I don’t know why some of us are fascinated with archaeology, but I feel the urge on a biological level. I’ve gone well out of my way for every old bit of rock strewn from here to Syria and from Hadrian’s to Hannibal’s. So that’s basically the whole Roman empire… if we are not quibbling over bits of Persia which came and went between battles. I´ll get there one day if they let women drive cars, the taliban all die and the foreigners in fatigues go home. Rant over.
ancient looking landscape, tick
I don’t think it’s the same as a genealogist´s quest, but I sense these ancient peoples as though we are related. I think my curiosity has something to do with discovering the essence of lifestyle (pretentious little name for a quest, n’est-ce pas quoi?), taking notes from a time when ideas of democracy and philosophy were new and shiny, and the first time people were leisurely enough to lie under a shady olive and contemplate beauty. Just look at Roman house design (excellent examples at Conimbriga) and you get a clear shot that the Romans new how to live and had a taste for beauty. (Look at Portuguese houses by comparison – rooms without windows? Hello, are we dead yet?)
ornately tiled rooms centred on a leafy, watery, light filled centre - Romans had style
And although the class divides were enormous and lives were most often cruel and short, these great empires still set an example. Could we ever again build monuments so awesome as the Temple of Luxor or even the Parthenon, staring down on Athens as a constant reminder to how far civilisation has fallen?
Anyway, the Sepulturas of Midões are today’s subject and they are medieval graves, certainly not of Greek or Roman origin. But nonetheless intriguing and mysterious if only on a more personal scale.
brown sepulturas sign gets you to this chapel. follow the path at the far right of this pic
One of the nice things foreigners bring with them to a new country is their curiosity. And I suppose, their perspective. I was tickled when a gaggle of forum punters started gabbing about a tiny medieval site hidden away in some local scrub. It’s not in the guide books, it’s not on the internet. The local council don’t promote it. There’s just one brown sign pointing vaguely in the general vicinity and all it says is “graves”.
you´re on this path, take a left when the path divides
But you know, for us people drawn to bits of old rock, this is enough. Someone raises the question and in an instant, a team of Indiana Jones´ are on the case. I just get the feeling that archaeology, history, and grave robbing is built into human DNA. Or as Jose Franco at Remax Viana once wisely told me: the stones speak to us.
and you´ve discovered something spooky!
The Sepulturas of Midões are interesting, not just because they are old (maybe as old as 8th century or perhaps as young as 12th Century) but because they are individual and isolated. They are obviously graves, but they are not in a graveyard, and they are not adjacent to any site of worship, Christian, pre-Christian, pagan or Muslim. While variously referred to academically as Roman, after the 3rd Century AD you have to concede that the Romans had little or no influence in Portugal, and Coimbra having been controlled by Islamic Moors from the 9th Century, the idea that Christianity was holding sway, even in the countryside, is unlikely. And these graves support this idea. These appear to be private burials with no particularly religious aspect. Small family groups, or village groups, close to farms and houses. Also close to fontes, or basins and small tanks: in the midst of things, to be visited frequently.
dont miss the groovy cacti growing behind the chapel
There are a few other sites around the River Mondego of similar age where people have appeared to have been buried privately, in groups of twos or threes or fours, outside of cemeteries and away from places of worship. Somewhat uncharacteristic of Christian burials, or Islamic burials (although the Moors also built graves by carving out the rock). It seems the country folk, despite regular interruptions by marauding hordes of Vikings, Normans and Whosits were essentially left to their own devices. Bless their atheist socks. The other interesting thing is the graves’ design which is uncommon and typical only to this area; the holes have heads and shoulder spaces carved into them. The peoples of the Mondego were travelling between villages and sharing their burial rituals. And this suggests community. Independence. Cooperation. Peace.
anthropomorphic - dead people shaped
And so we wander away in search of cake to discover the very interesting modern history-mystery of Midões. This tiny town /big village has not really any shops to speak of, a couple of cafes, no banks. But there’s a whopping cathedral-like church and a collection of Palacetes. Signs of serious wealth! Yet the public squares, while pretty, are not on the same scale, so it’s not the town that appears to have had the money, but a few individuals. A brief chat with some locals and a quick look around and one could conclude it’s the usual olive oil and wine money. But unlike say, Castaneira de Pêra with its many big fat country houses – these are actual palaces, with statuary, parapets and overt decoration – which makes them way-more-curiouser, dude.
and it´s for sale
Did I mention yet the pastelaria yet? Of course, it’s way above standard and will provide satisfaction in large helpings with cheery hospitality, even on an especially hot and still Sunday afternoon. This Midões place sounds just like a day trip.
Local Big Richard has invited me to an afternoon of boring local history tête-à-tête. And I say, put the kettle on Dick, I’ll bring the cake.
And of course, if you have an uninteresting brown sign near you, or even a rumour of history about your place, please cough up. We should all be eternal travellers, and the bigger our world gets the more curious it becomes.
For a little more, in Portuguese, and to credit my sources:
http://www.igespar.pt/media/uploads/trabalhosdearqueologia/50/9.pdf
http://www.j-f-midoes.web.pt/historia.htm
where it all started, and thanks to Sophie
http://expatsportugal.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=7520&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&sid=27f34e59d7846aac2148addd9f5714f2
another of Midões´ fontes
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If you only have one day in Portugal, let it be in Braga. It’s my favourite town. Actually I plan to live there one day and make a lifetime of this day-tripping thing.
Let me show you around.
Your day begins, naturally, with a coffee. Since you’re in Portugal you will also being eating one of the finest freshly baked pastries on the planet. The Brasileira know their business so the pastries, or even toast, will be as impeccable as the service. Anyway, you will be too busy watching all the stylish Bracarense walking by on their way to work… poor gorgeous things, off they go.
A quick walk around the pedestrianised old centre follows, window shopping at the variety of little boutiques running the gamut from lingerie to liturgical. There are local dress designers, tiny art galleries and antique collectables to seduce the spender, all tucked in together on the cobbled network of the compact town centre.
The oldest cathedral in Portugal (1070) is also here in the old town. It’s an important arquitectural monument, part brutal medieval, part golden rennaisance. There’s also a very nice fountain in the main square, a fortress-like episcopal palace and numerous intriguing old mansions to check out.
After this effort you’ll be needing a cup of tea and another pastry, if not lunch. This time we are at the glassy art deco Salão da Chã Lusitana. If the Salão isn’t romantic enough, you’ll have a view of the lovely Jardim de Santa Bárbara where you are guaranteed to see young couples smooching.
Five minutes outside town lies the Bom Jesus de Monte, a serious place for pilgrims at certain times of the year, a fun place to take photos the rest of the time. The curiosity of the Bom Jesus is a marvellous baroque staircase, with a lovely church at the top. Along the way there are spookily life-like scenes of the stations of the cross, but what you can’t miss are the Five Senses wall fountains. They are famous and funny. Otherwise known by the names my friends Jem and Kate gave them: Tears, Snot, Ear Wax and Vomit. Beware, it’s quite a walk up, (watch the Bracarense exercising! A rare sight in Portugal!) but those of us not here for devout agony can ride on the antique water-driven funicular.
And don’t miss the ceiling of the church, if it’s open. One of the prettiest in Portugal.
Now that the funicular has put us in a vintage mood, we are off the see the Confiança soap factory, which has been producing elegant luxury soaps since 1894. It’s not just soap: it’s about Portuguese design and tradition and pride. And it might be about buying a special souvenir for your mother.
