Too much attention given...

Being in Portugal for this month has been a memorable experience and  I want to share it with you all as well. During the last weeks  in Portugal I often had been confronted with peculiar attention from  opposite sex.

Whistles and shouts from passing cars, intrusive eye gaze and naughty smiles. (Admittedly,  younger men in this case is more withheld and polite, which could not be said about the mature age men.)

I assume that the locals have become accustomed  to such... I would say system, while for newcomers, this kind of attention can lead  to discomfort and culture shock.

Speaking for myself, I have to admit that at first it seemed a bit strange and amusing and sometimes even funny, but after a few weeks it became tedious and frustrating.

As you probably understood, in Latvia it is not accepted. (Just like kissing on the cheeks with strangers :D). Anyway, I want to add something positive  - I have heard stories that in Turkey, for example, if someone finds You attractive, they can kidnap You right on the street (not that it’s allowed). 

While no one has yet tried to drag me in the bus with tinted windows, I'm happy to be in Portugal. :)

No coffee-to-go in Portugal!

There are many differences between Czech and Portuguese culture, especially in the way of living. Most of my "old life" I'm not missing at all, but there's one thing that I'm missing almost every day. It was a big surprise for me to find out, that there is just no coffee-to-go in Portugal! Well... at least in Faro.

I'm a big coffee lover, or perhaps a lover of big coffees, to be more precise. Tall cappuccinos, caffé lattes, mocaccinos, flat-whites, all what Portuguese people correctly consider as "just a lot of milk flavoured with coffee", is exactly my cup of tea. At home, I'm used to drink a coffee served in a paper cup with plastic cap at least once a day - on my way to or from work. There's a coffee-to-go boom in Prague I guess, so you can find plenty of stands offering coffee2go all over the city, even in the underground. I know them all already. I know what kind of coffee they sell, how much does it cost and most importantly - whether they use/can offer me low-fat milk or not. I went so far, that I planned my everyday journey to work (I commute by bus and underground for approximately 45 minutes every day) according to what coffee I want to drink. For example, when I have a really good or really really bad day, there's my "expensive coffee time". Then I take the underground line C, get off at Muzeum station, hurry to Costa Coffee and buy a tall skimmed Tiger latte with 2 spoons of the mixture only, which is my lighter version of caffé latté flavoured with oriental spices called Tchai and it costs approximately 4 EUR. Usually, a medium coffee-to-go costs around 60 CZK (little bit more than 2 EUR) however recently I found a place very close to my office where I can have my coffee-to-go for 1,5 EUR only! (but then I need to take a bus going via Palmovka station and take underground line B to Můstek :) ).

So that's how all my friends know me - huddling to a paper cup full of delicious coffee, sitting or walking down the city centre while carrying at least 2 handbags on my shoulder. A little blond coffee-addict.

One reason, why I really looked forward to studying in Portugal, was the coffee. I've read that Portugal imports coffee beans from Brazil, which is a certificate of quality (if not in general, than definitely from Czech point of view it is). How upset I was when I found out that you may have plenty of Pastelarias at every corner but it won't help me anyway because you just don't serve any coffee-to-go! Any!! Above all, I can just think back in my memories about a tall caffé latte or good cappuccinos. Here in Portugal, a cup of coffee means a shot of strong coffee. That's it. When you order "café com leite", you get some little milk into it, sometimes you can even come across capuccino but that's so unlike our capuccino with thick milk foam; or Galao - drink served in odd glasses, that reminds me the most (by amount of milk) the coffee I am used to drink, but still...

