17: Leiria and My Wonderful Family

As I'm sure you know, I'm back in the United States already.  I still had two more posts planned for this blog, but unfortunately after my previous post my schedule got rather hectic:

First, there was exam period, where I suddenly had quite a lot to review and study and a 10-page paper to write on the book "Eurico, o Presbítero" and how it reflected Portuguese Liberalism during the 19th Century.

Second, there was the very short period of time after exams that was dedicated solely to packing and saying goodbye to the amazing people I met while abroad.

Third, there was the few days I had at home when I finally got back to the United States, which were filled with unpacking for Portugal, seeing friends, and repacking for New York City!

And now, for the past two weeks, I have been running around the island of Manhattan for my internship with an off-Broadway production company AF Productions, which is currently producing "The Magdalene: A Musical" at Theater at St. Clement's this summer (shameless plug, I know).

Though through all of this business I have literally thought about closing up this blog every day.  But such work requires two blog posts, I believe, and so I will start the first one now with my travels with my family at the end of my semester:

So to say that I was nervous to encounter my family is a grave understatement.  I was absolutely petrified to see them, though not because they are in any way unpleasant but because I did not want to make a fool of myself with my terrible Portuguese.  I'm sure you all remember my first meeting with my cousin, which left me completely disheartened about any sort of language skill I formerly thought I possessed... and now it was time to confront these insecurities again.

The first meeting was only a day trip to Leiria that I mentioned in my Queima das Fitas post.  Amy and I took a bus on Saturday morning and met with my tia (aunt) Arminda and tio (uncle) Joaquim.  Tio Joaquim is my grandfather's brother, and they recently moved back to Portugal after moving to the States in the 1970s.  Tia Arminda might be the only one of my great-aunts and -uncles, either in Portugal or the United States, who speaks English very well, so I figured that if my Portuguese completely failed, at least I would be able to get by speaking with her in English.  That being said, I was still completely terrified.

Tia met us at the station and started speaking to us in English right when we got off the bus.  I felt relieved but also a little embarrassed.  Did she assume that we wouldn't be able to speak to her in Portuguese?  After introducing Amy, she walked us around downtown Leiria a little bit and then brought us into Zara, which is like a much nicer European H&M.  Out of nowhere, Tia told me and Amy that she would get us something from the store as a thank you for having come to visit her.

How could I have been scared of coming to visit my family?  This was only the first of so many moments of kindness and generosity.

It was a surprise, after we finished at Zara, to find out that we were meeting my Tio Artur (my grandfather's youngest brother) and his wife Tia Gabbie for lunch as well.  When we arrived at the restaurant, the Portuguese began... and it was completely fine!  I understand the vast majority of what they were saying, and with Tia Arminda sitting across the table from me, it was easy to clarify a sentence or ask for vocabulary.  In true Portuguese fashion, my family fed me as if I were supposed to have the appetite of three teenage boys.  By the time we left the restaurant, I had eaten soup, duck, potatoes, vegetables, a bowl of fruit, and more bread than you can imagine.  And this was with my refusing quite a lot more.

For reference

After lunch, we wandered around the city of Leiria, which is about halfway between Coimbra and Lisbon.  The county of Leiria is actually where most of my family is from.  My cousin and her family still live in the little town where my mother lived before emigrating.  It really is a tiny little place, and when I underwent my language placement test at the beginning of the semester, the professora told me that she in fact knew Tojal and told me it that it was no wonder my family left as the town of Tojal was a miserable place to live.  What a very pleasant woman.

Inside Sé Leiria

We stopped at a cafe, where the tios and tias had café and Amy and I drank galões (thrust upon us of course, as we were still too full to move properly).  We then hiked up the hill, passing Sé Leiria, a beautiful catedral, on the way to the Castelo de Leiria, the ruins of a 12th Century castle that was partially reconstructed in the 1970s.  Tia Gabbie even bought me a book about this castle after hearing about my interest in medieval history and ruins.  She stayed behind at the entrance though, as there was quite a lot of difficult climbing in and around the castle.  We rambled over the rocks and through the little passageways.  From the top of the towers you could see a magnificent view of the city of Leiria, both old and new.  I definitely fell in love with that little city while I was there.  As much as I love Coimbra and Lisbon, Leiria is the birthplace of my family and I was proud to be from a region with so much beauty and history (more on this later).   Tia Arminda told me that she was happy to come up here again: she hadn't visited the castle for more than thirty years.

