Bridges

Spanish schools don’t have half term. It’s a bit long to be honest, and takes getting used to. They do, however, have this thing called ‘puentes’. There’ll be a public holiday which falls on a Wednesday or a Thursday, for example, and they just sack off the rest of the week. I recently found myself the the beneficiary of one of these ‘puentes’ and took the chance to visit Lisbon with Aiden, who still remains my only friend in Mérida – it’s not that I’ve not been socialising, it’s just that I’ve not found anyone to socialise with. Anyway, it was a bit strange being back in a city which I had got to know briefly a mere couple of months ago, but which also felt like it could’ve been last year.

Lisbon is a properly cool city. It’s got loads of little crooks and nannies to discover, and it’s teeming with bars and museums. To my surprise, my Portuguese had indeed improved since the last time I was there, and I could make out at least half the words which would be uttered through a mouth as open as Spanish banks after 2.30pm. I’d like to think that I made a great tour guide and generally solid travelling companion, given it was Aiden’s first time in Lisbon, but the truth is probably that without google maps we’d have been pretty lost, and without Sam’s recommendations from last time we’d have ended up in Irish bars the whole time. Without doubt, the highlight was breakfast at O Ninho cafe, home to the best yoghurt and granola and scrambled eggs you’ll ever have. (Disclaimer: I had one of the worst hangovers I’ve ever experienced so the accuracy of this statement cannot be confirmed). We did the other tourist stuff, like the national tile museum (far more interesting that its name would suggest) and the Tower of Belem but nothing quite scrambled our eggs like that breakfast.

Before all that excitement, I had the pleasure of Mum and Joshua coming out to visit me. There’s still food in the freezer and I’ve only just had to do a wash for the first time since she left, so to say I appreciated Mum being here would be a massive understatement. The only good thing about them leaving was the fact that I didn’t have to see Joshua’s awful trim anymore. To everyone’s general surprise, Mérida has some quite cool attractions and the Roman remains are actually pretty incredible. Yeah, I’m talking about them gain because there’s not a lot else here. It’s probably a bit depressing that the highlight of most of my days is walking along the Roman bridge to go to work, but I have turned into a sad little man with few friends so I appreciate these wins nowadays.

Spaniards are, in honesty, a bunch of melts when it comes to the weather. I wouldn’t say that the temperatures have dropped significantly recently, but they seem to have got out their ultra-winter wardrobes already: hats, scarves, snoods, the lot. As someone who has at least 50% hardy Scot in his blood, the cold has never really bothered me. I’ve been looking around at these lot and wondering how they’re wearing so many layers. Like, in the day, you can walk around outside (just about) in a t-shirt. It came as a great surprise therefore, to find myself in a home store the other day purchasing a blanket/duvet type thing and only confirmed to me that being abroad does indeed change people, and not necessarily for the better. I’m trying to justify it by telling myself that it’s better to buy a blanket than put the heating on in my flat, but the reality is that I neither know how the heating works nor have time in my four-day working week to try and find an instruction manual.

This read might seem more boring to you, and the reason it might be true is that I’ve now more or less settled into life in Spain. I’ve decided coffee is actually quite nice and absolutely vital when I have to teach 11-year-olds about outer space at 0820 (just beam me up, instead); drinking cañas is better than drinking pints; and having to go into a bank to obtain a pin for a bankcard is something which just becomes part of the daily bureaucratic struggle.

That being said, I’m looking forward to returning home at Christmas for a couple of weeks – mainly to test out if I’ve also become a melt and am going to need to get out my snood and hat in Oxford, which I don’t remember normally having to do.

Hasta luego,

Bill x