Life in Portugal mostly moves at a pretty slow pace. This morning I left the school I work at, and just across the road I waved at the lady who works in the papelaria nearby. She was chatting to a friend. I walked up to the supermarket, bought the things I needed to buy, stopped for a coffee. When I got back to the school 25 minutes later, she was still chatting to her friend, laughing away in the unseasonal sunlight, not a care in the world about her untended shop, because she knew if a customer walked in, the shopkeeper next door would hear the bell and give her a shout.
The roadworks are not designed to be completed quickly either. Many of the main roads in Cascais are cobbled, which means that when they need to be repaired or replaced, it involves an enormous pile of granite rock, and about five men with tiny hammers, who chip each cobblestone into the perfect size, then place it with artistic care. Then a man comes along with a giant piece of iron to hammer the stones into the ground. Then a seventh man fills the gaps with sand, and an eighth carefully sweeps up any excess. By the time the eighth man has come along, the first team has moved perhaps a couple of metres down the road. It's painfully slow, albeit with a very pretty result. The pavements are the same, but for the rather eye-watering black-and-white wave effect in Cascais, the process has to involve a big wooden template as well.
All part of the joy of living in southern Europe!
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