Greetings again, a day later than I planned to blog due to the whole thing being down yesterday. But it looks like the blogging is back in business so I shall write my update now.
The reason I was going to write yesterday is that it was a national holiday here in Portugal. Here, rather than tossing pancakes, the coming of Lent is marked with a Carnaval parade (I’ll spell it the Portuguese way). Of course you will have all heard of the lavish scale upon which the Rio de Janeiro carnaval takes place. I didn’t spend the day in Lisbon when I was here in my year abroad in 2005, so when I went down to the city centre yesterday afternoon I didn’t really know what to expect.
The carnival parade that takes place annually in the summer in my home town is a bit of a joke so I wasn’t expecting it to be as bad as that. And the Carnaval I experienced in 2005 in Caldas da Rainha was pretty decent with lots of floats of huge papier mache political figures. So I was hoping for a little bit of satire again this year, particularly as Prime Minister Socrates just gets himself embroiled in one scandal after another.
Yesterday the weather wasn’t great so upon my arrival down town it felt more like the national umbrella convention than a wild celebration (Rio’s being in summer they don’t have this problem). The parade was a huge disappointment. OK credit to those who dressed up in fancy clothes and had their faced painted but that was about it and some banging on drums. I don’t see what it was trying to achieve and there didn’t even seem to be any shameless advertising. No floats at all and it just seemed very poorly organised (even by Portuguese standards).
But despite the weather and the rather lack-lustre Lisbon Carnaval experience, life is still peachy. The research is going well and I am making more and more contacts. The plan is, of course, to get it all done in my last month. I am now at the half-way point of my stay and deserve a bit of a break as I really haven’t had any fun. Aside from watching a couple of Liverpool games in an Irish pub and occasionally going out for restaurant meals on my own, I have been stuck in my room either working or making the most of Youtube to pass my time. My girlfriend is making the trip to Lisbon tomorrow so I’m very much looking forward to chilling out and enjoying some of the nice places of Lisbon, but not on my own. I will definitely be taking her to the Port wine bar where I was when the picture of me on the blogs homepage was taken a couple of years ago.
I am meeting an important official at the Defence Ministry tomorrow and I am meeting another contact in the Portuguese Development Aid Institute on Tuesday. But am looking forward to the weekend and I have promised to take Lizzy around the zoo on Monday. Let’s hope the weather for that will be more like today (fine and with a bit of sun) than like yesterday (wet and horrible!). Although I gather I’m laughing in terms of nice weather compared to back in Newcastle!
Anyway I hope those of you that had pancakes yesterday enjoyed them. I will have some after Easter when I get home to make up for it! I’m not officially giving up anything for Lent, although I haven’t had a cup of tea for over 4 weeks. But this is largely because of not having the facilities and hating the crap fruit flavoured tea or green tea nonsense you get in these foreign places. But at first opportunity to get a decent cuppa I will go for it, so it doesn’t make sense to commit myself to a fast for Lent.