F-I-R-E-I-N-L-I-S-B-O-A

To the few people reading this, I’m sure you were waiting with baited breath the next entry. And for that I do apologize. I don’t think I’ll be writing on the weekends because, oddly enough, those are the days in which I have precious little time. We learned the subjunctive in class today and had five pages of homework which took about 5 minutes to do. This is not the lifestyle to which I am accustomed. I had no idea there were so many hours in a day when you don’t have to work, you get up at 7:30 in the morning and school takes a total of 3 hours. I’m trying to figure out what to do with the rest of the hours, and though I know I’ve much to do to prepare for the fall, I just really can’t bring myself to stay out of the streets and work on it. I am currently listening to Dylan’s “To Ramona” which I may be able to see live this weekend as he is playing on the cheap in Lisbon this Saturday. I’ve never seen Dylan because he was always a bit too expensive and my uncle Steve said he’s kind of crap live. And if Steve doesn’t enjoy a folk show I highly doubt I will. I am being called to the kitchen to help prepare the third jantar enorme in a row. These dinners are comprised of a sort of international iron chef competition in which every country in Europe is present throwing down knives and trash talking in a mash of Portu-Españo-Italo-Franco-English. Although mostly the jibes are tossed in Portuguese, necessity is the mother of linguistic invention and I’m sure Saussere would be thoroughly horrified if he were invited, but I’m no fan of dead French linguists so we decided to let him rest in peace. So I will leave this for now to participate in what I hope to be the last of these for a bit because my palette is a bit fatigued at the moment. I be back for a bit because I cook fast-like.

So it was Friday that the flatmates and I gathered together a bit of picnic to eat at the miradouro by the Igreja de Graça, where the view of the city was out of this world, but the company we inadvertently kept (pictured at right, I never got the gentleman’s name, but I got a good shot of his belly and that shit-ass grin he always carried with him) was most certainly full of the illicit bounty produced mainly in South America and more than a touch of Noah’s fermented grapes. He helped us out a bit by opening a bottle à la frances (pushing the cork down with an asqueroso finger instead of pulling it up with a corkscrew that we continuously yelled was available as he was in the process). Needless to say we left that bottle to be enjoyed by him and his paisanos. As we were leaving (due mostly to the aforementioned gentleman’s constant amorous attention of Betty (the brit on the left of the picture here—to her right is Gerald, another flatmate in the Casa Marvão), he whispered to me menacingly in Portuguese “we’ll see you soon”, which we most certainly did. We walked about a mile to another miradouro overlooking the Tagus River. After about an hour into the second attempt at a picnic Betty’s new friend found us mid-jantar and proceeded to ask for a bit of everything we had. He then threatened Gerald with a knife and we decided it was high time to ask the gentleman to kindly get lost. There were no shortage of athletic men in our group so it was not a case of fear that we let him disturb us for so long but rather the distasteful scene of beating up a drunk loser while the sun set upon a scenic Lisboa. I told our friend that he had overstayed his welcome and his inebriation (coupled with a complete lack of any sense of taste or geometry in his choice of attire) was unacceptable and putting us off our meal. He left forthwith and has only reappeared yesterday night as Betty was out alone getting cash to pay her tuition the next day. He of course didn’t notice her as his memory of that night had no doubt faded a bit. I’m sure he regaled his friends later that eve of the many witticisms he had entertained with only to be inhospitably rejected from the group of foreign rogues. But whatever, this is my side of the story.

Saturday was spent mostly on the Capirica beach (and travelling there and back which took about two hours each way even though it lies only a few miles outside of the city). We took a metro, trolley, ferry, and then a bus to get to it. The beach was at high tide and mostly packed so we had to relax on the rocks. The German flatmate had the sense to bring strawberries. They were delicious. The waves made for good surfing, but as none of us had a surfboard we opted to just dive in and out amongst the crashing olas. We missed the final ferry and got back a bit late for the first of the international iron chef competitions, but still made a good showing nevertheless. On Sunday in Lisbon everything is closed so that day was spent for the most part over lazy meals and homework, and of course another bacchanal for the jantar. The final picture is from one of these nights in which I was offered by a vendor at some bar a tiara that lit up by battery for 2 euro. I of course accepted as I've never had an electric crown but ended up getting very confused by the math involved in exchanging 2 euros. As I only had a 10 euro note he gave me six, took the ten to get change and then told me the bartender would not give him change at which point I took the ten (which was somehow now two fives) and tried also, and was also denied. I gave him back his six and told him nevermind but he was a persistent lad and gave me back the ten and long story long-somehow I ended up with the ten and the crown, but much money was exchanged in the interim. I guess maybe he gave up or I did. Whatever the case, it will remain a mystery to me. But now I have a sparkling new tiara in case Portugal is ever again in desperate need for a return of the desejado rei Sebastiao.