Tired? Time to check into the hotel and have a little lie down? I’ve booked the best room at the Hotel Francfort which is right on the main square with views of the fountain. It’s my favourite hotel in Portugal (of the hotels I’ve actually stayed in, that is). Our hostess is Dona Eugenia and she is at least 70, so you’ll be taking your own luggage up the stairs. She’s been running this hotel for 45 years and I suspect she hasn’t changed a thing in all that time. It’s just the way a hotel should be. Big rooms, springy beds and a full complement of matching furniture. And at €15/head who can argue? The Francfort is a perfect example of what is lacking in modern hotels. Charm, character, and a hostess like Dona Eugenia.
At last, it’s time for dinner. Taberna Felix is the best restaurant in Portugal so I’ve made a booking. Although they have recently expanded, it’s still an intimate restaurant with a short menu to match. The owners and their staff are so nice and take care of you like old friends. The taberna is tucked away on an atmospheric small square with a couple of other small restaurants alongside and lots of tables outside, and only a couple of other foreigners which make you feel like you’re in on a local secret. I don’t have to tell you that the food is superb. The desserts are even better. Felix, if mispronounced because you´ve indulged in a few local ports, means Happy. Time to waddle back to the hotel…
But wait! What’s that on the path between you and the hotel? It’s an open air bar! It’s music and caipirinha! Braga is also a university town, full of bright young people who require evening entertainment. Therefore Braga has a whole new personality which comes out after dark. Plenty of opportunity to rub up against those fit and stylish Bracarense.
But I’m going to bed, because tomorrow there’s the market at Barcelos… so much to do, so many more pastries to eat…
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Real estate is a bitch. Earlier this year I thought it might be good to have a swing at this business and make my hobby of house-perving into a money earner. House perving is an art. I have a friend who has drawn up architectural plans and with full landscaping designs based on what he would do if his random-house-favourite in Bondi happened to fall into his hands one day. No doubt the neighbours think he´s been sizing up the place for a robbery, for the last four years, or perhaps they have concluded, correctly, that he is simply a house pervert.
Anyway, back when I was looking for a house in 2007 I would meet lots of other people looking for a house … in cafés, at the markets, at the pousada juventude in Lousã… Central Portugal was teeming with foreigners on holiday-house-perves. Now I meet none. This is not the only reason my brief foray into real estate has not been a success. Firstly, I broke the golden rule of being a pseudo estate agent: I became emotionally involved with the clients. They became my friends. I liked their houses, I liked their dogs, I liked them. And we all know that a normal real estate person doesn´t do any gratuitous caring because in order to actually sell houses one must devote 110% of one´s soul to selling.
So back to being a fully-committed-builder-blogger it is for me…
But if you happen to thinking of following me in this crazy pastry-filled lazy life, and buying a house in Portugal, then I would like to share with you these three little house-gems I found. Three different ideas, three different concelhos, three different prices but with one thing in common. Three very nice honest owners who just want to move on.
Let´s start with this little beauty in Mosteiro, Pedrogão Grande. I discovered the cutsey little village of Mosteiro when I first moved here during my rampant Sunday drives. It´s tucked away in the middle of a quiet little forest, a short detour from the best bread kept secret of Vila Facaia. It´s a picturesque medium sized village with two cafés and and rather decent restaurant located at a flat grassed river beach with a charming bridge and plenty of shade. This village even has a bandstand (my dad just loved bandstands), and I strongly suspect it has recycling bins (which, believe-you-me is a clear sign of civilisation. I envy people who live in villages with recycling bins).
The house is for sale for €43k. For this price I can´t quite work out how Sergio is making any money out of it because it is a recently renovated stone cottage. OK maybe he inherited it and spent €39,000 doing it up. But let´s not look a gift horse in the mouth.´Tis indeed a charm-packed little two storey one bedder, with renovated bathroom and kitchen, heating in the ground floor kitchen, small walled patio for the barbie, pushbike, plants and winter woodpile. In other words, a low maintenance, with all the facilities, nothing more to spend, weekender and summer holiday house… about two minutes walk from the river pool with café, icecream and rather tempting looking restaurant.
The owner, Sergio, is a local schoolteacher and antiques collector. We met at the Figueiró Vinhos Velharias fair. So the house is filled with really nice furniture and interesting bits. This makes the place even more special, because it´s unusual for Portuguese who most often like their things new and shiny. The antiques work so nicely with the stone interior… well if it were me I´d be negotiating a price with contents included. Too easy.
The next one is the paradise I really wanted when I was looking but didn´t have the money for. It´s €55k, a 120m2 ruin on one hectare (10,000 m2 or almost 2 and a half acres, thank you sophie 
), and if you can´t imagine that, well it´s about a 20 minute walk around the circumference and pretty much what you see in the pic above minus the background mountains). It´s located in a gobsmackingly beautiful valley about 5 minutes outside of Figueiró Dos Vinhos. Your nearest neighbours, about 1km away, would be the rather groovy dutch couple who run Quinta da Fonte, a nice eco-holiday type arrangement, which might give you some ideas about what to do with your place. One hectare of land has potential. You could plant more olives (there are already about 50), more fruit, or plants trees for timber. You could have sheep, horses (although the terrain is quite steep in places) or 5000 chickens. With no neighbours, you could do what you liked. The ruin itself begs for a spacious, passive solar, low impact, simple stone design. The water supply is ridiculously good, with a small river running through the property, two wells and about another 4 tanks. The last time I visited, Figueiró council were running “company” water along the road anyway. The electricity is about a 25m connection.
So peaceful, so beautiful… I think it´s a very precious little spot. You´d want to have at least another €70k to get the house done … but after that, it would be Gins and Tonic on the balcony overlooking the garden in perfect serenity for ever.
Option number three is actually three and four because there are two of them. They´re in Castaneira de Pêra, which is a little disneyland town created by the Mayor of Big Things. Castaneira is home to a Big Fake Grass Rat, Four Big Ugly Things on Roundabouts (on the bright side there are several Nice Big Old Mansions one Megalith Pink Magnolia) and one Very Big Pool. My very cool niece, when visiting, named the pool succintly: ”Mega Pool”.
Mega Pool, aka Praia das Rocas attracts hordes of sweaty punters from all about who are perfectly happy to queue for an hour before opening time in order to secure their resort style deckchair and table by the “beach” for the day. By “beach” I mean graduated sandy-coloured painted concrete and a wave machine – ´the biggest waves inland of the sea´, would you believe? The thousands come prepared with buckets & spades, lilos, eskies, hats & blow up crocodiles and they make a day of it. Actually they make a whole summer of it, as Castaneira´s cafés heave with the aprés-pool crowd.
But where the hell do they all stay? There are some tiny cabanas at the pool, so that sorts out about 16 people, there is one nice old house which sleeps about 10, two small but nice hotels and a medium sized camping ground. The masses I speak of come literally in their thousands… and here´s where Joe´s houses come into the picture.
A few years ago Joe, a civil engineer, built these two houses with his family´s future in mind. With one son a chef and Joe and his wife Mariza heading towards early retirement, he had the idea that at least someone in the family would fancy having a B&B, and Joe having seen the development of Castaneira since Praia das Rocas, saw the potential in it. He built two houses, both with two attic bedrooms with ensuite plus three more middle-floor bedrooms plus a ground floor apartment. The lounge, kitchen, dining and garages are all big and they have massive backyards with room for a pool. Both houses have been ducted for central heating, the living rooms already have closed fireplaces and the kitchens have chimneys. Natural light pours into the houses from all sides, there is double glazing and security shutters. The front door has a intercom system accessible on each level of the house. The houses are fully wired for all manner of telecoms, there is an outdoor dining area off the kitchen, plus the ground level barbecue area, smashing town views from most rooms, at least one bathroom on each level, landscaped gardens and, and, and… Gee it looks like the only thing Joe didn´t think of when building these places was to make them wheelchair accessible because as soon as they were 95% complete some jerk crashed his car into Joe´s and landed Joe in a wheelchair. Permanently. Paraplegic-Like. So now he can´t even get through the front door of his own houses, much less down the stairs. Shit and a half, I say to that.
