Soup of the day

I got pumpkin soup. It had alphabets in it.

I thought that was super weird until a friend said the most famous soup in Portugal that usually comes with alphabet noodles has chicken hearts and kidneys in it.

Faulty clothespin

I was taking in my laundry from the line outside my window. I was thinking how disgusting it was that the girl downstairs was smoking on the balcony right under all my clean clothes. But when I looked down at her (figuratively and literally), to my horror I noticed that a pair of my underwear had fallen from the line onto her balcony! Not just on the balcony, but it miraculously landed directly on the small side table next to her. It looked like it was some kind of doily on the center of her table that she should set her ashtray on.

I apologized profusely and told her to throw it down to the ground so I could get it later but she insisted on the most awkward stairway-underwear-exchange ever. Lesson learned. No more unmentionables on the clothesline. And judging the neighbors brings bad karma.

Butcher

I've been building up the courage to try to ask for different meats at my butcher shop even though I don't know what they are called or how to specify the cut. This week, however, I noticed a mural of grazing animals painted on the tiling. Now I literally point at the lovely artist's rendition of grazing sheep and I get mutton. At least I haven't had to resort to actually making animal noises . . .

Evora

I mostly wanted to go to see this ridiculously 'metal' cathedral made of bones. I'm pretty sure no one died in the making of this cathedral. I think they were all already dead. Seems someone took the bones of the people that had died in the village and used them as a reminder that we all croak so we should value our lives while we have them.

Cute city! Although I almost had my computer run over by a car. I think the car was proving a point, and that point is: don't take selfies that require you to balance your camera on your computer bag in the middle of an intersection unless you want me to run over your stuff.

In my defense, I was done with the selfie and was standing right by my giant BRIGHT RED bag. A passing old woman was on my side too--she was quite complimentary of my bravery since I yelped and jumped in front of the car. She agreed: red bag = car probably saw it = what a jerk.

Tearful goodbyes at the bus station

I found a kindred spirit in a bus driver.

After running around the metro station trying to find where the distance buses are located, I finally run breathless up to the bus to Evora with 8 minutes to spare before departure. I see people with printed tickets and really hope I can buy a ticket on the bus. I start the game of charades with the driver--
"ticket! (pant pant pant) bus! (pant pant pant) uhhh money!" . . . pointing at tickets, pulling out money . . .
"No . . . ticket. . . uhhh. . . blah Portuguese blah blah" . . . points at ticket office. We both mumble what seems like encouraging words to each other and I think I'm to go quickly and he'll wait if it is just a few minutes.
"Obrigada!"

Damn. I literally run over to the office to find lines of 10 or so people for every window. With two minutes to spare I get to the window ("round trip please! what time will I return? I don't know! I don't have time for this. . . just one way then. . . for what time? quite obviously right exactly now!")

Hoping the bus driver remembers I'm coming, I run back to the bus and triumphantly present him the ticket. He looks at me with a look of despair and says "Oh no, problem!" I'm crushed. How could I have gotten the wrong ticket?

He points to the bus next to his. Oh! Not my bus driver! He's going to Fatima! Even funnier, the whole time "Evora" was printed in huge letters on the front of the next bus.

We laughed and then both said long silly lamentations with our hands on our hearts! "Oh No! I'm not going with you?! That's terrible!" "Ahh you won't be on my bus! So sad!" I waved goodbye to him sadly out the bus window as my much-less-friendly bus driver started our trip to Evora.

Law and Literature

I am not sure if I should or should not feel proud that I have decided to actually re-read "To Kill a Mockingbird" for this course instead of watching the movie.

The dramatically lowered bar might usurp my feeling of accomplishment.

Inappropriate-ish

I apologize ahead of time for the mild profanity. I just figured this out and I found it so hilarious that I had to share the features of my Euro bathroom.




Hand-towel rack----->














Butt-towel rack?--------->

Goooooooooaaaaal!

I accomplished my second goal this week. A tourist took a secret candid picture of me thinking I was local. It didn't happen at my window, as I expected, but rather at a friend's apartment. I was standing on the first floor balcony (see how I slipped in the Euro-first-floor-not-ground-floor-educational-reference there) of an 18th century building. A group passed and one woman, wearing a sweater tied around her neck fidgeted with her digital camera. I pretended I didn't notice her while screaming of excitement on the inside. She did a terrible job of pretending to not take my picture, which included a "look left, look right" and some fancy quick snapping.

