Visit Russia before Russia visits you

This is the first post about my trip to Portugal which took place this summer. I actually didn’t expect myself writing so much, so the story will be cut into three parts in order to make it possible to read each piece in one go. Sorry if my english is clunky, it’s pretty difficult to write a wall of text this big and maintain great quality, especially considering I’m writing so much in English for the first time. So let’s get started!

We (me and my friend Gleb) were quite inspired by other SFERA volunteers from phystech/ Guys were talking about lots and lots of interesting stuff that happenned during their time in volunteering projects, how they discovered completely unexpected aspects of other countries’ cultures and, of course, made a lot of new friends. I personally value such experinces way above routine ‘touristic’ travels, as in the workcamp one gets a priceless opportunity to explore the country from the inside, meet the locals, take a peek into their ordinary life which always has various peculiar aspects about it one never sees outside of boring 5-star hotels.

So one evening we were talking through Skype for several hours to decide which workcamp we wanna go to. There were three camps we liked: two in Spain and one in Portugal. Why Portugal or Spain? We did’t know anything about Portugal, but it’s probably warm in there so it’s a good option, same in Spain plus I’d have an opportunity to get my little knowlege of Spainsh to use. To be perfectly honest, we looked for a cheap way to travel, but we didn’t suspect how it’ll turn out completely the opposite in the end. There were more than three months to do all the necessary stuff, but of course everything was done in a rush during the last two weeks and my visa was issued in the latest day possible even after I called embassy a few times in the process. Just as we were about to fly, a revolution started in Turkey. What the hell does the revolution in other country do with our plans, you might ask?

Well, our interchange should have been in Istanbul and some governmental structure prohibited Russians to enter Turkey because of what was happening there, so we’ve been sent back straight from the airport – reseller site where we purchased the tickets didn’t even notify us. Our morale went down and the next day we were frantically looking for a ticket with less than 25hrs of flight time for a reasonable price. Everything was going to shit exponentially quick. I was very exhausted after the exams and hard work that kicked in at the same time and was running out of faith in finding any tickets. The day after fruitless searches we were sitting in a bar and were pretty confident it’s not going to happen. But if we weren’t going to Portugal, we had to plan another trip from scratch and that required some effort for sure. By that point we’ve managed to chat with everybody in the facebook group and really liked the people. I felt very upset thinking I won’t meet them. Then suddenly Gleb was able to dig up a ticket which was more or less fine to go and we decided it was worth its money – it wasn’t a cheap way to travel at all at that point, heh.

However, our problems didn’t end here. For some reason we only managed to book our seats on a flight to Geneva, but not to Geneva-Porto. In Switzerland, after spending some time trying to solve a problem of not having seats, we were only able to claim our places at a help deck.

Then our flight was delayed for 2 hours and even when finally arriving to Porto where Ines (one of the camp leaders) was waiting for us patiently, we were forced to hang around for 40 minutes waiting for our luggage. On the good side of things though, we watched some movies while flying and even accidentally stumbled upon two persons we knew (statistics, you have no power here!). When we finally arrived, Ines drove us to the school and I was finally able to breathe some fresh air. Totally unexpectedly, about a third of the participants was awake, warmly welcomed us to the camp and offer some food. We were two days late, but guys cheered us up by singing a special song for us!

A few words about the camp itself and the city of v.n. de Famalicao where it was held. Famalicao is situated in the outskirts of Porto. It’s a small cozy city with a lot of cobblestone (I wonder how much effort that took), green zones and nice overall atmosphere.

Our camp was situated in one of the school buildings around with sleeping rooms in the classrooms on the second floor and a cantina and a guest room on the first. There was also a kitchen there – a huge one, industrial-scale – the one you need to feed an army of children. The school is very different from what I’ve used to – completely different layout, both building and the surroundings.

The plant life and overall look of the city added to the feeling: one of the goals in mind was seeing something very different from the usual stuff and I was very excited to feel this difference from the very beginnings. Talking about the participants, we had Serbian, Spanish, Czech, Polish, Norwegian, Italian (and obviously Portugese) people. And I know you’re probably reading this, hehe. International part turned out to be exciting – you just talk and even stuff that makes no sense like ‘how do you say than in language x?’ result in very interesting discussions. There was a sudden realization of how secluded Russia is in sense that there interaction with external cultures isn’t that intense (not talking about all the nationalities living inside Russia) because the place is huge and isn’t connected to other countries from all sides like European countries are. In Europe, people often speak 3 or even 4 languages because it’s natural and they actively use all this knowledge. This results in mixed-language thinking, which is feels very unusual when you experience it.

Day 1.

After a tough night in a sleeping bag (never used one of these before) on the (stone?) floor (ouch, made my bones hurt) I joined the cooking activity.

My little knowledge of Spanish allowed me to understand some signs around the city and in the supermarket. Cooking took place in a local social facility for the homeless people – in Porto it’s a serious problem. Ironically, in the city, many houses stand for years without any use or renovation, decaying – owners often try to sell them for a good price, which results in a considerable amount of derelict buildings just standing around.

The facility was very nice and the kitchen had a lot of equipment. Martyna was our chef that day and we made special pea cream soup and spaghetti Bolognese. Not exactly polish, but it turned out to be surprisingly good – during the past travels food wasn’t this good usually – except for the Czech Republic where Sbarro (!) and breakfasts at the hotel were absolutely fantastic.