Então, slight change of plans for the Ramos family then.
The 95% finished bit is a good thing. It´s just the interiors that are unfinished. There are no kitchens (plumbing of course is there, but you´d choose the look and arrangement) Ditto for the attic en-suites – plumbing, no fixtures. One house has floating timber floors and the other has unfinished concrete. The final final job will be yours. The ground floor apartment space in not enclosed. All the wiring and plumbing, and a bathroom, is in, but right now they look like outdoor entertainment/basement spaces. So hence, these are new-builds that leave room for your taste, and I like that. New places are all very convenient and clean but I inevitably want to rip out their ugly pine kitchens and start again. Just thanks that Joe has taste in bathroom appliances, because those I rather like: a bit luxy but not pretentious.
So let´s talk business here. One house is €175k and the other is €210k. Say you spend another €5k making them ready for business. During the summer you could have at least a monthly income of €1200 (based on a modest guess of 5 nights out of 7 of the two attic rooms @ €30ea /night). OK so the summer is only 2 months – but then there´s the apartment downstairs which can be rented out full time or you live in the apartment and rent out the 5 bedroom house upstairs. What I´m talking about is the potential of immediate income. I haven´t done all the research but what I see are full cafés and thousands of people and not thousands of places to stay. I would also say again loud and clear that you should not attempt doing business in Portugal without speaking the language. Your main clientele will still be Portuguese, not English-speaking foreigners. My gut tells me this is a goer, and let me tell you Mr Joe is no idiot either.
All of these properties are listed with Chavetejo Imobiliaria LDA who are based in Tomar. The office number is + 351 249 32 77 00 but you know, every time I call it I get the answering machine and that really pisses me off. So what I suggest is that you call the mobiles of Derek +351 918 479 978 or Nicky +351 918 484 547. The best time to catch them is at 7:30am, after their two hour yoga session and just before 8am mass in Tomar. Cruise their website at www.chavetejo.com. These places can be found listed as:
Mosteiro ref 806/10
Fontainha ref 878/09
Castaneira De Pêra €175k ref 5135/09 and €210k 5134/09
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Still not 100% but after a week my hangover has subsided sufficiently enough to attempt stringing a few words together.
Sorry to say however, customers, that I was too busy enjoying the great white wines of Portugal under 3 euros to actually take any worthwhile photos of them. I have several pictures of other people´s breasts, several of one particularly handsome gentleman and all the other shots are out of focus. Thank god for Marta who not only has exceptional hair but has steady hands and a sharp eye. Phew, the post is saved.
The first thing one can say is that inexpensive Portuguese white wines are a great deal of fun. The post party emails keep streaming in with the same hilarity of the night. Ilya´s comment that such evenings should be banned by the Organizacão Mundial Da Saude had me weeping with laughter before breakfast this morning.
We tested 11 wines in all, with one wine, rather cheekily, being included twice, just to prove beyond doubt, according to the results, that we were a bunch of people having a good time rather than engaging in a rigorous scientific study.
The double agent came by the classical name Fratelli Coglione, or Irmãos Colhões, meaning Balls Brothers. The name is a devotion to the illustrious Italian rennaissance military commander Bartolomeo Colleoni, who indisputably had courage, and balls, as is pictorially represented on the Colleoni coat of arms. A coat of arms is nothing without a motto, as Judge João says, and to this fine wine he has attributed that of the “Order of the Garter” which is of course “Honi soit qui mal y pense” which in googlish can be roughly translated “shame on you for thinking there’s some dirty mockery in all of this”.
While no one but me rated wine number one in the manner of “give me one baby oh god I needed that”, this wine did receive a great deal more praise when listed again as wine number 6. Judge Wonky, of Lousã, for example, described wine number one as “Cold and Mildly Fruity”, with a unremarkable score of 32/50, but as wine number 6 felt that it was “Unbe-fuckin-leivable” and gave it the perfect score 50/50. Judge Fiona of Condeixa started with “bem” at number one and rose to “fixe” at number 6.
In general terms the commentary given to each wine began conscientiously and legibly. Judge Bitateiro, of Infesto, who could initially be relied upon for credible descriptions such as “young and fruity, silky nose with a long finish”, but who, by wine number 7, offers meekly “really can’t tell anymore”.
Wines listed later in the evening solicited passionate and even profane comments from the judges, ranging from simply “wine of love” given by Judge Purdey, a policewoman from Povoa to Judge Chef Fiona comparing wine 11 to a “Beijinho”. Judge Trotsky of Tomar, whose hobbies include Tap dancing and Toad Treating describes wine number 10 as “Bang Bang Bang”, the undelying meaning of which I think is clear to all of us.
Oddly, the harshest criticism was aimed at the winning wine, number 5. Judge Trotsky’s description of this wine as “cat’s wee” went against the general trend of high scores and superlatives. Variously described as full, acidic, dry, good with sardines and piri piri, orgasmic, automatic, cincomatic and just plain good. This wine was the clear winner of the evening. So what was it? Drumroll…. maestro….
It is the
Esporão Alandra
(thunderous round of applause sound effect insert here)
Significantly this beautiful wine’s usual retail price is €1.99. Read that and weep. Or just move to Portugal.
The other wines tested were
Loios
Adega da Borba
Porta da Ravessa
J P Azeitão
Dão Grão Vasco
Pegões
Colares
and special mention to runner up wine number 1 & 6
Quinta do Cardal Branco 2009
That’s right, smartypants, there are only 9. We lost number 10, and no one can remember where we put it.
As promised in a compromised state of inebriation, here are a couple of recipes of the night.
Vietnamese Rice Paper Rolls
- Rice Paper wrappers – my sister brought them from australia. Good luck getting them here.
- One pork febra or small steak, tenderised and pan fried in garlic and a bit of soy sauce
- some prawns, say two or three per roll, schoolies if you can get them, for the flavour, steamed, or just boil them for a minute with a pinch of salt
- vermicelli rice noodles – softened in boiling water just for a minute or two – can’t say how much but I always overestimate by ten times the amount required
- strips of cucumber without seeds
- spring onion or shallots – long green stems with white at the base – they are undeveloped onions, slice them lengthwise and cut into 10 cm lengths
- Mint, Vietnamese mint preferably, or maybe a little asian basil if you can get it
other optional stuff
– a bit of shredded lettuce, bean sprouts, or a single toothpick of carrot
You’re making a little parcel about 10cm long and 3cm wide, cylindrical. After softening the paper just collect the ingredients in little long pile and fold up the roll like a parcel. It’s not brain surgery. You’ll get the hang of it.
Dipping Sauce:
Hoi Sin Sauce
Fish Sauce
Peanuts
Splash of Lime or lemon juice
splash of piri piri or whatever chilli sauce
soy to season
Garlic Prawns as inspired by the ones in Nazaré
Prawns – green, frozen on the ship “ultracongelado” I repeat GREEN
Lemon
Garlic
Olive oil
Salt & Pepper
Handful of parsley or go all Portuguese and use coriander ooo yummy
Peel your prawns down to the tail, (or the lot of you prefer), rinse them well in water and slip them into a ceramic bowl with the juice of a lemon, an enormous quantity of sliced garlic (not crushed, not finely chopped, I’m talking a wackload of big bits) cover it in olive oil and keep it in the fridge, overnight at best but at least for an hour or two. Heat the oven at the highest temperature, put them in for 5 or 10 minutes, give them one stir and another 5 minutes and then serve them up with a bunch of chunky strong bread. And then sit back and wait for the marriage proposals to roll in.
