Okay, so, I've been in Portugal for well over a week and have been uninspired to write a blog post. I mean, 8 out of ten nights I've been drinking copious amounts of wine, and the other two nights? Hungover of course. That, so far has been the theme of Portugal...cheap wine, and it has kept my brain from producing the ever loquacious babble you choose to read.
Tonight I have kept my wine consumption to a minimum and am ready to tell you what has been happening in Portugal. In Porto and in Braga. In the tourist world I've been living in.
I arrived to Porto on a Friday afternoon, took an easy metro ride downtown where I was supposed to find my hostel 'just steps away from the Trindade metro stop.' Well, I took a few steps from the metro, and didn't see the hostel. I went back and tried a different direction. Fail. Repeat. Fail. Repeat. Fail. Repeat. Forty-five minutes later (with my giant backpack weighing heavily on my shoulders), I sat down and admitted to myself, 'you are not omniscient, you need to look up directions to where you are going.' After finding a tourist center to point me in the right direction I checked myself into Oporto city hostel and headed straight back out for food (of course). I have enjoyed all of the meals prepared for me along the way so far, and have enjoyed eating out for $3/meal otherwise. But, I was in a state of bliss to find a corner store lined with fresh fruits and vegetables for me to chose what I wanted to prepare. I bought fresh kale, tomatoes, garlic, onions, a mango the size of my head, and a bottle of wine for $5.
During dinner I made friends with some other travelers and we shared more wine. We then went to a tiny bar where we listened to local fado music (Portuguese guitar-y folkish music...not like flamenco) and drank more wine. Next up was a bar downtown, with more drinks (free for me as a reconciliation offer from my friends who tried to play 'guess Richelle's age' and failed miserably...the kindest guess being 30 years). I forgot how late European night life can get, but pulled myself away 'early' sometime after three. The next day I had dedicated to site seeing in Porto. The sites I saw were the different Ikea patterns of my Porto hostel bed linens. When I was able to get myself going, around dusk, I took a brief tour of the city hoping to come across the river. The lesson regarding my lack of omniscience had not stuck because I tried again to find my way without a map, and eventually had to call it a night without ever glimpsing the water.
My solo travels were over when I met with a Global Village team (some of whom I knew from Guatemala) the next morning. This trip had seventeen of us who came together to help build a Habitat home in Braga. These Global Village teams are very important to the local affiliates as they provide a powerful (although sometimes inept) work force for a week. I, however, join these builds more for the camaraderie than the making a difference side of things. And such a big team made for an exceptional and rowdy social experience. I was the youngest...there were four of us 'young professionals,' and then there was a jump to the average age of 60. The age gap was meaningless though. Happy hour every night, with a never ending flow of cheap wine, helped solidify friendships like the cement we threw at the house, and dinners were always long, loud and full of laughter.
The work we did during the week was masonry. The basic structure of the house was already up. The bricks were laid and some walls had different layers of cement on them. Our jobs were to mix cement and finish the walls inside and out. It was actually quite fun work. There was a certain 'zen' quality to cement mixing, and the next step was to throw the cement onto the wall with a trowel. You could throw mud all day! It was a blast, and then more zen finishing work as you smoothed the cement layers flat. The mason in charge was very kind and very funny. He was a perfectionist, and would always run over saying 'no, no, no!' and show you how to do the job just a little bit differently, babbling away in Portuguese (which is not close enough to Spanish for me to really understand anything). It sounds annoying, but he was very sweet. He always had a smile and always said 'thank you, thank you.'
It was an amazing week in Portugal. When we got back to Porto I finally found the river and the Port wine cellars that make Porto famous with my friends from the trip. I was sad to say goodbye to everyone I had met, but have already made a number of plans to see people again (there were six of us just from Colorado). Meeting people has by far been the best part of my trip, in every place. With little more than a month left, I look forward to even more friendships during the whirlwind end to my trip.
No comments:
Post a Comment