The Portuguese in his natural habitat is a creature defined by a striking dichotomy. On the street, in a bar or cafe, in the office or behind a desk they move like they have all the time in the world. Walking the streets of Lisbon you will often find queues of foreigners, giddy with an eagerness to absorb the sights and sounds of this marvelous city, forming behind slow moving tugas gently puffing on their cigarettes, making their way between their 14:00 bica and their 15:00 bica. In offices across the country emails go unanswered for days, weeks, years, telephones ring off their hooks and paperwork piles ever higher.
Yet put said same Portuguese in a car and there is suddenly no time to lose! Red traffic lights are a signal to accelerate to speeds never imagined by the car's designers, other vehicles are mortal enemies who have somehow offended the family honour and pedestrians are nothing but mobile speed bumps designed to slow them down and spoil their fun.
I am constantly wondering why the streets aren't always littered with the mangled wrecks of Smart cars and the less agile pedestrians. Perhaps salvage trucks make their way through the city nightly, clearing the streets of metal and blood, in fact that does make sense as I have set to see a single advert calling for blood donations and Smart cars are breeding like flies at the moment, I suspect thousands are simply made from the surviving parts of their fallen brothers.
More will have to be said about slow moving Portuguese people as it's a constant irritation for me, S and anyone else here who actually has to be anywhere but unfortunately it will have to wait for another time as I'm late - I was stuck in a people jam for 20 minutes this afternoon, the pavements were terrible.
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Heh heh so true!
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