Stay tuned for the Prova dos Vinhos: Verdes, and further, we could even trial Rosés… perhaps even saving the worldwidely famous Mateus from the doldrums of jokedom.
Super special thanks to Emma (the other emma in portugal) and Lawrence for being the hosts with the most, thanks to a really brutal bunch of Portuguese friends who make me love this country all the more and who are as generous as they are fun, and to Wonky (and Marta, sorry you´ll have to be quicker next time) for the marriage proposal, and more thanks to Tiny for having to eat all four rice paper rolls from Yen´s in Regent St Sydney so that she could take that accurately luscious photo above.
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My brother in law started this one off by saying that watching the Portugal vs. Ivory Coast match was enough to turn a straight man gay. “They were like gods,” he said. And although I’ve never been one for football worship in any way, this World Cup I know exactly where he is coming from. There has been some spectacular beauty out there on the pitch, not only defined by an Grecian physique or a Roman nose, but a divine masculinity of classical athleticism and gymnastic skill.
portugal vs. ivory coast
Sometimes the harmonisation of the team can turn a game into an all male performing art. Germany’s play, especially in the Australian and English matches, was elevating to watch like a ballet or opera. The Portuguese, against North Korea, made the game look too easy, and the players’ pride and joy was so potent that it spread throughout the whole country for a moment. Slovakia vs. Italy was operatic in its passion and hate and despair. But sometimes the performance never gets there. Nigeria vs. South Korea was just boring. It’s been hard to enjoy watching England play, with their absence of pride or enjoyment. They are the antithesis of New Zealand’s enthusiasm and sportsmanship. So heroic were the Kiwis that they made defeat look like triumph.
Friends of mine will think it is most peculiar that I have gone soccer mad. I’ve never actually been averse to the football of Europe, and I even pretentiously thought of it as a culturally superior game to the gang-banging thick-necked vulgarity of rugby league, the sport which predominates in my home town. Of course the reality is that soccer in Europe isn’t classy at all, but populated by thugs and spivs and corruption. Just check out the suits on the Slovakian coaches… gangsters minus the style.
One contention I have had is the nationalism which comes with sport. “Love just one nation, and the whole world we deny” as Michael Franti says. Flying the flag and all that rot… it’s loathsome. However, being an expat gives a context to your national identity, and it also helps to spread your nationalism further. Not only am I an Australian, but also a Kiwi (by continent), a German (former resident) and a Portuguese (by adoption).
Another of my former aversions to spectator sport was its irrelevancy. But at last, now I get it :- it’s the diversion itself from all things worrying and important that gives it substance. Football is the opium of the people.
If you don’t understand what the all the fuss is about, but would like to take the trip and forget yourself for 90 minutes, here are my beginner’s watching tips: First you need to focus. You need to keep your eyes on the ball at all times, in the same way you work your concentration when trying to see a 3D picture. Relax, allow yourself to be hypnotised. Anticipate the moves of the players. Become the player. Once you can focus easily and re-focus when distracted, you’ll be able to start checking out what’s going on on the wider field, but to get started it’s imperative that you get into that focussed zone. It’s a quiet trance-like state which will have you feeling the pace, snapping at the refs, and emoting loudly when there’s a goal or a near goal. Second. Watch the violence. Slapping about the opponent is a essential tactic. It’s a messy side effect of desperately trying to get the ball off them at high speed and even though it’s against the rules, it’s actually a serious device. Actually, no, not serious – just like two 7 yr olds brawling. Stepping on a foot, gouging an eye, tripping them up – it’s all part of the fun. I can hear you’re about to object so let’s rush to #3 – Theatrics. Pretending you are hurt is another significant scheme of the game. It wins your side time and if you are convincing enough you might persuade the ref to give out a yellow card and/or a free kick. But I don’t really think they are all bunging it on – certainly a kick in the shins with studs and a knee in the ribs would have me writhing on the ground and crying like a baby too – it’s just funny how un-tough these guys can be when they want to be. Apart from these three characteristics of the game there’s not that much more you need to know. There are some rules, but they aren’t really important, nor particularly interesting. You can pretty much commit the rest of your brain to perving.
cristiano ronaldo for armani, and jesus navas, spain
Starting with the Portuguese team. Over here we are rather familiar with the sight of Cristiano Ronaldo on the tele and magazines and everywhere else. With undies and without. But in his native habitat he is something special. He is a star. And who can’t be moved by that dazzling smile even when he misses a goal? He’s a terrible show pony, but hey, he’s entertaining.
vincenzo iaquinta - italy
He’s perfect, but that’s nothing when compared to the Italians. Watching an Italian football game is a lot like being in Italy itself: so many spunks you don’t know where to look. Cannavaro, di Natale, Iaquinta – I wept with them at the end of the Slovakia match – so sorry am I to have to kiss them goodbye this week. Ditto the Kiwis, not just pretty but so nice! Helping up the Italians after elbowing them to the ground… so sweet.
fabio cannavaro - italy
It’s not like you have to hunt too hard because there are cuties in every team. Rodriguez of Argentina, Navas of Spain, Honda of Japan. Bendtner of Denmark. Van der Vaart of Holland. Even those mean slavs have a few hotties, like Kopunek. The German team is a little overloaded with looks. There’s Cacau, Aogo and Boateng for starters. And here’s the bottom line. Maybe I’m a little biased, but none of the players I’ve singled out is a slouch on the field. To state it plain, they are not there for their looks. Sure, some like the blessed Cristiano and the revered Rafael Van der Vaart are savaged when they play less brilliantly than usual… but that’s the whole problem with being a saint. Just one miracle will get you the title, but for the rest of your career you cannot get away with being a mere mortal.
–alas! only a very human, an all too human, beauty.
Nietzsche
cacau, germany
I’ve got a radical idea to make the game even better. To make the players purer and worthy of worship. To give the sport all the nobility it aspires to. Freedom from corruption and cheating… Don’t pay them. Like in the Olympics, let their talent, not their price, speak for itself. Would Beckham have played so well without the riches? Yes. Were Pelé or Maradona as good as Ronaldo, even though they didn’t earn anywhere near as much? Of course. Better, many would argue. Would kids in the Bairros still dream of being Kaká or Messi? You bet. Would a rose not smell as sweet?
a beautiful shot by annie leibovitz for louis vuitton. maradona, pelé and zidane.
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I’ve been researching this post for the last three years and on doctor’s orders, it’s got to stop.
There are just too many cafés in Central Portugal and having to sample all of their coffees and pastries is going to be the end of my arteries and me. I can no longer justify a diet of pasteis, bolos and caffeine for the sake of the blog. Sorry.
In any case the parameters of my research have become blurred. Do I stick to the boundaries of the three Beiras regions or shall we just call it Central Portugal instead? Is it really a post about the best pastelarias in which case does it become a study of fabrico proprio? Is it really just a competition of coffee brands, because I think I’ve developed a preference for Delta. What if I catch a great café on an off day? What if they do the best duchesse in the region and I order a marselhesa by mistake?
But the main reason to stop is that there are just too many good cafés and a post can only be soooo looong…
So I’ll just tell you about my favourites (so far) and you can tell me yours, ok? Let’s go.
How I judge a place. The coffee has to be good on successive visits, with or without milk, bastante quente (who actually likes their coffee luke warm? I don’t know) and a good café IMhO serves directo whether you ask for it or not (or if you can’t tell the difference, that’s impressive). These things show a respect for coffee.
Either a good range of pastelaria, or a unique, small range. I look for specialities, or if they do a classic exceptionally well.
And that’s it: this is not about interior design, comfortable chairs, history, fame or even the temper of the staff… it’s just strictly a coffee and cake experience.
There are certainly many good places. What made it to this selection is being exceptionally good, and I do confess that the surprise of their sometimes obscure locations may have influenced their ranking. How do they compare with my favourite cafés of Lisbon? Certainly not well for décor(!), but for the quality of their coffee and cake, yes, I do believe they are as good.