No Inicio-Part II

My day to day has been considerably better although last night I couldn't sleep because of some dog a floor above me across the street and a motorcyclist who constantly went up and down this tiny street I live on with his engine full blast. What a fucking retard. Anyway, I'm in class with my French friend and flatmate Gerald, because I switched to a higher level which still seems a bit slow and redundant for me, but I know I need to get the basics back down again in order to produce the language. We are reading these tiny texts to check for comprehension and I'm used to reading novels or large socio-historic studies in Portuguese and resuming them in English so it is kind of hard for me to show that I can read Saramago in the original Portuguese when I have a hard time saying "I can read Saramago in the original Portuguese" and I understand why they don't believe me. Its just the different modalities of the language are so far out of whack for me since I take in enormous amounts of written and spoken Portuguese yet never am forced to produce it myself. Oddly enough, I am living example of how this can be a problem that seems an illogical one at first. Also I am almost getting over the jet lag still so my mind is a bit slow. I'm going to see the castelo de Sao Jorge this afternoon. It dates back to 1147 as a Portuguese posession and is actually older as a moorish one and the fortifications are pre-Roman!! This castle is only a 5 minute walk and it literally towers above my apartment so I should see it before I do anything else. Also there is a simulator of the 1755 earthquake that hit and destroyed most of Lisbon which sounds pretty rad.

No inicio

Things haven't been starting quite swimmingly I would say. I've spent most of the last 72 hours awake and most of that time in line waiting for something. Once I arrive to the front of these lines (with an average wait of about an hour) I notice no one is in line behind me. I've eaten two meals that have both left me sickly. The first night I went to a place called Bar Pinochio because it was packed with locals, yet I stupidly didn't order what it seemed every other table was eating (a bucket of peeled, seasoned shrimp-48 Euro). I opted instead for a dish that was listed as the house specialty which was bife au picapau and which consisted of maybe two steaks cut into large pieces and served in a pool of grease and charred garlic. The side it came with was a bucket of potato chips. On the second day, I write as I still have a bag sitting next to me for my vomit. I don't care to recall the name of this dive but I do remember the Caldo Verde soup was decent. Then I had a plate of “Bacalhau ao Portugues” which is like a grilled or roasted salt cod served with boiled potatoes and some chopped garlic and parsley. Now I must admit, I rarely if ever have been able to make salt cod into anything but a white mass that resembles more of a salt lick than a piece of fish. Nevertheless, I never tried to sell this fish flavored salt. For dessert I had a dish that would translate as camel drool but tasted nothing like that animal's drool and in fact seemed a bit more like a cross between tiramisu and flan.

Lo tho, I must admit that where the food has failed me twice I have been never so visually entertained or mystified. Today I saw two cops cruising in front of me on segues (or segways?) I would love to be chased by these cops by the way. I would start running in circles around them on uneven surfaces and see if they could follow me, I would stop suddenly then start walking, then run a bit, then sort of saunter awhile. The two cops parked their vehicles in front of this salt lick restaurant I was at and proceeded to get a bit lit for a half hour then returned to their beat, which I guess included smoking cigarettes a block down and hitting on teenage girls.

The beggars are very extreme here and seem to be very desperate and almost in competition. When I was taking the subway home from class a man entered the subway car singing and I noticed he had a walking stick and his eyes were fused shut. I think that seemed so extraordinary to me not because I have never run into someone with this malady, but if I had I would have never seen it because usually anyone with eye problems in the Unite States will wear sunglasses which could be seen as vain or considerate. Eye problems make my skin crawl because I have very weird eye issues and flinch if anyone or anything gets near them. Seeing the results of eye damage has the same effect on me. Anyway, not to be outdone the next beggar came in singing a jaunty tune as well. He also had a walking stick and, much to my continued unease he was missing one eye and had the other fused shut. The missing eye was just a mash of skin and empty space. But on top on this he carried in one hand a stick and under the other arm an alms container that he couldn't hold because he was missing his right hand! Those who had given the last guy all their change seemed to have a look of disbelief that there would be a needier cause. Like the last guy had cheated them by coming through ahead of the other. My closest encounter with a beggar was at the salt lick cafe where I was sitting reading a Gyles Brandreth novel and left half the salt cod on the plate in disgust. The adolescent girl who wasn't totally begging (she was selling band aids) came up to me and ask me if I was going to eat that in Portuguese. I didn't think I heard her right because in my world beggars don't ask for food, they ask for money--and if you offer them food they get offended. So she asked me again this question that I haven't been asked by anyone since I was in a junior high cafeteria, and when I ascertained that I had understood her correctly the first time, I (like any Minnesota protestant bleeding heart liberal) nearly tripped over every word to emphatically say the only word she needed to here--sim (yes). She grabbed the whole filet off my plate and immediately scarfed it down while walking away with her band aids. I wanted to chase her down with water as I realized that she would shortly be in dire need of it, but saw that I of course was already out. I only had a few bites of the fish and I am still drinking liters of water to slowly erode the layers of salt crystals that formed in my mouth hours later. I hope I didn't inadvertently kill her with this fish.

Anyway, I apologize for being such a prissy epicurean snob in this first entry, but I guess I had expectations that relied forever on memories of Portugal that had more to do with the people I had food and wine with at the time than the food itself. Over time those sense memories became something beyond mere images, smells, tastes, and Portugal reached a place in my mind as spotless and perfect and ephemeral as a long lost love, or a dream of the innocence of youth. Now I'm here and my love is very far away, and if I am to sacrifice being near my darling palomita to better my language skills, at least I should get a nice piece of fish now and then. Não é?