3: Arrival

02/6/2011

I finally have a good slice of time and an Internet connection, so its time for the very first post that I’m writing from Portugal.

Azulejos

This country is absolutely beautiful.  My program is through the University of Coimbra, which is one of the oldest schools in the world: founded in 1290 by the Pope, some of the buildings on campus are ancient and beautiful.  The Universidade Velha, the oldest part of the University, has a courtyard which looks over the entire city and the river.  One of the best views I’ve ever seen.   But honestly, the entire city of Coimbra is beautiful.  The houses are light colors with red roofs, black grates, and unkempt white-washed walls.  There is amazing tiles everywhere, decorating the outside of houses, the inside walls.  So many houses and buildings are bordered with these blue tile designs that are about as high as your shoulder.  These tiles are called “azulejos” and I wish the entire world could be covered in them.  But then again, I am a bit prone to exaggeration.

A gift store in the Porto airport

The trip here was crazy.  I was up for a day and a half straight and used every single modern mode of transportation other than a motorcycle.  Thursday: Drive to DC to get my visa at 9 AM; drive to Union Station; take a MARC train to BWI Airport, where my mom picked me up and brought me to the terminal; flight to Newark at 1:40 PM; Shuttle from terminal B to terminal C; flight to Porto with new friend Amy, another person in my program; flight from Porto to Lisbon at 7:40 AM (Portuguese time.  American time: 2:40 AM); Taxi from Lisbon airport to train station; Train to Coimbra B station; Taxi to Polo III, my home for the next five months.  So in all:

2 cars

2 taxis

3 airplanes

1 train

1 shuttle

My room!

I can’t sleep on planes, so by the time we got to Polo III, Amy and I were absolutely exhausted.  Carlos, who runs the dorm and who is basically a male House Mother, gave us our keys (we have about six to different locks all over the residence), but I was too tired to understand English, let alone Portuguese, so I found out what those keys were for much later in the day.  I emptied my luggage, took a shower, and crashed for two hours.  That night, Amy and I stumbled around the surrounding streets looking for some sort of grocery store or CVS-equivalent, but only found cafes, clothing stores, and an inappropriate amount of dentists (seriously, there must be a dentist on every street in this city).  It was in a gas station that we randomly ran into the third girl in our program, Tatiana, and her father Tony (who is Azorean) and his friend Mario (who currently lives in Lisbon).  Because the school hadn’t given us any information other than our residence (and our advisor here at the school was away the very weekend we were all arriving), Tony and Mario were our saviors.  Though they forced us to speak in Portuguese most of the time we were with them, they brought us out to dinner to a restaurant called “Dom Pedro’s.”  It was absolutely empty inside, but the two waiters were so happy to see us that we received the best service I’ve ever seen.  We ate there again on Sunday night.  I think Amy, Tatiana, and I have a “place.”  We’re already planning on going there for my birthday.  Cinco estrelas para Dom Pedro’s!

The next day (Saturday), we three decided to explore the city.  We went to a Universidade Velha, which is the oldest part of the school (as the name suggests).  When I visited with my family in 2008, this was my favorite place because of the library, which seriously resembles the Beauty and the Beast library.  But we found out that the ticket required to see the library and the other really neat sites at the Universidade Velha was half as expensive if you show them your student ID card, so we are going to go back when we have those.  We also went to the Botanical Gardens (o Jardim Botanico), which were beautiful and will be even better come Spring.  After the Gardens, we walked down the hill and ended up in the far East of the city and had to make our way all the way back near the center.  We found our way to Mondego Park, where a small row of restaurants overlook the river.  The cheapest was the “Irish Pub,” which plays music alternating between traditional Irish folk music and contemporary Irish musicians like U2.  Unfortunately the service was terrible: the first hour we sat waiting for a menu, and the second hour we sat waiting for the check.  Coimbra is giving Ireland a bad name.

After the longest lunch ever, walked Tatiana to her father’s hotel, and then Amy and I tried taking the bus back to our dorm and succeeded more or less (we got off two stops before we should have, but we got back just fine).  Later, Tatiana, her father, Mario, and their friend Helder (also Portuguese) picked us up for dinner.  We ended up eating right next door to the Irish Pub (awkward) in a restaurant called A Portuguesa (to see the busty mascot, you can probably just go to their website aportuguesa.pt).  It was much more expensive than Dom Pedro or the Irish Pub, so I felt bad when the men again got the check.  However, I did get to not only talk about Brown with Helder, who lived in Pawtucket when he came to America, but also got to try “peixe do sal,” which was delicious.  Basically, it is an entire fish cooked under five pounds of salt.  It sounds disgusting and completely unhealthy, but it is entirely the opposite.  The salt acts as a sort of buffer, and the fish cooks inside its own juices.  He let us all try some and I loved it.  Apparently it is a specialty in Nazare, so I hope I can order some when it gets warm enough for the beach.

That night, Amy, Tatiana and I decided to explore the dorm and figure out where the laundry rooms and such were, and ended up with a very fun and useful friend.  He is Nasif from Bangledesh, and he is working for his Masters degree in Polo II, another Coimbra building on the other side of the city (which makes his living in Polo III very inconvienent).  He spoke very good English but was excited to meet native speakers, so we sat down with him and spoke with him for a very long time about subjects ranging from religion to school to clubs in Coimbra.  Because we still had no information from the school and no Internet, he let us know a few tidbits about the bus route and such.  Hopefully we get to hang out with him again.  He was very funny and, despite having a propensity for saying “bus stoppages,” he cursed in English very well.

Praça da República

The next day, the very first thing we did was go down to the McDonalds at the Praça da República and use the wifi.  Neither Tatiana, Amy, nor myself had been on the Internet for days.  I wasn’t on long enough to write and post anything.  Notifications, messages, and emails tend to pile up when you don’t take care of them properly.  Then we met up with Tony and Mario and went to a shopping center (called Coimbra Shopping), got phones and room basics, then returned to the city and explored the northwestern area, found the Coimbra A train station, and sat at a café and had tea, coffee, and pastries.  We go to cafés quite a lot, and now I understand why Europeans are deemed stereotypically lazy.  But they just like their coffee!  Mario was so funny that day.  Apparently his girlfriend is a high school teacher, and one of her students, Jorge, is a young doctor in Coimbra.  He had been trying to set up Tatiana, but he set his sights on me.  He told me that Jorge was a “gatao,” a very attractive man, and that we should call him up as he was in the city.  I now refer to Jorge as meu marido futuro and meu amor da vida, and whenever we see a particularly strange or awkward young man, we pretend we have found him.  I wonder if we will ever meet this infamous Jorge while we are studying here.

As I mentioned earlier, we ended up going to Dom Pedro’s again for dinner.  The waiters were so happy to see us again that they kept giving us things after we had paid for our meal, like free almond liqueur, matches, and every number they could possibly have.  I even signed up for their Internet mailing list.  I have a feeling that I might be the only one receiving their specials.

Unfortunately that was Mario and Tony’s last night in Coimbra, which was sad.  I hated to see them go.  They were so nice and fun and such a help!  I hope we can visit with Mario when we go to Lisbon.  Tomorrow we meet with Ana Paula Arnaut, our completely absent advisor, at 9:30 in the morning.  Hopefully it will be a good start to a good week.