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.