By Sta. Apollónia Station I sat down and wept, or, I pit everything moving in Lisbon

The BBQ Pit
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(Or also, the only current transit pit thread not involving Greyhounds to the Astrodome.)

Wherein, O travel gods, have I offended? O Holy Trinity of the Backpack, the Money Belt, and the ISIC Card, whereby have I earned your wrath?

I have attempted to be a Smart Traveller. I have refrained from flash photography in national monuments, I have patronized small local establishments instead of tourist traps, and I have purchased hostess gifts for the people I stayed with.

I have exercised my nonexistent Portuguese at every opportunity. I have used the “obrigado” and the “desculpe-me.” I have learned the formal forms. I have not merely attempted to speak Spanish replacing all the “os” with “oosh.” When all else has failed I have asked politely in Portuguese if the person spoke English, or French. I have not simply started conversations by speaking LOUDLY - AND - DISTINCTLY - IN - ENGLISH.

Yea, though I walked in the valley of the shadow of Western Europe, neither did I even sew a Canadian flag on my backpack to try to get preferential treatment, even though it would have been perfectly honest to do so. I did not stand blinking at metro entrances, causing the locals to slam into me. I even obtained the proper authorization before photographing the metro.

Mãe de Deus! Why, then, am I beset with such tribulations?

Tribulation the First. This is an all-Iberian problem, actually, and admittedly it’s not as bad in Lisbon as in a few other cities I could name coughoportocough. But folks, we have to get some street signs going. You know, street signs? The signs you put on every street corner? YES, EVERY ONE, not just the beginning and the end. That way, even someone at an intersection in the middle of the street’s length can figure out what street they’ve come to unaided. Proper signage! Live it! Love it!

Tribulation the Second. If I have been here for four days, I don’t even drive, and still I can figure out that it wouldn’t be a good idea to park your goddamn car right on the tram tracks where you disrupt transit for the entire lower part of the city, why the fuck can’t you, tripe-for-brains? I came in two seconds too late to get into the Panteão Nacional because of you. Ass.

Tribulation the Third. To the toad rail clerk who closed the door on me when I stepped out for one second: Don’t even pull that “I can’t take any more customers before we close for our break at 6 PM” shit on me. I HAD TAKEN A FUCKING NUMBER, TURD BLOSSOM. It was 5:35. Now I’ll be cramming my 6’2" self into the bus to Cáceres, thanks.

Tribulation the Fourth. Please make interurban buses that can accomodate 6’2" people. You know, like the trains. This is not an uncommon height. Thank you.

Tribulation the Fifth. O bus driver, do not fucking lie to me and tell me you aren’t going where you obviously are which I know because I took a chance and ended up successfully getting off there. Tell me yes. Tell me no. Tell me you don’t understand the aforementioned nonexistent Portuguese. Tell me to fuck off. Tell me anything but tell me the truth, fuck! Did you think I wasn’t going to find out?

Tribulation the Sixth. Lisbon transit company, your metro is gorgeous, your buses commodious, your contactless ticket system exciting, and your tramways either adorable or very cool, depending on the make. Your maps, however, SUCK YAK BALLS. Do NOT make the lines disappear in the middle of the city. Do NOT omit entire terminuses. When you have several routes that you have merged into one big fat yellow line, DO name them ALL in ALL of the places where they co-occur. DO, for fuck’s sake, put the names of the metro stations and national monuments next to the appropriate pictograms! Jeezum crow, were any actual persons intended to use these?

Bonus Non-Transit Tribulation. To the fancy restaurant I ate at last night: The fado singing was lovely, thank you. But a note on comparative anatomy. Rabbits have spines, yes. But they’re generally not served with the meal. They also aren’t tiny. Also, rabbits don’t taste like fish. This is fish. I ordered the rabbit. The cheap restaurants I’ve been to have gotten my order right. The word is “desculpe-me.” Thank you.

Out of the depths, O travel trinity, have I called to you. Hear my cry. I will be in Andalusia for two weeks. Please make the transit work right.

Thank you.

Amen.

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So, I guess you’re on vacation in Europe? :slight_smile:

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I’m sad to read this rant, because I like Lisbon and Portugal in general.

I hope your misfortunes won’t prevent you from enjoying the diversity of this city (each district seems to belong to a completely different city), and, despite what your described, the overall friendliness of its residents.

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I meant to say that I’ve been having a sensational time in general. But the little annoyances have been building up today, and I wanted to let them out. I will be back to Portugal, that’s for sure.

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Vacationing abroad…a trip to remember for a lifetime! :wink:

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I was impressed by the street signs in Madrid when I was there about three years ago. They had them painted on tile with an ivy border, inset on the corners of all the buildings. Very tasteful, very beautiful. Too bad you couldn’t read the fucking things from more than two feet away.

Still, beats the hell out of trying to navigate Toledo, at least.

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If it’s any comfort, I have been looking at my travel diaries from last spring, and I see that it took me the better part of an afternoon to book a ticket from Lisbon to Madrid. (Partly, I grant, because I was too shy to experiment with my nonexistent Portuguese much of the time, but mostly because Lisbon has entirely too many stations for one city, and things that look on the map like a short and pleasant walk usually aren’t, and because the station’s only credit-card machine was broken and I had to backtrack in search of cash.)

