Lisbon baby!

Hola!
Below is the 4-part story of when miss Sweden, miss Iceland, miss Germany and miss Ireland went on a spontaneous trip to Lisbon, Portugal.


Lisbon, Portugal, part I: We know nothing about Portugal

So last Wednesday Sabine, Sol and I started talking about possibly taking a trip somewhere. We started discussing Portugal and the day after we decided that we were at least going to try to get there. It was one of my goals with this semester here in Spain so you can understand my enthusiasm. At first we thought we’d rent a car, but in the end we thought taking the bus would be better. So Friday morning at 7 o’clock we met at Plaza Mayor, Sabine, Sol, Fiona and I and started walking towards the bus station with hopes of scoring tickets. It proved to be no problem at all so off we were towards Salamanca first where we were to change buses to the one going abroad. But we were left with about 3 hours to kill so we took the Salamanca quick tour which basically lead us to a café which Sol recommended. I must say that I was not incredibly impressed by Salamanca, but who am I to judge I saw almost nothing. (Except for many alternative people and Sol’s favourite café…)

After some confusion we found ourselves on our bus towards Portugal just to find out that we would have to change buses at some point if we didn’t want to end up in Porto instead of Lisbon. The driver had told Sol that we would have to change in a place called something similar to ‘Albuquerque’. We were just generally confused and didn’t really understand all the Portuguese people on the bus – Portuguese is very much different from Spanish, at least in spoken form.

Oh well, we were still in good spirits (although tired), excited about going somewhere and more particularly about the fact that we were on our way, finally, to Lisbon and Portugal.

It was somewhere around here we started doing a mental list of what we knew about Portugal and Lisbon beforehand. That list was rather short. You see in our spur of the moment trying to be spontaneous trip we forgot to look up anything at all about the place we were going to. Our knowledge well was pretty much made up of the following: they speak Portuguese, the capital is Lisbon, they have euros and according to my mother they are more friendly than Spanish people. We spent the rest of the trip asking each other questions that none of us knew the answer to.

We managed to change buses and as we were going south Sabine looks out of the window and suddenly bursts out ‘I can smell the sea! It’s on that side.’ (Whether that was true or not is not something I am able to answer to. I can only smell my way to Irish pubs…) Sol and I spent some time (while the other two were sleeping) having a Nordic language school, trying out how much we could say in Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Finnish. Needless to say some languages were easier than others.

We arrived in Lisbon around 22 local time (it turned out that they have different time than in Spain! How silly isn’t that? And Sol and Fiona knew it and told me and Sabine just before we reached our final destination.), about one hour late. Four very giggly and over-tired girls made our way, using the metro, to the hostel Sol’s boyfriend had booked for us earlier that same day. After checking in to a sweet apartment-looking hostel we went out in search for food or drinks (anything really). It took about 5 minutes of walking and then a guy stopped us and asked us if we wanted to buy some weed. He took Fiona’s hand and said: ‘I know you want some’. Fiona took her hand back said ‘No!’ and we walked further.

After a little while we found a small place which was fine for us where Sol and Fiona ordered sandwiches (!) which took forever for the guy to prepare. We kept speaking in Spanish as we figured that would work out fine, but then realised how ignorant we probably seemed. Didn’t we know we weren’t in Spain, that Portugal is a separate country? So we spoke in English instead, which proved to work out just fine. As the place we were sitting at had a clientele consisting of only men and as the preparing of the two sandwiches took forever we were joking about the situation. Sol suggested that we should find a gay bar instead which lead Fiona to say: ‘I’d feel more comfortable in a gay bar than here’. Shortly after that the sandwiches arrived and after they were finished we all went back to the hostel and slept a long nice night. (I had only slept about 2 hours the night before…)


Lisbon, Portugal, part II: The streets go up or down, never sideways (alternatively: Where is Fiona?)

Waking up in the morning after a nice long night we found a surprise in our room. We all thought we were sleeping in a 6-bed female dorm, but it turned out that it wasn’t the case. When we woke up one bed was taken by a hairy guy! We were all equally surprised as we saw it. After getting ready, eating breakfast and collecting all of our things we checked out and went to our next hostel in which we were to spend the rest of our nights (the first one was fully booked the rest of the weekend). We found ourselves staying at a small hostel in which the shower was in a room outside and where they’d prefer it if you didn’t come home after midnight. It was still sweet somehow and we were happy as we got a room completely to ourselves.

