Lisbians

I'm not sure how you are supposed to refer to residents of Lisboa, but I like to imagine that the correct term is Lisbians.

Anyway, before going to Lisboa, I had heard a lot of rumor and speculation. If Spain was Europe's Mexico, people said, then Portugal was Spain's Mexico. I was a little scared, and getting off a bus from Seville at 5 in the morning, in a bus station surrounded by vacant lots and grafitti, I started to question what kind of twisted place Mexico's Mexico would look like. But I survived the first couple predawn shankings, and made it to the metro, which Ross and I used to get to the harbor, trying to catch a sunrise on the water. It was close to seven in the morning, still mostly dark, and not one cafe was open. I cursed the laziness of the Portuguese, and all Latin people, and walked to the waterfront, keeping eyes peeled for the last of the graveyard shift shankers.

The waterfront was beautiful, although the buildings around it were in terrible shape, the reputed splendor of Lisbon's monied past hidden by neglect. Ross and I watched the sunrise through a chainlink fence, until a Portuguese guy in a oddly cocked fedora edged towards us and slurred "Where are you guys from?" He continued talking to us, in a bad Portuguese accent made worse by his stupefying drunkenness, saying that he had lived in a cave in Granada for 2 years until being forced back to Lisbon due to a sick relative, which induced a boredom in him which could apparently only be cured by drinking until 7 in the morning and making techno samples from the sounds of ships mooring and unmooring, which is apparently why he was at the waterfront.

Aside from him however, I have found Lisbians to be extremely friendly, and eerily proficient in English. I had heard that Romance speaking countries, like Italy, Spain, and France are supposed to be among the worst in Europe, but people in Lisbon seem to have excellent English in the most unexpected, and embarassing places, like when Ross and I were in a grocery store debating whether or not to spend 56 euro cents on mustard for our cheese sandwiches, and a clerk burst out in laughter and head shaking, shaming me into assenting to the mustard.