Little does she know she got a picture of an American. I hope she's German. Better yet, I hope she's from Wisconsin and thinks she got a picturesque shot of Portuguese in the wild.

In talking with people that live here, taking pictures of people without their consent is an assault-worthy offense. They'd like to be asked first. I wanted to argue that perhaps we don't ask because there is an equivalent guilt of not speaking the language. We are in a lose-lose. But instead I feigned shock despite feeling proud someone snapped one of me. What?! Just taking pictures of you without asking!? Then nerve!

Not breaking the fourth wall--for once

I had an experience today that wasn't particularly fun, but gave me an idea about the difference between 'traveling' and 'living' somewhere. I pride myself on having lived in other countries instead of the usual checkmark one gives themselves for crossing the border. I have a hard time expressing the difference.

I often get bored in situations where I'm with locals and the conversation is in a language I don't understand.

I was sitting with locals today. They were speaking a language I didn't understand.

As I sat, I thought about the fact that this was a guy meeting up with his brother and his brother's girlfriend. He had to pass along laundry because his washer was broken. It occurred to me: this exact situation would have happened with our without me.

In travel, or even long-term stays, most of your activities are focused on you, your travel needs, and your entertainment. A guide takes you to a great site! (Wouldn't have happened without you visiting). A waiter at a cafe tells you the specials. (You are instigating behaviour). You ask an awesome local about where the best lookout is. (Not a conversation he'd have with himself). There is an entire world that you don't access. At this particular cafe with brothers, despite the lack of attention and the foreign language (filled, of course, with laughter that you'll never know wasn't directed at you, you paranoid idiot) this is a real, actual experience. You don't know what they are saying, but you are implanted in a Portuguese scene. Like a green 3D interactive green screen.

Oddly, the stand-alone Portuguese activities are not fun. It's much more exciting to have people catering to you, asking you where you are from, enjoying your silly American culture moments. It's boring to sit and wait for a conversation to finish. But something to appreciate nonetheless.

Ok fine.

Wait, there is actually something worse than regular party noise coming from my neighbor's apartment. It is the repeated blasting of "I believe" by Blessed Union of Souls for the past hour.

I give up. Return to yelling out the window.

Ignore the French?

US professors: Don't use italics. Don't bold any words. It just reveals that your writing is so unclear that you have to use artificial methods to point out what you find important.

French professor today: When you back up your ideas, don't just quote the whole paragraph. Write just the phrase and bold the important words. This way you prove to the judge that you understand the passage.

US professors: Your exams don't have straightforward answers. You have to discuss if the issue could be decided in more than one way and state how you believe the court should conclude.

French professor today: When you write an exam you have to add quotes from the text. No one cares what you think. Who are you? Nobody. Write where the argument is in the text.

US professors: Avoid Latin phrases. It makes you look like an elitist asshole.

French professor today: We are lawyers and well educated so if you can, use the Latin to show your competence.

Pleasant Commute

I almost heard myself complain about my commute to school this week. I walk about 10 minutes to the Baixa-Chiado metro station, wait maybe 8 minutes for a train, ride for about 15, and walk another 15 to the school. Have yet to see a dead person (Russia), drunk homeless person sleeping in my car (Russia again), or get punched by an old woman (definitely Russia). The commute here is extremely . . . pleasant. I read on the way there and all of the stations are clean, uncrowded, and full of art. Just doesn't make for interesting stories.

Everything is relative.

Every night I wish my window panes were thicker, or there were fewer freaking birthdays celebrated at exactly midnight at my local bar (with really a spirited version of our 'happy birthday' with some Portuguese words. . . . I'm quite sure they also wish a 'happy birthday' to _______).

But here officially ends my complaints about my neighborhood. A couple of students from the program arranged an apartment in what I, in my newly acquired mildly snobby attitude about my surroundings, I would call the suburbs. It's not. But calling it that give me a little bit of satisfaction since they live, oh, one stop outside of the center by metro. Still, to me (see above snobbery) that is out of the center.

At any rate, I was having lunch with two Americans in my Quantitative Methods class (best class ever). As happens abroad, they are both great dudes. There is a certain phenomenon about meeting people in long-term living abroad. They are always quality people. They told me about their pretty sizable (whoa), apartment in a nice neighborhood (ooooh) where they share the rent (aaaaaah).

Later they revealed that they hadn't been getting any sleep. . . because they found out they live above a nightclub.

Yelling down the street muffled by shutting my windows > bass so loud your house vibrates.