The day was spent sightseeing in the city, walking up and down the hills – there were very few streets going sideways, always up or down… We went to the Castelo (castle) and found an art festival going on there with music and clothes and jewellery. It’s the little things that make everything great and this was one of those things. As we sat down in an alternative ‘restaurant’ temporarily there for the festival and listened to the alternative music coming from the DJ (no Spanish music as far as we could hear :-D ) we were all extremely relaxed and happy. We stayed for quite some time just taking it easy and relaxing, but decided to go before we fell asleep.

Then we made our way down the hill and ended up in the middle of a Brazilian samba drum concert on the streets. They were banging their drums and dancing and screaming olé as they lifted the drums above their heads. It was really cool and of course we stayed there for quite some time as well. I thought wow, what a great way to work out and made a mental note to check out if it’s possible to do something similar in Malmö.

We kept on loosing Fiona, or so I felt as I kept on asking ‘where is Fiona?’. (In reality she wasn’t lost at all, I was just not seeing our red-headed miss Ireland at those moments… It was sometime around here that we found Sabine’s future career. She will own a pink hostel in Lisbon where she wouldn’t let Spanish people stay. We even found a pink house for it.

Eventually we made our way back to our hostel to relax and change before going out in the evening. We found a restaurant where they were going to have a buffet and had a seat. The waitress told us that we had to wait with taking food a bit because there was a big party coming and the food wasn’t completely ready. We said all right and ordered some drinks. Sol was extremely hungry and wondered every five minutes when we could start taking some food. The party arrived eventually but they didn’t start taking food until everyone was there (which took forever) so the staff at the restaurant let us take food before. It was great food. Some cold dishes, some warm and a desert (uma sobremesa) consisting of either pineapple (or rather ananas – why is it more or less only in English that it is called pineapple?) or chocolate mousse.

It was during that dinner that we started talking about the many gorgeous guys we had seen during just that day. Sabine, Fiona and I agreed that we had seen more beautiful guys during one day than during three and a half months in Spain. Sol just didn’t get it. She hadn’t seen any pretty guys, but we decided that maybe she hadn’t been looking. So to make her open her eyes we decided upon signs to make her aware of the chicos bonitos. I was to pull her hair, Sabine to get a coughing attack and Fiona get spasms. Then I saw a beautiful guy, turned to Sol to pull her hair but she got it before I finished my sign. Then we all had a long laughing attack.

On the way home we discussed how nice the city was and how most of us could consider living there permanently, and also how the guys are different from Spanish ones. Right then a guy grabbed Sol’s breasts and Sol burst out: ‘I don’t wanna live in Lisbon anymore!’ and gave the guy the ‘fuck-finger’. And so it was settled. Portuguese guys were no different to Spanish ones and the city suddenly looked less attractive to the blonde miss Iceland.
We all concluded during the day that although the city was beautiful it didn’t feel like a big city or a capital. It felt more like a small holiday city, to which you go to stay for a week or so, like cities on the Canary Islands or other holiday spots. It also looked like a poor city, houses were quite run down and sure there were areas which were modernised and cleaned up, but most of the streets that we walked down or up were filled with houses which needed substantial remodelling. The Portuguese people came across as extremely friendly and nice (except maybe for the guy that molested Sol…) and so we could agree with my mother’s opinion, they are nicer than Spanish people, at least the ones that we met, and they speak English!


Lisbon, Portugal, part III: I hate sand.

We decided that we were to visit a beach on this day, our last day in Portugal, a beach that was about 30 minutes outside central Lisbon. On the way we were to stop and look at some monuments and stuff in Belem (which was also recommended to us by the tourist office). As we sat on the train relaxing we suddenly saw the train leaving the station that we were supposed to get off at. Ooops! We went off the train at the next station and jumped on the next train going back. The only thing was that the train we were on didn’t stop in Belem so it was just to get off that train as well and go back one more time. Then we came to the right station and could finally see the things we wanted to see.

