Portuguese is for me a language I can
understand but I’ve never learned it. In terms of closeness to Spanish, it’s
like Luxembourgish and German or Slovak and Ukrainian. It’s mutually
intelligible to some extent with a number of notable exceptions, and yet it’s
definitely another language. But it is also a language I will never learn, and
there’s a reason why: it sounds so familiar but not in the way you think. It
comes across like a whole swathe of other languages I speak, all jumbled up.
Each time I hear Portuguese, for example in advertisements from the supermarket
speaker, I think, “why on earth are they talking about skin products in a
Slavic dialect?” Then reality hits and I realise it’s about kitchenware in
Portuguese.
To me, the adverts sound like this: “Gołąbki
feta carambolage waneschglift scooby doo mulţumesc pinball? Now Nižný vollkasko
pain au chocolat! Wie sieht Esch-Sur-Alzette procureur fandango Edinburgh…
Kantonesisch!” And then some jingle. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trying to
insult the language or the people who speak it, but in all the languages I have
learned or tried to learn over the years, some defeat me for one reason or
another. Usually incompatibility with my own ridiculous preconceptions of it.
A good example is Danish. I tried, boy did
I try… but apart from the bonkers phonetics and the insane numerical system, I
couldn’t get my head around it being far too recognisable without actually
looking anything like English or German. However, what threw me the most was
the word order, which is more or less like English without the silly exceptions
for questions and negatives. I expected Danish to put its verb at the end, like
German or Dutch. Nope. Didn’t get it. And now I’m sensing the same vibe with Portuguese,
although for different reasons.
So navigating the supermarket, shops and
cafés has been a little torturous for me. I hate going to a country and showing
my incompetence in their language – this only happened twice in my life before.
In Denmark, obviously, and Hungary. Hungarian is a step too far for me, really.
Although when I hear an attractive person speaking it, I turn into a warm pool
of watery mush very quickly. Early on in this trip, I learned that Basque is
also an incredibly beautiful language. So much so, I am actually thinking of
learning it.
Anyway, on Sunday 11 August, I woke up
feeling awful. I couldn’t move and just wanted to crawl back into bed again.
The kids also noticed this and kept hugging and stroking me – it was really
very sweet of them. By about midday, I felt adequately mobile to go to the
kitchen and make lunch – creamy chicken rice. I was incredibly surprised when
Livia said she would eat some with us. Whisper it quietly, but I think she
might be passing out of her fussy eater stage.
I have been getting tips from a very
special friend of mine, Gonçalo, who has microscopic knowledge of this area and
to prove it, I’ve been sending him a random photo each day of a place we have
been to – only once did he need a second guess, all the other times he has been
spot-on. And he advised us to head to the beaches of the western part of our
promontory. The ones near Setúbal are
pretty overcrowded and it’s difficult to park.
We headed out west in the car for a dessert
and then beach; my choice was the resort of Sesimbra. The approach to the town
was extraordinary, similar to the French Riviera or the Amalfi Coast. But as
soon as we entered the place, it was a parking hellscape. I thought I had seen
everything in Setúbal with the pile-up
of vehicles, but here, it was another level. There were cars parked in the
middle of tiny squares with just enough room to pass, there were cars that had
reversed on to people’s front gardens, there were cars wedged between rubbish
containers, left precariously on empty building sites, even abandoned in the
road with the hazard lights on.
I drove around looking for a parking spot,
nothing. Then I saw a sign pointing to a 500-space parking garage. I thought,
there must be a space in here. I drove in on the lowest deck opposite the
beach, up and up a spiral column until I hit a parking zone. The kids thought
the dizzy circles were hilarious. One floor was reserved for a hotel, and going
up, all the barriers were down – I presumed later I had to get a ticket from
the entrance to each deck, but I didn’t realise this until we reached the top
and the parking garage vomited us out onto another car-plagued side street. We
all laughed so soundly that even a 500-car parking megalith had spat us out.
I drove up the hill away from the beach
area and came across a secluded street with cars lined up in a row backing on
to a fallow field. And I also noticed another car coming down the hill. I put
two and two together and suspected there was a free space just up there. I was
right, and there was no ticket machine. Fabulous. Now we needed to try to get
everyone down to the town without an argument or a complaint. Never going to
happen.
