Feeling good about yourself

Sometimes, you feel down. Sometimes you feel like despite all your effort, you are not achieving your goal. You learn every day and still you sound like an idiot. But then you go to a party and you realize you not only can make yourself understood, but actually have fun, talking to both Portuguese and Brazilians.

Sometimes, it is good to look behind at what you have achieved, in order to encourage yourself and pat yourself on the shoulder. Do you know the movie "Love Actually"? I remember watching it like 5 years ago, not understanding a word from the scene in Portuguese. Now? Piece of cake.

Sometimes, it's the little things :)

Good Night? Already Going to Sleep?

I'll take a break from the travel posts and the next one will be again linguistical.

One of the fascinating things is how different nations perceive time. Here is a small infogprahics of the greetings throughout the day in the languages I speak:

Portuguese is for me the most interesting case. They do greet each other with "Good day", but only in the morning. Then the afternoon is "tarde" (= "late"). And they strictly keep to this distinction. If you say "Bom dia" after 2 pm, they look at you very strangely. Evening greeting is "Boa noite" (= "Good night"), but they use it only after dark, i.e. a bit later than afore mentioned languages. And yes, it is a greeting :) This one is the hardest to get used to, I feel like I am sending the people to sleep already. Generally, all the portuguese greetings from the picture above can also be used when saying goodbye.

Why the difference? Well, the Portuguese do have it a bit shifted. They get up a bit later and also the best time to go out on Friday is 11 pm. That is the time of leaving for a pub, not of the subsequent way to a club. Another example: The Portuguese word for lunch is "almoço" and the breakfast does not even have a proper name of its own, it is just "pequeno almoço". On the other hand, they have a special word for late dinner.

Blue: Greewich Time, Red: Central European Time

Spain is also famous for its shifted biorythm. But there it has more reasons. Except for the heat during the noon, it is also their "wrong" time zone. Spain uses the central-european time, even though it lies way more to the west. Franco wanted to please Hitler and that is why the sun sets quite soon in Spain. Portugal is more realistic when it comes to timezones. I just need to get used to "Boa noite".

Any thoughts on this? Leave a comment.

Three Trips and One Jump

At first I though the autumn belongs to one of the things that have been cancelled here because of the crisis, but now I am slowly getting used to the fact that it will come later. In the meantime, I am enjoying 25 °C in October. Not complaining, just bragging.

There are four events I would like to talk about. Of course, they are all connected to the very special community: couchsurfing.com

Trip to Drave: The Abandoned Village

My first trip with a bunch of couchsurfers. The Portuguese have an interesting habbit of building a house and then abandoning it, so we went for an entirely abandoned village in the mountains, with the name Drave. This one had a good reason to be abandoned: Unless you have transport beam available, it is unusually hard to get there. To give you an example: The telephone came there in 1993.

We left the cars several kilometers away in the neighbouring village and hiked through the mountains to get there. After we were satisfied with the number of pictures that we had taken, we went for a small bath in the ponds around. Cool!

A cork oaktree after the harvest

The village where we left the cars

Drave, the abandoned village 

My shadow jumping in the water

Nature around Drave

Trip to the Vineyards at the River Douro

If you like Porto Wine, you would have loved the trip up the river Douro to the Quintas—vineyards, where this delicious wine is made. We went most of the way by a packed train that looked more like subway. A boat took us then directly to the vineyards. The rocky soil of the hills around Douro together with the abundance of the sunlight and scarcity of rainfall forces the vineplants to try hard to reach the water and to grow long roots. This gives the grapes such high content of sugar. So we walked among the plants, tasted some wine and on the way back we even ha time for some barbecue—sardines on a grill.

Marketing is important

The view from our quinta

Cheers!

Trip to the National Park Peneda-Gerês

This one was a true hike. The park lies on the northern border with Spain. There was a beautiful waterfall with a refreshing (a diplomatic way of saying freezing) water. And so we did not come up with a better idea than to swim in it :)

On the way back, we made a short trip to Spain for hot springs. Paulo, the leader of our expedition had a plan to spit on the Spanish side (you know, the Portuguese-Spanish brother rivalry). But then, we were in Galicia which is something like Spanish part of Portugal (or a Portuguese part of Spain?), so he left the spitting for another time and place. The warm water made my feet feel happy and me sleepy.

This water was actually warm,
you can tell by the happy faces

The Jump

https://vimeo.com/75728260 ;)

The Road to Portugal

My trip to Portugal was rather eventful. I decided to go by car, eventhough by plane it would be ten times cheaper. I am going to spend year and a half in the western Europe and wanted to have the car by my side. You are curious about the prices? 60 € for a trip with Ryanair, 600 € for the gas and highway tolls. Especially French highways will pull the last penny of your pocket.

The journey started in Slovakia. I crossed Austria, Germany and got to the Switzerland relatively according to my timeplan. I wanted to avoid driving by night. Because of my recent laser operation I still have problems seeing well at dark. In Germany, I took a hitchhiker. He had Polish ancestry, lived in Germany, studying in Switzerland. In the beginning I let him speak Polish and try to pick up words, but then we just switched to German. He was fun, not unpleasant, but one thing that I don't like about hitchhikers is that they take it for granted that they go like this for free, not even buying you something symbolic, like a chocolate at the gas station.