In alphabetical order, we start in Avelar… a funny little town with really nothing much to recommend it except a pretty church, the Casa Farrica hardware shop and this outrageously good pastelaria. When I was new here I thought I was a genius to discover a cute side alley old fashioned little café which then abruptly closed its doors. I felt guilty and unfaithful when I decided to go to the new big modern place, whose pastries were possibly even better… until I realised it was the same place, they had just expanded. Phew!
Pastelaria Rocha’s thing is sonhos, and they don’t call them dreams for nothing. Their miniatures are adorable and their savoury things also are great.
Ansião is also nothing much of a place (sorry Ansianense) but it does have Pastelaria Diogo, or two, actually. Massive display of goodies, consistently good coffee.
In Condeixa-a-Nova, conveniently located across from the centro de saude, is O Pote de Mel. It is slightly infamous for turning out more unusual creations, in life threatening sizes. If you’re up for something truly decadent, pop in here for a escrapiada or a delicia. After your blood tests.
Technically still in Condeixa, but tucked away in a bairro they call Urbanização Nova de Conimbriga (it’s off the roundabout that joins the IC3 to the IC2, towards Soure) is a little gem of a café called O Bom Forno. It serves more polite, but no less decadent, cake portions of divine invention. And they make the cutest baby berlims I’ve seen. Chocolate berlims too. And it’s wookie friendly.
Coimbra has a few good places. There are three close together on Rua de Sofia near Praça 8 Maio. My favourite is the old fashioned stand-up-only Pastelaria Palmeira, whose speciality is the weird-but-yummy pastel de santa clara. Almost next door, Pastelaria Penta has a bigger range of mouth watering sins and arguably better coffee. Across the road, Pastelaria Sirius is also very good.
When in Leiria I always go to Martin & Thomas on Praça Rodrigues Lobo. It quite rightly uses “gourmet” in its self description and indeed would not be out of place in any modern foodie location in the world. Great bread. Great everything. I think of Leiria as the Braga of Central Portugal. It’s civilised. It has Zara.
And now to Tentúgal and Vouzela. But these places and their pastelarias are SO good that they deserve their own day trip posts. It’s certainly worth going all the way to Vouzela for a visit to Café Central, and to eat a pastel de Vouzela. But the town itself is such a treasure that it’s a destination in itself. Similarly, at first glance Tentúgal’s pastelarias dos doces conventuais look like a truckies´ stop. But Tentúgal not only has an exceptional café but an unforgettable restaurant and a fascinating historic church as well. It’s not just a lay-by, it’s a lay-day.
But after visiting hundreds of other cafés, I always come back to my local. Pastelaria Pingo Doce in Figueiró Dos Vinhos, behind the Câmara, is so inconspicuous you’d normally not notice it. The coffee here is just as I like it and while I’m very fond of their bolos de arroz and tigeladas, it’s their pasteis de nata that are by far and away the best in Central Portugal. I’m tempted to say, the best outside of Pastéis de Belém. I know, it’s a big call, but I have tried, I have tested and I have the belly to prove it.
I would like to hear I’ve missed something in Castelo Branco, or that there’s a gem in Guarda (I’ve never been to Guarda). Have I passed on something in Pombal? Fundão? Do you have a favourite in Aveiro? Does Sertã have something hidden? Anything new in Lousã? Let me know. Not for any more serious research, no, just in case I’m passing…
innocent and unassuming... and the best pastel in the region
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I sometimes get emails from people who are looking to simplify their lives. They are tired of the stress, the traffic and noise of the city, of working all their waking hours for little personal reward and never having enough time for the people they love. Perhaps you too are wishing you had more time to do things you actually enjoy? Would you like to escape the tyranny of spending and consumerism and the desire for things you don’t need? Do you fill your life with possessions as a reward for the pressure, pain and emptiness of modern living? Maybe you’re thinking about downsizing, having less clutter, no more drawers overflowing with unused mobile phone chargers. And you would like to reduce your carbon footprint, and have a more sensitive relationship with Mother Earth? Can you see yourself, happy and free, running naked through a sunny field of daisies?
WELL SNAP OUT OF IT YOU DAYDREAMER AND GET BACK TO WORK.
If there’s one thing I know now it’s this:
POVERTY IS OVERRATED.
Yes, trouble is, once you have a healthy cash flow it’s rather difficult to remember what it’s like not having one. Of course, I know you’re not planning on being poor and desperate, but if you’re going to give up working your bum off, then you are inevitably going to have to adjust to living on less. A lot less. And then, as time goes on, even less and less. It sounds fine as an idea, but believe me it is extremely difficult to change your mentality from “rich” to “poor”, and to change it fast enough to keep pace with your economic status.
How much do you need to live on in Portugal? The minimum wage here is €450/ month: I cannot see how anyone can live on that. I get by, in a painfully, unhappily, penny-watching way (see the Support button below) on about €600, and some months this blows out dramatically: all it takes is a sick car or dog, an insurance bill or a visitor or two and my budget goes out the window. I estimate that a couple with a cat should budget for $1200/month or €15000 a year. PLUS accommodation – allow another €250/ month for renting a 3 bedroom house (you’ll need a guest room, or two). Readers please throw in your two cents worth on this, as costs, as people, vary region to region.
Debt is the enemy. I seriously do not recommend giving up work if you have any debt. What you are undertaking is already enormously financially challenging and complicating the risk with old financial baggage is a bad idea. If you have a mortgage at home or on your new life, then either you or your dog needs a regular job. Sorry about that.
Should the math still be working in your favour, I have this to say. Doing without feels quite good at first. But after a while the novelty wears off and you’d rather have back a flushing toilet, a kitchen with plumbing, a shiny black golf and a goddam dishwasher. So here’s my first piece of advice for those who are persisting with the idea:
1. Don’t Throw the Baby Out With The Bathwater.
I know some people who have tossed their lives away, like me, but they are still living comfortably in a house with modern appliances, eating interesting meals, and maintaining proper standards of personal hygiene. Their secret has been better financial planning coupled with a more moderate approach to deprivation. In essence, they started with more money and they did not elect to live in their ruin.
So, if your other half (or your other identity) is advising caution and saying `let’s give it another 6 months and then we’ll be more financially secure´, then listen to them. On the other hand, that advice would not have saved me. As a freelancer, I may have been waiting forever for that last 50 grand to appear, and it is critical to getting a new life that you don’t put it off forever and to know when you have to make the leap. So if you think your team mate (or you yourself) is just procrastinating and they don’t really want to go and live in Portugal, then dump them and move on. 
The point I’m trying to make is when you’re making-frugal, don’t go overboard. Going from living in a penthouse to living in a tent is not nice. Try not to overestimate your stamina and try not to underestimate the length of time your money has to last.
2. Start Living Frugal Immediately And Be Committed.
Somehow you have to guess at the most basic living conditions you can tolerate for an unknown period of time… and then start living that life and stick to it. Even though your money hasn’t run out yet try to live as though it may run out tomorrow. It might sound a bit contradictory to the first advice, but this is about not living in denial about your financial situation. As soon as you stop earning you need to stop spending. Make a long term budget and be sure to include a bucketload of contingency.
One of the trickier things is getting other people to understand your new situation. I am still being invited to skiing trips in Val d’Isère when I haven’t earned a dime in three years. And I don’t even like skiing. You’ll have to tell your friends and family loud and clear, and over and over. No more lavish gifts, no more expensive restaurants. You are Frugalling. You may have to start a blog as well or get a tattoo on your forehead.
3. Go Bush
Mission Frugal should involve the switch from city to country.