We saw a couple of monuments situated by the ocean and walked along the coastline. We sat down and rested our flip flop bearing feet and Sabine got a sunglass salesman to sell her a pair of sunglasses, that he originally wanted 15 euros for, for 5 euros. We saw loads and loads of Americans (mainly old ones) who wore funny clothes. In particular one guy who was so mismatched that it was hilarious. And he wasn’t old. He bought a scarf from a scarf-selling lady which made his outfit even worse. Let’s see if I can describe it; he wore grey surf shorts with white flowers on them, to that he had a shirt with a lot of patterns on it mainly in a reddish scale of colours. From the lady he bought a blue scarf. Talk about loving colours…

After resting and feeding my new-found coca cola addiction we walked to the next train station and took the train to the beach. We arrived in a really small town where they had McDonalds (of course we had to go…) and nice and friendly people. We found the beach and laid ourselves down to enjoy the sun (the water was not very warm according to Sabine and Fiona – and as you know I don’t bathe unless the water is at least 25 degrees warm…). It was windy and the sand found its way through everything and I realised once again how much I dislike sand. We got to lie there for a little while, but then the clouds started turning grey and so we left to go back to Lisbon.

It really was amazing to us that more or less everyone spoke English there, even the bum helping us with our train tickets. A nice contrast to Spain.

We bought Subway sandwiches (yes, McDonalds and Subway in the same day. No we are not extremely Americanised… you just have to understand that these kinds of fast food restaurants don’t exist in Valladolid!) to have for dinner and a bottle of wine. The next day would be starting very early and so we decided to relax at the hostel’s roof terrace. The way home led us through the red light district of Lisbon (ooops!), but I guess it’s something you really should see and know where it is so you won’t end up lost there when it is dark and the middle of the night…
We relaxed on our roof terrace and played a few games of Uno (the card game) and I became the two-time winner while Sabine learnt the word sink and that it is not equivalent to binch. We sat and relaxed and talked and decided it was a pity to have to go back to Spain and Valladolid, Portugal in general and Lisbon in particular had proved to be such a nice place to stay at.


Lisbon, Portugal, part IV: The long way home

The day started approximately 4.30 Portuguese time, our train to the bus station was to leave at 5.36. Arriving at the train station we found no information as to where the train would leave from. We asked some people and found our train. At the bus station we had the same trouble as there was no information whatsoever. A bus driver told us where to wait and eventually the bus arrived.

We had to change buses again in the city which has a name similar to ‘Albuquerque’ and as we went on the bus the bus driver told me ‘no comida en el autobus’, I answered ‘pero solo es agua’. In reality I had both crisps and cookies in my bag but that is not food in my opinion. Those are only snacks, no matter what Fiona says.

As I saw the Portuguese landscape passing by outside the bus window, listening to my I-pod music, I thought about the differences between Spain and Portugal. There are truly many differences. One is about the people’s general behaviour. Most of the Portuguese seemed to speak and understand English, while here in Spain you’ll have to search more or learn Spanish. They seem to eat more proper food, not only tapas (which I don’t think I will ever become properly used to). Everything seemed also cheaper than in Spain – anything from metro tickets to food and drinks. The landscape looks somewhat different to what I have seen of Spain and the language written is possible to understand, while spoken is quite different from Spanish. Someone said it reminded her of eastern European languages.

I quite enjoyed Lisbon, I think we all did, but wouldn’t like to live there. I’d love to come back though for a visit, either back to Lisbon or to other places (maybe both).

As we reached Salamanca we were all hungry and just wanted to get home already. We went to a small snack bar where we immediately got reminded of the Spanish people’s way of being. We came back to Valladolid and home to our apartments around 8 p.m. The best thing was to have a proper toilet not only those disgusting smelly toilets on bus stations or gas stations… Also the last hostel had the worst beds (hard, too short and not wide enough – I had to balance not to fall off), so coming home to my noisy, but comfortable bed was great.

It was so nice to get away for a few days. Now we all just have to study for our Spanish exams and finish our other assignments. Well, hopefully the energy from being somewhere else will make it all easier…

I realise this story of our adventures ‘abroad from abroad’ was rather long, so if you’ve read all the way through you’re worth an award! ;-)
Besos
/k