Quarter Life Crisis

The world according to Sven-S. Porst

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Arrival in Portugal

231 words on

After three hours of flight (Portugal is a bit further than I thought) we arrived in Lisbon, got our rental car and drove up to Coimbra. The car is a very small one as my parents had booked it before they knew my brother and me were coming along and fitting all the luggage in there was a challenge.

Weather is quite pleasant but not really warm. The sun looks more friendly here – not the type of crystal clear sun you have on icy winter days. And people are more relaxed and better looking than in northern Europe. My first thought was that this is due to Portugal being 'Mediterranean'. I tend to think of Portugal that way although technically it's at the Atlantic ocean of course and perhaps the plants, although being green at this time of the year, may look a bit rougher that you'd expect in a proper Mediterranean area. Strange stereotypes.

And people speak Portuguese here. I don't know any of it. A few words can be understood using my by now scarce knowledge of French. Even then, you may only recognise them when they're written as the pronunciation differs. When spoken, Portuguese partly reminds me of Russian, having a lot of 'sch' and other soft sounds in it. The other part sounds a bit like Spanish, but not as much as I expected.

March 5, 2003, 22:11

Tagged as country:pt, portugal, travel.

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