I visited the Lisbon metro.

And you also should.

From my very first days here, I have been always amazed by the unique character that each metro station had, with tiles, sculptures, murals, writings and paintings. Finally this year I insisted on this desire and made a guided tour inside the stations.

At the time of this writing, there are four lines: Blue, Green, Yellow, Red. It is supposed to change with the inauguration of six new stations, which will also make one of the lines into a circular line. Before any of these changes, there was this beautiful website done by Metropolitano de Lisboa, called Art Tour. It's possible that they discontinue it, but basically it's an interactive self-guided tour divided into four parts (corresponding to the four lines).

We did four separate days of visits to the metro (I bought a daily pass each time), so we took a few months to finish this project. Each tour took us three to four hours (without any rush and with some breaks).

Due to the person that I am, obviously I made a list and personal ranking system, keeping track of how much I liked each station. I am not going to bore you with it, but let me give you a sense of what you should pay attention to.

 To start with, if you like urban immersion and if you already walked in the older neighborhoods a bit, then you must definitely visit the metro with some intention and attention. It really gives you a good sense of the city's soul.

But if you don't want to give it that much effort, then you can still do two things. One, you can visit a few key stations (see below). Two, you can be aware of your surroundings while using the metro and take a few minutes longer inside some of the key stations (see below).

 

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Here is how I would do it if you want to appreciate the metro and do it justice.

  

0) I am assuming you are not doing the Art Tour for some reason. (You should!) 

  

1) Go through the Green Line (Cais de Sodré >>> Campo Grande) and then take the Yellow Line (Campo Grande >>> Rato), getting off at each station and having a quick walk.

This tour will give you a taste of the first stations (with Maria Keil's artistic struggles during the dictatorship), as well as some of the extensions. It will be your baseline for everything else.

N.B. If the circular line is open, then do the whole thing. 

It should take you one day. (If you are running out of time, skip Baixa-Chiado, Arroios, Alameda, Areeiro, Roma, Campo Pequeno and Picoas.)

  

2) Visit the following stations with special care.

Each could be treated as a museum. Particularly in Lisbon where worthy museums are a rarity, these stations are definitely top sights to see.

Lumiar (Yellow Line): Clean and smooth from a distance but filled with details when you look closely, the artwork by António Moutinho, Marta Lima and Susete Rebelo is mesmerizing.

 

 

Parque (Blue Line): From the very first metro line inaugurated in 1959, it has some of Maria Keil's work. It passed through major renovations in 1994, when Françoise Schein and Frederica Matta transformed the station into a dense museum. It has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights meshed up with small icons from the colonial history and surrounded by humanist quotes. It's perhaps the only decent historical narrative you might find in official spaces, doing justice to the contradictions.

 

São Sebastião I (Blue Line): This is where to see the full capacities of Maria Keil. She did the first art work in 1959, went over it in 1977 (after the Carnation Revolution, that is), and then did the extension to the Red Line. This station is basically a tile museum. 

Chelas (Red Line): This was inaugurated in 1998 for the Expo, so it belongs to a different category of considerations. Here and perhaps for the only time, the architecture and the art work are fully integrated. In all other stations, the station is built and the art work comes after. In this case, the architecture of Ana Nascimento directly communicates with the tile work of Jorge Martins. It's simply stunning. 

 

A proper visit to each would take perhaps 30 minutes.

The stations do not communicate with each other, so you can visit them separately based on your life and calendar.

 

3) Now if you have more time and/or if you want to have mindful travel experience, here is a list of very pretty stations.

 

 

Cidade Universitária is a permanent exhibition by Vieira da Silva, no further words necessary.

Saldanha I (Yellow Line) is a wonderful painting-on-tile exhibition by Luís Filipe de Abreu.

Cais do Sodré has Alice's rabbit overwhelming you and himself.

Martim Moniz has an eclectic mixture of imperial past and multicultural present.

Bela Vista is almost in our top picks for the tiles by Querubim Lapa.

Oriente gives you an international painting exhibition launched for Expo 98.