My hitchhiking colleague in front of one of the Swiss lakes

And then I came to Zug, Switzerland where my friend Gabi with her husband Andrei are now living. I got to exercise Romanian, eventhough it was weird for her, since we always spoke in English before. But she kept to Romanian. They took me around the city and after a good sleep I continued my way. Thanks for the breakfast Gabi! :)

Gabi and Andrei in Zug

France has a system of highways that is well taken care of and... empty. The prices of the tolls combined with good quality of the parallel roads gave me the opportunity to have a three-lane highway just for myself. I would have been successful with my plan to come to Bordeaux before dark, had it not been for the failiure of my alternator. I stopped at a rest stop and with the help of the big portion of gesticulation, the crew of the bar there understood what my problem was and called a car mechanic. Luckily, the supervisor at the bar spoke a bit English.

So the car mechanic grabbed my car, loaded it on a truck and took me to their garage. Hannes, a friend from Austria that I met in Hamburg and who spoke French, helped me with the translation over the phone (Thank you!), when dealing with the guys from the garage. I did not feel like going in a hotel there, so I asked if I can sleep in the car and he did not have a problem with that. That probably made impression on them, making them think I am rather poor, because later I discovered that they found some older, still functional alternator and gave me a discount. I was happy that I could continue and that it was not as expensive. In the end I payed some 370 € for the towing and for the alternator replacement.

The beauties of la France

Clio cut open. On the rigt side the old alternator

And then, off I went. Bordeaux. I am going to skip this part and write about it in the next post, so that this one is not eternally long. I spent one whole wonderful day there.

Passing through the Basque ragion was magical. The humid forests of the Pyrenees. Beautiful stuff. I was turning my head around like kid in a candyshop. Then came Castile and León and the road became drier, flatter and monotonous. One could see only hills with dry grass on them. The Sun was setting when I came to Galicia and the nature was getting greener again. I crossed the borders to Portugal and had some one and half an hour to Porto.

Pyrenees

Passing through the Basque region

Dry Spain

I was tired, but the road got then so beautiful that I forgot all my tiredness. I caught a Portuguese radio station. I asked at the gas station about the tolls and I understood! Such a refreshing feeling of being able to communicate, after the France and the Spain. There was a dark blue sky with first stars above me and an orange strip on the west towards which I was driving. There were thousand lights on the hills around me, from the lanterns of the mountain villages. The air smelled beautifuly. I had kind of a feeling of coming home. And it was even reinforced by the warm welcome from my flatmates.

Already chillin' in Porto

3 000 kilometres. But worth it :)

My home for the autumn 2013 - O Porto

Porto, sweet Porto. I expected it to be pretty, but one has no other option, just to stare with an open mouth, when the sun sets over the river Douro. Damn, they could just make car commercials with this in the background. But I am sure they have.

Ponte Luís I

After four days of travelling and one day spent in Bordeaux, I finally came here. And it just all seems perfect. There is bamboo growing behind the house. Palm trees all around the city and peacocks strolling in the parks. I got cool flatmates—Anna from Germany, Dessislava from Bulgaria and my landlords—Patrícia and Rui—are from Porto. Anna cooks and I had to vehemently insist when I wanted to do it once too and Dessi speaks nice Portuguese, so I can always ask her what some word means. So I just feel like a sucker that is just enjoying life.

My place

Bamboo!

Oh, I did not tell you: My parking place is just next to the appartment. And I already managed to swim in the Atlantic, see the centre with the famous iron bridge and drink three bottles of Portugal wine (those of you who know my relationship to wine know it's a big thing).

Oceano Atlântico

But hey, the language mission. I am going to live here until Christmas and in November/December I will go for the C1 language exam. I can already speak, because I had one semester of Portuguese back in Brno and the whole summer I was studying at home. People have to slow down considerably when speaking and I don't know all the words. But I am already able to enjoy a movie dubbed in portuguese or read a magazine. From now, it can get only better.

And I am going to definitely enjoy this autumn. I already am :)

River Douro with me as a foreground

Promenada close the mouth of Douro

Sunset over the Ponte da Arrábida

Portuguese Mission: Tomorrow We Ride, Till the Planets Colide!

Hi guys. I know, it took a bit longer, but here it is: My next mission. It will take place in Portugal and the target language will be European Portuguese. Wait for details, for now, just enjoy the music and the flow. Now I am going to bed, 4 hours of sleep is better than none and a long journey awaits me. See you soon!

P.S.: I fell in love with this song at the age of 14, when I fell in love with one blond, two-year older girl on a school skitrip. It is from the Armaggedon OST.

End of my German Mission and the C2 Certificate

Six months passed since October, when I commited myself to reach C2 in German. The time I wanted to devote to it was four months. Eventually I had some 20 days more, mostly because there was no closer examination date. From the beginning, I was willing to fail. And... I did. Today I opened my results from the C2 exam in Mannheim. I passed in reading, listening, writing and failed in speaking. Minimal number of points for passing was 60 and my results were the following:

Writing	68/100
Listening	79/100
Reading	86/100
Speaking	53/100

It is interesting that the results roughly correspond with how much pleasure I got from those activities. I knew that I had the biggest reserves in speaking and eventhough I was trying to talk to anybody and anything that would respond in German, at the end of the day I would still look forward for the moment with the book "Die Stadt und die Sterne" by A. C. Clark.

I must admit that I am really proud about this failure. I reached for the Moon. Did not get right to it, but I ended up among the stars. Now I am quite relaxed when using my German, my comfort zone was expanded by three European countries and I worked in the language (not using English) and managed so well that my employees want to keep me. Moreover I explored one of the biggest cities of Europe, I met very interesting people and learnt, that some things can be done differently. A big win.

And if you think this lowered my expectations from myself, you could be not more wrong. I am indestructible. I am even hungrier for the next mission. I will let you know about it soon. ;)