View from Castelo de Leiria

Pastéis de Leiria

After the castle, we visited a cute little museum that was dedicated to visual movement.  Along with quite a lot of old cameras and video equipment, they had a really neat display of optical illusions.  My tios and tias seemed to enjoy that exhibit a lot.  After the museum, we traveled back downhill and stopped in another cafe, where my aunts and uncles bought us Leiria's famous pastries.  It seems as though all cities in Portugal have some sort of "special dessert," though they are all some variant of egg, flour, and sugar.  These were pretty good, and seeing as Amy and I enjoyed them, my family made us eat three before we left.

Tia Arminda, Tio Joaquim, myself, Tio Artur, and Tia Gabbie

After the pastries, we hopped into Tio Artur's car and drove over to a church on the edge of the city.  I can't remember its name (alas, what happens when I wait too long to blog) but it had a special legend about the numerous steps that led up to to the church.  There the tios and tias showed me the new hospital, which they had spoken about several times throughout the day already, and another great view of the city.  There we took pictures together and then hopped back into the car.  They wanted to show me Batalha.

Amy and I outside o Mosteiro

Pastéis de Batalha

I had visited Batalha when my family came to visit Portugal in 2008, but I was excited to go back.  The monastery there was definitely one of my favorite places in Portugal.  Unfortunately by the time we arrived, the Mosteiro de Batalha was closed to visitors, so we (in true Portuguese fashion) found a cafe, sat down, and had yet more coffee.  My aunts and uncles ordered Amy and I the special pastries of Batalha, of which I do not have fond memories.  Whether it was the amount of food and pastry I had already consumed that day or the strange texture of the pastry that made my entire body want to reject those pastries from Batalha I do not know, but I struggled to get those down and I think Tia Arminda noticed.  By that time, Amy and I were both slipping with our Portuguese.  We hadn't spoken English since before lunch, and our brains were exhausted.  Of course, Tio Artur's son Ricardo, with his wife Inês and son Tómas, who was just as tired as we were, came to meet us.  I had never met them before, as they weren't available when we visited years before, but they were very nice and their son might have been the cutest little boy I have ever seen.  But I'm afraid my language skills probably didn't impress them too much.  Exhausted and all Portuguese-ed out, Amy and I didn't have much to say after they arrived.  It didn't help that the conversation changed to real estate and economy either.  Soon it was time for Amy and I to get back to Leiria to catch our bus back home, so we all left the cafe, scrambled into the car once again, and jetted back to the station.  It was good that we did too, as the bus that we thought left at 8:30 actually left at 8:15, and we were just able to grab our bags and jump on the bus before it left.  My aunts and uncles lined the street and waved as our bus pulled out.

It was a fantastic day, and I was happy to be able to see them the next weekend as well.

I took a bus that next Friday afternoon to Leiria, though this time a few things had changed: 1) Tatiana was accompanying me this time, 2) I was set to be in Leiria for the entire weekend, and 3) I was not only visiting with Tia Arminda and Tio Joaquim, but I was also going to visit my cousin and her family from Saturday night to Sunday afternoon.  The butterflies returned, but I remembered my day in Leiria all too well and was much more excited than I had been before.

My pile of shrimp shells

When we arrived in Leiria on Friday, Tia Arminda and Tio Joaquim were waiting with Tio Artur and Tia Gabbie.  They were excited to bring Tatiana and I to some sort of seafood restaurant outside of Leira that Tio Artur loved, but when we arrived, it was sadly closed.  So we continued driving south and ended up in Nazaré, a fantastic beach town that I had visited previously.  Nazaré is divided, with part of it on the top of a high cliff, and the rest sprawled out down the hill and around the beach.  We went to a great restaurant on the higher area of Nazaré, where Tio Joaquim taught Tatiana and I how to shell shrimp both with our hands and with utensils, and Tio Artur told a very racist joke about Chinese food.  After dinner, we strolled over to the edge of the top part of the town, where we could see the beach and the rest of Nazaré at night.