Aeroporto introduces you to all the important figures from the Portuguese intelligentsia, successfully telling a story of national culture without relying on emperors and colonialism. While there, say hi to José Saramago from me, hiding at a not-so-used exit.

 

These are also very full stations. So do give yourself around 30 minutes to visit each. 

 

4) For the rest of the stations, just pay attention to (1) the entrances and stairs have tiles, each station is unique; (2) stop at the atrium and look around, there might be some art work deserving your attention; and (3) walk along the platform while waiting for the train and check what you might find.

Nothing very complicated, just watch your environment. It might maybe add 5 minutes to your existence in the station, but it will add to your day a substantial amount of beauty.

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Establishing this personal intimate connection with Lisbon, the city where I lived the most in my life, is a major achievement for me. So take this long post as my celebration.

I speak Spanish.

My theory is that, overall, Spanish and Portuguese are the same language (which is a corollary of my theorem that in Europe there are only five languages: Western European stuff, Eastern European stuff, Basque language, Hungarian and Finnish). Same alphabet, same reading direction, same language structure (subject, verb, object), thousands of shared words, etc.

So I have been dismissive of Spanish as a language distinct from Portuguese. But naturally that's just the elitist me talking, because that's not how anything works in real life.

In the last couple of years, I spent a bit longer time interacting with people from Latin America. Many of them are folks for whom Spanish is already a foreign language (on top of a few native languages), so Latin languages do not look natural at all to them.

The point is that I understand Spanish using my Portuguese but the Portunhol that I used to speak is not necessarily comprehensible for Spanish-speakers.

I decided to learn Spanish.

But I don't have time for classes and also hate self-learning. And I surely hated all language apps: they don't have any philosophy of pedagogy, rather they are driven by user engagement so they are more gamified and less useful.

Then I met Language Transfer.

It's a website. There is also an application. In any case, there is nothing app-like about it. 

It consists of 10-minute classes which are just audio files that you need to listen.

Besides the teacher, the classes are assisted by a student who is learning the language at that moment. Whenever there is a question, you are expected to pause the audio and do those exercises before the student. So each class takes maybe 15 minutes.

A complete Spanish course takes 90 classes. They also have Swahili, Italian, Greek, German, Turkish, Arabic and Japanese. (In these, the language of instruction is English. There is also an English course for Spanish-speakers.)

The underlying pedagogical philosophy is that we learn by getting used to things. (This is not only about language. It's about everything)  Language Transfer has the Thinking Method and a blog, but Victor Wooten's talk convinced me better:

 

 

If we agree with this, then there is a natural conclusion: The fastest and most solid learning method is by associating new information into existing information. That's why the base language matters and that's why the word "transfer" is important.

Language Transfer starts off with the same hypothesis as my theory above: If you speak English, then you have immediate access to a big chunk of Spanish. By consolidating it and by learning how to transfer (what to transfer, what not to transfer, what changes to implement while transferring), you can learn the language very quickly.

Another conclusion: What matters is to get the right intuition on the language you are learning. Therefore, one, vocabulary is not covered in the lectures, because that's just memorizing and not part of the learning process; and two, grammar rules only matter in as much as they reveal patterns in the language.

All of this further has implications on the curriculum: They discard entirely the linear order of learning one verb and all its conjugations, as well as the chunky sessions of memorizing names of kitchenware. Instead, they teach whatever is necessary to get the intuition right. The rest we will learn only in practice anyway (and will forget as we stop practicing, like I did with German).

To summarize, I am a big fan of Language Transfer.

I just finished the Spanish classes. We covered all tenses and conjugations. (We covered maybe a total of 50 words in total in order to do this.) This, in 90 classes of 15 minutes each.

So here is my celebration that I can now confidently say that I am fluent enough to survive sophisticated conversations in Spanish. 

 

Bip bip vın vın

Sardinya adasına gittim. Bunda bir ilginçlik yok. Adada ilginçlik çok. (Gramsci orada doğmuş mesela.) Ama benim gitmiş olmamda bir ilginçlik yok, zaten bir konferans bahanesiyle gittim. Gitmişken partnerimle on günlük bir de tatil yaptık.

