Lisbon

Last Friday was a national holiday in Portugal. I was going to Lisbon to see the concert of Leonard Cohen on Sunday, so I decided to go there for the whole weekend.

Unfortunatelly national holiday often means a strike. The trains were striking more or less the whole week, but on Friday the traffic was completely stopped. So, last minute as I am these days, on Thursday I tried to find out where the busses leave from (there are 2 companies). Found one company, my flatmate called them and they said that the morning busses were full, and there were some seats for the afternoon bus. However, the reservation system was down and I could not reserve a ticket.

So I found out where the other bus station was and managed to book a ticket online. But our printer was out of ink. So Friday morning, on the national holiday I was running around the centre trying to get my ticket printed. I managed and headed towards the bus station.

It was like all hell broke loose. There were so many people there, the queues were unreal and of course no busses had signfs of were they were going. Normally there is one bus at 12:00, but because of the strike there was now three of them: 50, 50A and 50B. So after somehow by chance finding my correct bus, we headed down to Lisbon. All went well until... the bus stopped. In the middle of a highway. The driver puts on his yellow vest, opens the engine and I get super worried. And it was a hot day and the air con was naturally down. I went outside to see what is happening and the driver was on the phone but of course I did not know what was going on. I was just thinking that please, I hope this whole thing won't take too long since I really need to pee.

The driver did his magic and the trip continued, maybe 3km to the next pit stop: Fatima. The driver disappearred and the engine was left running, and it didn't sound good. Another bus that left from Porto maybe one hour later arrived, and there was some confusion. The driver came to the bus and said that this bus is not going anywhere, and that there were some seats in the other bus that was going to continue to Lisbon (seems that I can understand Portuguese when really needed). So, I took my bag, luckily I didn't have any luggage down so I was able to approach the other bus very fast. Then I TOTALLY played my "stupid foreigner" -card and brutally cut the line and managed to get in the bus. Muahhahahahahahaahhaha, I have necer been more proud of myself.

And this is when the luck changed. I arrived to Lisbon, was queuing for a ticket to metro when a girl approaches me and asks "do you speak English?" I said sure, and she gave me her daily ticket to the metro because she was leaving town and didn't need it anymore. Perfect. So I went to the centre, found my hostel (the best one I ever stayed in, with these reindrop showers), met some nice people, had great dinner and ended up in a square with the 2-hour concert of beautiful fadista Mariza. That was incredible. Then I had some drinks in Bairro Alto and couldn't really believe how unlucky and lucky I was that day.

This is Mariza and the song I need to learn, because there was a sing-along-moment that I couldn't participate to :(

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Iapqgekl3I