Dateline: Lisboa
Lisbon is a beautiful city.
I arrived "trasnochado" on the bus yesterday morning – I don't think I slept but one or two hours. At one point, about 3 in the morning, the bus stopped at a rest area and the driver made everyone get off and locked the bus for 45 minutes. I've travelled by bus in 10 or 15 countries, and have never seen something quite like that… seems unusual cruelty. Ah well…
Yesterday morning, after finding a hotel (no mean feat, given the "semana santa" situation mentioned before), I left my luggage and went exploring, riding the subway, walking around Rossio and Baixa neighborhoods.
Portuguese is, in my opinion, one of the most beautiful languages – despite my struggles to make sense of it. That's strictly impressionistic, of course – what makes one language seem more beautiful than another to someone? Certainly, there are no objective criteria. But I like the rich, almost slavic-sounding phonology, combined with the syntactic "grace" of the romance languages, the way it takes Iberian trends, such as post-fixation of pronouns to verbs, only partially expressed in e.g. Spanish, and generalizes them.
Um. I went to the Museu Gulbenkian – modern art. I love modern art… once again I found myself daydreaming about taking up painting. Certainly that would give me the creative outlet that I keep craving… and my doubts about my level of talent are ultimately moot – if one wants to pursue art, it should be driven from within, not based on outside reinforcements. Right?
I was just thinking, in Sevilla, that I had finally thoroughly shaken the flu I acquired in Poland, but this morning I woke up congested and feeling feverish. Probably the consequence of the lack of sleep night before last, who knows. But being sick is frustrating.