Now I must invite them over to brag. NO. Shit. I mean. . . . check out my neighborhood.

Fingers crossed for the mail service

Due to some miscalculations on my part I didn't get my student visa in time to start the semester so I hopped over as a tourist and figured everything would work itself out. Turns out the solution is to send my passport to America for the visa and have them send it back! Off it went today, through the regular Portuguese postal service (for a bargain price of 6$).

Good thing the Portuguese don't seem to be itching to find foreigners and check their documents. Hope it makes it or I'll be heading to the embassy with a photocopy and a checkbook.

School starts

First day of class. Mild disappointment. I got the reading at the last minute from the university and spent much of Sunday trying to learn about the levels of EU bureaucracy. Unfortunately, not only was the level of the first class on the light side, I was asked by other students during the break if I think Americans are fatter than Europeans and why we eat dinner at 5:00 p.m. And yet again, the average age of students floats around 23.

Should I have been surprised? Probably not. Then again, this course was part of the Global Studies masters, and my Thursday class is in the "Advanced" International Business masters. Maybe advanced students will have more to say. Some of them wore suits to the orientation (hopefully because they have jobs, not because they wanted to make an impression). Or maybe I should just relax . . . (says the Portuguese to the American).

One thing I enjoyed during the 3 hour class. Our professor calls people from Luxembourg: Luxembourgeois! And here I thought they were Luxemburgers.

Don't encourage them!

Lisbon is overrun with European exchange students. They live in every corner of my building. They knock on my door to ask for wine-openers. They crowd outside the house discussing where they should go for hours. Then they naturally form alcohol search teams, very loud clumps of teens on the hunt for locations they can imbibe and shout at each other in their common language of poor English.

Turns out their behaviour might not be entirely germaine. Now, I worked in a study abroad program and we mostly took students to museums and tried to convince them to show up to class on time. Here, every exchange student in the city (Erasmus, a European exchange program, or not) gets a "welcome kit" with information about the city. One of the first events from this group:

"Erasmuslisboa wants to welcome you in your Erasmus experience!

We'll started our Tuesdays parties at Bar do Rio with the famouse [sic] Kiss Me Party…

In our last Kiss Me parties there were many friendships and relationships that started in this event!

Spread the love in this party by kissing someone and we offer you 1 FREE Sangria(till 2)! A member from Erasmuslisboa will be 'checking' your kisses!"


Fact: worst job in the world is definitely teen exchange student 'Kiss Checker'.

Orientation

As usual we went around the room and introduced ourselves. But for some reason when they got to introducing me the room was already giggling. Or at least it seemed that way. I said something about Russian and violin and hoping to hear people say interesting things. At any rate, I'm the token exchange student and more than a handful of 22-ish Portuguese girls came up to me after and said we would be awesome friends (!) because I have so much energy (!) and they can just tell we will have so much fun (!).

Works for me!

The actual Bicaense

I went on a tiny date with the Portuguese owner of my building. Well, first I made sure he didn't actually possess keys to my apartment, which would have made things quite weird.

We went to the bar Bicaense, that I heard is a great local artsy hangout--and perhaps prematurely the inspiration for the blog title, which just means a person from Bica. They have DJs, show movies some nights, and generally are laid back. Strangely, even though a lot of people are "at" the bar, no one is "in" the bar. The hip thing to do is to hang out on the street with your drinks and talk. So each and every bar as you walk down the main street (the steep street in my profile picture with the tram) is empty but the streets have clusters of happy hipsters enjoying the weather.

Silêncio!

Fado is absolutely charming.

I got a tip from the hostel that there is a small bar that has the best Fado in the city. And no, Fado is not a type of pasta, it is a mournful ballad sung with a guitar accompaniment.

Thank goodness I had the address. We passed several stuffy, uncrowded restaurants where the Fadista was probably paid and ignored. When we stepped into building 39, it looked a bit like a teeny tiny Applebees with photos and items plastered to every inch of the wall. It was packed so we stood awkwardly near the bar until about two songs in an old, no, ancient man saw some seats open up and waved us over to it wildly as if it was his personal responsibility to make sure we had a great view.

This particular Fado bar doesn't pay its singers. People that want to sing just show up on Mondays and Wednesdays. Like Fado open mic night.

I have found Portuguese people incredibly warm and welcoming! Especially old men. (?!) We got tips, advice, and some animated stories from the men at our table.

