Fado House, Mr Jose Lucio, First Team Meeting, Sight Seeing, Sergio Fonseco

I meant to post last night but I had been up with my "game face" on from 9 am-midnight working off of 3 hours of sleep. I am feeling a bit more rested today but I woke up late and only have about 40 minutes before I have to be on the bus - believe it or not when I sit down to write a good blog I generally give myself about an hour to an hour and a half.

The last I spoke with you I was about to head out to dinner to a Fado house to meet Mr. Jose Lucio. This restaurant was a small hole in the wall in a remote corner of Lisbon. When our group of 12 walked in there was definitely a record scratch and the dull roar of the people fell silent. Because most places we've been so far have been touristy we haven't stuck out so bad. The people eating at this restaurant were not expecting tourist, however.

We ordered some wine and as it goes in Portugal the people we were meeting (Mr. Lucio and Professor Machado) were the standard 30 - 45 minutes late. This is never a problem because the wine, bread, cheese, olives and prosciutto (this is the Italian name I have yet to figure out the Portuguese name for it) are abundant before every meal. I think the only meal that I haven't had wine with yet was my breakfast yesterday.

Finally, Mr. Lucio arrived, we ordered dinner and more wine and a few moments later the lights went out and two guitarists – one with a traditional Portuguese guitar from Coimbra, Portugal and another with a standard classical Spanish guitar – come out and sit next to me and begin to play. One of the cooks takes notice, removes her apron and comes down to sing. The video of them is below. Despite the fact that I was sitting right next to them the audio is pretty bad and since there were only two lights on in the whole place – both of them red light bulbs – the video is horrendous at best but you can still hear the audio a bit.

Throughout the night the Fado players would come out and play between two and four songs at a time. The cook and another guy, who I presume was there just to sing, would take turns singing. Sometimes only the guy would come out and sing a play by himself, sometimes the crowd would sing and everyone seemed to know when to sing and when to clap and when to shut up and listen. The following video is the guy singing and playing by himself. His singing did not take over the entire house like the woman’s did but I feel that he was far and away the most captivating between his guitar and singing.

As the night proceeded Mr. Lucio – sitting at the opposite end of the table from me – started to get down pretty heavily on the sauce becoming louder and more animated. His English is not great to start with and everyone knows how that goes once the booze takes over. Later in the night Dr. Nielsen, my professor, mentioned to him that I played guitar. From across the table of 14 people he yells “Miles – you play the guitar?” Yes sir I do. Why does a woman hate you" me having had a bottle or two of wine by now too: I’m not sure, you should ask my ex-girlfriends! No, how you tell? A woman hate you, how you tell? I’m not sure. Mr. Lucio sitting next to his wife: You take the guitar, you hit the woman on the head with the guitar. If the woman die, she no your enemy. The woman live she your enemy. Apparently Jose likes scotch, jokes and not women.

Towards the end of the evening some people had already gone home, and some were outside drinking and smoking cigarettes. As the table was only about half full now I moved down to sit next to Jose and have a drink and shoot the breeze. At this point in time he was pretty. . .not sober I guess you could say? He was trying to explain how he is an open man and he says what is in his heart – in significantly worse English now. He went on to explain that he can know everything about you after knowing you for 5 minutes so he proceeded to move around the table psychoanalyzing everyone in his path. I only had the thought to take out my camera and record him speaking to the last person – a very conservative, reserved and soft spoken Chinese girl, Tiffany. (I must apologize for the length of the video and my sloppy camera work. When I attempted to cut it down the editing software that I have made the file significantly larger so I just put the whole thing in there.)

I was the third or fourth person whose soul he peered into. “Oh, this man, he is easy. This man plays the guitar, he is a musician, he has a very open heart. He takes the pretty woman, he plays her music, he tells her how he loves her, his heart is open to her. He is the musician, this man. He has a very open heart.”

