Grapa revisited

Date: Apr 7, 2010

When I checked my email at 2 a.m. (can you say Jet Lag?) there was an email from my friend and travel client from Norway who asked if I was talking about “Grappa?” with two p’s. He’d run into the stuff in Italy once, and just hearing about it made him queasy all over again. I told him after a few drinks, I couldn’t even pronounce it, much less spell it. I found out it is indeed Italian in name, and that here in Portugal they call it Agua Ardente, which translates to “Burning Water.” So my description of it as firewater was not far off. Carol looked it up in her Portuguese dictionary and found it defined as Cognac. Well, we’re not talking about any cognac I’ve ever tried, and if it’s VSOP, then it stands for Very old, strong poison.

It’s a great time to be here in Portugal. The mornings are bright and crisp. I leave the hotel in a short-sleeved polo and Carol has her fleece jacket. I’m chilled and she’s toasty warm. By noon I’ve warmed up and she’s got her fleece wrapped around her waist. So pick your poison. No, wait. I’ve covered that already. It was about 22 C, or 75 F today. Southern Washington hasn’t seen 75 since the end of summer last year. Of course, I was confined inside for two months, but It remains my position that it’s been damn cold there.

The wisteria is in full bloom, and provides the patios with that wonderful lavender color as well as providing shade and a modicum of privacy to the patios which are overlooked by all the overviews of the city on the various hills. Orange blossoms fill the air with their sweet, aromatic bouquet, The loquats are ripening. Carol is amazed at how large they are here, the biggest she has ever seen. They are larger than our Santa Rosa Plums in California. The lantana hugs the ground and provides white and purple contrast to each other. It’s Spring in Portugal, folks.

The streets are crowded with tourists. Not Bergen in July crowded, but still there are lots of visitors. Seems like people know about this. We just hit it right, not by being smart, but because my wife didn’t want to miss the summer growing season at home, short though it may be.

I mentioned the hills and it is indeed like a Mediterranean version of the hills of Bergen, with little alleyways and pedestrian streets which seemingly lead nowhere but, in fact, keep going and eventually open up to a major street. The neighborhoods are so closely packed with such narrow access, that they had a fire in one house on one street in 1988, and because they couldn’t get any fire fighting equipment in, a whole section of the city burned down.

Lisbon is such an old city and many of the sections are in a very distinct stage of decay. I go back and forth with whether it’s old world charm, or city blight. Plaster falls from the outside walls, exposing the bricks and mortar of the building, old doors are rotting from the acid rain, and the red tile roofs are patched with a makeshift mixture to keep the weather out while the people are in.The azulejos, blue tiles, show the wear of being exposed for the centuries they’ve been attached to the buildings. They are cracked or missing and very faded. However, throughout the city there are home cement mixers whirring and the sounds of workers resonate from within the walls, so you know things are in a state of repair. I’ve never had the sense of abject poverty and the people seem well dressed and well fed.

They love their coffee and pastries are a national passion. On any given street there are Pastelarias and they are frequented by all throughout the day. Busy corners have kiosks where in two minutes while waiting for the bus, you can get your fix of both and never miss a beat, much less the bus. The Portuguese drink their espresso VERY sweet. The cups are small and they always bring two LARGE packets of sugar. I only use one in my café com leit, coffee with milk, and it’s still very sweet. My neighbor and friend from Nicaragua would be right at home here. He could drink it as sweet as he likes with out the jerk from down the street harassing him.

I’m a little surprised at what I would call a lack of fashion. I expected much more traditional/formal dress. This morning while waiting for the metro I scanned the platform across the tracks and there was only one woman with a dress/skirt. Everybody else had jeans or slacks. Now, maybe it’s just because I’m such a unobservant old fart, and jeans really pass for haute couture these days. There are more men in suits and ties, but still it has the feel of a more relaxed dress code than I expected.

A change for Carol, since forty years ago, is the number of black people in the city. Portugal had many African colonies and that would account for the large influx of immigrants, but that hadn’t happened yet when she was last here in the mid 60’s. I haven’t been able to talk to anybody about it yet, but there are numerous spray-painted messages of: “Nazis, go home,” for me to think there is some kind of backlash taking place. It’s been my observation that in many European countries that raped and pillaged their colonies for centuries don’t feel any obligation to open up their land to immigrants. Certainly, that was the case in parts of Scandinavia as we discovered last year. It’s interesting to me as an American to see countries trying to come to grips with the issue as we had to half a century ago.

Tomorrow it’s to the north. It will take us three days to go the 120 miles to Oporto. We’ve thoroughly enjoyed Lisbon. It’s such a treasure, rich in culture and full of warm, friendly people. We’re buoyed by the fact that we’ll have a couple more days here at the end of our trip. It all seems too short right at the moment.

We hope that all is well at home, and we send our love to all who receive these attempts to explain what we see.

C and J