Salvador, two weeks in: five things I love, and five things I don't

Since I have a lot of opinions about Salvador, I thought I'd put them here in a classic listicle format for your reading pleasure...

"Temos coco gelado" - nothing better than cool coconut water

This is meant to be light-hearted, not deep criticism of a city/country I barely know, and definitely not sociological commentary. Please don't take me too seriously!

Five things I love:

1. Tropical fruit. It's delicious, cheap, and also comes in juice form... So far I've had, among others, umbu, acerola, cajá, pinha, goiava (guava), maracujá (passion fruit), ananás (pineapple), and lots of manga (mango), as well as the obligatory coconut water fresh from a green coconut. And there are still plenty more I can look forward to!

2. The people here. Nearly everyone I've met has been friendly and chatty. People are willing to talk to strangers and freely share their knowledge and experience. All of this makes going about your daily business really pleasant.

3. The architecture in the historical centre. This is such a cliché - if people have one mental image of Salvador, it's probably of beautiful, brightly-coloured, colonial-style houses lining steep cobbled streets. And some parts of town (the Pelourinho area and Santo António Além do Carmo, where I live) really are like this.

Photogenic streets

4. The beach at Porto de Barra. When I was preparing for this trip, my 'back-up plan' was that if my research didn't go well, I would spend all the time on the beach. In retrospect, the weather means that was a ridiculously naive idea. But on the two occasions I have been to the beach so far, Porto de Barra has been lovely. I'd happily spend more time there!

5. The chance to challenge myself and discover new things. So far things haven't all been as I expected - and not always for the better. But I'm trying to get the most out of this experience that I can, by finding solutions to my problems and not getting bogged down in the smaller worries.

Stormy skies

Having said that, though, I would like to give a balanced view of life, rather than just choosing the good bits. So here are five things I don't love:

1. The climate - it's the winter, so it's raining a lot, it gets dark early (around 5pm), everything is constantly damp, it's humid, there are mosquitos everywhere, and I still managed to get sunburnt while wearing factor 50 suncream.

2. The crazy traffic - including traffic jams, and some of the worst driving I've ever seen. Most drivers are seemingly unaware that their cars include a special feature known as "indicators". And pedestrian crossings are an optional decoration, whether the traffic lights are red or green.

3. Security paranoia. Everyone is scared of robberies and violence, particularly at night, with the inevitable result that it's easy to feel threatened after dark, regardless of how (un)likely it is that anything will happen at 5.30pm in a busy street. It's hard to know whether Salvador deserves its reputation as a violent city, but I'm not taking any chances.

4. Cat-calling. Maybe this is the flip-side of the friendliness. It annoys me in the UK too, but it doesn't happen anything like as frequently there as here. Yes, the words "hello beautiful, smile!" are theoretically friendly, but if you're a complete stranger, I don't want to hear it as I walk past you, and if you persist in making that horrid kissy noise, I'll just ignore you.

5. Lack of information about buses. Oh, you want to get on a bus home? If you're lucky, you'll find a helpful "ônibus" sign at the side of the road, with an accompanying queue of people. Then simply wait between 30 seconds and 30 minutes and hope that a bus turns up. Then try to guess where it's going from the arbitrary selection of stops written on the side of it. There's no way of telling whether buses going to other places will come along to your stop, or not... so good luck!

My new friend

In all seriousness though, things are going well, and I'm learning a lot about this forever surprising place. And look, I even made a friend!

A Portuguese curiosity

An extra mid-week post today...

I thought I'd put up a quick explanation of a very idiosyncratic quirk of life in Lisbon. I'd guess that most people in the UK, as well as my other regular readers, won't have heard about this before.

At the door of many apartment buildings in Lisbon there's a notice saying something like 'Feche a Porta' (fetch the port). As an example, here's a photo of the sign on my own building's door.

Fetch the port, please (SFF = se faz favor)

This is because in Lisbon there's a very well-developed system for port deliveries. Just like in the UK the milkman will deliver your milk every day, in Lisbon there are Porteiros who deliver port to their customers' addresses every week. Obviously not everyone takes advantage of this system, but it seems to work really well. The notices are simply there to remind anyone going out of or coming into the building to bring the port inside on the day it's been delivered.

There are even some more creative versions of these ubiquitous signs online, such as:

Sourced here

Now... I'd best go and see if anyone's left some port (vinho do Porto) on my front doorstep this morning...

Happy 1st April everyone! And don't forget to close the door on your way out.

Portuguese rowing words

I thought I'd add to the useful/useless knowledge (depending on your situation) available here by creating a list of Portuguese rowing vocabulary.

Who knows, this might actually be the first rowing-specific English-Portuguese word list on the internet. That's probably unlikely, though. I haven't been through the whole of the internet to check...

So, let's get started! This might be updated later when I remember words I've forgotten.

Rowing - (fazer) remo

Sculling - (remar a) parelhos

Equipment

Boat - barco (generic)
You can also specify 'skiff' (a racing shell) or 'yolle' (wider boat) or 'yolete' (in between)

Oar/blade - remo

Parts of boats

Stern - popa or ré
Bow - proa
Rudder - leme

Parts of blades

Spoon - pá
Handle - punho

Other useful things

Trestle - cavalete
Trolley (for moving the boat around - seriously, super useful and we should definitely have more of them in England) - carrinho

Technical words/how to understand the coach

Coach - treinador

Crew - tripulação

Stroke-side - voga

Bow-side - sota

Row on - remar

Back down - ciar

Easy there - leva

Stroke-rate - voga

People in the boat

Cox - timoneiro

Stroke-person - voga
e.g. 'a tempo com a voga' - in time with stroke!