First I thought that the reason why Portugal has no coffee-to-go is just because it is a fashion brought from USA and maybe, there's not as big adoration of American culture as in our country - because you just don't have our historical context (the U.S.A. has been a symbol of freedom during communism regime in the Czech Republic, everybody wished to emigrate there). But then I figured it out: the Portuguese people simply don't NEED any coffee-to-go - it's not a part of your culture! Why you should hurry and drink your coffee while walking? No, there's no reason for you to do that. You just sit down and enjoy your coffee in peace and quiet or with company of your friends. No foolish rushing to save every minute, burn your tongue and induce a gastric ulcer. And you're right. Because when you want to have a nice cup of coffee you need to experience the cosiness that coffee brings along. And you won't feel cosy when fighting the traffic in city centre with coffee in your hand in order to get to your office on time.  So either have it in peace and quiet or not at all. And I understand and agree! :)

Erasmus, como uma família

Erasmus, como uma família

Quando eu comecei a minha viaje para Faro, eu tinha sentimentos de emoção e alegria, misturada com o medo do desconhecido e o que iria acontecer. Acho que todos nós temos o sentimento de querer saber: se tudo vai ficar bem, onde vivemos, quem são nossos novos amigos e se seremos capazes de nos adaptar a um novo país.

Mas eu acho que neste primeiro mês, todos os Erasmus  estan a tornar-se em nossos novos amigos formando uma grande familia na que poder apoiarnos, mas a sensação que se tem é como se tivéssemos conhecido dende sempre. É incrível como as pessoas de diferentes países, com diferentes línguas, culturas que não se parecem nada e costumes que talvez eles nem sequer sabiam, agora são um motivo de união entre nós.

Em muitas viagens que fizemos ou que faremos a partir de agora, não teram nada a ver com esta  grande experiência que nos estamos tendo. Porque depois de quatro semanas eu posso dizer que sou parte de uma grande família nova.

Rosana Rodríguez Vieira

Gender Equality

 The first time I saw this video was on a social network, I began to see it without realizing it's true purpose. Only after a few minutes I understood it's message. This video talks about a very talked  subject in our society, which affects male and female gender.  The inequality is still a reality, which targets both gender and feeds social stereotypes.
I hope you enjoy it!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vxd_DKsITXo

The difficulties about language

What distinguishes us from animals is essentially the ability to communicate, i.e, we have the intention of wanting to say something to someone using words with meaning. Communication between two people only occurs when the receiver realizes what the speaker meant by what he said. And when that doesn’t happen ,communication does not happen as well. Let´s see: when I (Portuguese) say “fixe” with the intention to say “it´s ok” or “agree”, a native speaker of English will understand the word as fish (peixe). What happen? The language that I speak comes from a certain convention, these determined by native speakers, and even knowing that “fixe” is fish I use the word in a different context. In Portuguese language however there are words called “estrangeirismos”, words applied to our dictionary that came from countries like Fance, England, Germany, and others. In this case communication occurs because most of the people know the  context of the words. Example: affair (caso amoroso), atelier (oficina), Alzheimer,...

Every nation has their one language but there is one  that every nation answer- English. Why is that?

A job as a foreigner

Hello, my name is Naomi, I am Belgian and have lived in Portugal for 15 years now. As I was applying for my first “real job” here in Portugal, I found myself some difficulties. I realised that Portuguese people are not that enthusiastic about hiring foreigners. As I delivered my CV, they saw my name – that totally shows I am probably not Portuguese – and they asked me right away where I was from. I told them I was from Belgium. By the look on their faces, they were not too happy about it. Finally, I got to do an interview with them and again the question “Where are you from?”. Again, I got the same response. Sadly enough, when they called me to inform me that another person had been chosen, I was told they hired a “Portuguese girl”.

They actually had to fire the other girl because she was a hard learner and couldn’t speak English. They hired me as second choice because they had no one else.

I understand that Portuguese people are going to support Portuguese people, but what about our skills, in my case, my language skills? What about selling skills or communication skills? Don’t they count to? Isn’t that more important than my nationality? Does this happen everywhere else in the world too?

Naomi Seys

25/09/2014, and finally... end of  hazing in our institution! The undesirable practice of hazing does still crop up in the university and increases in terms of humiliations. The indignities to which the youngest students are subjected can't help to integrate, it's just a sort of fascism. They believe that they have to accept hierarchy just because. Because? Because what? 
C.S.