"The Traveling Gluttons," a blog about the Harper-Ash family in Lisbon, including musings on pastries, urban life, food, Portuguese society, oh, and did we say pastries?
After a couple of visits to our favorite Fado bar, O Jaime, Rafi has now declared a new ambition: fadista. He's already designed a couple of album covers.
The inspiration for his new aspiration is Camane, the current king of Fado, whom Krista and I very much enjoyed in concert at the Fado Museum. Camane began his public singing career at 10, giving Rafi a couple of years to work on his act.
A Tasca do Jaime (O Jaime) Rua da Graça, 91 1170-167 Lisboa tascadojaime@hotmail.com +351-21-888-15-60.
The Fado performance runs 4 to 8 pm on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays. The performers are excellent and strictly local. Jaime, who with his wife Laura, owns the place, often starts off the set.
O Jaime is literally at a 28E stop in Graça. Not to be missed.
As I think Krista has already noted, there is a nostalgia boom in Portugal (for when we were young, for when we used to make things, etc.). As in Hungary and other places with troubled pasts, it can be awkward (now that I think about it, where wouldn't that apply--maybe some places more than others). But who among us does not fondly recall Gorilla Gum, the Portuguese equivalent of Bazooka, complete with cartoon.
Krista and Rafi had the Solero Exotic Explosion yesterday in the park. Maracujá (Passion Fruit) popsicle with real pulp around creamsicle center. Heavenly. Can we get these at home? Will Customs object if I fill my bag with
O Rafi went to birthday party for a Mafalda (the definite articles before people's names never ceases to amuse me) at the lovely park behind parliament last weekend.
Zeke, Rafi, and I took the bus over the bridge back in early April, walked up the hill, and took the elevator to the top of Cristo Rei, the enormous statue of J.C. given by the people of Portugal in gratitude to Antonio O. de S. (odious) for keeping them out of WWII.
Unfortunately I forgot the camera. But we were lucky to meet Joe Ting and a friend of his, both students from Singapore studying in London. Joe took a picture with us and emailed us the photo. So here we are at the foot of Cristo Rei.
We all went to the Azores (os Açores) with Victoria and Bruce for a long weekend (much more on this in posts to come). A few days before the excursion, Krista and I ate late at a Lisbon sushi restaurant with the likely/unlikely name Kampai - Inspirado nos Açores (Kampai - Inspired in the Azores) and quite good sushi. There we tried Kima Maracuja, a delicious passion-fruit soda pop, made in the Azores.
Rafi, Zeke, and I drank plenty during our visit to the Azores but have been unable to find a regular supply in Lisbon.
twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays, at their school Escola de Pedro Nunes. Their instructor is Ms. Monteira, pictured here with Zeke. Her sister, Telma Monteira, was at press time in the number two spot on the world ranking list and represented Portugal in the 2004 Athens Olympics.
Telma came to visit her sister's Judo club and signed Zeke's and Rafi's obis (Judo belts).
After visiting Monserrate with Marshall, we continued our roadtrip through the Serra de Sintra with a visit to the Convento dos Capuchos (Capuchin or Franciscan Convent). The Franciscans built it in the 1500s. In keeping with the order's focus on simple living and the beauty of the natural world, the friars built their monastery up against a hillside, with rooms tucked between moss-covered boulders.
Contemplative Zeke
The monks used cork from the mountain's trees to line the walls of their cells, to make cushions for their benches and beds, and to pad the incredibly low doorways of their monastery.
Inside the monastery, everything is tiny and dark. Eight Franciscan monks lived there, plus the occasional novice or visitor. The monk's chapter house, where they would hold meetings, was a small, circular room with a fireplace and cork-lined benches--it was a little community of hermits.
Outside, the monastery is enveloped in woods, greenery, moss and ferns, and trickling springs--the beauty of nature.
Michael's dad, Marshall, came to visit us in mid-March, and we had a great roadtrip together through the mountains around Sintra. We visited a beautiful mansion and botanical garden at a place called Montserrate. It was built in the late 19th century by a wealthy British family, but it fell into disrepair around the Second World War. Now it is being refurbished, and it is quite a neo-Moorish fantasy.
Chapel at Montserrate
Marshall, Rafi, and Michael
The grounds also have a chapel ruins--built already ruined for full effect. All they needed to do was to grow a giant ficus tree over the crumbling walls and voilá! Instant romance.
