Lisbon, Europe's First International City

Lisbon is a lot of cities. It's Portugal's capital city. It's a food city. A party city. An old city. A medieval city. A modern city.

Most of all, it is Europe's very first truly international city. 

Before New York was New York, before everyone dropped anchor in Amsterdam, before they came to London or Paris or even Rome, Lisbon was where the world came to Europe. 

And because it came aboard Portuguese ships, the flavour this internationality left on the city is unique. The architecture, the food, the city itself all feels like it might be from somewhere else, but has enough of a touch of Portuguese that it does not feel out of place.


A Pile of Tiles

It is forbidden to depict any of Islam's big players. While Europe's artist were painting bearded Jesus pictures, Arab artists were stuck painting lines and shapes. 

Because the Arab's were also the world's medieval mathletes – they invented zero – and because their hot tropical climate was hard on oil paints, they created intricate geometric patterns with tiles. 

The Portuguese picked up this tile making, and being good Christians they ditched the geometric patterns and put Jesus and flowers and God and stuff on the tiles. Then they got more intricate, creating huge pieces of art with dozens or hundreds of bits of tile. 


Today, many of the city's buildings are covered with tiles and they lend the city an Arab look, even though these tiles remain a Portuguese trend, and a specialty.

When the Holy Spirit strikes!

Tile peeping.

Lisbon Feels Like Lisbon

Travel to any big, popular to visit city in Europe and you end up marvelling at how lovely it is. You also find yourself marvelling at how people can live there? Rome was like that. Paris is apparently like this. I always thought the middle of London was a lot like that, unless you were super rich. How do normal people live in a touristic town that, as a result of its touristic-ness, feels blandly touristic?

The core of a city, with its museums, monuments, points of interests, shops, kiosks, restaurants, hotels, hostels, bars, and cafes, is the draw for visiting tourists. As more tourists come, the city's centre becomes less about offering these things for the locals and more about accommodating tourists – or fleecing them, depending on your level of cynicism.

Lisbon's centre is compact, making it great for tourists to like to walk or stroll or amble about from point of interest to restaurant to museum to bar and back to the hotel.

While the 12 squares blocks in the centre of the city's centre has been given over to these hordes of tourists, the actual places you want to visit – Alfama, the city's maze-like Medieval district and the Bairro Alto, the city's nightlife area – are also in the centre, yet still feel like Lisbon, not a watered down touristy Lisbon.

My theory is that Lisbon, as a port city linking Europe with Brazil, India, Africa, and the Far East has been accustomed to having visitors for almost five hundred years. Locals live in these great neighbourhoods, and used to eating and drinking cheek-and-jowl with the herds of visitors. 

They have enough practice with hundreds of years of tourists to not feel like they have to surrender the city centre to them and flee to the suburbs. It adds a welcoming spirit to the city when you're out on the town.

Alfama: A Lisbon hood with its own vibe.

Lacking in Lockers

This cool reception for tourists has its downside. Everywhere we went, it seemed the city was wholly unprepared for the thousands of foreign visitors who flocked to the city.

The major subway stations were choked with tourists lining up to refill their transit cards. A few more machines at these busy stations surely would help the lines move quickly. 

Staying in an Airbnb with a morning checkout time and a late afternoon flight meant our luggage had to go somewhere. We spent over an hour going to various train and subway stations looking for a locker. Each station had a small wall of lockers, all occupied. In some stations, there were tourists zealously guarding an empty locker while a friend made change.

Lisbon is an international city, but in some ways it felt wholly unprepared for its international visitors.


Food

A colleague from Lisbon offered up his tips for the city. I figured it would be advice for beaches and points of interest, with a few bars and restaurants. 

The tip list we got was largely restaurant recommendations, with some pointers on where to find the good places to drink. What made the list so interesting was not its length, but its variety. 

The eateries we visited were not just seafood spots, although the seafood we ate was deliciously fresh. Our choices on list and along the streets included all sorts of cuisines – Indian, Moroccan, Asian, and many more – but many were fused with different cultures and flavours together. And they did it well. After all, cultures and nations have been mixing and fusing in Lisbon for hundreds of years.


