In the city of Viseu proper, there is a different vibration. Out in the Coutos you can hear the land speaking, but here it is drowned by the familiar and enldess voies of humans. Imperial hegemnony is a helluva drug, and I had very much underestimated the influence of English as the Lingua Franca - you can get by in the city without speaking a lick of Portuguese. I do feel quite alien, but this is my usual plight. I barely have a grip on social customs in the place where I’ve lived my whole life, and here my childhood fear of looking people in the eye re-emerges. It becomes harder to recognize what we share, and everyone clocks me as American without a word of english spoken.
It's very weird to see cobblestone streets and buildings that are centuries old amidst shiny and newly constructed stainless steel code-compliant grab rails and hi-vis signage. The urbanism is intresting in that it seems to grow upon the environment like vines rather than spread like moss across a sprawl. I did not see any enourmous parking deserts here - I wonder how will everyone go to the store without one parking spot per 300ft of retial spaces in order to exceed minimum parking requiremnts? ?? (byzantine and confounding policy decision btw, the americans were smoking crack during post-war reconstruction)
Being drunk in a European city is an expeirence I wish to bestow upon all beings