The second part of the day was dedicated to designing and painting our own t-shirts. I felt a sudden lack of creativity and wasn’t able to come up with anything. By the evening Gleb’s t-shirt was decorated an electric guitar and stencil of lighting was laying nearby. Something to expect from an AC/DC fan! Afterwards we went to watch a rehearsal of some pretty… abstract modern art and enjoyed local beer while waiting for the artists to set everything up.

There we met weird lightbulb-headed people that were collecting garbage and nobody really understood anything about the performance. WAY TOO ABSTRACT FOR ME SIR! I better stick to maths.

Day 2.

Hell, considering the timezone change, we were going to sleep pretty late and got up very damn early by my standards. Every day is filled up with tons of stuff and is subjectively perceived extremely long. I thought the time stretch is the best way lifetime can be extended, because what else matters except a subjective perception of time. This seriously fatigues if it goes on for a long time. This day we went to do the carpentry: our task was to peel off the old wood and paint from pallets for ‘Dar as maos’ (give a hand) organization which we visited yesterday. Some experience allowed me to tackle it quite effectively and get math out of my head. Some of the girls went to paint the pellets which were already peeled at this point and Gleb, just as he planned, was deeply absorbed in destroying the walls and sometimes threw off things from the window with appropriate battle screams. You know man’s at his dream job when you see him working like that. This evening the Night intercultural was held. Everyone was hastily cooking something special at the kitchen, trying their best not to burn it to a crisp on hellish fires of the giant kitchen. In the end, just one word describes the party for me. And that word is… vodka.

Our initial strategy was to cook borsch and peppers stuffed with meat, however, there’s been a change of plans and amazing skills of Olga allowed us to cook real potato vareniki with onion and carrot – hand-made (mom used to make those when I was small)! Kvass in which we were putting so much effort wasn’t that bad in the end. We were making it minding okroshka, however, most of the people preferred it as a Russian salad, without kvass.

Among everything, Serbian myaso was remarkably tasty as well as potato pancakes and Portuguese sweets. Not mentioning real Spanish (okay, and Catalan too) sangria – thank you, Patricia and Aran.

Polish herbal tincture was cool, too. We partied far past midnight and next morning I was very, very dead.

Day 3.

Today’s Saturday which means that we have a break in a form of… getting up early and travelling to Porto!

The city is unusual and attractive in so many ways! First of all, it’s a proper marine city (one of the most important docks at some point in history, possibly?), you can feel that either by looking around or simply by inhaling the unmistakable salty breeze coming from the ocean. The landscape is chaotic, everything is scattered around like hell in all three dimensions (the first city in I see where height actually matters), some buildings show signs of decay of various strength – and that’s the flavor of Porto. It’s an old city with a history and its own flavor.

The trip began at the train station richly decorated with blue tiles, and then we had a ‘worst tour’ cleverly picked by our camp leaders, which means we hear stuff nobody usually tells – and which is, obviously, the most interesting. For example, how rich families started a trend of building a bunch of long houses in a backyard (because they can) and in the end formed a special areas that hold memories of local history and culture.

It looked like ghetto at a first glance – a narrow labyrinth of old buildings, lots of random stuff laying around, a stray cat and ruined decorations, but it turned out the houses are considered cool and the inhabitants are proud of belonging to this backyard community and even organize annual competitions where they figure out which of the neighborhoods is better decorated, etc.

The ordinary houses reminded me of European cities I’ve seen to date, but lots of details make buildings there them feel different and distinct.

Possibly because of the old age each has its own kind of scars and tons of small unique features which in the end makes once similar buildings absolutely different by now.

We also explored a local cemetery and went inside a building where musicans do their rehersal. The cemetery turned out to be surprisingly beautiful and positive place. And the musical buiding looked kind of informal inside, as expected.

Closer to the end of the tour we even accidentally separated from the main group and explored on our own a bit. Bogdan, Milosh and Gerard didn’t miss an opportunity and jumped from the bridge during the lunch-stop.

Afterwards we tried a cheap-ish francesinha which I consider one of the worst dishes ever. It reminded me of something I’ve tried: sometimes when you’re hungry and too lazy to cook anything, you simply roast yesterday’s spaghetti, add eggs and cut sausages on the top of it and mix it all, which results in extremely heavy substance that you can’t eat much of in the end. Well, francesinha is definitely not spaghetti, it’s a sort of hardcore sandwich filled with 2-3 types of meat, cheese, egg on the top of all this – and some special sauce. Ugh. Not exactly my cup of tea, forgive me, my Portuguese friends. After dinner we separated, and our group decided to visit the Matosinhos beach.

The ocean was too cold, but if there’s water, you can swim in it and enjoy the process. In addition, it was hot enough outside of water, so the decision was obvious. The view was beautiful: huge ships far away, made semi-transparent by blue-ish fog, waves, sand made burning-hot by direct sunlight and big dock complex.

We almost killed poor Milosh during our many attempts to take a funny photo by burying his head in the sand.

After we spent enough time on the beach, we took a train back to the city center. The streets were nicely decorated with paper lanterns and jellyfishes, little flags of various colors.

The workcamp group reunited in a small restaurant in the center of Porto and shared impressions.

That’s it for now, see you next time!