Architecture

While the late Gothic architectural craze that was raging across Europe on the 1500s, Portugal conceived its own architectural style. Taking a bit of the Spanish, and combining that with Morrish and Indian influences, Portugal created Manueline architecture.

Sadly, most Manueline buildings were constructed in Lisbon, so many were destroyed in the earthquake and tsunami of 1755 (the Alfama district was spared). There are a few examples still standing like the Jeronimos Monastary, in Belem, just outside of Lisbon.

The church in the Jeronimos Monastary.

No point in talking about architectural influences at the Summer Palace in Sintra – just look.

Unrelated: Going Off the Grid

My data plan was inoperative in Portugal because I have a lousy cellphone provider and a lousy cellphone. Getting shut out from Facebook, Twitter, and most of the news, this year still being 2016, turned out to be a good thing.

Then I returned and learned that some sort of Pokemon Go phenomenon occurred while I was away. I learned about it upon my return, but I still don't understand it.


If you go...

Drink the Green Wine: 
Or Vinho Verde, as the locals call it. It's a bubbly young wine that I ignorantly avoided, thinking it was like champagne, which I am not crazy about it. It's actually dry and only slightly bubbly, like a fröccs – great for afternoon drinking on Portuguese patios.

Buy a transit card: 
Lisbon is a compact city, but you will take a train if you want to hit the beaches or go to Belem, where there are a few nice sites and a cafe where the Pastel di Nata (Portuguese egg tarts – was invented. You'll save a lot of money if you get a transit card and refill it as you go.

Look for random places to eat: 
We stayed in a mixed neighbourhood of locals and tourists. There were many restaurants, but the best were the places with little signage, bright lights, and normal-looking furniture on tile floors. Do not be deterred. Get in there and eat up!

Watching the Euro in Europe

In its simplicity, soccer can be a beautiful, entertaining sport. 

It can also become a tremendously boring sport when you add layers of national leagues and divisions with friendlies and the exhibition games and qualifiers as they do in European professional soccer.

But once every couple of years, the haze of confusion and boredom lifts for a few weeks and I'm able to sit back and enjoy simple, fun soccer again. Sometimes, I even call it football during these lovely tournament times.

It's a bit easier to get emotionally invested in a few national teams, rather than cities with millionaire mercenaries from all over the world. There are no friendlies or exhibition games, every game matters and you can feel the immediacy in the play. They're playing for home, after all.

Yes, the Euro brings the sport of soccerball back its simple beauty, even to this ignorant North American with his hockey and baseball.


More teams, more fun

The tournament widened from 16 teams to 24 teams, so the enthusiasm level across the continent was incredibly high for this year's Euro. 

There are two opposing arguments over this. One side claims this diluted the tournament's talent pool – I heard this from two people, one Portuguese and one German, both accustomed to Euro appearances.

On the other side of the argument, this new format allowed national teams to make their first appearance – either their first ever or their first in a long time – on the international soccer stage. Hungary, Albania, Iceland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all brought a unique energy to the tournament.

Maybe it wasn't pretty for those soccer aficionados, but it definitely made the game more exciting while those teams were playing.



Germany is Europe's America

I was able to get this feel around those teams' enthusiasm largely because I live in Germany. This is one of Europe's new settler countries, where more and more people are from somewhere else.

Italians, Hungarians, Portuguese, French, Turkey – almost every nation represented has a few nationals (except for Iceland, I suppose) living in Germany. They crowd the bars, cheer in the streets, and adorn their German-made cars with their national flags.

When Portugal won on Sunday night, there was shouting and honking and celebrations up and down the busy street near our flat. Being from Toronto, this is standard stuff for an international soccer tournament – especially if you live close to Little Portugal, Little Italy, or Roncesvalles – but it's nice to see in an increasingly multicultural Germany. 


Soccer Mad Portugal 

We were in Lisbon last week and it was difficult not to notice a rise in the usual soccer passion whenever Portugal was scheduled to play that day. 

You would pass a cafe with a TV out front and it's replaying earlier matches from the tournament, usually one that Portugal won. Kids were kicking balls in the street. Adults were kicking balls in the street, while trying not to spill their beer. 

When the semi-final game started, we were just finishing dinner and awaiting the bill. After a longer than usual wait for the dinner's reckoning, we looked around and saw every waiter huddled around the computer screen with rapt attention. I don't think they were studying our bill.

