Deciphering Lisbon

This weekend, after an overnight bus and sunrise taxi ride, I found myself in Lisbon. Arriving at 6 a.m. I was quite the space cadet, however the hostel where I was meeting my friend Abby was accommodating and sympathetic to the fact that I was delirious. 


A bit about Abby: we have been friends for almost seven years. We met the summer before freshman year of high school at a particularly tumultuous part of my life, yet after finding mutual friends and a few jewish youth events, we've been best friends ever since. 

Sometimes I think about how we have other friends besides each other?

She is studying in Salamanca, northwest of Madrid in Castilla y León. A lot of people lose touch with friends they had in high school and it seems to not affect them much, but I think I would be a little crazy if Abby and I hadn't maintained a strong friendship throughout college. 


Simply put, we are best friends for a lot of reasons. Abby understands it, she's sharp and witty and can call me out when I'm wrong, and vice versa. We can sit in complete silence and be entirely comfortable, and be together, doing nothing, and be content. We both listen to each other. I never feel lonely when I'm with Abby, and talking to her and spending time with her assures me that even though people truly suck, there are good people in the world. Nonetheless you should all be jealous of us. 


Abby is a keeper because she is up for exploring new places and being open to new ideas, which was more than essential in Lisbon. She arrived at the hostel mid-morning, and after making ourselves a bit more presentable to be in public, we set off. 


Lisbon is a cluster of plazas (or Pracas, one of four words I learned in Portuguese). Lisbon is also quite strange. It didn't exactly feel like a European city; I could venture to say it felt a little South American. Friday we got to know the city and made it all the way to the top of Alfama (mind you Sevilla is a flat city) to see the Castelo de Sao Jorge. What a view:

Other highlights of our trip include: 

Food: Lisbon, situated on a river leading out to the Atlantic, is known for its seafood. We splurged on octopus, cod (I'm starting to believe every single coastal European city is known for cod) and Portuguese sangria on Saturday night. The city, however, is pretty cheap; we watched the sunset by the river with galletas de María, beer and iced tea for 1,50 euro. Our hostel nourished us well in the morning with freshly made crepes and eggs, as well a festive dinner at night. Eating with other guests was interesting - especially since we sat with two German girls who spoke impeccable English. 

Soup, flava beans, spinach, salad, bread and fruit. 

Belem: A 4.5 mile walk from Baixa, Belem has a bunch of monuments and museums dedicated to the naval history of Portugal. We saw the Discovery Monument, the Tower of Belem and San Jeronimo's Monastery. Walking to and from Belem probably made our view of Lisbon even more distorted - it seems like this part never recovered from the city's earthquake in the 18th century. It was extremely run-down and decrepit. Despite its eeriness and sketchy nature, the walk to and from Belem was an interesting dichotomy from Alfama, the oldest (and most beautiful, in my opinion) part of the city. 

Abby pensive in the monk recreation yard (probably thinking about what monks do to recreate).  

The nasty weather made Belem and the view of the ocean look pretty...nautical? 

Fado: Fado is folklore. A musical style, it translates to "destiny" and has origins in Africa, Brazil and the Iberian peninsula. We had the chance to watch fado after our seafoody dinner, hearing one woman sing with two male guitarists. Please enjoy this video, it was a headache to upload. Joel can attest. 

In all, Lisbon is a city searching for an identity. Not that I didn't enjoy the city, because the beautiful parts were truly the highlight of our trip. And romping around with Abby, of course. 

Peacocks/peahens at the castle?

Alfama

Feria Pregame

As the semester progresses, I find more and more reasons to appreciate the rich and comprehensive Spanish education I had in high school. I've arguably learned more in high school (Spanish-wise) than college, and I owe it all to the wonderful teacher I had my junior and senior years. She's retired now, but she's Nina, she's a big deal (High school friends? Do you exist? Can you attest?). Growing up in El Salvador, I'm not sure how she learned so much about Andalucía. I also don't know how she ended up being fluent in four languages, ended up in Spain's cultural olympics in the 70s and went on a date with Harrison Ford. I need to email this woman. 


Anyway, as Feria de Abril approaches in a month, my señora and her neighbors and all of her friends thought it would be fruitful, and a smashing good time, to have a party that is similar to what goes on at Sevilla's famous Feria. It's basically a bunch of what Spaniards do best: eat, drink, dance, sing, drink and then a bunch of times over again. My señora dances all the time and of course sings, so she lent me one of her dresses for our little fiesta:

Flamenco dresses are heavy and flowy, making dancing a very colorful affair. Between the shawl and red ruffles on the bottom, there was just yellow and red flying everywhere. Everyone dances Sevillanas, a four part flamenco dance. See, this is why Nina is cool: the last weeks of my senior year of high school were spent learning this dance. Good thing for me three years later it came to fruition. Thus, I got some brownie points and knocked everyone's socks off with my stellar duende and flamenco skillz (not so much). 