Have fun. 'Tis a good country, in spite of everything :slight_smile:

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By the time you read this, I expect you’ll have gotten to Caceres. For me it would be well worth the pain of a bus trip from Lisbon to see it again, you lucky devil.

I understand your frustration. I guess mass transit must work pretty well in Montreal. After living in California for so long, I was just amazed to be able to get everywhere so easily without a car in spite of facing all the same problems you listed.

My view of travel is that if something doesn’t SUCK there won’t be any good stories to tell.

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I lived in Lisbon for two years, and remember it very fondly…for the most part. The traffic is awful, the drivers very 3rd-worldish, and by god when it’s closing time, it’s fucking closing time, asshole! I remember stopping at a winery up north and wanting to buy a case of the local grape. It was lunch break, however, and even though the employees were sitting right there in plain sight, not one would lift a finger. I told one woman that we would like to buy some wine; she looked at me incredulously and asked in disbelief: “Agora?” (now?).

Interesting to see that Portugal still hasn’t figured out signs - or even tourism, for that matter - since I left there in 1995. Any luck finding public toilets at the various tourist attractions? Didn’t think so.

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Don’t come to Cleveland, OH. There is a lot of neat and beautiful and interesting stuff, here, but they also believe that only major intersections should have (some, small) signs (somewhere). (That is not strictly true. At minor intersections, the sidestreets are named, but they figure you must already know the name of the major street, even if you were forced onto the minor street by construction or other blockage, elsewhere, and do not know which street you are attempting to cross.)

I sympathize with the door closings. They were rampant in Spain and Portugal thirty years ago. Interestingly, the other country where I found that attitude prevalent was Austria–much more so than in France or Italy, for example.

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Which is a good thing, IMO. I really don’t like the fact that it’s becoming less and less prevalent. Priorities are becoming completely fucked up. Buying a case of wine is no emergency. Taking the time to actually live is certainly more important than complying with the demands of customers who, for some reason, think they can’t possibly wait and can’t adapt to a more leisury way of life. Especially weird when said customers are supposedly vacationning.

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Actually, when the dust settled I found myself in Mérida, which is cool because the Roman ruins are free tomorrow. But of course my bank card has stopped working, so there you go.

Well, let me say that I have been impressed by the mass transit – Madrid’s metro is a dream (more than 200 stations in a city of 4.5 million), commuter trains everywhere are fantastic, and intercity transport is absurdly cheap compared to what I’m used to (A Coruña to Porto for under €20!). Generally I’ve been extremely happy with the transit in this peninsula.

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Merida is more impressive with the Roman ruins and all, but I hope you’ll be able to get to Caceres as well. I loved the renaissance/medieval feel of the place – and the storks (though it may be too late in the year for them).

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I’m assuming your comments weren’t directed at me specifically. We just laughed it off, since we were used to that sort of thing. It’s still an inside joke for us when we run into a surly salesperson here in the U.S. The other fun thing in not only Lisbon, but almost everywhere in Europe, is trying to find anything even open in August. I’m not sure where everyone is going on vacation, but many businesses and attractions where they might be destined are closed because everyone is gone on vacation to places where everything is closed.

My favorite place in Portugal: The Douro River Valley in fall during grape harvest.

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Nope.

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Meh. Worked for me! My Spanish is decent, and you can fake Portuguese well enough for a traveler’s purposes with that. :slight_smile:

I didn’t have so much trouble finding street signs - just look at the corners of buildings. But why, oh why - given that most of the streets in Lisbon, especially in the older parts of town like the Alfama or the Mouraria, are quite curvy - does every five degree street curvature necessitate a new name? Suddenly Rúa 25 de abril (or whatever) becomes something entirely different! And why are half the streets named after dates anyway?

Digression - is it just me, or are the inhabitants of Lisbon more attractive than anywhere else in the world? There was a higher hottie ratio than I’ve ever seen anywhere. Actually, playing “confused tourist” was a nice tool for striking up conversations with attractive locals. Portuguese boys are quite lovely.

P.S. It’s just “Porto” in Portuguese. Porto’s a lovely town. Had to use my broken Portuguese to get ringworm treatment from a pharmacist, but he was quite a pleasant gentleman. (I brought the ringworm with me. It came from my job at a veterinary clinic, not from the folks there. It chose a great time to show up, though, when I was in a country where my vocabulary was pretty much limited to “I’d like the grilled trout, please”, “Thank you”, and “Check, please.”)

Wonderful country, anyway. Absolutely beautiful. A trucha grelhada, se faz o favor.

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Excalibre: I knew about O/Porto but was trying to be terribly English. (The odd thing is that it’s used in Portuguese with the definite article, but the article isn’t considered part of the name, as with A Coruña or the like: Concelho do Porto and such.)

As for the boys… I dunno, I think Spanish boys are prettier. But to each their own :slight_smile:

clairobscur: As for the closing time, it wasn’t the fact that they were closing that PO’d me, it was that he closed the door in my face, when I already had a number in line, twenty minutes before the posted closing time.

I have tended to take a pretty relaxed attitude (using the siesta hour/s to actually sleep, and so forth) but I have to say that irritated me.