Parking madness

What is it about parking in Portugal? Portuguese drivers seem to think they can double-park wherever they want, blocking other people in.

My apartment is in a backstreet of Loulé. On the ground floor is a popular café and several solicitors' offices. On my side of the street cars park along the kerb. On the far side, there is a parking bay for cars to park perpendicular to the street. All day long cars arrive to visit the café or one of the offices and, if no parking place immediately outside their intended destination is available, they simply double-park, blocking in two or three legitimately parked cars. Naturally, when the owner of one of the blocked cars wants to leave, they lean on their horn to attract the attention of the offending driver. This means that, sitting here in my office, I have to listen to the insistent blasting of car horns all day long. And frequently, when I want to go out, I find myself blocked in by one of these arrogant idiots.

Furthermore, often when I arrive home in the middle of the day and wish to park, I find an empty parking slot blocked by a double-parked car - yes! they are even too lazy to turn into a vacant spot, preferring to block it and two other cars! I've even seen an offending driver come out from the café to let someone out, then reverse back into his original position, thereby blocking the now-empty spot from being used by anyone else!

When the offenders do eventually emerge to move their car they rarely, if ever, show any sign of remorse or guilt, or even haste. On the occassions when I have challenged them for their arrogance and rudeness, they bristle with offence at my anger, claiming variously that they "were only five minutes" or "this is how it's done in Portugal".

Well, enough is enough! I'm going to start a one-man campaign against these rude, arrogant morons. If the police won't help (which I strongly doubt they will), I'm going to print up some multi-lingual notices and spend a day or two gluing them to the windshields of offending parkers.

Does any other country suffer from this kind of pig-headed, self-centred rudeness by drivers?

Cinema Disgrace

Teresa and I are avid film fans. At home we have a ginormous plasma screen and regularly rent DVDs. We'd given up going to the cinema because our local establishment (an 8-screen complex in Algarve Shopping Centre, Guia - operated by a company called Castello Lopes) consistently disappointed us on every visit - poor focus, poor sound, pour ventilation, exhorbitant popcorn prices and so on.

But the new film about Queen Elizabeth I - The Golden Age tempted us back. What a mistake! Castello was once again spectacularly successful in spoiling our evening out. First, the men's toilets stank of stale urine. A neatly printed label above each urinal declared that the flushing mechanism had been disabled "to save water" and that instead there was a special chemical block with a "microbiological action" to ensure that everything would smell fresh and hygenic with just one flush per day. Well, Lusmundo management, it doesn't work - the toilets in a Moroccan bus station smell better. And when I pointed the problem out an employee in the foyer, he simply said "Yes, I know." So if he knew, presumably "the management" knew, and yet it still stank.

The next jab at one's sensibilities was the price of the popcorn and drinks - the Ritz in Paris wouldn't dare ask that much.

Once in our seats, it was quickly obvious that the auditorium ventilation was not operating - it was unpleasantly hot and stuffy. Since the outside temperature was mild, I guess they thought they could save money by not running the ventilation.

Then the film started and, guess what? It wasn't properly focussed. After an eye-straining ten minutes I got up and went to find a functionary to fix the problem. A few minutes later it was apparent that someone in the projection booth was attempting to set the focus correctly. The picture snapped into focus, then quickly blurred again. This was repeated three or four times over a five minute period. Then all activity stopped - with the picture still out of focus.

What's more, the projector appeared to be having a problem with it's power supply - the screen image was constantly flickering and oscillating in brightness.

At the interval, Teresa and I got up and walked out in disgust. We'll wait for the movie to come out on DVD. And we are never going back to any establishment owned by Castello Lopes - ever.

A Wedding - Una and Alan

Una and Alan, a lovely couple from Dublin, got married last week and I was privileged to photograph their great day.

The ceremony took place in the adorable chapel of São Lourenço, the patron Saint of barbeques (he was roasted over an open fire for his faith). Then it was on to an open air reception at the Vila Sol Hotel followed by a banquet at the Restaurante Caso do Campo in Almancil.

Police protection?

Here's a driving tip for non-Portuguese residents and visitors using any kind of motorised vehicle in the Algarve: don't get stopped by the police!

The traffic cops here are the BT/GNR (Brigada de Trânsito of the Guarda Nacional Republicana). And guess what? They don't like "rich foreigners". As usual with public services, they are overworked and underpaid, so I cannot blame them at all being pissed off most of the time. But it stills hurts when you get on the wrong end of them.