Towards the 1 am hour many people had gone home and I had just ordered a vodka tonic and Jose another Dewar’s on the rocks and we were talking about going out to see some Fado and have a few more when Dr. Neilsen came in and said that they were all leaving and that I should come with. I was pretty not happy about it but I figured it would be a bad time to mention my distaste for her slave driving as I was a few sheets to the wind.

After saying goodbye to Jose and thanking him for the conversation I went back to the hostel with the others. A few of us were not yet tired so we decided to go out and check out the town. After trekking up ridiculous hills - I would've never guessed in a million years that this place would be worse than San Fransisco on the hill tip - we decided on a bar on the outskirts of Bairo Alto, a section of Lisbon. We got some drinks and hung out and shot the breeze for a while.

Right behind my seat there was a bronze statue of a man in a top hat sitting in a chair. I don't know who this character was but the wear (or lack of tarnish) on his arm and lap indicated to me that he has probably made it into many a tourist's “My trip to Lisbon” photo albums. We were talking when I heard east coast English being spoken behind me. I turned around and two girls were taking a photo with the statue and I asked if they were from the States. They said yes, that they were studying abroad for a semester in Seville and came over to Lisbon for the weekend for shits and giggles. One was from Connecticut and the other New Jersey. We said that we went to the University of Baltimore and they ran off to get their friend who was studying abroad from Towson (a school 10 minutes north of Baltimore (if you’re not familiar.) We talked for a while before getting kicked out for closing time - small world.

Once we were home Laura and I were both wide awake still (as it was 11 PM back in the States) so we decided to have another one of the infamous 99 cent bottles of wine. I grabbed a guitar off the wall of the hostel, played a few tunes and we talked for a while. Before I knew it 2 am turned into 5 am and that 8 am wake up call was looking pretty dismal at that point in time.

Sunday Morning: Up and At 'Em

I grab a shower, some light breakfast and jump on the bus to head to Carlos Machado’s apartment. I'm not quite sure how I'm alive right now. Professor Nielsen was pretty adamant about everyone being on time. I made it to the bus early off 3 hours of sleep and yet someone in the group still held us up by 15 minutes or so. Today we were to have a team meeting to talk about the business agenda for the week. We needed to discuss the case so that we might all get on the same page. This way when Jose showed up we were not asking questions that had been answered in our reading material and we were not repeating each others questions. The conference center at Carlos’ apartment complex was a penthouse style room with all window walls overlooking Lisbon and the Tejo River – not the worst business meeting venue in the world.

When Mr. Lucio showed up he had a sudden health problem walking in to the door. As Carlos described it the top of his stomach expanded outward by 4 inches or so as if he was instantly pregnant. He was in a lot of pain and had to go to the hospital. We are all hoping and praying for the best as Mr. Lucio alluded to the fact that he had some health problems to Dr. Nielsen and would like to get the project rolling as quick as possible.

Needless to say, our meeting with Jose was canceled so we got some lunch and did some sight seeing on the Tejo instead. Machado went out to get lunch and he brought back Pizza Hut, a salad that Isabella made and french fries from McDonalds, and of course, wine. I thought America was bad with the fries but they have them with most meals here. Also, I'm not a fan of Pizza Hut in the States but I would take it any day of the week over Pizza Hut in Portugal - not so good meal number 5 of 5 for the trip.

The Sights:

When we down at the Tejo we had "free time" to see the sights for a few hours. Laura, Ewan and I went to check out the Belem Tower (left.) The tower was constructed to commemorate Vasco da Gama's mission - it is the first landmark you see when coming into Lisbon by sea. When they wanted 4,50 euro just to walk up to the top of it we decided against. I feel there are much better things that I could do with $7. Next to the the Belem Tower is the civil war memorial (right.) Behind the wall there are the names of all of the fallen soldier's similar to the Vietnam Memorial in DC. In front of the war memorial there are two booths where a Portuguese soldier stands in a military stance, staring forward all day like those British guardsman. I was very tempted to have my picture take but I was exhausted and thought better of the idea. We needed to make our way down to the Monument of the Discoveries to meet the tour bus but were struggling pretty hard so we stopped along the way for a cafe com leite - Monica said that I was going to drink a lot of espresso when I was in Portugal and I didn't believe her because I don't in the States. My god was she right. The Padrao dos Descombrimentos (left) - monument to the discoveries - is a monument erected to celebrate the age of discovery. Essentially Portugal erected it after Ferdinand Magellan circumnavigated the globe.