Back in the car, Tio Artur drove us to the lower part of town, where he and Tia Gabbie had an apartment.  We stopped at their place, took a tour, and left with two large bags of chocolate.  Their apartment building is right on the main stretch of beach, so we walked down along the board walk for a little bit.  It was starting to get late and Tatiana and I were already pretty tired, but we still several other places to visit before we were able to sleep.  We drove back to Leiria, where we stopped at Tio Artur and Tia Gabbie's house there and took another tour and received a cake.  Then they drove us back to the bus station, from which Tio Joaquim and Tia Arminda drove us to their house outside of the city.  Somehow we were dead tired but my aunt and uncle were wide awake.  We passed some sort of fair along the way and Tia Arminda seemed to be entirely genuine when she asked if we wanted to stop by.  Tatiana had fallen asleep in the car at that point, so we decided to go ahead and get home.

Now, Tia Arminda and Tio Joaquim's house is like a mansion.  It's seriously one of the nicest houses I have ever seen in my life, and it is all built with money that they earned while working in the States.  I didn't have much time to admire it again when we arrived though.  Both Tatiana and I practically passed out as soon as we finished helping Tia Arminda make our beds.  We had gone to a river beach in Coimbra beforehand, but we were too exhausted to care that we smelled like river water.

Fatima

The next morning, we showered, ate some fruit and some of Tia Gabbie's cake for breakfast, and then drove to Fatima.  For those who don't know, Fatima is probably the holiest place in Portugal.  In 1917, the Virgin Mary appeared several times to three Portuguese shepherd children.  Of course, no one believed them for a very long time and, as Tia Arminda said, they suffered quite a lot.  I won't get into the whole story of it all, but I'll link the Wikipedia article here.   Now, it is a huge sight for pilgrimages and it is safe to say that 90% of Portuguese households have at least one statue of Our Lady of Fatima somewhere in their homes.  This was my second time at Fatima, but it was still amazing.  The complex is absolutely huge, with a huge cathedral on one end opposite another more modern church.  Between is all paved with white stone, with several smooth pathways for pilgrims to crawl on their knees toward the site where Mary appeared.  She originally appeared under a tree to the three children, and the tree is still there.  However, its been moved a few feet away from its original position, where a chapel with the figure of Our Lady of Fatima now stands.  I love this place because as soon as you enter the complex, you can feel that something very special happened there.  When she appeared, Mary also gave the children three prophetic secrets that foretold the upcoming World War I, the conversion of Russia, and the attempted assassination of a future pope.  The third secret was withheld from public knowledge until Pope John Paul II was almost killed in 1981.  Now there is a statue of JPII there whose toe is already worn with the touch of thousands of people.

We went into the cathedral, which is lovely inside.  The three children are all buried next to the altar, though I don't remember Lúcia, who became a nun and died in 2005, having been buried there yet in 2008.  Tatiana and I visited the official Fatima shop, where I finally got my Portuguese Bible, and then we left the complex and wandered through the maze of gaudy religious shops before Tio Joaquim picked us up and we went to have lunch.

After lunch, Tia brought us to the Grutas de São António, these fantastic underground caves near her hometown.  We were the only ones there, so we had a great time with our tour guide (who Tia Arminda instructed to only speak in Portuguese).  The caves were absolutely gorgeous underneath, and it was a nice break from the heat.

Inside the Monastery

After the caves, we returned to Batalha again.  This time, we were able to visit the inside of the church and monastery.  I didn't know previously, but my grandmother both went to school and was married there.  We visited the church, where King João I, Queen Phillipa of Lancaster, and their (kinda famous son) D. Henrique and his siblings are buried, then went into the cloisters, where we witnessed the changing of the guard ceremony at Portugal's own Unknown Soldier grave site and visited a small museum about the Unknown Soldier site.  We then passed behind the monastery to visit the unfinished chapels, where the touching grave of D. Duarte and his wife are forever holding hands.

Grave of D. Henrique (Henry the Navigator)

The Cloisters

Anyone remember "Timeline" when they see this?

