Introduction: Portugal, an Enigma

Since my objective is to do justice to the countries I am writing about, I usually keep myself out of the picture (as well as pictures of me - out of the articles). This article is a one-time exception (and an experiment), because some of my incidental personal experiences happen to shed light on the 21st century Portugal - be it in terms of food, transport or society at large.

Portugal is so famous for its cuisine that even a non-foodie like myself was tempted to create a 13-"must-try"-dishes list to explore upon arrival. I also presumed that popular dishes were to be found almost literally anywhere across the country. As it turned out, it was the case for only some of them - such as, for instance, "pastei de nata"/ custard tarts. For the rest, looking for them felt like being on a treasure-hunt. I've never found 9 out of 13 dishes in question (they happen to be available only in specific regions, or sometimes even in a particular restaurant), and stumbled upon several others but incidentally. Those incidents did not necessarily coincide with feeling hungry and being ready for a meal - and when I was finally prepared to make acquaintance of "Polvo a Lagareiro/Fried octopus, the menu of a centrally located restaurant didn't look promising. That is, similar dishes were there but the actual octopus was not. I started moving away but was intercepted by a proactive waiter who was eager to find out what I was looking for. To my surprise, upon hearing my reply, he asked me to wait and went to talk to someone in the kitchen. Surprise turned into astonishment when he returned and encouraged me to choose a table. -"But I want the octopus, and you don't have it". -"We do, we do!". And they did - even if I had to wait for my meal for somewhat longer than usual. Long story short, they scrambled, improvised, and created the dish on the fly - quite likely, for the first time in their establishment's history. Even considering that tourism is known to be Portugal's "main industry", pulling off a trick like that, just to please a random tourist, struck me as something quite remarkable.

The above-mentioned conversation with the waiter isn't just related in English for the sake of the blog - it actually happened in English, and so did each and every communication in both Lisbon and Porto. It's literally impossible to practice Portuguese in Portugal - simply because everybody switches to English the very moment a non-native speaker open hir mouth! It took me 6 days and a relocation to Coimbra to run into someone - a wash-station owner - who couldn't speak English. Before I could get excited about my practicing prospects, a train station cleaner shrugged off my feeble attempts to ask a question in her native tongue, and confidently chattered away in English. I started having a vague suspicion that I might have landed in a wrong country! My bewilderment grew as the phenomenon was explained to me by several unrelated people, among them a tour guide, a florist and a bar owner. The gist of the explanation? Portugal owns its English proficiency to a lack of dubbing! Just like that: watch so-and-so many movies in English with subtitles over a number of formative years, and voila - a foreign language becomes a part of your identity! One can but wonder why the situation is so different in the rest of Southern Europe... 

The improvised octopus and random encounters might be symbolic of Portugal because they indicate the shortcomings of meticulous planning. Even Portuguese transport, while generally reliable, can pull off an occasional stunner - and that's what happened to me when my navigator indicated that there were two buses going to Sintra (renowned for its colourful palaces) from my present location. So, I took the one that came first - and ended up going in the opposite direction! In 40 minutes I was in Cascais I knew nothing about. It was such a blatant, obvious "lemon" that I felt a strong urge to turn it into lemonade. One of various "Things to do in Cascais" blogs mentioned a small, family-owned restaurant providing an utterly unique experience for every customer - walls full of broken but charming watches (the above picture) contributing to the ambience, and personal gifts. I was so intrigued that I decided to find the restaurant, and it was every bit as unique as the article suggested. Good food (always welcome but not unexpected), the watches (quite unusual but maybe not completely one of a kind), and the gift in question. The mercurial owner came to each and every table and asked the diners to smile for a picture. By the end of the meal, the picture was delivered, accompanied by two personalized mini-trays and a food item (a fruit or a candy).

Then there was a whole gamut of a typical midsummer day's (September 29!) experiences - such as beach foot-chest-headball

swimming

fishing

and parapet-singing

(traditionally, a performer like that would be referred to as "street singer" but there is clearly no street to be seen - just the parapet, the sun and the ocean...)

What started as an embarrassing mistake, ended up as one of the trip's best experiences -and that volatility ripe with possibilities will likely remain the recurring motif of these Portuguese adventures