it's because Chicago, as much as it's a global city, is also a city where people have deep roots. The probability that someone living here has their childhood best friends nearby, their family close, is very high. So people are already integrated into their own communities. It's not that they're unfriendly. It's the opposite. But their lives are already very full. You have to find your way in. It's actually one of the things I respect about the Midwest. Family and community are genuinely valued here, not just as a concept. You see it.

Victor: And for us, we weren't interested in finding the French expat community or the Portuguese community. We wanted to understand the local culture. So we were patient about it. You don't really understand a city in the first month. Six months, maybe. Maybe more.

"You don't have to love everything about a place for it to teach you something. If you spend your time comparing every new city to the one you left, you're missing the point entirely." — Victor Mongin

Mathew: Were there preconceptions that didn't hold up?

Victor: Chicago's reputation for violence was the first one. Of course crime exists in any big city, but after four years here we haven't had a single bad experience. I think if you spend too much time reading the crime map on your phone you'll go crazy. Reality is quite different from what you hear from the outside.

Mario: The other one for me was how different America actually is from Europe. I moved here from China thinking I was going back to familiar ground. I genuinely thought, okay, this will feel more recognizable. I could not have been more wrong. It's been one of the most exciting and disorienting surprises. Everything operates differently here.

Mathew: Was there a specific moment where you really felt that gap?

Victor: We were driving to St. Louis for an exhibition with some friends and stopped at a gas station. And there were free magazines at the door. And one of them was an NRA publication. Just sitting there, free, for anyone. And we both just looked at each other. It's such a small thing but it was a very, very vivid reminder that we were somewhere completely new.

Mario: The prevalence of guns is just a different reality here. We don't have that frame of reference at all in Europe. It's not a judgment. It's just genuinely startling when you first encounter it.

Mathew: What have you brought from your own culture that's landed well here?

Mario: The long lunch. We host a lot and we take it very seriously. Victor cooks for twelve hours sometimes, everything from scratch. We iron the napkins, we pick good wines. You sit at the table for five, six, sometimes eight hours. And people stay. They actually enjoy it. I think Chicagoans are more open to that than you might expect.

Victor: I also developed a Starbucks habit, which I'm slightly ashamed to admit. In France you have espresso. That's it. But something about the filter coffee here just got me. I've since switched to decaf because I realized it was getting out of hand.

Mario: The fleece shirt did the same thing to me. I used to think of them as a practical but unfortunate necessity for bad weather. Now I own several, I select them with alarming seriousness, and I wear them everywhere. My European aesthetic remains completely intact. My wardrobe has quietly surrendered.

Mathew: So, what do you actually love about Chicago?

Victor: The cultural institutions. The Art Institute, the MCA, Mariane Ibrahim Gallery. These places aren't just buildings here. People actually use them, support them, feel proud of them. That relationship between architecture and culture and daily life is something I find really inspiring. And working in the Loop, as Mario does, that architecture is genuinely extraordinary. Even in the depths of winter.

Mario: We also love what Abby Pucker and the team at Gertie have been doing. That kind of initiative, where you're bringing people together around art and design rather than just asking them to consume it, that's the kind of community building that actually means something.

Mathew: The Midwest is just a chapter for you. What comes next?

Victor: Lisbon, March 2027. We've genuinely loved being here and it's not that we want to leave. But we've both been away from Europe for a long time and we miss our roots. After that, because of Mario's career, we'll be packing up and starting somewhere new again. And honestly, that's exciting. It always is.

Mario: Victor has very ambitious ideas about the next chapter. Bold architectural projects, city scale regeneration. My dream is considerably more modest. A house in the countryside. Enough space for the dogs to run loose. A proper garden. Who knows, maybe somewhere right here in the Midwest.

Mathew: Last one. What would you tell someone thinking about moving here?

Victor: Arrive with curiosity rather than expectations. Don't spend the first year comparing everything to where you came from. Give yourself six months just to observe. Say yes to invitations. Let the city show you what it actually is.

Mario: The Midwest is dangerously underrated. Warm people, real seasons, and a pace of life that actually lets you think. Arrive with an open mind and it will quietly win you over. It won us over.