After my first day i feel like telling the first week here ..it was one of the those amazing week which i can think of . soon after my day 1 was over, i was at my office on day 2 . office is closeby a 30 minutes walk .. which was instrumental in me shedding some kilos of weight .. daily walk of 1 hr made my day and since coimbra is elevated town everything from houses to mercados and offices look on top of hill . so my daily routine is climb down my hill walk on straight ground for some time and climb up hill again .. its quite tiring and you sweat profusely by the time you reach office even though the outside temperature is 5 degrees.. coming bak to the topic.. i reached my office after and then antonio introduced me to my boss- Jorge Marques. My boss has got a style of his own. he is an achiever . manages offices on two continents on with elan. He is a guy who would inspire any new comer like me and i am happy to say i have got a great boss heading my company .
After the ice breakers wid the colleagues at work , i soon started my work on day 1. was directly rolled in the ongoing project and yeah my work life began .. after working for couple of hours .. i soon realised i was hungry .. i did not have anything to eat and then i had known that lunch time was about to begin .
Most of my colleagues eat out at the restaurants and few go home . i was invited by my colleagues to join for lunch at restaurant . The lunch hours in Portugal are quite long . we get 1.30 hrs of lunch time .. i was initally perplexed as why so much time was given for lunch and when i went to restuarant . i realised it ..Food is very important in Portuguese culture. It is this time they get time to catch up with people and talk.. Portuguese love to eat , talk , sit in restaurants and relax in the lunch break .. Even the dinner ,they eat lot and the most important thing i noticed about dinner is Portuguese people love to eat late . i have seen people start their dinner at 11am which goes till 12.30 -1 am too and some restaurants do no start serving before 9-10pm . Newayz when i went to lunch with colleagues to a restauarant . i did not expect that i would be encountering my first of manyof the new cultural experiences.. we all sat down and soon bread came and then i saw wine coming up .. i was surprised to see white wine (vinho branco) coming up .. and thats when i got my first cultural experience.. Portuguese people love to drink wine and it is social habit and customary to serve wine with food. Soon i was drinking wine which was quite good and was trying to see the food menu and i was not surprised.. Menu only had
1 beef
2 pork
3 Turkey
4 Fish
many dishes involving the one of the above four as main ingredient . i was left choiceless.. i was feeling hungry and there were no other restuarant closeby and tats when one of my colleague talked to the kitchen guys to include the some vegetarian salads or eggs.. they said they could involve eggs.. so at last i got eggs but ofcourse it came wid fish .. i was shocked because people here dont just prepare eggs or omlette. these serve as side dishes to main one.. It was hard one but yes i had eggs and i tasted fish for the first time in my life .. I am not proud saying that but yes i realised sometimes u are stuck in situations where you donot ahve much choices.. and thats when some hard decisions need to taken . I would say i did not relish the food but neverthless i was a great experience for me as i was thrown in the most challlenging scenario i could ever face when i was in a new country and was just 24 hrs old.. me and my friend decided we better bring our own food next time as it also saves money which would have been spent eating daily at a restaurant..
Newayz after my culinaryexperience , it was work usual and soon the days of the week started to fly and very soon weekend approached.. my first weekend in the new country and thats when i got to know that AIESEC was having a local conference at a place called Sao pedro do sul in north central part of the country. we were also invited and thus my first weekend i was spending outside coimbra .. we were picked on friday by Luis and Artemisa. and soon we were speeding fast on highway which actually connects Portugal and Spain . It connects between the cities of Coimbra , Porto to the Spanish city of Salamanca, which also like Coimbra is a University Town. while we were driving , it was the first time i saw the speedometer hitting 150kmph/hr and soon it reached its highest of 190km/hr .. There was absolute no sensation and we felt like we were moving normally .. realised that nature and quality of roads make a huge impact in driving a fast car.. now i realised why F1 cars can so zoom fast and yet driver does not ahve any effect. I realised that apart from the technical specs of car and the ability of the driver , it is equally important to see the nature of surface on which it is driven . Newayz it felt great going at 170 km-180km/hr and soon we reached Sao pedro do sul . The accomodation was actually a pousada juventude which is the portuguese word for "Youth Hostel". It was a very neat hostel providing all basic amenities and cheap rates for youngsters.After arrviing we directly went to party and partied whole nite till 4am . it was dance fun booze frolic,jives and tats when i heard Tunak Tunak Tun of Daler Mehandi sung by portuguese guys .. Boy oh Boy the guy is famous all over the world.. First i heard this from a group of Chinese and Japanese Aiesecers in an international conference and now it was portuguese.. He must be proud that his songs are international. It was great start of getting introduced to fellow aiesecers. The next day it was serious business for AIESECers, The conference was to introduce the newbies into the organisations and i saw the common thing among all people was smartness and ability to understand and respect the other cultures-one of the qualities you would find in aiesecers all over the world.
We dd not take part in the sessions as it was not meant for us and so we were helped by few aiesecers to take around the whole place. so we spent the whole morning and afternoon session exploring the place . We went around with Maria , a Ceeder from Romania, Sridhar and Luis
Sao pedro do sul is small village in north central portugal around 200km from Spanish border . It was pictersque village with lush green tress and fields of olive around t
he village. we went around the whole village and to the old age hospital which uses the hot springs to cure the diseases of the old . It was great to see a rural town . That was time i felt like i was in Europe. Typical restuarants with people seated outside having a morning cafe .People relaxing , taking short strolls or reading newspaper. it was great experience. we went around the river and the inatel place. By the time we finsihed out tour we we were very tired and so we headed back to the conference. 
Later the evening passed quickly talking to people , relaxing .. nite was party time.. partyin went till early morning 6am and it was great opportunity to socialize with people . The last day of conference was pretty much the same.. we did not ahve much to do so we just watched tv , talk to people , share our experiences of living in india and sleeping . i also remember it was amzing day because i happen see the Formula 1 Final race at the hostel wth all portuguese f1 fans . Kimi Raikonne wins a dramatic race and the championshi. Although it was weird to hear as it was all in portuguese .. My first Portuguese f1 commentary.. missed your commentary -- steve slater ..
Finally it was the end of conference at 7pm and we slowly moved out by 9pm..It was great weeknd.. got a chance to explore countryside portugal and meet various people . I would say a satisying end to a weekend and great start of my days in this country ..
Inspired by Teresa , i am also feelin like starting observation pointers
- Portuguese eat late . be it dinner or lunch
- lunch hours are long usually lasting for more than 1 hour
- Professionally Portuguese are punctual but outside work not much of difference when compared to India. expect them to be late alteast 10-15 minutes
- Portuguese love their fish and football
- Portugal driving is opposite to that of india
- Wine is served with food and it is common to see wine everywhere
- Buses in coimbra are much costlier than the rest of the country and aparently as costly as Amsterdam and Brussels
- Coimbra is known Ciuidade dos Estudantes
- In portugal greeting a people is done by shaking hands if its man or kissing on their both cheeks if its woman .. was quite a shock first time..
- Coimbra is loaded with restaurants and cafes, and you would find some activities at these places all the time
- Portuguese find it offensive if people think it is part of Spain which many think . and alos they find insulting that the language spoken here in portuguese and not spanish
- Roads in Portugal are very good and are comparable to other parts of Western Europe but what sets portugal apart from others is the high rate of accidents on these highways
Até Logo ..
