Corpus Christi in Vila Real

Second weekend of June was a, so called, "long weekend" for everybody thanks to the Corpus Christi holiday that took place on Thursday.
Typical thing about this holiday are processions. In Poland, the processions take place in the morning and everybody treat it very seriously and try to look and behave very elegant. In Portugal it looked more like an evening street parade where firefighters and friends were making a lot of noise with their drums and trumpets.

Meanwhile the community of Vila Real gathered in front of the church as if it was a picnic. In Poland everything is closed during such holidays, in Portugal every supermarket is open just like it was during Easter.

To seize the day, Sena and Filipe called me in the afternoon and we took a ride to Alvão.

It gave us a lesson that my beloved waterfall is hidden in the shadow in the afternoon.

Instead of swimming we went on admiring the views.

In the faraway background - Vila Real.

Kasia and Daniel conquer Portugal

Last weekend of May was incredible! The best couple in the world, Kasia and Daniel, came from faraway Toulouse to visit me. Their journey took 13 hours by bus but when I saw them in Vila Real on Friday noon they were as joyful as always.

Before they arrived the only thing I asked them to bring was French cheese. By the way, in the nearest supermarket here - Pingo Doce - most of the cheese comes from Poland. So while I expected Kasia and Dani to bring 2 or 3 cheeses, they've filled one of their backpacks with cheese! It made some of my flatmates very unhappy - after opening the fridge the only sentence I could hear was "uhhhhhh something stinks!". To avoid any kind of tragedy that could take place, we decided to eat the most smelly ones as soon as possible and did an evening picnic.

The consumption of cheese was supported by Calem's Ruby Port wine. It matched just perfect!

First cheese we've tried is called Valencay and produced from goat's milk. It used to have a pirdamide shape, but after Napoleon's unsuccessful visit to Egypt, the top of it was cut off not to remind him about the failure. It tastes much more delicate then it smells. It really smells!

Second cheese was Forez, made of mixed milk (goat's and cow's) and brick shaped. It is very soft and somehow similar to Camember.

That's all folks! I got hungry...

May I show you...

The month May is not, as most of the people think, a month of picnics and admiring flowers. It is a month when every student hardly sleeps and is followed by deadlines, no matter if awake or asleep, while being surrounded by great possibilities of having fun. And here I go with some daily shots...

Queima de Vila Real

Queima das Fitas is a traditional festivity of Portuguese students. The most famous ones take place in Coimbra and Porto. In Vila Real it started last Thursday.

That evening Iva, with a support of Paulina and me, prepared Czech dish called knedliki. She served them with chicken and as a salad prepared cucumbers with yogurth (in polish: mizeria, in turkish: cacık). As you see below we had a big variety of people with different eating habits: a vegetarian, non-pork eaters and also a person who eats mostly junk food. Despite of that, everybody enjoyed the dinner and we have to repeat it!

After having a coffee we've moved to the Camara Municipal - the main square, where crowd of students gathered for the Monumental Serenata. During the Serenata fado and historical songs were performed. However, I was personally positively distracted by the general atmosphere and students dressed in traditional outfits. The picture below shows me and my classmates (from the right: Nelson, Simon, me, Armando and Filipe). As you see, two of them are wearing praxe and two of them not.

Praxe is a traditional outfit of portuguese student and its history reaches 14th century. It consists of a long jacket, trousers, black tie and vest and of the long coat which has many patches on it.

The patches on each student's coat are different. Those that you may see at Armando's coat symbolize his university, his faculty and his favourite football team.

Nelson has a patch of his faculty and many patches of cities that his friends come from. Interesting rule is that the number of patches must be odd (1,3,5,7...101).

Felipe, who studies biochemistry, has not only patches with his country, city or faculty but also favourite bakery, his parents, valentine's day. He told me that it is also common to wear a round black hat with the whole praxe.

Inseparable and main part of Queima are music concerts and even if you are not paying attention to what the band is playing it is still fun. The biggest stars so far this year were Rita Red Shoes and Blasted Mechanism. The week is not over yet!

Lost sunglasses

One beautiful sunny day my dear flat-mate Iva lost her sunglasses at the university here in Portugal. It's kind of easy to imagine how upset she was and so she kept on looking for them everywhere. She went back to school to check if they're not there, because she still hoped that Portugal is not like Czech Rep. or Poland and that people would not take almost-brand-new-D&G's sunglasses that they've found forthemseleves. However, Iva's Portuguese friends told her that there is no chance to find them...

After the longest weekend of her life, Iva went to the university on Monday and for the last time made an effort to find them. She asked the portier who obviosly didn't speak English if he havn't seen anything like what she lost... and the miracle happened! There they were. It turned out that she left them in the ladies room.

The moral of the story is:
Portugal is not like Czech or Poland. If you've lost sth you still have a chance to find it!

70 km/h

I've never heard or seen such a strong wind (behind the window and its covers... it sounds as if 10 elephants were fighting with each other) as it is today... Around 70 km/h probably.
Let's give up a mountain trip.

Greetings from Portugal! :))

Vila Real - exploring #3

Yesterday's on-foot trip with Poli... :)


"There are sheeps... and there are wolves... and there are also black sheeps. Black sheeps always win."