Bow-person - proa

Other rowers - just use the numbers as in English ([um] dois, três, quatro, cinco, seis, sete [oito])

Parts of the stroke 

Stroke (one complete stroke cycle) - remada
e.g. 'remada bem comprida' - nice long strokes

Finish - safe
e.g. 'safe rápido' - quick finishes

Recovery ~ à frente
e.g. 'aguente à frente' - slow on the recovery

Catch - ataque
e.g, 'ao ataque comprido/meia-calha/tronco e braços' - sit at the catch for a full stroke/half slide stroke/arms and bodies stroke

Drive ~ na água
e.g. 'força na água' - power on the drive

Drills

Arms only - só braços

Arms & body - tronco e braços

Half-slide - meia-calha

Full slide - cumprido

Square blade rowing - remar sem rodar o punho (lit. row without turning the handle)

Positions

Backstops - pá de chapa

Frontstops - ataque (logically, the same as the catch)

'Gunnels' (Is there another word for easying with your blade handle on the saxboard?) - punhos a falca

Other

Lightweight - peso leve

Openweight - I still don't know how to say this. One thing's for sure, it's not 'grande', which means fat...

NB "~" means 'roughly equivalent to'

With thanks to:
http://www.arbl.pt/documentos_fixos/remoescolasarbl2.pdf and http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remo#Componentes_dos_barcos
and Filipe Monteiro, treinador at the Associação Naval de Lisboa

Public transport in Lisbon: 7 tips, plus a bonus

Hello! This post is something a bit different from my normal descriptions of life in Lisbon, aiming to introduce you to the wonderful world of public transport in the city. I hope it will be useful to anyone planning a visit to this beautiful place.

Yes, it's a tram, of the traditional sort

So, without further ado:

1. There's no good substitute for planning ahead. The public transport system (known to Lisbonites simply as 'transportes') covers the city really well, but it can be difficult to work out routes on the go, as information at stops can be confusing - that is, assuming you manage to find the stop in the first place! Having a look at the metro (underground) map and the bus/tram network map will go a long way to help you with this. Likewise the suburban train routes, if you're heading further out of the city.

2. If you're waiting at the stop for a bus or tram, you need to make a clear signal that you want to get on, i.e. stick your arm out into the road. If you are facing the wrong way and don't notice the bus approaching (and therefore don't make a signal), it will drive straight past you, leaving you to wait for the next one. Yes, this has happened to me - but it's a mistake you only make once!

3. There are often helpful signs telling you how long you have to wait for a bus/tram. These are generally accurate, but can be completely wrong, especially if the weather's bad and the traffic's busy. Some stops (e.g. ones where only one route stops) do not have them at all.
The metro has a similar system, which is nearly always accurate to within 20 seconds. Yay, efficiency.

This was at about 6am, hence the '76 minutes' until the 738 arrived.

4. There are lots of different ticket options. This could get complicated, so take a deep breath and bear with me. The main types of ticket are:

• Lisboa Viva. A card valid for 6 years for the individual whose name and photo appear on it. To get it, you have to fill in a form and pay a fee (€7 to get it in 10 working days, or €12 if you want it within 1 working day). The card must be topped up with a monthly pass, costing from around €36, or more to include train travel as well as metros/buses/trams. Only worth doing if you are living in Lisbon for a long time, and using more than €36 of public transport (excluding trains) a month.
• Viva Viagem and 7 Colinas cards. These are purchased for an initial fee of €0.50 and can either be topped up with a day pass (€6 - only worth getting if you're making more than 4 journeys in 24 hours), or used for 'zapping' (pay as you go credit). Zapping can be either for a certain number of journeys, or a certain amount of credit. €5, €10 or €15 are the standard top-up amounts at machines, but if you ask at a desk, they can put a specific amount of credit on. You also receive a 'bonus' depending on how much you add, up to an extra €1.15 for €15. For zapping, each journey costs €1.25, whether it's on a bus, metro or tram. Zapping credit can also be used on suburban trains, at very reasonable prices.
  The two cards do exactly the same things, the only difference seems to be that 7 Colinas is sold in shops (e.g. newsagents), and Viva Viagem is sold by the machines in metro stations. They can be used for up to a year after the date of purchase.
Bonus tip: The system in Porto is pretty similar. The Andante card is basically the same as Viva Viagem and 7 Colinas.

5. There are two different types of trams: the traditional sort, pictured above, and the new 'supertrams'. They can use the same lines, but they operate on different routes. The 12E, 18E, 25E and 28E are the traditional sort. The 15E is the modern sort.

An example of a 15E, closely followed by a bus, in case you couldn't recognise it.

6. On the subject of different route numbers - I don't really know how the system works, although bus routes are three digits, 7**. Tram routes are **E.

7. Watch out for strikes. They happen alarmingly frequently (to a British mind). The helpful website Há Greve? (slogan: see if you'll manage to get to work) can tell you whether there are any strikes planned for the next few days.

Have fun! If you have any questions, just ask me in the comments and I'll do my best to answer.