The biggest advantage for country living for the ex-city materialist is the absence of temptations. I really appreciate not being surrounded by shops full of shiny things. And there’s something about living in the city that results in needing $15 cocktails on a Friday night. As much as I miss the food, I am glad that I cannot accidentally blow $50 on a sushi tray. Thank god rural Portugal is not a glamorous place – or rather, it is a very unpretentious place. One may comfortably go about looking like a sack and no one snorts or huffs or looks you up and down… On the contrary, I’ve been complimented on my nice dressing gown.
4. Making Friends With The Natives
Let’s now assume you’ve quit your job and moved to Portugal.
Your Portuguese neighbours will be an enormous support and resource to you, even if they want to kill your dog. Firstly because frugality is a way of life in rural Portugal, and secondly they will help you overcome the foreigner/local price divide.
In most places in the world, foreigners are presumed to be better off than the locals, based on the simple principle that you’re travelling and they’re not. It is now your job to undo this misunderstanding. You will ingratiate yourself with your neighbours by complaining about the price of things, griping about being poor and moaning about your poor health. Once you graduate from whingeing you can move onto the higher subjects like local supermarket specials. After that it’s carte blanche on cheap tips: what price they get on sand, which car mechanic won’t rip you off, and what you should have paid for those onion seedlings. And all this invaluable assistance just for your time, your witty banter and your liver.
Unlike your friends at home, your Portuguese neighbours will not expect you to bring a fine wine every time you drop over. On the contrary, my neighbours have scorned all my gifts like home made jam, spaghetti sauce and marinated olives because this gift giving nonsense is just not on. It’s not because they are stingey or ungrateful (no siree, just watch them force food on you) it’s because they don’t have money to waste. Christmas is the best. They gave me crap (but useful) gifts like tea towels, and in return I gave them crap (but useful) things like tea towels.
4. Trading
I discovered the village bartering system by accident. Tia Maria had been abandoned by her children (they went to France to work) which meant she had to walk up and down the hill to tend to the crops. It’s a bitch of a hill and she’s 30 years older than me, so we’d throw the pumpkins the back of my van and I’d give her a lift. No biggie. But then in return she’d try to give me three weeks worth of green beans, a dozen eggs and a bottle of wine.
Once we’d negotiated a more restrained quantity of produce, this became a regular thing. Then I realised that everyone was up for this trading thing. Next door would drop over some lemons, I’d leave a bag of dog food my dog doesn’t like. Lately we’ve been getting into car swapping, internet access for labour, land clearing for firewood. Of course it’s been going on between them for ever: one historic transaction was when one neighbour fixed the other one’s car for 6 jars of honey. It seems so right that I wonder why we aren’t living like this all our lives…
5. Grow Your Own
Of course you’ll need something to trade, and your exotic city tastes may help. I can’t compete with my neighbour’s talent for horticulture, but I can offer them things they don’t grow or have never tried. My stuff has novelty value. And other friends will appreciate your efforts too – so instead of bringing a bottle of wine you can take a pot of basil, cherry tomatoes or some rocket – things we can’t often find in our local markets. Of course anything else you can grow in your garden will help your frug-style. Growing stuff in Portuguese soil will be made easier if you also raise chickens, and while you’re at it, get a pig, some goats and sheep too.
6. Think Global, Buy Local
The biggest immediate saving to you is that you’ll spend less on petrol, but that’s the next point. You have to buy locally because rural areas are in rapid decline and things will get more expensive if we don’t invest in our tiny towns. Your custom with local business will help you forge relationships which will get you better prices in the long run. If you don’t take an interest in your local shop you might find that it no longer exists next year.
While regular customers are the most valuable, you should try to share the love around. The most obvious example is to buy whatever you can from local markets and not from big supermarkets. At the market I even prefer the smaller, older stallholders who are not importing fruit and vegies, but growing it themselves. Your money goes directly into the local’s pocket and keeps the local economy working. Just now a neighbour proudly showed me some apples that have come from Argentina… can you imagine the real cost of those apples, and can they be so much better than what’s hanging on the tree outside? Maybe they are not paying the extra cost right now, but the economy and the planet’s environment is, and if you’re thinking big picture, it is relevant to your personal operation frugal.
7. Step Off The Gas.
Apart from the urgent need to stop burning fossil fuels, the cost of petrol and the distances you often need to travel in the country is a major handicap to the frugal life. I consider every hour in the car costs me nearly €10. Most of the time I’m better off spending more on individual items at the nearer corner shop than driving further to the supermarket. And I prefer to buy things from my neighbours for more than I’d pay elsewhere because of what I save on petrol. It’s a strong argument for using the bread, fish and veg trucks that visit the village. My neighbours, the dedicated bargain hunters, once recommended I buy car tyres about 1 1/2 hrs drive away. So those cheap €20 retreads really cost me €35 each… and they’ll need replacing again in a year’s time… see more about “false economy” below.
When you have to use the car, take your foot off the gas. Driving slower in this country may even save your life. And while on the road I try to encourage others to slow down too. I flirt lasciviously at men who attempt to overtake me, which works a treat. My parents had a test of not using the accelerator on the way home from the shops. In turn us kids would do it too, and make it more fun by not using the brakes either… I still do this today, when there are no other cars around, of course.
8. Beware of False Economy.
There are false economy traps everywhere. Initially I bought cheap vacuum cleaners, cheap power tools and kitchen appliances which all had to be replaced. Buying stuff at the bottom of the market is rarely worth it unless you are really only using it once. When I researched my purchases properly by using organizations like Choice (Australia) I bought things that actually worked, and still work today. Beware especially the lojas chinesas (el-cheapo import shops) in Portugal. I have some strict rules about the things I am allowed to buy in them. I can’t tell you how many hose fittings I’ve been through because I stubbornly refuse to spend three times as much for something that actually functions. So instead I buy things that break before I get them home. Clever.
Frugal shortcuts; Electricity is not your friend. Use the free Espaços Internet if you are only an occasional net user. Give up cheese, or save it for restaurants. Eat less meat. And if you like to take a coffee, you should do as the Porties do and drink espresso… a 55c café is the kind of treat you never have to do without.
For specific prices consult the following:
http://www.mosqueteiros.com/. They publish their brochures on line for both groceries (Intermarché) and hardware (Bricomarché). See “Folhetos”.
More groceries http://www.clubeminipreco.webside.pt/index.htm
Groceries and larger stuff http://www.modelo.pt/promocoes/folhetos
Now, nudie hippie dude, go forth and frugal yourself!
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Visitors are invariably impressed that every morning a little van comes by to sell us fresh bread and cakes. I guess it reminds them of the milkman who delivered daily in our childhoods. It’s a sweet, old fashioned service that trumps the idea that things were better in the old days.
We also have a frozen-things truck that comes on Fridays and a fish truck that comes on Wednesdays. Some villages have more – maybe also a veggie truck. Where I was houseminding the fish truck came three times a week, which really meant you never had to leave the house. And that’s of course why they exist. With the villages of Portugal mostly populated by old people, many of whom don’t drive, these deliveries are more like a necessity. Sure, many of them are also living out of their gardens and chicken coops, but who has sardines in their fish ponds?
It’s one of things my dad would have liked about Portugal had he been alive long enough to visit. My dad loved fish. And while he also liked to make that special, private trip to the fish shop on a Friday evening, I’m sure he would’ve been tickled pink at the sound of the truck’s horn right at his door.
I am, in any case. I love it most when I’ve forgotten it’s Wednesday, and then suddenly there are all these choices for dinner. Will it be sardines, fish soup or grilled salmon? Fish and chips? Vietnamese salt and pepper squid? Fish is so great, my dad reckoned, because you can get away with so few other ingredients. Lemon, butter, salt and pepper, bit of parsley… anything else might be superfluous for a nice piece of fish. I’m sure the Portuguese are of the same school. My neighbours almost always only buy sardines, and they are always just grilled with some garlic, salt and olive oil. They don’t even bother scaling, gutting or chopping off the head! Rustic as hell, and honestly, the way they taste straight off the coals, I wonder why I go to all the fuss I that I do.
