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Being a short series of observations about a recently concluded trip to Portugal.
Doing Nothing Is Sometimes Completely Necessary
I have developed a mental metric for how much I needed a given holiday. This is measured by the time after which I get bored of "doing nothing" (which is actually reading, but text intake for me is so easy that it's essentially nothing), and start to look for something to do (usually writing). On most holidays, this happens after two or three days. In this case, from the 1st right through to the 8th of June, I did not get bored. At all. I read a lot, but also spent a lot of time really doing nothing; staring into space.
The Iberian Landscape is Different
This is something that's really obvious when you say it directly, but it's something I forget. It's not just the different plants, it's the shape and colour of the land itself, the feeling of the air, and a good few other cues that I recognise, but can't describe. I spent a good bit of time watching this difference, and trying to find ways to pin it down, so that I can use it later. I wonder, too, if it's a climate thing; if California or Mexico might seem similar.
Oddity of Language
Portugese looks very similar to Spanish, in text. It sounds completely different, and depending on the speaker, makes me think instead of Russian, French, or something completely unfamiliar. It does not sound like Spanish, though.
Portugese Architecture is All About The Details
We looked at a number of houses around the hotel where we were staying, with an eye to picking up details we liked. And I discovered, they're almost nothing but details. The way they're built, on hillsides with the entrances at the top, and steps going down to doorways, and small courtyards, it's very hard to see all of the house at once, and as soon as you're far enough away to try to take in a lot of it, there are trees or cacti or bits of landscape or something in the way. No two chimneys are the same. No two roofs look quite the same. All the places we'd expect angles, there are curves. Even in blocks of houses clearly built as a unit, there are variations in the way window and door spaces are formed, in the way external stairs climb - and then there are the tiles - glazed ceramic tiles used as wall decorations, adorning the risers of stairs, for house names and numbers... mostly in white and blue, and invariably gorgeous.
That was a really good, and very much needed holiday.
Doing Nothing Is Sometimes Completely Necessary
I have developed a mental metric for how much I needed a given holiday. This is measured by the time after which I get bored of "doing nothing" (which is actually reading, but text intake for me is so easy that it's essentially nothing), and start to look for something to do (usually writing). On most holidays, this happens after two or three days. In this case, from the 1st right through to the 8th of June, I did not get bored. At all. I read a lot, but also spent a lot of time really doing nothing; staring into space.
The Iberian Landscape is Different
This is something that's really obvious when you say it directly, but it's something I forget. It's not just the different plants, it's the shape and colour of the land itself, the feeling of the air, and a good few other cues that I recognise, but can't describe. I spent a good bit of time watching this difference, and trying to find ways to pin it down, so that I can use it later. I wonder, too, if it's a climate thing; if California or Mexico might seem similar.
Oddity of Language
Portugese looks very similar to Spanish, in text. It sounds completely different, and depending on the speaker, makes me think instead of Russian, French, or something completely unfamiliar. It does not sound like Spanish, though.
Portugese Architecture is All About The Details
We looked at a number of houses around the hotel where we were staying, with an eye to picking up details we liked. And I discovered, they're almost nothing but details. The way they're built, on hillsides with the entrances at the top, and steps going down to doorways, and small courtyards, it's very hard to see all of the house at once, and as soon as you're far enough away to try to take in a lot of it, there are trees or cacti or bits of landscape or something in the way. No two chimneys are the same. No two roofs look quite the same. All the places we'd expect angles, there are curves. Even in blocks of houses clearly built as a unit, there are variations in the way window and door spaces are formed, in the way external stairs climb - and then there are the tiles - glazed ceramic tiles used as wall decorations, adorning the risers of stairs, for house names and numbers... mostly in white and blue, and invariably gorgeous.
That was a really good, and very much needed holiday.
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I've found this interesting too. My experience is that I can't hear the difference between Portuguese and Romanian - my half-baked, completely unresearched theory is that it is to do with both of them being equally distant from Latin, albeit in opposite directions.