With our Galo necklaces

After our visit, we met up with Tio Joaquim and Tia Gabbie again.  I had noticed a few people in the monastery dressed in period clothing before, but it was only when I got back outside that I realized that Batalha was hosting a Medieval Faire that weekend.  We wandered around the booths and watched a few musical performances.  One of my grandfather's old friends runs a souvenir shop near the monastery and gave me a little pendant of the Galo de Barcelos for free, which was so nice of him.  Tia Gabbie then bought me a chain and since then I continue to wear my Galo every chance I get!

Musicians at the Medieval Faire

My time with my aunts and uncles was drawing to a close, however.  We dropped Tatiana off at the bus station and then headed to Tojal, where my cousin (recently back from Hungary) and the rest of her family was waiting for me.  We arrived a little late to dinner, which only made me a little more anxious about the coming day-and-a-half.  But after saying goodbye to Tia Arminda and Tio Joaquim, I joined my other family for dinner.  At the table were my two cousins, Joana and Ana Rita (who acted as my translator throughout dinner) and Joana's boyfriend Tiago.  Then there was my uncle and my Aunt Maria do Carmo, who is my mother's cousin.  Her parents were also there: my great-aunt, or my grandmother's sister, and my great-uncle, or my grandfather's cousin.  Very confusing stuff, right there.

Speaking with this side of the family was much more difficult than speaking with my other tios and tias.  Perhaps it was because they had a stronger accent, but I found it very difficult to understand very much of what they were saying.  I had special trouble with my great-uncle, whose accent was impossible for me to decipher.  But my aunt Maria do Carmo was so nice and was very concerned that I like everything she had made for dinner (which, of course, I did. It was delicious!).  After ice cream, Ana Rita had to leave for a late shift at the club at which she worked, and I found out that Joana and Tiago were going to bring me out that night and visit the club.  Once I was just with them, though, I felt much more comfortable.  Tiago was playing The Killers (his favorite band) as he drove us back to Leiria and was very pleased that I was a fan.  We visited a Middle Eastern-themed tea shop which specialized in a whole bunch of flavored teas before heading over to Ana Rita's club.  It was pretty early so it wasn't very crowded.  We didn't stay too long either: Joana and Tiago had gone to the beach early that morning, so everyone was pretty tired.  Tiago dropped us off at Joana's house for the night.

Joana and I at Nazaré

The next morning was gratefully lazy.  We got up and hung around the house for a little bit.  I ate breakfast with Joana while my aunt continued making lunch.  I watched a little TV, got on the computer.  Ana Rita, who had obviously worked very late, got up just in time for lunch.  Tia Maria do Carmo had made chicken AND bacalhau for lunch, as she wasn't sure if I liked bacalhau or not.  After eating basically two lunches, we hung around the house a little bit with Ana Rita.  Tiago came by and we drove back to Batalha, where we explored the on-going Medieval Faire again.  After some coffee, we returned to Tojal, grabbed our beach stuff, and headed out again.  We stopped by a local assembly-type place, where Tia Maria do Carmo was already busy cooking for a party that night.  There we borrowed my uncle's car and drove to Nazaré.  It was a long drive, and by the time we got there it was already late afternoon.  We lazied around the beach for an hour or so before driving back to Tojal, changing for the party, and then heading over to the community party where I met quite a few new faces and ate dinner.  The food was delicious, of course, and after dinner my aunt and uncle told me that they would be driving me back to Coimbra themselves, as Joana was heading back as well for a summer internship.  Unfortunately Joana didn't live close to the University at all: instead, her apartment was across the river in Covões, where the hospital and medical school is located.  After dropping off her stuff, we headed back into the heart of Coimbra.  Despite my protestations, they all wanted to walk me all the way back up to my apartment.  I felt so bad, as of course my uncle wouldn't let me carry my suitcase myself.  After the long hike uphill, we said goodbye and parted ways.

Sadly I wasn't able to see my cousin after that, even though she was much closer.  Right afterward, finals began.  The next time I was able to contact her was a day or two before I had to leave, and she had work of her own that she couldn't abandon.  But I did have her and Ana Rita promise that they would visit the States as soon as they could so I could show them around MY home country.  Plus, they paid for everything when I was with them, and I need to pay them back! 

And thus ends this account.  Now THAT was a long post!