The Recibio Verde (Green Receipt) is the Portuguese way of employing people, mostly young people, in the formal sector but without formal job protections, similar to long-term work as an "independent contractor" in the U.S. The Recibio Verde has shown up as a recurring symbol in the Precariedade (living at risk) and Geração à Rasca protests. Here is a Green Receipt sculpture carved in green marble, artwork available from the Caroline Pagès Gallery in Campo de Ourique. (I've heard The Mill Was Made of Marble...but the receipt, too?)
So how many people are working under the Green Receipt?
Well, we won't find out from the Portuguese Census because the now-infamous Question 32 seems intended specifically to obscure a count of precarious employment.
Question 32 asks, "How do you do your work?" and the possible answers are (1) as the boss or employer; (2) work alone on my own account; (3) work for someone else; (4) unpaid family work; (5) work for a cooperative; and (6) other situation. The literal fine print says, "If you work under the Green Receipt but you have a fixed place of work in a business, a place in a work hierarchy, and defined hours of work, you must choose the option "work for someone else."
So we won't get insight into the extent of the informal formal sector from the Portuguese 2011 Census because the règle du jeu lumps together the precarious and the rest. Maybe there's a broader point there about class solidarity, but in the short run we are being denied insight into the dysfunctions of the economy.
Lately we have been using Skype in new and exciting ways...For those of you who don't know Skype, it's an online telecommunications service that allows you to call phones from your computer and to video-conference from your computer for free. Michael and I have been using it a lot for work, but we are also using it with the boys to keep in touch with friends back home.
Zeke on Skype with his class
For example, Zeke and Rafi have each had video-conferences with their classes at Wildwood School. The computer teacher set up Skype on one of the school computers, and the kids had fun interviewing Zeke for about a half an hour. Also, this week Zeke and his friend Ethan figured out that they could play Magic the Gathering with each other on Skype, and they had a great time doing that together on Saturday afternoon.
So, if you want to Skype us, drop me a line...good times are before 4:30 pm EST, and before 1:30 pm PST.
It's been over two weeks since our last blog post, and that's because it was a spell of time when some of us were hit hard by a virus and the homesick blues. So for those of you who might have wondered, is there a downside to taking the whole family across the Atlantic for a semester of adventure, here's the scoop:
Colds happen, even in a three-season climate: I spent about three weeks of March with bronchitis and generally running at about 75% capacity healthwise. It was really hard to stay upbeat, and I really missed being in my own bed in Amherst. I did have a positive experience with the Portuguese health care system; I walked into the neighborhood public clinic on a Sunday, was registered at the desk, charged a $4.50 co-payment, and saw an MD who spoke English within 20 minutes of arrival. Since I had a cold, all she did was confirm that my sore throat was not strep throat and sent me home with a prescription for an expectorant, but I got timely and professional medical care on a walk-in basis.
Barf happens: Rafi and Zeke were stricken by a bad barfing bug the third week of March, and they spent a few days holed up at home. They bounced back pretty quickly, but it was hard to get Rafi to return to school afterwards.
Mediterranean homesick blues: Rafi got especially homesick and bummed at the end of March. Most mornings, Rafi did not want to go to school and complained about things that were frustrating him at school. These things included conflicts with his closest friend in his class, worrying that the other kids think he's dumb because he could not speak Portuguese, and just plain missing his wonderful teacher and friends back in Amherst. Zeke misses his friends and teacher, too, but his day-to-day life at school is less challenging in some ways than Rafi's because by age 10 and 11, Zeke's Portuguese classmates already speak English well (yeah, pretty impressive). I was feeling down about Rafi's homesickness, my cold, and the weird pace of exploratory research.
Hitting a wall with the language: Going into month three, I really got bummed out about my Portuguese skills. I can read and speak pretty well, but my listening comprehension is seriously bad. Mostly, I was holding myself to high (and unrealistic) expectations for how quickly I would be able to learn the language. I asked my teacher for some tips and started reading more in Portuguese and forcing myself to just talk with people in Portuguese instead of English. This last one is a must because Portuguese people usually speak pretty good English--but if you get into a normal social situation with lots of Portuguese people, naturally they prefer to switch into their own language. So if you want to understand what is going on, you need to know the language. Michael and Zeke are making great progress and feeling good about their Portuguese skills, but Rafi and I have felt the limits of our abilities a lot. It must be said that Rafi has the best accent of all of us--he wins our family's prize for the "most hours in a language immersion setting" (which is probably why he wins the "most homesick" prize, too).
What am I doing here, anyway? This was a factor in my blues--I felt especially responsible for Rafi's homesickness because I was the one who convinced everyone to decamp to Portugal for a semester. So it made me feel like I should have a very clear picture of my new research project, but it is at the "exploratory stage," which means I am just trying to figure out what is going on in Lisbon in order to formulate a research project.