All of these sights were great but my personal favorite was the remote controlled sailboats (right.) I watched them race for a few minutes not terribly interested until one guy pulled his boat out of the water to make some adjustments to it. The entire time I had been assuming these boats had little motors that propelled them. When he the boat out it looked like a real sailboat on the bottom, with a keel and rudder. It turns out the remote only controls the rudder and trims the sails. I was amazed at how agile these little things were. Perhaps I'll get myself one for the winter when I can't sail the hobie.

The Meeting with Sergio (left):

Ya gotta love that I was asked to dress in business attire at 8 am so that I could wear it sight seeing all day simply for this meeting tonight and this is how Mr. Sergio Fonseca was dressed the entire time - Reebok's, warm up/workout pants, and a black tee. None of it matching and definitely not business attire.

Being day number three without sleep people were absolutely miserable there - several people were nodding off including one kid who decided to take a full on nap, sitting in his stool, during the presentation. A girl who seemed to be on top of her game (always being in the know, always near the Professor's side, conservative, stick to the rules type) who doesn't drink, thus not going out after hours, getting a requisite amount of sleep was even nodding out. Professor Nielsen had to squeeze her leg several times in order to bring her back to reality. I , personally, have never felt so incredibly drained and horrible while still having to keep my game face on. At one point in time I stepped outside, sat on some steps and took my pulse to make sure it still existed. - while here I even got to hear my first Portuguese family dinner fight (Sergio lives in an apartment complex.) Though I had no idea what they were saying it instantaneously brought me back to my childhood. Not that these fights were frequent but let's be honest, when was the last time you were involved in a fight at dinner? I'd have to say it's been a good decade for me.

Sergio is a friend of Jose's and the link Jose has to the ethnomusicology program at Universidade do Minho. He was having the class over to his home and workshop (in the same apt. complex) to tour his collection of guitars, play some fado music for us and to cook us an authentic Portuguese dinner. Though I was only half with it, Sergio reminded me of an only child whose parents have lots of money only he's never allowed to have friends over and thus has little social contact. When a friend is finally allowed over the kid is going a million miles an hour showing off all of his toys while his friend doesn't get so much as a chance to breathe. That or he's really into his guitars and had just done a LOT of cocaine. I'm going to go with the former. He has over 200 guitars from all around the world several of which he created himself.

After telling us all about the guitars and taking us on a tour of his music room we finally got to eat dinner around 11 PM. Professor Machado (read: my hero) was nice enough to bring a case of wine - if it were not for the wine I would have fallen asleep in my plate of food. I did not catch the name of the dish but it looked a lot like a gumbo served atop rice. It was reddish brown, from the kidney beans I assume, and had sausage, chicken, some sort of green vegetable (looks like a green bell pepper but it isn't) and onions in it. There must have been a combination of Portuguese herbs and spices in it because the flavor was like nothing that I've ever tasted and I have absolutely no idea how to describe it to you other than delicious.

After dinner and a few glasses of wine I was right back in it and played a few songs on the guitar with Sergio's daughter, Ana - she has an amazing voice. Thirty or so minutes later the real show began - Sergio and a friend of his played us a few traditional Fado songs along with some other, more entertaining, tunes. Originally it was to be Sergio and Jose but needless to say Jose could not make it out. Since you've already heard traditional Fado music I decided to post the video of Sergio and his friend playing a traditional Portuguese song and Stairway to Heaven medley - significantly better.

Around midnight our bus driver had to get home so we had to go as well. I passed out for a little on the bus ride back. When I got into the hostel I checked up on some NFL action online, saw that the skins eeked out another victory and hit the sack. I got my first "normal" nights sleep in a while - five and half hours.