Carnaval in Portugal

Carnaval is basicaly, as everybody know, the celebration that takes place usually in roman catholic societies before the time of 40-day lent which ends during easter holidays. It's parts are usually a colorful parade of funny dressed people and other kinds of parties.
Since previous week children were hanging around the city dressed in costumes.
My top 3 were:
1) child dressed in blue... with a car-shaped box around the waist... omg! it was a girl dressed as a police car!
2) girl in pink fluffy elephant outfit
3) little Batman... tiny actually. perhaps 1 meter tall!

Actually I should mention 2 more unforgetable costumes... On Saturday Daniel and I went for a mountain hiking (due to the lack of the routes we had to walk along normal roads and trial motorbikes paths that smelled like sh... like burned tires) and while passing through the small village where the time stopped hehe suddenly Spiderman and Snow White came out on the street. They were both as small as Batman. The mountain area disappointed us with loads of trash everywhere but we really liked the stream that was passing by.

On Monday night Erasmus students had a Carnaval dinner all together in "Transmontano" restaurant. Most of them had put on costumes, some of them didn't. My flatmates and I didn't coz we already look like a basketball team...

We had typical portuguese dishes for dinner:
- bacalau com natas which tasted like spanish tortilla de patatas with fish
- carne de porco a alentejana - "alentejo" style pork meat
- arroz and batatas (rice and potatoes)
I didn't enjoy the meal as much as I expected (perhaps I was not hungry enough).
The thing that everybody tasted and liked (except one person that drank water) was obviously Sangria.

Luckily, on the next Daniel took me for lunch to the typical portuguese restaurant - "Restaurante 22" that serves portuguese dishes and this time I loved everything we ate. The potatoes were sooo delicious that Daniel had to make a biiiig sacrifice and eat rice.
The nicest thing about restaurants in Vila Real is that when you're leaving, the staff is always smiling friendly so that it really makes you want to come back :)

Vila Real - exploring #2

Last weekend Daniel paid me a visit in VR. The town seemed to be depopulated and the weather was perfect.

We had a funny adventure with looking for the restaurant serving francesinha which my erasmus incoming res. recommended. When we've finally found it, the door was completly locked. While deciding not to give up and standing on the corner of Avenido 1 de Maio and Rua Miguel Bombarda one guy came out to us to invite to his restaurant - 'Retrio da Marginal'. As soon as we've entered the place, it seemed to be like entering the time machine. For me the place looked like polish 'milky bars', popular over 20 years ago during communist times. Obviously we were not in Poland and the main reason, why it couldn't be milky bar, was the fact that they had Coca-Cola there. Anyway, we went on... There was one guy sitting by the bar and another one by the table. The owner kept on saying sth to us and pointing the end of the room so we moved forward... Actually I didn't know what was happening but then I saw sth like a kitchen window and a cooking lady... Then a small corridor appeared and "Sala de jantar" written above it. It was clear, the most representative part of the restaurant was still ahead of us. We've passed the corridor and there it was. Hudge dinning room with loads of tables and next to two of them an old couple and a family dinning. After taking a sit, the owner and the waiter served us very politely with everything we wanted.
Francesinha was good and the french fries were like home made - Bom apetite!

(This is one of over 30 posts, which I accidentally deleted one day in January. Luckily, I was able to recover them thanks to the backup done by DanielSan! It's a pity that the comments are gone but someting is better than nothing.)

Vila Real - exploring #1

Igreja de Bom Jesus do Calvário

(This is one of over 30 posts, which I accidentally deleted one day in January. Luckily, I was able to recover them thanks to the backup done by DanielSan! It's a pity that the comments are gone but someting is better than nothing.)

... and my beautiful flatmates - Iva (Czech Rep.) & Paulina (Poland)

River Corga and Dolce Vita - shopping mall

Loads of silver cars are characteristic for Portugal

Vila Real

Vila Real is not a very big city where I'm doing my Erasmus.
It is located between the rivers Corgo and Cabril. What's more the Marão and the Alvão mountains surround the town. Those who have experienced the Bieszczady mountains (Poland) can try to imagine Bieszczady and the city with 25000 inhabitants among them.
This is it. Vila Real.

View from my window (one of two)

I've arrived here on Sunday afternoon, after having exquisite portuguese lunch prepared by Ze Mario's mother. The way from Amarante was extremly foggy, thanks to the GPS I didn't have a feeling that the car is gonna fall into the abyss in a second. In this point, I should mention that Ze Mario drives very carefully, although he says that portuguese people are famous for being crazy drivers.

Vila Real welcomed us with even more fog and rain.
As soon as we've found the building, where I was going to stay for the next few months, we went to its owner to ask for the key and short explanation about the apartment. Well, finally there were 3 keys and a very long explanation in portuguese which included all the details about fishing season in Portugal and things like 'how to open the window", "how to hang laundry" or "how to sit down on a chair". So, after this speech that could compete with Fidel Castro's, it turned out that my home mates were in Dolce Vita, which is a nearby shopping center. I was in a desparate need of the heater in my room, so it was quite a good opportunity to buy one and also to get the Vodafone card. In Dolce Vita, Ze Mario easily recognized 2 non-portuguese girls - Iva and Maruška and we all got back to our hudge Ice Castle.
While spending the first evening in my new room I took off the gloves after 4 hours of having the heating on and the jacket one hour later. The night was $%#@^* cold but without my sleeping-bag it could be much worse...

(This is one of over 30 posts, which I accidentally deleted one day in January. Luckily, I was able to recover them thanks to the backup done by DanielSan! It's a pity that the comments are gone but someting is better than nothing.)