The "Crise": As in Ireland, Spain, and Greece, Portugal's economy is in serious trouble. Our Portuguese colleagues have already taken a 10% pay cut to to shoulder the national debt to the banks that were encouraging wild speculation and loans just a few years ago. Prime Minister Socrates announced a budget with austerity measures and was asked to resign and for new elections to be held (this happens in a Parliamentary system). The only problem is, none of the big political parties is suggesting any alternative strategies. So the Portuguese themselves seem a bit shell-shocked. It is a difficult time for this country, and its people don't deserve the hard times that have come their way.
So these were some of the challenges of the last few weeks. But lately, things have been looking up for all of us. The various viruses have run their course, and we are all feeling healthy again. Daylight savings time has arrived, and the sun is setting at 7:30 pm, so we are getting lots of wonderful light. Rafi seems to be perking up a bit. We are making friends! We are learning a lot about Portuguese history and society, and suddenly, the research possibilities for me are falling into place. So at the start of April, things are looking up for us (though probably not for the Portuguese economy).
At the end of March, many good, fun things happened, too, like a visit from Michael's dad and brother Andrew, but that's a story for the next post...
Lisbon has certainly been exciting lately! Today the metro opened late because of strikes (second time this has happened to us this spring). We took the bus instead, but it's a sign of the discontent that is everywhere in Portugal during a crise ("the crisis").
On Saturday, we marched in the massive "Geração a Rasca" demonstration with our history prof, Alice Samara, her husband Tiago, and other friends from the the university. The protest was all organized on Facebook and new media, it was not sponsored by any of the traditional political parties or unions, and many of the participants were probably drawn because of that fact (they don't see themselves as "political"). And it drew out somewhere between 200,000-300,000 people in 12 cities across Portugal, which is a sizable chunk of the total population. Between one and two hundred thousand people joined the LIsbon protest alone.
Tiago, Zeke, Alice, Rafi, and Michael hit the streets
The term "generation at risk" (also known as precarioso, of "precarious") refers to young adults who are unable to get jobs after graduation, or who have temp jobs without benefits or security--part of the so-called "flexible economy." There's a lot of concern that they can't leave home and get their own apartments, that everything is on hold because of the financial crisis, and no one knows if they will ever be able to lead "normal" lives.
Many people wore shirts with a checklist of "at risk" or "precarious" conditions. The guy in the photo below is wearing one. It reads: "I am: an intern, a scholarship student, intermittently employed, on a short-term contract, a teacher, a working student, an immigrant, an independent contractor with crummy social security, unemployed, childcare worker, employed below my credentials, about to emigrate, a temp...I am precarious, but inflexible!"
Precarious...but not taking it anymore!
In fact, many of the participants in the march on Saturday were parents of young adults--many of them held signs saying things like "Mother-at-risk of a recent-PhD-at-risk-living-at-home." And plenty of pensioners joined the fun, too--people started talking about "Gerações a Rasca" ("Generations at risk"). I think that the "generation" talk is about the fear that this generation will not see the rising standard of living that the Portuguese experienced from 1974 until about 2001, when Portugal hit its first post-dictatorship recession.
There were not one but two big protest-pop songs being sung in the streets. There was a group called the Homens de Luta ("Protest People"), which started out as a comedy act, a cross between the Village People (very popular in Portugal) and a protest singer from the 1974 Revolution (the one that brought down the Salazar dictatorship). They hope to compete in the Eurovision Song contest, bringing the Portuguese people's message to the good burghers of Dusseldorf, where the 2011 contest will be held. Some folks wonder if they will get thrown out for being too political. We also heard the Deolinda song, "Que parva que eu sou"("What a dummy I am"), retooled as a drum corps chant--powerful stuff!
Next Saturday, the major trade unions and Portuguese Communist Party (this is one of the major parties here, not a tiny organization) will be holding demonstrations--it will be interesting to see how it goes, and how much overlap there is with this new-media-inspired "Generation at Risk."
We went to the Fado Museum in Alfama last weekend and saw displays on the history of Fado and listened to recordings by the greats. Zeke and Rafi liked it a lot, especially the recordings and the seamy side of pre-Salazar Fado life. Krista has a well-developed interpretation of the current meaning and viability of Fado, which I'll leave to her in another post.
This past week, Michael's brother Garrett came to stay with us for a few days. Garrett was over in England giving a presentation about the NGO he co-founded, Running Across Borders, which supports training and education for competitive runners in Ethiopia. So after that, he stopped in. Whenever Garrett visits, he finds a way to squeeze in his daily 14-mile run. In Lisbon, he did this by running around the city in the wee hours of the night when there are hardly any cars out. Pretty wacky!