"Show up at 12 and stay until 3." Why? Because sometimes professional singers get off their late shifts at the restaurants and stop in here to sing one song to a crowded room. Oh, and the tourists listen to one or two sets and leave around 11:30.

"Silence!" When anyone is singing you can't make a peep. Unless you are ordering a drink. And you can shush other people! I love a bar where you can--and should--shush other people whenever you want.

"Try some blood sausage." And by the way, sausages on a tiny grill-pot with alcohol flames is big here. But they bring it to your table and leave it burning. The guy flipped it a few times, so we asked when that would be necessary? "I can't explain. You either know it or you don't." So sausage flipping is something you just know . . .

One of the best parts of this Fado club is that it is crowded. There are no free tables. Ever. The Fado singers from around the neighborhood come in late and don't have reserved seating, so they plop down at the end of different tables in the restaurant. Every time I go, I get a singer at my table. Tonights was actually a Fadoista-Jurista! And the extent of my Portuguese tells me he is writing a book about philosophy, love, the existence of God. . . and quantum physics. (?). Lost in translation perhaps. At any rate, when he got up to sing he blew me a kiss! A Fado set dedicated to me, or . . . to the American tourist who pretends to understand what he's saying.

Approaching 3 a.m. the owner gets up to sing. The man has made long introductions before every singer, with smattering laughter from the crowd. He sings with bravado and acts as if he owns the place. Which he does. But between you and me, I saw him behind the bar frantically wiping a stain off of his suit coat before he went up to perform. "Street Fado" stars. Regular guys who love to sing.

More Fado, More Silence

Difficult to photograph, but the entire night people were crowding outside the bar trying to hear. People looked in the windows and craned their necks in the doorway.

Lukewarm

One of my landlords stopped by to discuss the power. So. I can't run the water heater and the stove at the same time. That must have been it, he says. Water heater? What water heater?

No wonder my showers have been lukewarm. Really this living situation just gets better and better. Hot water? Fantastic. Except neither of us can figure out how to turn it on. We both clearly agree that the on light is not, in fact, on. That was stated several times. We both started turning different knobs and pushing on valves to see what would happen but nothing was happening--no clicks or whooshes or water noises. As a last effort I pushed a black lever that had a spiderweb on it and a pressure stream of water shot straight out at us! I yelped a high-pitched "oi!" that I picked up in Russia and he yelled "quick! test it! is it hot?" as if our other knob turning could have possibly had some silent but immediate effect on the water nearest to the spiderweb valve. Nope, still cold. As I giggled about the whole water squirting situation my landlord says "you made a Portuguese noise!" I guess "oi" works all over continental Europe. My first word! (That is besides "thank you", which a friend of mine informed me that I have been saying with the masculine ending, likely either putting a big sign over my head that says 'foreigner', or sparking a full-body double-take).

All in all great news though! This means whenever we figure out how to turn this thing on I'll have hotter-than-lukewarm showers. And I can now respond when people talk to me in Portuguese with various versions of "oi".

Goat recipies

I have been hoping to run into some goat--the meat that is, not the living animal. I'd probably not be very happy running into an actual goat. Though I think if I saw it out the window I would probably just laugh at the fact that it was climbing stairs.

Nope, goat curry! Yum. I actually stumbled upon goat meat at my new favorite giant Spanish grocery store. It has a meat department and a cured meat department. It has a wine section and a port section. It has more types of cheese than America does breakfast cereals.

And it has goat!

Winning at mutual friends

My day in Cascais, a western beach town, started with some handshake/cheek kissing confusion followed by a short walk from the train station to the waiting Volvo convertible. I forgave the awkwardness.

I had stopped in Cascais for about a half hour last week and saw the shopping streets. It seemed less than impressive. However, today Bernie and Tiago took me walking through a fantastic garden park, past restored fisherman houses, and to a great restaurant for lunch where I had a bunch of seafood in a copper pot. Then we hopped in the car for a ride along the coast with the top down. Thank you Emily, who was an Iowa student here last year, for making friends with the two most enjoyable Portuguese in existence--and giving me their phone number.

Blending in?

Before moving here I had a goal that I thought would be difficult to obtain: blend in enough so that people would come up and speak to me in Portuguese. Goal attained already!

A woman on the bus complained to me about how hot it was on the bus (clues: it was hot on the bus. and she didn't sound happy. and was waving her hand in front of her face).

A woman crossing the street chatted with me about being impatient for the walk light to change (clues: really oddly long stop light. some kind of tsking noise followed the comments).