In the end, we got there, and I have to say
the town was quite a pleasant place. Dainoris was doing his usual “I’m hungry!”
routine, but I wasn’t going to go in the first café I saw just to appease the
little monster. I kept walking until I came across the right place. The groans
got louder the more places I walked past. Then we found a restaurant
overlooking the sea where they were finishing the lunch service, so they
wouldn’t mind just serving desserts and drinks. If there’s one thing Portuguese
can do incredibly well it’s pâtisserie. Livia had a chocolate mousse so thick
and unctuous that it could have been used to repair glass. Bonny Bee and
Dainoris had a strawberry cheesecake, and Milda had something similar. I went
off-piste and had an orange and cinnamon flan.
We kept checking the sun because it was really bright and hot, especially in mid-late afternoon. They kept badgering us to go to the beach, and I kept telling them it was too hot. This was doubly justified when I peered over the edge to look at the beach – I couldn’t see the sand, just a teeming number of parasols, sunbeds and towels as far as the eye could see. There was no way I was going to go down there. Gonçalo had told me about the fabled beaches out west, and upon consultation with Bonny Bee, who wisely suggested that by the time we got there it would be cooler, I had to sell this idea to the kids.
The protests were almost on the level of
French faux-outrage over another government decision to save the economy, but I
bargained with them – if we went back to the car, we would go to the beach shop
and get some stuff. Suddenly they went from the infantile equivalent of
pitchfork-wielding, tyre-burning, ministry-occupying protesters, to effusively
loyal political party members whooping for their leader at a pre-election
rally. Dainoris got his first surf board. Livia got some sand utensils and a
bucket, and Milda got an inflatable ring in the shape of an unrecognisable
animal.
For speed, I decided to drop everyone in a
square and dart up the hill to get the car. Smart move…? Well it would have
been were it not for the labyrinthine street layout. I found myself going
around and around the tortuous pattern of thoroughfares trying to land on the
one where I dropped everyone. Eventually, I managed, and in a powerful act of
integration into Portuguese culture, parked in the middle of the road. They all
hopped in and off we went.
It was a good half hour’s drive, but the
scenery was lovely, even if the roads had seen better days. Arriving at the
wide-open expanse of the Praia do Meco at about half past five in the evening,
I took the car down some very remote roads. Yet when we got there, the place
was utterly packed as if Taylor Swift and the Rolling Stones had teamed up with
Liverpool FC and Benfica for a free football match accompanied by live music on
the beach. The car parking facilities were crazy – they went on and on for rows
upon rows. In the end, as some people had started to pack up to leave, I drove
to the parking area nearest the beach. We got a front-row space and piled out
of there.
Reaching the beach, there were those wooden parasols with the sharp, straight branches lining the place, and I had to go to the bar to ask for one. Now… in Peñiscola, they cost 5 euro for the day. The guys under the one just next to us had arrived at about 1pm and had to pay 18 euro. I was scandalised on their behalf, but not surprised – this was a money-spinning operation. The parking facility was 1 euro a space, which was a relative bargain, but it wasn’t the beach proper, otherwise I would have set us up in one of those instead. The woman at the bar looked at me, asked her husband what he thought as it was coming up to six, and told me “pięknie izgubi folkloric bardzo ketamine fika benzine, calorie maréchal Volkswagen Kombi,” to which I replied “uma pessõa” and she asked for ten euro in English.
Getting there, we all changed out of our
clothes and into our swimming gear. I helped blow up the inflatable genetic
mutation and the kids’ water wings, then we headed down to the water. To say
the waves were high and somewhat crashy would be like stating that Hurricane
Katrina had caused a bit of a commotion. There was no way Dainoris was ever
going to get his surf board into that water. But he really tried – again and
again and again. For sheer persistence and determination, I was utterly
impressed. Milda on the other hand arrived at the edge with her blow-up escaped
laboratory experiment, took one look at it and headed back to her mother, who
has remained stoically dry every time we have visited a beach. Livia just got
in the water and had enormous fun.
After a while, realisation set in, and I went to speak to the rescue service, as they would have more idea of where I should take Dainoris to try his surfboard out. They said about 5 km up the coast was a beach called Fonte da Telha, where the sand was less steep and the waves calmer. We will try that another day for sure.
After another fun-packed afternoon, we
headed back to the car with the accompaniment of lamentations and protestations
from the rabble. My plan was to stop at some place for a last drink but they
were really acting up so I drove straight home. Let’s see if we can find calmer
waves…
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