Some photos from his visit...
On the #28 trolley
Up at Castelo São Jorge
Also at Castelo São Jorge
When you run 14 miles a day, go ahead and indulge in a pastel de Belém
Sunset on the Tejo, Belém
At the Torre de Belém at sunset
This morning Garrett flew home to the States. It was a short but very fun visit--thanks for coming to see us, Uncle Garrett!
On our way home from Tomar, we stopped by the Castle of Almourol, which is smack-dab in the middle of the Tejo River. It can only be reached by boat! It was built during the period when the Portuguese were slugging it out with the Muslim emirs, and for a long time, the Tejo was a key natural boundary. Here are some photos from our visit...
In addition to the fortified church built by the Knights Templar, Tomar has one of Portugal's few synagogues, which we visited.
Michael and the boys in front of Tomar's tiny synagogue
Jews lived in Portugal from at least the 5th century, but maybe even as far back as the Roman times. The Visigoths, who were early Christians, gave them a hard time back then. Things got a lot better for the Jewish population after the Muslims invaded in 711, as long as they paid their taxes to the caliphate. The Christian kings from the northern part of the country kicked out the Moorish emirates in the 12th and 13th century, and Portugal became a Christian kingdom with large populations of Muslims and Jews, especially in the central and southern parts of the country. Under these kings, Portugal's Jews continued to have important roles in cultural life and education, politics, and commerce, and there were especially large communities in Evora and Lisbon, as well as smaller communities in villages and smaller cities like Tomar.
All this changed 1497, when King Manuel I (the guy who gave the "Manueline" architectural style its name) ordered Portugal's Jews either to convert to Christianity or get out of Iberia (since Ferdinand and Isabela were the ones who started the whole trend in Spain). over the next 140 years, there was a Portuguese Inquisition, with many waves of massacres and forced deportations. Many Portuguese Jews fled to the Netherlands (like philosopher Baruch Spinoza), England (like the ancestors of classical economist David Ricardo), Greece, Brazil, and other countries. Some practiced in hiding as marranos, while presenting themselves as Catholics in everyday life. Accusing someone of being a marrano appears to have been an handy way to get one's enemies jailed, deported, or executed. Jews pretty much stayed away from Portugal until the late 19th century, when some Jewish businessmen from Brazil came to live in Lisbon and other cities. That's why Lisbon's synagogue was built in 1904.
So, after 1497, Tomar's temple was no longer used as a synagogue. Over the centuries, it was used as a jail, a chapel, a hayloft, and a storeroom. In the 1920s, a Jewish engineer from Poland named Samuel Schwarz was working in Portugal and started collecting Portuguese Judaica--fragments of headstones and stone plaques with Hebrew letters. He also bought the building in Tomar, had it excavated, and established it as a museum. Today, the museum continues, and the building is sometimes used for synagogue services for international visitors.
Here are the entry badges of Krista and our new friend Emma for the walk at Conimbriga. The check marks, red on Emma's and blue on Krista's indicate, "Bottle of local wine and rounds of local cheese have been received." And they were, with pleasure. (The boys received wine and cheese too.)
On Monday, we took advantage of the long weekend, a sunny day, and our landlady's car and took a day trip to the little town of Tomar, about two hours' drive northeast of Lisbon. Once we got through the Lisbon metropolitan area, our drive took us through a landscape of little hills with olive groves, cow pastures, and the occasional vineyard. We arrived in Tomar at the opening time of the main sight, the Convento de Cristo of the Knights Templar.
Inside the rotunda, the oldest part of the monument
The octagonal rotunda of the church was built by the Knights Templar in the late 1100s. They were a monastic military order, which is quite a concept to try to wrap your head around. Basically, they were a group of tough guys who formed the organization in about 1130 to fight in the Crusades, and they agreed to take vows of chastity and poverty. Later, they added the task of protecting pilgrims traveling to the Holy Land. But after about two centuries of collecting rewards in the form of landholdings and protection money, the Knights Templar grew very rich. Because they had both money and a trans-European network extending from the British Isles to the Holy Land, they became the "American Express" and Lehman Brothers of the Middle Ages--issuing both travelers' cheques and the transfer of funds across Europe. They gave out big loans to the merchants and kings of Europe, and they had enough money to build beautiful convents like the one at Tomar all over the continent.