Çok da süper planımız vardı. Araba kiralayacağız. Hani artık ben de sürebiliyorum ya, bir o bir ben süreceğiz, koylardan koylara gideceğiz.

Her şey hazır. Kalacak yer rezervasyonlarını yapmışız, gün gün planlarımızı yazmışız, benim de konferansım bitmiş Cagliari'ye dönmüşüm Partnerimi bekliyorum. O da işte havaalanında uçağının kalkmasını bekliyor. Öyle goy goy yazışıyoruz. Ben planlarımızı detaylandırıyorum falan.

Sonra bir anda "Noooooooooo" yazdı. İngilizce yazışıyoruz da ondan öyle yazdı, yoksa "Yooooooo" veya "Aaaaaaaaa" veya "Haaassssss" gibi bir şey yazardı herhalde. 

Evde bırakmış sürücü ehliyetini.

Ben dedim "Takma kafana, hallederiz." Neyi hallediyorsak...

Neyse işte iki kapılı küçük bir araba kiraladık. Ben tabii az çok nerelere gidileceğini biliyorum, ama oralara nasıl gidileceğini araştırmış değilim. Koyduk harita uygulamasına, git diyor gidiyoruz. 

Cagliari'den çıktık öğleden sonra, ilk durağımıza vardık, asayiş berkemal. Uyuduk uyandık. Koylar bizi bekler. Ama işte o günden itibaren şöyle bir şey oldu. Şuraya gidelim diyorum haritaya, iyi tamam diyor, mesafe 40 kilometredir diyor, yolculuk süresi yaklaşık bir saat diyor. Nasıl oluyorsa...

Sonra işte şöyle maki manzaralı bir yerlere gittik.

 

 

Manzara güzel tabii, ama bakabilirsen. 

 Efendim, yollar şöyleymiş.

 

Bunlar, tabii ki çift yönlü, yolun ortasında çizgi çekmeyi hak edemeyecek kadar dar yollar. Üstüme iyilik sağlık. Biz koylardan koylara dediydik, bunun anlamının virajlardan virajlara olduğunu anlamadıydım. Bir de bu virajlar tabii dağlık yer olduğu içindir. Yani fotoğraflarda görünmeyen yokuşları inişleri de sen getir gözünün önüne. 

Oysa hayatında kaç kere Kaş, Kalkan taraflarına gitmiş bir insanın bu duruma uyanması lazımdı çoktan. Partnerime mi güvenmişim neyse, hiç hesap etmemişim.

İşte böylece, iki aylık ehliyetimle, on gün boyunca, her gün en az iki saat, toplam 1100 kilometre araba kullandım birdenbire. Hem de kiralık araba, yani çizdirmek çarpmak lüksüm de olmadan. 

Bu da beklenmedik yeni bir zafer oluverdi listeme. Kutlamasını da terk edilmiş madenlere bakarak ve akvaryum gibi Akdeniz'de yüzerek kutladık. Bir zafer olunca kendimle ve seninle paylaşmaya söz vermiştim sene başında; işte iki tane de fotoğraf koyayım:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hayatımda ilk kez, sıfır çürük

Kendimi bildim bileli dişlerim çürüktür. Dolgu yapılır, dolgunun kenarından girer yine bir şeyler, çürük yürür dolgunun altına. Onu hallederken başka dişler çürür. Onları doldururken ötekine kanal tedavisi gerekir, sonra o kanallar enflame falan olur. Bozdukça bozan ama bir türlü de final yapmayan dizi gibi.

Bakmıyor da değilim dişlerime. Günde iki fırçalamaksa fırçalarım. Diş ipi kullanırım, hatta çantamda diş ipiyle gezerim. Bir ara o ağızdaki her şeyi öldüren ağız sularından da kullanmıştım (sonra başka dişçi bırak deyince bıraktım).

Kimi diyor ki o kadar erik limon yeme, kimi diyor ki genetik. Genetiktir genetik.

Bir fikir edinesin diye söylüyorum: Toplam 15 dişimde çürük olmuş şimdiye kadar. Yirmi yaş dişlerimi çektirmiş olsam dolgulular hükümet kurabilecekmiş ağzımda.   

