Twitterpating

Not having been raised in a city
they still give me pause,
a sense of prudish irritation:
A flurry of fluttering feathers
then soft whispery sighs and insistent cooing moans.
Pigeons fornicating on my balcony.

Lisbon, June 1 +2

The day of arrival was about getting bearings, finding the hotel we had booked, etc. Lisbon has an admirable public transport system with an Aerobus, a bus that makes a direct route from the outskirting airport to the center of town, with a few stops at major points along the way. As it turned out, we lucked out on hotel location -- it was right across the street from the Campo Pequeno, the bullfighting arena, and thus easy to find and with easy access to public transport. Hemmingway-induced curiousity battled with my animal rights/vegetarian mindset, but the habit of 13 years won out, and the Campo Pequeno did not get a closer look.



After perusing the hotel, we bussed downtown, intending to go to the Praco de Comercio, a main square on the Tejo River. The bus system quickly presented a major failing, however -- once on a bus, there is no indication of route whatsoever and a passenger has to push a button to indicate a desire to get off at the next stop. That there was an established route I had no doubt, but how to know where we were and where to get off? It turned out the free city map I had picked up at the airport handily showed a map of hte metro system and indicated metro stops on the map itself, but bus routes and stops were not indicated. Deeply embroiled in comparing the streets the bus navigated with those on the map, I was pleasantly surprised when the smartly dressed woman across the way asked in perfect English if she could help. It was the first of many times that the Portuguese proved themselves to be a friendly and helpful people, which came as a slight surprise as some Austrian friends had warned us that the Portuguese were "komisch" (strange).

It turned out we disembarked at the same stop as our good samaritan, who also indicated the direction to the Praca de Comercia before she elegantly clacked away in her pale green suit and heels, showing a blatant disregard for traffic as she crossed the street on her own whim, a trait obviously shared by all residents of Lisbon. Whereas we tourists maneuvered our way to crosswalks and waited patiently for the signal to cross, natives, it seemed, couldn't be bothered, even by the indignant horn-blowing of the traffic forced to brake for them.

The Praca de Comercio was decked out with a special display, a "Tree Parade" of model trees painstakingly and lovingly decorated by school classes to raise awareness of deforestation and global warming and other environmental issues.



The imposing arch of Augustus leads into the Chiado, a carefully laid-out grid of streets that comprise Lisbon's main commercial district. It is an area of bustling activity, and a somewhat chaotic blend of tourist traps and chain stores like H&M frequented by locals. Vendors hawk canvases of painted cityscapes, handbags, scarves, jewellry, and only slightly more subtly, illicit substances. The first time we were approached by an average-seeming guy proferring "ganja" in broad daylight it was somewhat of a shock, but by the fifth time or so, it receded into the backdrop of commercial banter.

In the evening there was a stoll along the Tejo River and dinner at a slightly overpriced cervejaria, where I enjoyed a plate of decent shrimp cocktail and a delicious house-brewed dark beer. The chilly breeze and travel-induced exhaustion made for an early night.

For day two an excursion to the Moorish-influenced Alfama neighborhood and a hike up to the hilltop fortress Castelo de Sao Jorge were planned. The trek up to the Castello wound its way through the quaint narrow alleys of Alfama, characterized by tile-covered buildings and criss-crossed by lines of laundry drying in the sun.





The Castelo itself was a marvel of old stone masonry, offering dizzying views of the city from its terraced gardens and multiple towers, though a disappointing lack of battery charge in my camera limited the photo opportunities. The castle also boasted a seemingly complete lack of busybodies to herd and babysit tourists. Visitors were allowed to clamber all over the Castelo, up and down narrow, crumbling stone stairways without handrails and along lofty passageways whose sidewalls only reached a height of mid-calf. I could only imagine the potential lawsuits were it located in the good-old USA, but apparently Portugal still exists in a state of blissful non-litigiousness.


The relentless beaming of the sun and the apparent discrepencies between my guide book maps and the actual layout of Alfama lead to a late-afernoon fatigue that almost had us packing it in before catching a glimpse of another famous Alsama sight, the Casa dos Bicos, a building with an unusual facade of pointy stones. It looked like jagged teeth of weathered concrete.


On the way home we planned a stop at a festival we had seen in the city's largest downtown park -- a festival whose purpose and contents we were ignorant of until we arrived and I actually read and assimilated the words emblazoned on dozens of bright pink banners: Fiesta de Livre. A book fair. A HUGE book fair, with booths 2 or three deep lining the sidewalk the entire length of the park. We walked the whole circuit, me flitting hopefully from booth to booth of icredibly reasonably priced books, but after an hour or so of dedicated searching, I came to the reluctant conclusion that there was not a single book I wanted. They were, for the most part, in Portuguese, a language of which my knowledge is depressingly low, but I wasn't entirely letting that stop me -- I hoped to find a book that would be the more interesting for being in a language I can't read, for example, a book of knitting patterns. But no such luck. This will go down in history as a very sad day -- surrounded by hundreds of thousands of books, I left empty-handed.