Still, I like the versatility of fish. I like making it Asian or Italian or even Cajun. And even though the squid is only about €6 kilo, and the sardines about €3 kilo, it always feels like a bit of mid-week luxury. And the pets love it too. Once while preparing dinner, Mao and I scoffed down a whole steak of salmon, sashimi style, before it could make it into the pan. The neighbours were in shock when I told them – Raw fish?!? Vais morrer! Even The Wookie gets in on the fish guts and heads, provided I’ve fried them up with a bit of garlic and oil, bien sur.
Stuffed Squid
The inspiration for this comes from a great little Italian restaurant called La Locanda, in Clovelly in Sydney. It’s the kind of place everyone would like at the end of their street, a not-too-up-itself but good & authentic Italian bistro.
In winter (and I’m sure this is some culinary faux pas, but I don’t care, it works both ways) I swap the white wine for red, which stains the squid in a nice way when it’s cooking.
2 or 3 squid tubes per person, but it really depends on the size of them…
stuffing:
half cup rice, cooked
an onion
garlic
a carrot, finely diced
lemon zest
red capsicum, finely diced
sauce:
half tin tomatoes
cup white wine
some parsley and lemon to serve.
To clean the squid, remove the tentacles and bits from inside the body and peel off the fine skin. Cut off the head at the beak, remove the beak, being careful not to disturb the ink sac, and rinse well in cold water, but don’t leave the squid in the water or they’ll soak it up like a sponge. Chop up the tentacles and mix with all the stuffing ingredients.
I have a trick for stuffing both squid and cannelloni tubes, and it goes like this. Stick the end of a funnel into the tube, put the stuffing in the funnel and poke it through with a chopstick. Be careful when filling squid not to fill them much more than half way, as the tubes shrink as they are cooking and they’ll squeeze out their filling like they’ve vomited into the cooking pan. Not a good look.
Plop the filled tubes and any leftover stuffing into a frypan or a small oven dish and throw on the tomatoes and wine and some salt and pepper. The idea with squid (and their friends octopus and cuttlefish) is to either cook them very fast or very slowly. So, on high on the cooktop for 10 minutes, or on low in the oven (or fireplace as I do) for about 40 minutes to an hour. I prefer the slow method for the flavour.
You could serve it with a salad, but I usually have it as is. Yum.
Pan fried sardines with parmesan crust.
Tia Maria once asked me how I’d cooked my sardines the night before. Once I’d shared this slightly fiddly recipe, she just shook her head in wonder. Sardines and cheese?
First I gently scale the little fish with a steak knife, then chop off their heads and gut them. Then I flatten them out on a chopping board, sometimes removing the spine, sometimes not, depending on how big they are and how chunky the bones. Then I wash them and leave them on a tea towel to drain. I make a 50/50 mix of toasted breadcrumbs and grated parmesan (actually the powdery fine stuff is good for this because it’s dry). I rub in a crushed garlic or two, some parsley, and season it well. Then I dunk the fillets in milk or egg, or if they are still damp, nothing at all, and then dredge them in the breadcrumbs mixture. Then you pan fry them in about a centimetre of hot olive oil (or a mix of olive and vegetable oil to get the oil hot enough for a cleaner, faster fry) and serve them with a salad and lemon wedges.
If they are small sardines, they’d be great for finger food at a party as all the little bones are perfectly edible and very good for you. They are also excellent the next day in a fresh crusty roll from the bread truck.
Apparently my fish soup is all right. I like it for it’s simplicity: just a steamy bowl of broth and some clean fresh fish. This is another recipe in the Saudades for Yens category; when I´m missing the food of a great Vietnamese restaurant in Sydney. So this fish soup, while not a true Phở, has been Vietnam-ised.
for the stock:
2 leeks
a big onion
garlic a carrot and/or stick of celery, finely diced
whole black peppercorns
chopped parsley
half cup white wine or sherry (or jerupiga)
A mix of filleted fish – as in a calderada sold by the fishmonger. A mix of pink and white fleshed fish is good, and even better if there are some bones and skin still attached to the pieces.
for finishing the soup:
half an onion, finely sliced in half rounds
150g per person of rice noodles
bean sprouts
a big handful of Vietnamese mint or Thai basil, if you can get it, or instead I use a mix of coriander & mint
cut limes
a shot of fish sauce or nuoc nam
Fry up the onion, sliced leek and garlic. Throw in the rinsed fish, the carrot and peppercorns and a litre of water. Let the stock simmer gently for a hour or so. Drain off the solids, rescuing the fish pieces. Separate the flesh from the bones and return these to the pot with the drained stock and the sliced onion. Cover the noodles in boiling water and then stack the bowls with hot noodles and sprouts. Pour on the stock and fish, and serve with the lime quarter, nuoc nam and a pile of the herb greens. Yum.
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I was going to apologise for the lameness of the subject but I’ve just seen ‘primavera’ as the title for Miguel Esteves Cardoso’s column in Público today. Now I have to apologise for being so unoriginal.
But the thing is, the arrival of spring is indeed worth noting. As Sr Cardoso points out, the season of spring in Portugal is a true season, not just summer light. The charm of spring is that it definitively marks the end of the winter. OK that’s obvious, but its psychological effect is really significant. Quite suddenly this year, the sun has come out, I’m not wearing a coat and insects are everywhere. And the flowers! Spring has sprung!
That the malady named SAD (seasonal affective disorder) actually has been given a name (and what a dumb name) seems ridiculous to me. Of course winter makes you unhappy. Winter is miserable. Winter is bad for you. It’s cold, wet and dark. Winter should be renamed depressing. I concede that some things about winter can be nice, like a roaring fire, woollen scarves and hot chocolate or a warming whisky. And I do like snow, for an hour. But the rest of it totally sucks. I could tolerate winter in Sydney, because it’s not really winter, just summer again, watered down. We don’t need beanies or gloves, for instance. I hate beanies. If there are laws against wearing headscarves I think there should be laws against wearing beanies too. To me beanies represent something dangerous, oppressive and separatist. Beanies are a political statement.
And this winter has been the worst winter ever, according to my neighbours. Tia Maria says she has never seen a winter as long and cold and despicable as this one. You know it’s a bad winter when matches won’t light. This year the firelighters won’t light either. The vet told me we have had five days of sunshine since October. And not just a bad winter in Portugal either. Even the Swedes were complaining about the snow, still falling in April (just for me and the film crew). And Swedes are pretty tough.
So thank god that some buds have appeared on the bare trees at last, confirming what we were all quietly suspecting, that it’s not quite so cold as the week before. Like the trees, I’m relieved to have survived the hibernation. I’ve run out of firewood, because it’s been longer and more fierce than expected, but now I don’t have to run around after twigs like my life depended on it. The panic of basic survival is over. And that’s what the little flowers are saying: it’s not something twee or quaint or puerile: it’s time to get on living, which is not what I’ve been doing this winter.
I look around the still soggy, green-with-moss-house, and my ruin looks more ruined than ever. It seems years since I did any building work. I have watched while others continued to point and pour in the hours between showers, but up here in the mountains I just can’t see building in winter as a feasible proposition. During the multiple trips back and forth from the Tomar plains I calculated there must be five degrees difference in temperature, and if it’s cloudy down there, it’s raining up here. And it never seems to be just raining here; it’s either gusty & rainy or bucketing. Or it is just that I’ve lost my nerve? A financial beating is psychologically crushing as anyone knows: it’s an dark and omnipresent worry. Being sick is humiliating and boring, and both of these things are tangible obstacles to building work. But the winter has smothered me, like my eyes are still full of dirt from the burrow and my mind is foggy from the deep sleep of internment. My stores of incentive are as empty as my garden.
