Coimbra Diary, Week Two

February 24th - March 2nd

Every Sunday, give or take a few days, as long as Portugal lets me stay in the country, I’ll review the week’s activities from Coimbra, my new home. It’s a beautiful, old city, filled with students from the University of Coimbra (that’s it on the hill there) who can often be seen around town in black capes, carrying instruments, and singing. There are cobblestone streets here, as well, and what seems like too many places to buy eyewear.

February 25th

“Would you like a fresh Coke Zero?” the vendora asked me this morning.

I thought to myself, “Are there Coca-Cola certified chemists in the back mixing up a batch? If so, I want a tour."

“Fresh?” I asked her.

“Cold, cold.”

“Ah, Ja . . . Si," I said because I’m in Portugal and why not drop a little German and Spanish.

“Do you like Coimbra?” I then asked after she handed me a "fresh" beverage.

I held out my hand. She counted and took the money from my palm.

“Not so much,” she asked.

“Porquê?"

(Who’s multilingual? Let’s continue.)

“Hmmm, I don’t know. People here are so,” and then she put both hands up to both of her ears, vibrated them, and said, “People here are, how you say, closed in the head. You know people like this? They are so ... CLOSED up here," she added, hitting over her eyes with her forefingers.

And here's a picture of two guys racing kayaks on the Mondego River.

February 26th

On Tripadvisor, a woman from California wrote in, asking whether she should cancel her trip to Coimbra because, wait for it, she had the wrong kinds of shoes in her closet. She had heard because of the hills and cobblestones in the city — and, admittedly, there are nothing but hills and cobblestones in Coimbra — she was afraid she might slip and fall if it rained, as her footwear would not provide adequate traction.

It's why the world hates us.

The Tripadvisor Sherpas, wise guides all, told her not to worry, advised her to buy new shoes, and to not cancel.

At around 3 pm, as I’m now doing everyday, I walked to Praça do Comercio and to Café Santa Cruz to sit outside, have a Coke Zero, and some kind fruit-, cheese-, or chocolate-laced bread product. The waiters here don't work for or expect tips, which, oddly, makes me tip them more.

I asked my server, an older man who sits at one of the empty tables, squinting and smoking when he's not serving, where all the tourists were.

“Now, no,” he said, “Abril, Maio, Junho, Julho, Agosto, and Setembro they come. By Outobro, they all leave."

"Cafe gets crowded then?"

"Sure."

"¡Ay, caramba!" I said because Spanish and Portuguese are pretty close and surely Portuguese has a "caramba" equivalent. "Tough to find a seat, sim?” I asked.

“Yes!" he said emphatically, almost gutturally.

“Fucking tourists,” I thought to myself, “ruining it for us locals.”

I have been here nine days.

February 28th

And sometimes out of nowhere, students in capes with instruments and streamers start stinging and dancing in a town square on a Friday afternoon.

My father, Jack Friedman, used to tell me his mother, Riva, half Austrian, half Ukrainian, pronounced the name of this continent, "Youhpe."

He didn't know from Portugal, my father, who like his mother, used to put subjects, those things, at the end of sentences — the nouns.

Black Forest Cake, alas, he knew from. Goes great with coffee I hear.

March 1st

Once, sitting outside at the San Antonio Riverwalk, I was tormented by a single bee. It was clear the world, or at least the world that day, was not big enough for the bee, the hamburger and fries, and me.

One of us would have to go.

I smashed and then smothered the bee with the laminated menu. My thinking at the time was by doing so, other bees on the Riverwalk would fear me.

There's a Portuguese fly in my apartment who won't leave. I'm not really sure it's the same bee (or Portuguese for that matter) but he's been there for about a week. Windows have been opened, door has been left open and he — and I think of bees and flies the way my family thinks of dogs . . . always male — won't vacate the premises.

I will not kill him, though, even if he lands, which he hasn’t done.

I am, after all, still a guest here.

A homeless man approached me this morning outside Visconde Pastelaria.

"Desculpe," he said in Portuguese, a word I understood -- "Excuse me."

He said he was with three friends and he wanted to buy them all coffee. He promised he wouldn't eat anything, just drink a coffee, if I gave him money.

I did.

In English, he told me about the church next door and the stones on the ground and how they're inscribed in Latin.

"I don't speak Latin," he said. "Portuguese, English, yes. Not Latin. Desculpe."

A man, creased with a sour expression, holding a cigarette the way men in Europe hold cigarettes — at least in the cinematic way European men hold cigarettes: between the thumb and forefinger, palm out, cupped, pinky, ring, and middle fingers slightly extended — stood nearby, staring at nothing in particular. He then motioned to a woman and smiled, his creases softening.

The tables at the cafe, meanwhile, are filled with people smoking. It doesn't bother me as much -- and it's not like the wayward, wafting smoke doesn't find me in Europe as easily as it does in America. Down the Praca do Comercio, there are once again students in capes with musical instruments, singling and playing and twirling ribbons. People are taking pictures and videos behind others who are taking pictures and videos. The are more stray dogs out today than I've seen since I got here and they are uniformly in a bad mood, barking at everyone and everything. As other dogs, those on leashes, those with owners, those, presumably, with homes and dog dishes and places to sleep walk by and bark back, the strays are fit to be tied. "You want a piece of us?" they seem be asking their canine brethren and sistren who were dealt a better paw in life than they received, "Bring it, bitches!"

Melissa told me the other day that I won.

"Won?" I asked.

"At life, yeah."

I keep reminding myself I am not on vacation. I have nothing I have to do, nowhere to be. I do not have to get to the cafe at any specific time. I am not getting on a plane in the next day or so. There are plenty of tables. There is plenty of bread and chocolate things and cans of Coke Zero. There are plenty of ashtrays, should I take up smoking.

The caped singing and dancing students will be here everyday.

Winning.

Joan Didion wrote that a place changes when you throw out your return ticket.

My favorite pizza place opens in a few hours.

I'm sure my fly will be waiting for me when I get back to the apartment . . . home.