Well - it's Portugal

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I have some strange feeling, whenever I go to Portugal of being lost to the rest of the world. It seems that Portugal is in a category quite of its own. And the Portugese are not disatisfied with this. You often here a sentence ending with; well this is Portugal and then a smile or laugh indirectly asking you, if you can handle it.

But let me give an example or two of what Portugal then is.

I have been visiting some very good friends in Lisabon for the last week and am now in Porto trying to find my way back to Spain. The day I arrived to Lisabon my friend had to go to his hometown of Evora, one hours drive from Lisabon to witness in a trial. He went all the way on a day of his exam just to witness and return, hopefully in time for the exam. But the trial had been cancelled. - Well it's Portugal was his comment to that. Monday he went to university to see if he had passed his exams having plans with me later in the afternoon, but when he showed up it was five hours past our meeting time and he excused himself that he had had a re-examination, which he didn't know until he arrived. I wondered if they didn't have e-mail service on Lisboa University and what would have happened if he hadn't found out in time. His answer was well... it's Portugal. Whenever someone is driving far beyond the Autobahn speedlimit in center of Lisabon and I shiver from the terror of what could go wrong, my friends look at me and laugh, saying darling, it's Portugal.
But maybe it just is Portugal and maybe that is why a Danish girl always gets so bloody stressed here, because nothing ever goes by plan. So my advice to Northern people arriving in Portugal is to have nothing arranged but the time and place of arrival and departure and then a guidebook in the bag. The rest will come and in this way you might feel very lost, but you will soon discover to relax and shake of the stress and start living the Portugese way.

The Portugese way also includes a lot of alcohol and partying till next morning, when they go to bed. They then get up at 3PM, take the car to the beach and then at some time past 8 or 9PM they have dinner and start drinking again. This is their life circle in the weekend, and they all do it. It is exeptionally clear when you sit in a car line from Lisabon to the beaches south of Almada, not feeling you have moved at all for the last two hours and crossing your fingers that the air-condition wont break. Or when you after having arrived have to navigate through thousands of cars parked in a pattern only understandable to Portugese. But as my friends say, it's Portugal!
I really like Portugal and I love my friends, but as a borring Dane, I can't quit the idea of scheduling everything, and being in Portugal for more than ten days is therefore to much for my early to bed life-style. So this afternoon, I have for hours tried to find a way to Salamanca in Spain, but the best offer has been to arrive at 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, which, since I'm still in Portugal, shouldn't surprise me.

To finish this little essay on Portugal I will come to the conclusion that should my friends here ever travel to Denmark they would become so very stressed by how ordered and scheduled everything is and how dinnerplans are always made three weeks in advance. But what is the better, maybe it would be the compromise of a golden middleway. And yet, I wonder if anything will ever change and whether it should. How borring to travel abroad and still have to plan ones schedule. So nice it is just for a ten days time to leave the calendar at home.

As a little note I would like to add that though Denmark and Portugal are so very different there is one thing which I seem to see as a similarity and that is the appreciation for our national flag. It seems that all the Portugese hang their flag out the windows and you often drive by appartmentblocks, where the facade seems covered in portugese flags. I have a feeling it might be a pride, not a bad one though, but I could imagine that even more flags were shown when the national soccer team played or on national days of independance. If anyone knows, please give me your thoughts on it.

But well back to real life. Spain is coming up and I am once again on the road.
See you at my next stop.

Anna

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Photos

my gang in Lisboa
Taken on the beach off Lisboa

Lisboa beah by night
Lisboa

view from Joao's place
near that stadion of Sporting and the University Campus, Lisboa

cows and people
central Lisboa

guys at the beach
beach of Lisboa

Comments

[André]

portuguese patriotism
Well, you're totally right about our way of being. The lack of plans, the going out till late, the absolute no respect for traffic rules, the "this is portugal" thing. Exacly the opposite of northern countries, such as yours, which our politicians always point ou as the rolemodels we ought to follow. However, about one thing you are not completely right. A once i heard a friend saying, the portuguese are only patriotic in two different ocasions: whenever someone foreign talks trash about our country or whenever the national football team plays. The flags thing only started in 2004 when we hosted the european cup, and only returned this summer during the world cup season. The flags may still be hanging for a couple of months, but the sad truth is that until the next big football event we will pretty much tend to let that patriotic wave go... hopefully this will because i do love my country