Saudades

Things have finally slowed down just enough to catch my breath, and to begin having saudades. This is a particularly Portuguese language concept, sort of like nostalgia, and melancholy and missing someone or something, but at the same time a sort of a sweet tug, something to be cultivated. I was only to cry myself to sleep, lulled by the soft music and the inescapability of everything that I have loved and left behind, or perhaps from sheer exhaustion.

The coimbra fado that we went to hear the other night couldn´t do what a few neatly plucked cords and familiar voices could. In fact, Coimbrian fado, while beautiful, and in its instrumental form quite similar to Spanish guitar, is too intellectual. Only sung by men, still a privilege of academic riguer, and male privilege here in the heart of the oldest university city of Portugal. It was fun though, to go out with a large group of friends from such distant points on the earth as Tokyo, Extremadura, Berlin, Minnesota, Amsterdam, Korea and Paris, all communicating in varying mixtures of Portuguese with other languages. The restaurant was a converted Chapel, and afterwards, there was a misty damp silence that hung over the city, lights twinkling off the rust-orange roofs.

Juli and I went down to the river to see our friends at the provisional Biergarten (now closed post-mundial) for a few free beers and some company, and then back up at the crack of dawn to go on an academic excursion from hell. Cheyla had warned that they were lame, but damn insistent me wanted empirical evidence of the like, and was supplied with more than enough. I think the last time I was subject to so many hours on a bus for the sole purpose of driving by tourist attractions without stopping for more than 15 minutes for pee and shopping breaks was on the way to Ocho Ríos in Jamaica when I was 9. Do the math. Or don´t. I hope it is another several decades before I am lulled into the belief that a tour bus full of people with several stops will mean something other than cramped conditions and overpriced lunch.

Granted, we had fun, but in the way that you do when you are on a field trip in middle school and the fun is the bus itself. We were supposed to the Serra da estrela national park, but spent less than 15 minutes within its borders looking at a man-made lake and its accompanying dam (the Portuguese love their barragens). I was envisioning a hike among the rocky outcroppings, but alas it was not to be, instead we drove 5 hours to see a museum at the University of Beira Interior on none other than Wool. I could now tell you all far more than anyone should be subject to knowing about the fabrication of woolen products at this in situ factory museum... The only really interesting thing was that they used cochenilha (cochinilla) from Mexico as one of their color sources which, I think, is the self same bright red color obtained from nopal cactus parasites that was used to color the spectacular Teotihuacan murals.

Then another 4 hour drive back.

Juli invited me back to her house for a shower with actual hot water (we have been having boiler issues at our house) and her luxuriant body products (from Rituals, the store she works at in Amsterdam) and then to the game to see the girls. It was packed, for Portugale, and though Ricardo committed at least one «frango»-missing an easy ball between his arms, and hence upholding in the eyes of some, his epithet of «frangueiro» (newly learned slang, sorry, had to write it somewhere)- at least they got one goal in edgewise to muster some sort of a dignified exit. Daniel, and his other friends, attentive beyond all realms of normalcy (mostly because he wanted to see what would happen with him and Juli, but partly because there is a sort of code of gentlemanliness uncommon in our parts) and they actually procured chairs for me and Juli because we were standing even though there were over a hundred people there before us, all standing in the dust and straining to see the screen. Ah well. After the game we sat around and drank whiskey and coke and watched the last of the firework festival before all being convinced (along with Kristina and Sarah) to stay out (despite our decidedly un-out-going attire) and check out a local club on the other side of the river.

What have I learned? That I am far too old to stay out dancing all night. The dancing was great, if hot and crowded, we stumbled out all around 6:30 to a greyish sky . Portuguese people (and here I am going to make a crude generalization about an entire nation based on only several hour´s experience) are not particularly good dancers. I don´t know what I expected, and god knows I am no specialist, but people all sort of bunched together in a big knot and moved, not altogether arythmically, shifting from one foot to the other and moving their arms but not much else. We were shot dirty looks for taking up more than our allotted space or perhaps for gyrating too vehemntly, or maybe even for grinding (Daniel said that girls here don´t dance that way). The bouncers, however, get high marks for whisking away obnoxiously drunk men trying to rub up against unsuspecting backsides while unbuttoning shirts in lude excess.

I could not, however, sleep until I had done the handwashing of the tobacco permeated dress and undergarments and taken a cold (not by choice, but rather nice nonetheless) shower. By noon Kristina and I were up, and our day consisted of a compensatory behavior. Ok, that´s a lie to hide our ultimate dorkdom. We found an Adega típica and spent three hours over a breakfast of really great house wine, fish croquets, beans with a vegetable called couve (which is grown and used in abundance but as of yet, untranslateable - sort of like acelgas or swiss chard, I think). Of course we felt obliged to eat the chocolate mousse that came included, I mean, it would have gone to waste if we hadn´t, right? Then, our one big accomplishment of the day was finding a real bookstore. Yes, big, bright, black and white with foreign and national language titles, art books and novels. So what if I spent about half of what my housing for the month cost on books... (I feel the need to justify the purchase of books, something must be wrong). What I did not find, however, were guidebooks for Portugal in Portuguese... and I even looked through the whole entire section.

Before we left the house for the final, our senhoura de casa accosted us once more with bolo, or the Portuguese version of cake. We have come to the conclusion that this is the one way that she knows how to show concern. The park was desert for the final cup match, once Portugal was out, it seems, there was no more interest, save for a few highly obnoxious French tourists (who preceeded to try and have a drunken conversation with us after the game about how American tourists always go to France to drink because the legal age in the states is 21) and a pack of only slightly rowdy Italian families. Morning came far too early today, but I am looking to my class on Portuguese cinema, so I best go home for a nap before then, or else I´ll be crying myself to sleep again tonight.