And I confess: I can see the projection that some weaker wills judge me to be. A dreamer. A procrastinator. An ingenue. HEY! STOP RIGHT THERE CAPTAIN! I only have to write those words to see how wrong there are. Moi, ingenue? Given the choice between the crotchety, tired and disappointed old woman of the winter, and a blithe virgin-of-life: I’ll take the wrinkles thanks. Young I was once, but naive I’ve never been.
If there’s SAD for winter, is there a diagnosis for spring? Is it contagious?
Goodbye winter. Good riddance. Shower me with spring rain, let me walk in compost and estrume and adubo and the sun:- shine, warm and colour me… and watch me grow a house with my hands.
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(or, The Best Sex I Had Last Year)
When I bought my old house, she had no telephone line, which is quite normal for old houses in this country. Throughout rural portugal you will still see crusty signs that advertise a phone service in a local café or general store. Not so long ago, no one had a phone, and then suddenly mobile phones appeared, and the humble landline simply passed into obscurity. The technology skipped a generation.
And that’s fine if your locale has a nice robust mobile signal floating about. Mine doesn’t, which means to make or receive communications I had to walk up the mountain and stand on one leg. Which would have been complicated had I severed a limb with the chainsaw.
I explained this situation to Portugal Telecom in December 2007, in the hope that they would come the next day and fix me up with a telephone service. The next day, they did not. I continued to call them daily to remind them, and to also remind them that I was using a rival telecommunication company’s mobile network to do so. The more they put me off, the more money I would spend with vodafone. But they didn’t care.
After the first couple of months I decided to use a different tactic. I didn’t really need to explain that I was a foreigner but I pointed out that as an Australian-type foreigner almost everyone I knew was a very expensive phone call away. And how we Australians like to jibber-jabber. What a good client I would be! A big spender! But this didn’t impress them either.
Next, I tried begging. Then I tried being a pest. I tried being nice and developing a ‘customer service relationship’. At this point I had a breakthrough of sorts. They told me they were thinking about connecting the phone. I asked if they would call me back when they had thought about it and I was told “we are not allowed to call our clients”. Um, hello? Trying to do business, and you cannot call your clients? A telecommunications company who cannot call their clients. Nice strategy. Don’t think it will catch on somehow.
It was, at least, an original angle on the “don’t call us, we’ll call you” attitude traditional taken by producers towards actors. And I knew what that meant. It meant that our phoney relationship was over.
Several months later I received a letter from PT informing me that they had finished thinking about connnecting me and had decided not to. It was too hard. Too expensive. But you know, time had passed and I had moved on. I wasn’t hurt. I felt no desire to respond. I mean, I couldn’t exactly call them on my home phone or anything. They made it easy for me to walk away.
Just now I’m remembering something quite funny about dealing with Portugal Telecom. Everytime you call up they want you to provide a phone number. “That’s exactly the reason for my call” I would say, (for which they had no automated response). Brazil, anyone?
So my life continued on its uninterrupted way, free from birthday wishes, announcements of births and deaths, random calls from mother at 8am on a Sunday. In fact, as I didn’t have a TV or radio at this time either, my life trickled over without so much a squeak from the outside world, unless I dared to venture down to the tiny town for a newspaper or session at the espaço internet. Even then, the modern world would come to me only in strictly measured doses. And it’s amazing how few letters you receive when you send none yourself. And no pigeons arrived either (note huge gap in the market there, entepreneurs…).
Occasionally people from modern life would come to visit, because even though my existence had diminished to a barely detectable vibration, other people’s lives continued with the same rampant tramping zeitgeist as ever. I would be horrified by visitors who incessantly sent and received text messages and had separation anxiety from facebook after an hour. They scoffed at the absence of hotspots. Like, at the fonte. At the depositos do lixo. In the forest. Nothing. No signal. Zip. Tch. Toh. Gr. Humph. Who were these people, I wondered, and what planet were they from?
Then, out of the blue, an incredibly good-looking guy with an 8 metre pole arrived and asked where would I like it. It was now December 2008, and I was making an on-the-spot decision about where to fit an ugly eyesore into my grandiose house plans. Up went the pole, and we fixed a date to run the cables.
I almost forgot to tell you about the sex. We were discussing a potential pole site down in the garden. I was standing on a wall that drops off a few metres to the little road below, and my neighbour was passing by, checking out me-and-hunkyportugueseguy. I wobbled, and considering that this was in pre-vertigo days, I think we’ll have to say I swooned, and Senhor Telefone reached out and grabbed me. And pulled me swiftly towards him. To him. At him. Oomph. My neighbour reacted just as I did, with a shriek of surprise and delight. And then it was over. But the moment was good and I definitely felt the earth move.
He came back to fix the line rather inconveniently as my sister and brother-in-law arrived for a visit. Rather more inconveniently for my sister who wanted to take a shower but found that the up-the-pole position gave the techo a perfect view of her less-suntanned bits. I argued on the side of the techo installing my much needed phone, but she got wise and covered the window with a piece of cardboard. The details one remembers of a good day. We sat around in high anticipation of connecting to the world, but as it goes in Portugal things don’t happen in the pre-estimated time. We were waiting for three days.
Mario, or Paulo? I can´t even remember his name, how superficial of me.
Maybe it was during this time that they decided I should start a blog. All I know is it wasn’t my idea and after a year of seclusion the last thing on my mind was revealing my every waking thought to the universe, especially if my thoughts were locked in the tedium of choosing toilet appliances. I was excited enough just to have a telephone line to telephone people on, but in a matter of minutes I would have email rushing at me, a world of information and news available, a facebook account where long lost friends could be found again and then in a month or two, I would be out there living nude in blogland. OK not nude, but sometimes feeling exposed nonetheless.
At first, I confess, I found the contrast a bit extreme, but after few weeks I felt comfy in my little global village. I was mollycoddled by the fresh warmth of friends and family. While I watched my life from another (quieter) era slip away, and the irritating interruptions of random communication began creeping in, I also realised anew just how important friends are.
And starting the blog only reinforced this. I expected the internet to be full of weirdos, and I can confirm that it is, but a few of them are now my friends, and if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.
A year on, and more than 60,000 visits later, I’d like to thank a few people. Foremost, a gargantuan thank you to Fairy and Med for taking it on and keeping me going. About 6 months into it tinyartdirector and I realized there wasn’t going to be any largesse of riches coming our way but we had created quite a nice cuddly monster which other people liked as well, so we’d better keep at it.
Big massive thanks also to Isabel (weirdo) for her constant ideas and feedback. Dee (weirdo in spain) and all the other hilarious women who have tuned in and encouraged. Non-scalable Derek (not that weird) and a variety of other cheerful blokes who’ve gotten into the building bits without being patronizing fools (I will try to actually build something this year, promise) and to all the Portuguese; the porties and the tugas who’ve made me feel welcome even though I can whinge like a pom and can’t write in their language, yet. Thanks peeps. Thanks.
Oh and I should thanks my pets, Mao and Wookie, for being themselves and keeping me warm in the winter. Onya, fellas 
Ironic (or just stupidly shitful) that my phone line/internet connection died around the time of the one year anniversary of the first post. And I´m still not reconnected after months and innumerable chats with the good people at 16200. Shout out to Anna, Alvaro, Fernando, Patricia, Maria, Nuno… quite a lot of people there to answer the phones but no one to come and actually fix the line. And Portugal Telecom still don’t call their clients. What’s that all about?
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