Lisbon

I’m in Lisbon, Portugal now. I arrived at 8am local time, after taking the overnight train from Madrid. Lisbon seems nice, but more faded and poor than I thought it would be.

I went to a museum on the recommendation of someone in the hostel – great for three reasons. Firstly, being Sunday, it’s free entry. Secondly, there was a free concert that had just started. It was a group of about 9 performers with 2 singers, 2 recorder players (one of whom double on baroque oboe), a bass player (who also played a cello-type instrument, a bass viol…or something…), a percussionist, a violinist, and two guitar type thingys. One played a lute and a sitar looking thing and the other played little guitary things. If you want proper definitions of these, go ask a music teacher. I haven’t a clue. But they were amazing. They played a bizarre combination of Portuguese/Brazilian/Cuban/Baroque music, which was just wonderful. There was a huge crowd there too, from toddlers to oldies. And third - they had a whole bunch of Rodin sculptures!!

I’m staying in Lisbon for a couple of days, then travelling to Paris via overnight train, to London for a night, then off to Amsterdam to stay with a friend. Apparently on my first night there we’re going to some musicy event at a Greek restaurant. Will keep you posted…

Before I go (and hopefully you haven’t gotten totally bored yet…) here’s one final thought:

What’s weird about being in countries where you don’t speak the language (well, for me anyway), is that any little scrap of information that you’ve ever heard about a place suddenly comes to the forefront of your mind. In France, I constantly had “Faux du fafa” by Flight of the Conchords going round my head (see above) and in Spain, it’s been little bits I’ve remembered from Sesame Street (gracias Maria y Luis) and one line in the song “Pretty Fly For A White Guy” by The Offspring where they count to 6 in Spanish. So I can now count to 6 in Spanish really easily, then after that…

However, I have discovered that you can get by knowing how to say “hello”, “goodbye”, “yes”, “no”, “please”, “thank you”, “can you speak English?” and “I can’t speak [inset language here]”. That is the extent of my Spanish. My Portuguese is limited to “hello”, “goodbye” “yes”, “no”. My French is considerably better than that. In French I can also ask for a ticket, and buy food (thank you FOTC). My German is better than all of these. I don’t know if I’ll be able to have a conversation in German, but I do know a lot more. Remember: LEARN A LANGUAGE. Doesn’t matter which one. Just learn it. Believe me, no matter what you think, you WILL travel one day, and actually being able to actually ask for a chicken sandwich is SO much better than any kind of sign language you can invent. Trust me – I speak from experience.