We hungrily searched the neighborhood of our hotel for an eatery, finding a disappointing lack of sustenance. Finally we came across a restaurant that advertised take-out in its window, a compelling draw after a long day afoot, bringing to mind an image of a lazy dinner in bed. Once entered, however, the restaurant's ability to provide take-out seemed diminished as there didn't seem to be anything pre-prepared, like sandwhich ingredients or the like. It turned out to specialize in grilled entrees and was some kind of Portuguese chain. The staff were friendly and laughed a lot as they attempted to explain the all-Portuguese menu in borderline passable English. They convinced us of what we wanted to order and ushered us upstairs where there was a big-screen TV broadcasting the Portugal-Belguim soccer game. We happily watched away over caparinhas, (which, due to the Brazil connection, were fabulous), the staff finding excuses to hang around upstairs and chat with us while eyeing the game. Happily, Portugal won, and the food was delicious -- and the manager of the place insisted on giving us a plate of some kind of grilled beef for free, which T summarily enjoyed.

Lisbon, June 1-6

The city is endowed with an undefinable uniqueness -- not-quite-Spanish, not-quite-Mediterranean -- Old World charm lagging behind the earlier democratized Western European powers. The sun casts an atmosphere of sluggish haziness, lends a golden cast to the cerulean swathes of sky and the Tejo River.


Grand Renaissance architecture glitters with embellishments of hand-painted Moorish tiles. This type of thoughtfully-created beauty often seems thoughtlessly disregarded, a taken-for-granted part of the backdrop, painstakingly designed tiles flaking their enamel and losing themselves behind layers of pasted paper posters. They wait to be discovered by eager, awed tourists exclaiming over the multitude of patterns and colors to be found.






Lisbon is not a place to be in a hurry. Umbrellaed sidewalk cafes offer a refuge for lingering over coffees and pasteis de nata, thick custard pastries. The lethargy-inducing heat dictates a relaxed attitude toward commerce, stores seeming to keep their own hours, opening late in the morning.



With gentle persistence, the atmosphere entwines and ensnares the visitor, beckoning like a sultry, languid seductress, "Come stay awhile..."

You call this a soccer riot?!

The view from my balcony at about 5 p.m. yesterday was somewhat shocking: a van full of police donning riot gear, just outside my front door.

Apparently, the evening's usual local soccer game was to be a bit unusual. I'm still not entirely sure which teams were actually playing, though one was certainly the second-string players for Graz's beloved SK Sturm. They play here pretty frequently, though the real, first-string team plays at a much more grandiose stadium. The opposition wore blue, and they had a very adamant cheering section of about two-dozen young men who, starting an hour before the game, kept up a constant not-so-dull roar of cheering, jeering, chanting, singing and setting off firecrackers in the stands. The riot police took the liberty of front-row seats for the action.


Needless to say, the home team won the game, which left the boys in blue to seek creative ways to vent their frustration... tearing down a metal barricade seperating their section of the stands from that of the home crowd.




I really couldn't believe my eyes as I watched the cops go after the fans with their billy clubs. They even knocked down two guys and later dragged them out of the stands in handcuffs.



On the other side of the stadium. a line of riot cops stood gaurd to prevent the home team fans from rushing the field.

The fans didn't take well to this -- they threw rocks.

They also fgured out how to turn on the sprinklers, but I missed the photo opp because a security guard with a German shepherd in tow was quick to rush over and put a stop to it.

The chaos lasted for an hour or so after the game had ended, with the fans continuously trying to find a way around the cops to go at each other's throats. It's all part of European soccer culture, but to me it is baffling. This is the first time I have seen this type of violence and police brutality in person. Usually it's just the stuff of Fox News reports, not happening in my backyard. I don't understand how otherwise mild-mannered Austrians get so riled up about soccer that they turn to violence, but it is a well-known fact that after every real SK Sturm game there is a fight somewhere in Graz -- the fans arrange a post-game meeting point in advance so they can go at each other without police interference. This event was minor compared to what goes on in conjunction with a real, professional game, but to me it was still shocking and thrilling in a voyeuristic way. I was only too glad that I was viewing it from the safety of my balcony, though, rather than in the thick of things. It didn't seem like any "innocents" were involved in any skirmishes, but i still wouldn't have wanted to be down there.