Neyse, hikaye şu. Birkaç yıl önce sanki düzenli bir işim olacakmış gibi olunca tüm dişlerin panoramik röntgenini çekip bir plan çıkardık dişçimle. İşte Kasım 2022'den beri, beş altı ayda bir gidip bir iki dolgu yaptıra yaptıra o listeyi 2025'te tamamladık. Ama bu arada tabii ki yeni girişimci çürükler oluştular. Onlara da bu sene el attık. Bu iş Ocak'ta biter sandımdı ama şimdiye kadar uzadı.

Bugün itibariyle, nihayet, ağzımda toplam sıfır çürük var. (Zaferden zafere koşuyorum.)

Böyle bir şey daha önce hiç başıma gelmemişti. 

Kutlamak için ne yesem, ne içsem, ne ısırsam bilemedim. Yoksa aksine bir süre hiçbir şey yemesem, F harfini falan hiç kullanmasam mı...

Ne kadar dayanırım bilmem bu çürüksüzlük ahvalinde, ama şu anda kutlama yapmayı hak ediyorum bence.

 

 

I have a driver's license!

There is a recurring joke in the family about how I lived through all my young adulthood without a driver's license.

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The beginning is me moving to Istanbul for university. For trivial reasons, it was out of question to take the license at that time: it would be completely impractical to practice driving in said city. In the meantime years passed and I found it less and less relevant to invest my time on cars.

Of course, everyone else would insist that I would get the license. Arguments for: you never know, just in case, it's good to have it. Arguments against: millions of actual cases (of the "just in case") where it was absolutely beneficial not to be a driver. 

So the joke was that for every single reason in favor that my father would give, I would provide ten reasons against. And I would actively point them out. (We are now in a dinner, you know who can drink alcohol? Something needs to be picked up from somewhere, you know who will not be called to do it? Not to mention the inspections, the insurance and the accidents.)

Needless to say, I won this bet. My trolling skills overpowered my family's rationality.

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Years later, something happened that was not supposed to happen.

My father got sick. He had to go to the hospital (or the clinic) more than once a week. Right after the initial stages of the illness, he stopped driving.

My mother drives, and there are taxis. They handled it just fine. They didn't need me. But something else mattered. Which is that I didn't matter. I could go to support them, I wanted to go support them. But we made a cost-benefit analysis. Destabilizing their newly established routine, stressing them about what I will eat, where I will sleep, if there is reasonable internet connection... all of this without a meaningful upside.

In a way, I never knew (of the "you never knew"). I could be doing some of the driving.

My father died in six months.

The next autumn I decided to take driving classes. 

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This was more than a year ago. 

My travels and the class schedules have been slaloming between each other so it took me longer to get stuff done.

 

This was the car of the school. I'm putting it here for you to be aware and be kind with other learners.

 

Then, I failed the practical exam.

Strange, because until then the only exams that I failed were of STDs.

Then, I failed it again.

It was confusing, expensive and extremely impractical for my daily life.

Then, I relearned something about myself.

The reason I passed the theoretical exam so easily was that I had overprepared. I was doing 10 exams per day (30 questions each), for a period of an entire month. The total number of questions (they publish the entire repertoire online) is 400. And I was doing 300 questions per day. So the point is that when I went to the exam, there was no question that was not obvious to me. Which meant that I was extremely calm.

For the practical exam, the option of overpreparation was not available, because I cannot practice in my sparetime and on my own rhythm. I depend entirely on the classes from the driving school. But I hadn't done anything to compensate for this problem.

So now I was angry at myself not for failing an exam because a pedestrian showed up behind a car parked on the zebra crossing, but for not having followed through on something that I very well knew about myself. Self-awareness is useless if you don't use it.

Fed up of paying for repeat exams (which come with compulsory classes), I paid instead for redundant extra classes.

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The exam was today. 

I was not overprepared. I was not confident. But I was also not too nervous.

Now, I have a driver's license.

This saga came to an end with a major victory. So here I am, committed to tell myself the history of the accomplishments of the year. It's a big one. 

I am ready to contribute to chaos, noise, pollution, and latent urban anger. Let me know if you need me.