A Change of Plans

When we last left our heroes, they were boarding the overnight train from Madrid to Lisbon. That was actually somewhat of a pleasant trip. You just walk on to the train, get yourself a little bed in a room of four, devise paranoid and elaborate ways of guarding your stuff from the other three characters in the cabin (this may have been just me), and go to sleep. When you wake up, you’re refreshed and at your destination. I liked it.

When we got to Lisbon, we walked right to our hostel, Lisbon Dreams, which was actually very nice. Our room wasn’t ready, but they let us drop our bags and cash-in a day early on the complimentary breakfast. You’ve got to love a complimentary breakfast when traveling. You just eat as much as you can for free and then save a few euros on food for the day. In general, the hostel was very clean and kind of charming. It had a kitchen and a living room, and a very helpful staff. And it was pretty cheap. I highly recommend it to anyone going to Lisbon.

For our first day in Portugal, Reed and I had separate agendas. He was going to visit the wine town of Porto, and I was going to Fátima. I was going to Fátima, but the first hiccup of the trip changed that. I had looked up the trains online, and I knew when I had to be at the train station. But when I got to the front of the line, my plans changed. After a struggled exchange through the language barrier, I learned that the trains to Fátima don’t take you very near to the city center, and that they’re just generally a bad idea. Oh. Okay. So the girl at the ticket counter directed me to the bus terminal where I would meet the grouchiest woman in all of Portugal.

First, I should note that, for some reason, very few people that I met early on the first day spoke English. And Portuguese is purely confounding. It actually looks a lot like Spanish in writing, but once someone starts to speak, I’m lucky to make out a syllable or two. So most of my conversations on the first half of the first day started the same. Keep in mind that each line here took about a minute by itself. Here is what happened with the wicked witch of the bus terminal:

Bus Witch: Shhhhoojjjj acah bashoosh ba blosh blosh blosh.

Me: Err, no Portuguesa. Do you speak any English?

Bus Witch: Little.

(I thought that this meant that she spoke a little English. Really, she was just showing off “little,” which happened to be the only English word she knew.) (Also, I should clarify: I’m not annoyed that she didn’t speak English. It’s my fault for not speaking Portuguese. And as I will explain later, the Portuguese people were incredibly nice – really just lovely. This woman was not.)

Me: Okay, um… ¿Hablas español?

BW: death look
(In general, it seemed like Portuguese people would rather you speak broken English at them than Spanish. I’m not sure why. But Spanish was usually not an option.)

Me: Um… billhette? Fatima?

BW: Fatima? Look of disgust.

Me: Yes, um… Fátima.

BW: Frown. Fáááátima.
(Apparently, you really have to give that accent mark a few seconds to itself.)

Me: Um, today?

BW: Look of disbelief.
From whatever she said next, I gathered that the bus didn’t leave for an hour and a half and that it took over two hours.

Me: Hm. Okay. One, please.

BW: € 10.10

I paid. She gave me a ticket. And I start to walk away before…

Me: Oh, one more thing.
(I can tell by her face that she hates me.)
With hand motions: When is the last train back?

BW: Shink horash.

Me: Five o’clock?

BW: No. Em shink horash.

Me: What? Five hours from right now?

BW: Nod.

Me: Um... great. Thank you.

After taking a moment to recover from that conversation, I realized that, if I took this bus today, I would have very little time in Fátima. I also realized that I would rather lose the € 10 I just spent than provoke the lovely woman at the bus terminal trying to get it back. At least, I was still in Lisbon, and it was still somewhat early. I quickly decided to switch the two days, and this became Lisbon day.

It was actually a bit of a relief to hit the first set-back in the trip. I know that there are bound to be many of them, and this one I could handle. If that's the only thing that goes wrong for a few days, I'm in good shape. I still wound up seeing everything I wanted to see in Lisbon that day. And it took a lot of walking. I’ll detail it in the next post.