The guys outside the convent; oldest part is behind them
Eventually, the kings of Europe came to see these militarized Christian bankers as a threat to their power. The French and English kings decided to burn them at the stake in the early 1300s, and many of the Knights fled to relative safety in Tomar, Portugal.
King Dinis of Portugal then did something pretty tricky--he renamed the order (to the "Order of Christ") and claimed it as a royal order. This meant that instead of handing over the Templars' assets to the Church in Rome, the Portuguese throne largely controlled the Templars' assets. This had important effects: in 1417, Prince Henry the Navigator was named the Grand Master of the Order, and he used the Order's assets to fund his navigation school at Sagres and the early Portuguese sea voyages that claimed the Azores and Madeira Islands and sailed far down the coast of west Africa.
Rafi and the ornate Manueline window
And the spiral staircase!
We really liked the spiral staircase!
After Henry's death, other Portuguese royals used the Order's money to finance sea voyages around Africa, to India, Southeast Asia, Japan, and Brazil. So basically, this church represents the financial empire that led to the colonization of people on three continents. And now, it's a tourist attraction in a sleepy Portuguese town. Being here really does make you tend to think about history in the longue durée.
On Sunday we all went for a walk in the Alfama, the area clinging to the steep hill between Lisbon's Sé (Cathedral) and the Tejo riverfront. On the sidestreet next to the Cathedral walls, we tried to pick some oranges from the street trees, but others had beaten us to the low-hanging fruit!
No luck for Michael and Rafi!
Later, we spotted a young couple who had a great look going: the guy in a green tweed jacket with chalk inscription ("fetra": not a Portuguese word, what does it all mean?) and the girl in orange tights and cobalt blue patent-leather shoes, with an enormous cloth flower pinned in her hair.
On Saturday, looking for fun things to do with the boys, we visited the "Museum of Water" near our house and saw the impressive Mãe de Agua cistern.
The cistern was built during Lisbon's great urban reconstruction in the period following the 1755 earthquake and tsunami that leveled much of the low parts of the city. The aqueduct dates from the late 1700s as well.
This whole complex is part of a beautiful mid-sized park near our apartment, just across the street from the shop where the boys are taking piano lessons. Lovely Lisboa!
The last weekend in February, after visiting Coimbra, we woke up early and went on a hike in the hills with our new friends Marta and Pedro and their buddies.
L to R: Marta, Michael, Krista, Rafi, Emma, Pedro, João, and Lawrence
We met Marta a few weeks ago when we were searching for the same geocache in our neighborhood in Lisbon. She is Spanish but studied on the Erasmus exchange program in Coimbra. Now she lives and works in Portugal and is engaged to Pedro, who teaches environmental studies at the University of Coimbra. Their friends included João, Ilya, a Russo-French architect, and Emma and Lawrence, two Brits who have moved to the village abutting the Roman ruins at Conimbriga.
The hike was organized by a Portuguese running association, and many of the participants were actually running a 30-km cross-country race. We opted for the 14 km hike instead, but we were a little worried because we didn't know if the boys could handle a 9-mile hike! But Zeke and Rafi looked so professional with their official t-shirts andfcc race numbers, we figured we could give it a try.
Zeke and Rafi hiking through Conimbriga Roman ruins
Our hike started in the town square of Condeixa and then passed through the ruins of a Roman city. after that, the trail led us over a small pass into the next valley. We walked through olive groves along a small river.
Brothers on the road
We passed through a village and saw this beautiful tile sign, which let us know that we had been walking on the Caminho de Santiago, the Portuguese road leading to Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain, where the relics of St. James are buried. In other words, this trail is part of a trans-European travel route dating back to the 12th century!
Note the seashell motif on the tiles: the symbol of St. James
Of course, the Portuguese part of this network is just one of many spokes from all around Europe.
A map of the paths leading to Santiago de Compostela
Still, it's interesting to imagine the pilgrims, like the travelers in the Canterbury Tales, who have been walking this network of paths for centuries. The route through northwestern Spain is enjoying a renewed popularity with tourists, though they're mostly secular these days.
Pedro and Michael take a break in the second village
The nice thing about going on a hike organized by a Portuguese club is that they call up the village cultural and sports associations and get them to greet the hikers with not only water bottles and orange slices, but also with fresh bread, local cheeses, and wine!
The finish line!
And after hiking over nine miles, we crossed the finish line and everyone received a bag with a bottle of red wine and two sheep's milk cheeses. Yum! the boys were very proud of their accomplishment, and we were proud of them, too.
After the hike, Emma and Lawrence hosted the whole group for lunch at their restored house in the village next to Conimbriga. It was a fabulous day.