Everyone sang and danced and ate and drank and played guitar and castanets and woah. My host sister plays the guitar, so after flamenco music, she was strumming to a few Sean Paul songs. And then reggaeton played instead of cante jondo for an hour or so.  

Between food, drinks and music, a majority of the people who came (who didn't already live in building) left around 7:30. I jumped at the occasion to change my clothes, yet when I came back I found everyone trying new wines and telling jokes. All the jokes were in pretty poor taste, or at least the ones I understood were. Yep, Spaniards, just like us. 

I learned some great vocab, if anything. We ended up leaving around 9:30, only to return at 11 to eat dinner. My señora was roaring with laughter the whole time because her dress especially accented her butt, also she claims she's flat as a board. I had such a wonderful video of her and Antonio, her husband, dancing, but Nikon is disappointing me again. Worst decision ever. 

It was a day of realizing that my host family has truly been the best part of Sevilla. They make the effort to be sure that I really am a part of their family; it's a good feeling. 

Going bananas in the Straits

Saturday brought me to the Straits of Gibraltar. It's a particularly weird place, starting with passport control, or lack thereof. Rushing through and having a guard simply glance at my photo reminded me of security in the Czech Republic a few years back, as at that airport I had to run through a metal detector with a duffel bag without even stopping for them to search my, you know, really dangerous bag.


The airport in Gibraltar is one of the most dangerous in the world, considering planes have a tiny landing strip and face having to circle Gibraltar's famous 200 million year old rock (see below) and wind blowing in two different directions. The runway is also part of a major thoroughfare, thus car traffic is frequent when planes are landing. It's quite silly actually. 


Gibraltar's streets were constructed for buggies and horses, so we had the pleasure of going up the rock in a "mini-bus," or a stick shift Mercedes safari-like bus for 20 people. Our guide was very knowledgeable. Quite vulgar too. But more of that later. 


There are 33,000 Gibraltarians. There are more students at UW than Gibraltarians. British, Moroccans, Indians and Spanish people inhabit this tiny bit of land, which is linked to Spain by a narrow isthmus. The real estate there is crazy expensive - some of the ritziest apartments cost up to 2 million euro, and some other extravagant amount in GBP (eff the GBP). 


Our guide (who never told us his real name, but rather just to call him Ivan the Terrible), explained that Spain tried to regain the Rock from the British in the 18th century, but grossly failed, making the Rock of Gibraltar an impressive beacon of British pride. 


Technically speaking, the Rock is an ancient sea bed. As it is slab of limestone composed of deceased shelled animals, some people consider the Rock to be an island, but it's really a peninsula. I hate typing rock over and over again. Here's the Rock:

Just kidding. I'm hilarious, yeah?

For a little ooing and ahhing, Ivan the Terrible let us off first at Europa Point, where you can see all the Straits, including Algericas (or Al-Jazeera if you're feeling lazy), Gibraltar and mountains of Morocco. The photos speak for themselves.

Adi gawking.

Heading up the Rock with Ivan, we went to St. Michael's Cave, a Cathedral Cave believed to be bottomless. Walking through I felt just like Don Quijote did in his caves (not quite). Today it's actually a theater. Fun fact: people used to believe that Gibraltar was linked to the African continent by a subterranean passage over 25 kilmeters long under the Straits. Hence, bottomless cave. Anyhoo, the cave can keep 10,000 soliders alive for a year. Well, not the cave itself, but it has the capacity to house 10,000 soliders and their necessities for a year. Apparently if the water falls from the rocks onto your head or body, it's good luck. Just like when bird droppings land on you?

Poor Yorick.

My sophomore year I took an advanced psychology class about animal behavior, focusing on primates (between Naomi taking horticulture and me in monkey class, we had quite the slew of random information constantly filling apartment conversations). Knowing all of this before I came, I was reminded that the Barbary Macaques were brought to Gibraltar by the Moorish royalty as pets. They lack tails, hence they are apes. There are about 300 of them living in Gibraltar, being the only free-living monkeys in Europe today. They are controlled and fed by the local government, even sporting tattoos in their groin with an ID number. Ivan kindly offered to show us his tattoo. Foul. Here are da monos:

Thumbs and nails.

Ivan, have you ever run over an ape? "Rubbish." 

Playing with baby macaques is just like babysitting, apparently.

Other than that, Gibraltar isn't much. Most of the people that live there work for banks and live lavishly on the coast. But, because Gibraltar is a territory of the UK, I found dark chocolate Toblerone (because Spain really only raves over milk and white) and Cadbury Crunchies. Successful, silly day.