A girl at the train station asked if the train near us was headed to Lisbon (clues: at that exact moment I was confused about whether this train was heading to Lisbon and really wanted to ask her).

Two old drunk men at the train station talked to me about. . . wow I really had no clue on that one and frankly I just tried to pretend it wasn't happening.

So I've had to make a new goal. Judging by how many tourists walk through (or I should say up and down) my neighborhood, I now want someone to take a picture of me. I think my best bet is while hanging laundry on the clothesline outside my 3rd floor windows.

Young riders

Metro information in English says: "Children under the age of 4 travel free of charge on the Metro, as long as they are accompanied by an adult."

Note to unaccompanied children under 4: you will be charged to ride the metro.

Quick! Hostel tours!

After finding the apartment I still had two nights at the hostel before move-in day. I felt relaxed. I felt [mildly] social. So I took a day tour of Sintra and Cascais.

I probably could have negotiated my way around the cities myself but after the tour, I confirmed that there is no way I could have found my way to the two castles on my own. I likely would have walked around the mini-city-center for hours trying to figure out why it was give UNESCO heritage site status (sorry, but seriously, why?). The day tour gave us an appropriate ten minutes in the historical center to walk up one street and down the other, take a couple of pictures, and get going again.

The magical parts of Sintra were the Palacio Nacional da Pena and the Quinta da Regaleria. Not the castles themselves, but the gardens surrounding them.

I slept the half hour out to Sintra (blame very random salsa dancing incident from the night before) and was only mildly awakened as the guide told us we were headed to the "Penis Palace". What? He said it some 10 times as he described its history. When we exit the van we get our tickets and map. Oh, Pena's Palace. They don't have that awesome Spanish "n" that softens the a sound, so it's just an N. With a Portuguese accent in English Pena's Palace and Penis Palace sound the same. While I was glad we weren't going to some sort of palace made of penises, I was at first disappointed that the guide just dropped us off at the first place without any intention of walking through with us and giving us history lessons. Plus I was tired and frankly, there was a hill to get to the castle I wasn't particularly motivated to climb. Within minutes, though, I was all about this place.

Magical fantasy gardens. I ran into almost no one the entire time, except for a really nice Turkish guy that came on our tour, spoke only some English, and became my semi-silent tour buddy for the day (which awesomely included a lot of pointing and taking turns following each other's inclinations). The garden was full of huge trees imported from all around the world. Sequoias and redwoods and ginko boloba trees. There were small structures here and there and of course the main castle, an eclectic mix of old things with a bunch of small rooms with two chairs and a table each.

The Quinta da Regaleria gardens were almost as beautiful and clearly more fun. There were underground caves that led from one place to the other, an inverted tower spiraling 30 meters down and lots of towers peppered around the territory. Turkish guy and I did a lot of pointing.

We had a traditional lunch, which was terrible, and headed to the most western point in Europe and a quick stop at the beach in Cascais. Here the Turkish guy and I got a kebab and giggled about how it was the best food either of us have had in Portugal so far. We must not be pointing randomly to the correct dishes on menus.

The tour book encourages a lot of other things in the area so I'm sure all be back. But for now, Sintra=check.

Sintra tour

Travessa do Cabral

I took a bit of a chance on my apartment for the semester.

I hadn't had much luck finding anything and had resigned myself to the possibility that I might need to search for a room in someone else's apartment or a large apartment split into numerous student-occupied rooms. I finally got a call and set up a viewing of a studio apartment in Bica. I got to the house and nervously stood around with 7 other foreign-ish students. Running through my head was what exactly the apartment needed to have before I quickly said I'd take it--this seemed like a "first accepted first served". After a few, the landlord arrived to show us the apartment(s). Turns out every other person there was looking at single rooms in larger apartments going for about 200-250 euro, and I was the only one interested in the 450 euro studio. While the others scrambled to choose what looked like horribly small rooms with one sad common area to share between 8, I was taken up to my place.

I had to overlook a few things. The apartment smelled when I walked in. Hmmm. The futon and couch looked old. Hmmm. There was a bunch of stuff lying around, like food in the pantry, that made everything look disorganized and not very aesthetically pleasing. Hmmm.

But as is my trend, I usually get one call and I take it. I can live with a lot of oddities but I can't stand wasting weeks searching for the perfect place.

A few days later I'm in the apartment, and after a grueling bus trip to IKEA to drag home some household items I felt I couldn't live without, I'm happily home and comfortable.

Until today when I shorted out power running the washer and the stove at the same time . . .