A few months back I was riding in medium traffic on the EN125 (a main east-west road here in the Algarve). A few cars ahead of me were two traffic cops on bikes. One of them was riding in a way that can only be described as "like a jerk". He was weaving his bike from side to side, standing up on the foot pegs, slowing down to a crawling pace then speeding up again. The driver of the car immediately behind him was obviously in distress, not knowing what to do with this lunatic clowning around in front of him. I watched in amazement as this guy committed a string of motoring offences, any one of which would have rightfully got ME in trouble if I'd done it front of HIM.

Finally, I lost my cool: I pulled alongside him and made a hand gesture that suggested he was not setting a good example to other road-users. In three seconds they had their flashing lights on, sirens going, and had pulled me over. I was then subjected to a very aggressive inspection of my documents (together with an absolute refusal to speak Portuguese slowly enough for me to understand them). Unfortunately, the insurance certificate I had with me had expired and the new one was still on my desk in my office. They (gleefully) escorted me to the police station and then took two hours to issue a simple fine. During this time I was warned, in no uncertain terms, against making any official complaint. After finally being released, I decided to let it slide: life's too short and all that.

Two weeks later, I was pulled over by a roadside random check team. I'd forgotten to switch on the headlight of my bike: an offence, even for a bike bigger than some Japanese hatchbacks and at midday on a clear sunny day. They fined me 60 Euros on the spot. If I hadn't happened to have 60 Euros in my wallet, they would have confiscated the bike.

Enough! The next day I went to the police station and asked to see the boss. How come, I asked him, I can witness 6000 traffic violations per hour when I'm out on the road and yet rarely see anyone being pulled over for the most heinous infractions? How come I can see beaten up old Zundapps on the road with no brake lights, no front or rear lights and completely bald tyres? How come I have to close the front windows of my apartment at night to block out the revving engines and screeching tyres of the nocturnal "tuning" morons, without ever seeing one being chased by a police car? How come all of this and then it's ME, a responsible motorist with 25 years bike and car experience, that can pick up 200 Euros of fines in two weeks for... what? For nothing important!

He was a polite, well-educated man and he listened in quiet amazement to my complaint that the greatest part of my offences was to have been "a rich foreigner". He asked me to identify the officers involved in the first incident. He explained to me that he was shorted-staffed, under-budgeted, etc. Would he refund my fines? No. Could he assure me that such injustices would not occur again? No.

Was it a satisfactory ending for me? Not really, but I'm glad I complained. Somebody should.

Oi! Clarkson!

I used to admire Jeremy Clarkson. I enjoyed him on Top Gear, although I'd rather go for a drink with either of "the other two". I used to enjoy his columns in The Sunday Times. But success seems to have gone to his head - he's turned into his own joke.

A week or two back, he wrote about British tourists. Seems there was a survey amongst European hoteliers and British tourists came last. Since I live in an area that is infested with chip-guzzling, lager-swilling British tourists, this did not surprise me in the least.

His riposte may have been tongue-in-cheek, but to my mind it was a low, whorish pander to the "market segment" for which he writes. Clarkson: you can't cover shame with a cheap jibe.

The sad fact is that, here in the Algarve, British tourists are generally a very un-funny joke. Rude, arrogant, ignorant, uncultured, miserly, unadventurous, narrow-minded, unintelligent, badly dressed, poorly behaved... you get the idea. We (the collective business owners and residents of the Algarve) would rather have the Irish, the Dutch, the Germans, the French and even the Spanish (old national rivalry thing there), all of whom make better tourists - they spend more money (on a wider variety of goods and activities), they behave better, they are more cultured, etc. etc. etc.

And it's not just the "chips and lager" that irritate us. The other night I was in a favourite restaurant. At the next table an English couple attempted to engage the waitress in conversation. She's from Hungary and after only six months here she already speaks very good Portuguese. The English couple started with the peculiarly-British "slow and loud" way of speaking to "foreigners". When the girl didn't understand, they tried "even slower and even louder" and finally turned to the occupants of my table for assistance. "She's got to learn!" they declared, in the most condescending tone I've heard in a long time. Why? Why has a Hungarian girl working in a Portuguese restaurant in the Algarve "got to learn" English? So that a pair of ignorant, stupid British tourists can ask her inane questions while they share one pizza (with chips) between the two of them? I don't think so!

No doubt Clarkson would have categorised the waitress as "a Latvian girl who arrived in [Portugal] that morning on the underside of a Eurostar train" (to quote from another one of his writings) and fully supported Mr and Mrs Pigignorant's treatment of her.

Shame on you, Clarkson! You're part of the problem yourself.