Portuguese bits

On our Lisbon hotel balcony  -- note the exterior wall tiles so typical of Lisbon, of Portugal generally.

When this post was started, we were in Coimbra (university town in northern Portugal), just back from dinner at a tasca, a local no name sort of trattoria.  Delicious.  We had local cheese and bread, goat stewed in wine with cabbage, potatoes, garlic, onion and carrots; black pork (a proud local breed) with cabbage and punched potatoes (baked young potatoes that have been punched/smashed then doused in olive oil), and a dessert (sweet cracker layers with cream and cinnamon) and tinto (red) vinho de casa (house wine).  Meals here are often finished with their local favorite port, gratis.  Yum.  So much food, couldn't finish it, and we were there for a couple of hours.  Accompanied by local music (taped) and waitstaff that knew no English.  None.  Interesting, lovely evening, ending with hugs.  What a delight.

We took a train from Sintra to Lisbon to Coimbra, 4 hours of transport, all on trains that ran like clockwork -- organized, on time, comfortable, easy to maneuver, even for non-speakers.  I'd love to be able to provide that for tourists in the US.

An oddness about Portugal:  it's the only country I've ever visited that doesn't have "real" names for the days of the week.  In Portuguese they are Sabado (Saturday in most of the Latin speaking world), Domingo (Sunday, ditto) and then segunda-feira (Monday, translated as the second day), terca-fiera (third-day), quarta-fiera (fourth day) on to sexta-fiera (sixth day).  Logical, but sooo different.

There are so many other anomalies with the language -- in pronunciation, in spelling -- that we've pretty much given up on learning it.  One Portuguese person with whom we spoke mentioned that the Portuguese language is designed to highlight differences between it and Spanish -- letters have been dropped, pronunciation dramatically changed, meanings occasionally altered, to mark the difference.  Mostly.  Hard to believe, but there has to be some reason.  One Portuguese person, when we asked, said to us, "thank us with obrigada/o [standard Portuguese] or merci or danke -- anything but gracias.  We are not Spanish."  A matter of national pride, differentiation.

A few photos of odd Portuguese stuff --  bad, bad internet connection these days.

This is a ladies' bathroom in a national museum.  Bidets are common in women's, not so much in men's rooms.
Gotta keep those lady parts clean.  

A collection of Portuguese neti pots from the 1800s (above), and a mortar and pestle from the 1800s, both from the Pharmacy Museum in Lisbon .

Modern art from Mozambique -- dressed, pompous guinea hens -- displayed  in a Modern Art Museum  in Belem.

Steve, the noble knight, at the national tile museum.

Giant four-leaf clover I found outside the walls of Evora.  My first for 2013.  

Black storks are common in central Portugal.  Here are five nests on electrical towers.  Bad photo, taken from a train.

Mail carrier's bag, Lisbon.  

Insignia of Lisbon's trash servicers.  

A Lisbon fire hydrant.  

Last night while having dinner in another neighborhood tasca, we realized that folks were standing around the TV, transfixed.  The prime minister was resigning due to a lack of confidence vote, economy based.  Not an easy economy to be in.  Shell-shocked folks abound.  A 30-something man with whom we spoke today (our guide through the old city here in Braga) mentioned that so many of his friends are having to leave the country to find work -- his circle of friends is breaking up just to have a working life, a relatively new phenomenon in this society.

Portugal and a military show of force

We've been in Portugal now for about 10 days, and can't seem to locate the blog habit.  It takes time to make something happen, and we've been so engaged with getting to know Lisbon that it seems to be all we can manage.

With Lisbon looming large and indigestible, but wanting to prime the blog pump, a small presentable chunk emerged on Sunday morning:  we stumbled onto a military parade outside of the Portuguese President Anibal Silva's residence in Belem, just outside of Lisbon.  We were there to see a couple of museums, and were thrilled to hear drums and see shiny helmets in the distance.  Apparently it's a regular Sunday morning occurrence, and included about 250 soldiers (5 women), lots of swords, scabbards, helmets and brass, 4 dogs, about 100 horses and two bands, one on foot, one on horseback.  And about 45 minutes of excitement, equine beauty, music, and pageantry.  Observations:

Mounted brass band, on mostly white horses led the procession, with a marching band behind.  The music was  marchable, but not something either of us knew. 

Marching band in dark uniforms followed the white horse band.  

The main drummer's horse's ears were usually twisting around, but he was really well behaved.  Couldn't be easy with that constant noise.  

And his mane, as well as all the mounted bands' horses manes were braided.  

The 5 ladies on horseback wore ties.  Why?!

Four dogs, three shepherd mixes and a rottweiler.

Sweet, sweet uniforms.  Posture and uniformity of size and seriousness were pretty cool, too.

This leader guy had attitude, and chose to wear his chin strap mid-chin.  Some chose below chin.  Marching band members were exempt from chin straps; mounted ones had them.  Don't know. 

The ones on white mounts had helmet tassles that matched their mounts' tails.  

The "lead" horses were marked with anklets -- dark ones with blue, white ones with red.

And the horses all had had pedicures -- sporting shiny hooves for the procession.  

The horses also had special rump combing for the day -- quite lovely.  Less visible on the whites' rears, but it was there (see three photos up).

Swords raised, on command.  Steve had an Onion-like thought including the headline  "Massacre on Belem street,  officer apologizes for garbled command."

Back to their Sundays.

The street cleaner, ready to pick up the inevitable horse leavings.

Portuguese is not an easy language.  When written it is much like Spanish, and is borderline accessible then, but when spoken, it becomes an undecipherable Russian-like melodic mess -- easy to enjoy, impossible to understand (from here).  As in most parts of the world, making the attempt is appreciated, and then their frequently-accessible layer of English emerges.  Sigh.  To be born into the current lingua-franca has many blessings.

We really don't know if anyone's interested in this blog.  If you are and have thoughts as to what might be fun to read about, please let us know by comment on this page or by email to either of us.