When the final started between Portugal and France, we were in the air returning to Germany. We landed thinking it was over. Almost every male on the plane fumbled for their phone, deactivated flight mode, and rushed to the exit when they realized the game was well into overtime.



Ode to Gabor Kiraly and the Sweatpants

I am also a grey sweat pant aficionado, yet I don't think I have celebrated the Gabor Kiraly enough in this space. 

This is a goalkeeper who wears sweatpants because they are more comfortable than the standard long socks. He kept Hungary in a couple of games, which is clear proof that comfort affects performance. It might be a good reason to start wearing my sweat pantaloons to the office.

Comfortably watching the match.

Hungary's Huge Year in Sports

My new soccer hero, Hungarian goalkeeper Kiraly Gabor,
who always plays in sweat pants.

There are few sports fans who have lived with as much angst and despair as the Hungarians – especially their soccer fans. The angst and despair are all the harder because the country was once one of the best in the world.

The Magnificent Magyars, led by Ferenc Puskas, won gold in the 1952 Olympics and defeated Italy to win the 1953 Central European Championship. 

Later that year, in what is now called the Match of the Century, the Hungarian team played England in front of a 105,000-person crowd at Wembley Stadium and picked a heavily favoured English team apart 6-3. The next year, the English tried to get revenge, but managed just one goal, and lost 7-1 in Budapest. 

The Hungarians were now recognized as a soccer powerhouse and came into the 1954 World Cup as the favourite. They beat Brazil and cast aside the defending champions Uruguay. They faced West Germany in the Final, whom they had already beaten in the first round. It was a tougher game than expected. With six minutes left and the game tied 2-2, the West Germans scored the winning goal. Hungary lost the World Cup, in what the Germans would call the 'Miracle in Berne' and the Hungarians would dub the 'Disaster in Berne.'

The team still dominated international soccer, winning a few more international matches and seemed posed to win a championship until 1956. The team was abroad when the revolution erupted against the communist dictatorship in Budapest. After the Soviets invaded Hungary, the team stayed abroad, but eventually broke up. Some players returned to Hungary, while the rest scattered across West Europe. 

Over the next few years, the national team might occasionally break out of the first round of a tournament, only to be  defeated in the next round. Eventually the team stopped qualifying and faded into obscurity at international soccer's second tier.

When I sat down on Tuesday evening at a German beer garden with Kata and another Hungarian friend in town for business, you could say the mood about being at the Euro was "We're happy to be here."

The first half could have gone either way, but Austria seemed in control. In the second half, a Hungarian player in Austria's goal box looked as if he lost control of the ball but managed to slide-kick it into the goal before the Austrian goalkeeper could get to it. GOAL! 

We were on our feet. The rest of the beer garden didn't seem to be watching the game, except for a grumpy old German who grumbled something in German. On the TV, as the players jumped into the crowd, we heard how loud the crowd was at the stadium and they were chanting "Magyarok" or something like that. 

Now even Kata is paying attention as the Austrians tried to tie up the game. We saw a yellow card, a close Austrian attempt, a close Hungarian shot, and a brutally twisted ankle. Finally, Hungary scored the second one and the victory was confirmed to be no fluke.

The game ended. The grumpy old German at the next table grumbled and we watched the post-game analysis from German TV announcers. They didn't know what to say. They clearly prepared notes about Austria winning, but knew nothing about the Hungarian team, not even the pronunciation of their names. So they talked about what Austria didn't do during the game.

On the other hand, our social media feeds were filled with photos of Budapest streets brimming up with celebrating fans. Remember, it's been decades since something like this has happened.

Earlier this year, Hungary's hockey team participated in the World Championship in St. Petersburg. Aside from a brief appearance in 2009 this was their first appearance there since 1939. A massive contingent of Hungarian hockey fans followed their team there and sang the national anthem after every loss. 

In their final game, they scored five goals to Belarus' two and won their first game in 77 years. Look around online for video of fans after the game and try not to get a little emotional. 

If Hungary does well in water polo, it's like Canada wining gold at the World Junior Hockey Tournament, it's expected. But watching both their soccer and hockey team win their first game in eons is a huge thing. We're witnessing a huge year for Hungarian sports.