Week two: a lot has happened

It is day 13 and I’m in my favourite chain cafe (again) – A Padaria Portuguesa. I practically have shares in the company at this point.

Much has happened in the last few days. I am fine, and this experience has already taught me a lot, which is part of the reason I came here. But take a seat, this could turn into a long story. 

Let’s start from where I left my last blog post. It was Tuesday, the surprise bank holiday. I spent the morning on my laptop at the Copenhagen Coffee Lab (already one of my favourite places in the city).

For the afternoon I headed to Belem via LX Factory, which is a very hipster-y collection of cafes and shops in abandoned buildings in a neighbourhood you wouldn’t have any reason to visit otherwise. I highly recommend it if you have time to get a bus out there (it is walkable too – about half an hour from Lisbon along the waterfront). It has one of the coolest bookshops in the world, some great food, and views from under the Ponte 25 de Abril bridge. 

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I walked from there to Belem (about half an hour) and it suddenly rained. Having not prepared for this I got pretty soaked! I had been planning to visit the Meet Vincent Van Gogh exhibition (my favourite artist) but discovered it hadn’t opened yet. Oops. So I carried on into Belem and went to Museu Coleção Berardo. Mostly it’s modern art which isn’t really my thing, but there’s a couple of Andy Warhol and Picasso pieces, both of whom I like. 

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Downstairs they had a beautiful photography exhibition of Andreas H Bitesnich’s work. He does black and white street photography which is one of my passions. The photographs on display were series from different cities: New York, Berlin, Vienna, Tokyo, Paris, and most recently Lisbon. Super inspiring work. Plus I’m lucky to have visited all of these places (except Tokyo) so recognised some of the locations.

On Thursday the office was having a gas-something-or-other fitted which was apparently going to be noisy and dusty, so they said most people would be working remotely and I could too. Not wanting to spend the whole day in my room on my bed, I went back to the Copenhagen Coffee Lab and joined a whole row of other keyboard warriors. Despite being a bit more expensive than the ridiculously cheap drinks in most Portuguese places, it’s the best coffee I’ve found yet. And trust me, I know my coffee.

Heading back after a day’s work, I started to feel a bit odd. I realised that this was the longest amount of time I’d ever spent alone. As I discussed in the week one post, the group I flew over with has not become close, as they all already knew other people, and I am not living with international students so the language barrier gets in the way of making friendships. It felt like a strange day. My friend who spent years travelling in his youth shared his memories with me of having those down days, and made me feel a bit better about it. 

After work on Friday I forced myself to hang out in the living room instead of my bedroom. One of my flatmates’ Brazilian friends came to collect him for a night out and saw me sat at the table on my laptop. They asked if I’d like to go out with them which was very kind. It was like uni days again, going out in an unknown city with total strangers. One of them spoke good English and made sure I knew where we were going and what was happening which was really appreciated. I got back at 2am having had a great night. They must have had some sort of radar that I was feeling a bit lost. 

Bear with me, I am getting to the ‘story’ bit.

Last week I was added to a Whatsapp group with the people on this programme who flew over last month. They sent a message inviting everyone to a vegan buffet on Saturday night so I went along to meet them.

There are six people in the group who came over last month (four of them were at the dinner) and they all became close on arrival as no-one knew each other and they were keen to make friends. I explained that it hadn’t been the same with our group which they said was a shame and that I was welcome to hang out with them. They were very kind to me, we had a fun night, and it was nice to have a conversation with people whose first language is also English!

I always enjoy getting to know international people of course, but when there is a language barrier (i.e. the English isn’t fluent), it can make bonding a little harder. It was also nice to speak to others on the Erasmus+ programme who’ve been here for a while now. They had a similar experience to me with the application and pre-departure process (it was not a good experience. I will write about this in another blog. But hey-ho, I got here).  

Here comes the thing that’s made me feel quite different about my experience. Nothing bad has happened, but to me, this feels quite crazy, because I am the one here living it. 

Let me start from the beginning. My accommodation is horrible. I have not complained about this (before today) for a number of reasons:

• I didn’t want to worry anyone.
• I thought everyone was in the same situation. It’s a fully-funded trip after all, so I wasn’t exactly expecting luxury. 
• I am not the type to complain about something straight away. I try to give things a fair chance and see if it improves or I get used to it. 

My room is ok – it was quite dirty when I arrived so I did a bit of vacuuming and dusting and it is ok. The same cannot be said for the bathroom. I’ll spare you of the photos but to cut it short, the toilet seat is snapped in half (as in half of it falls onto the floor when you use the loo – this might not be so hard for a man trying to pee (which the others living there all are) but we women don’t exactly have the option to stand up). The shower curtain is horrifically mouldy and very difficult to avoid while showering. I am just beginning to master the art of how to shower in a very small space without letting the flapping-around curtain touch me. As a tall person this is not easy. 

Anyway, I’m only here for three months, I kept telling myself. And the area is nice. Mostly I was putting up with it because I thought that I didn’t have a choice and this is what to expect from a Erasmus scheme. 

On Saturday night two of the people who came over in January were telling me that they were originally placed in the same building as each other. It was awful, and they both got moved to nicer, clean places. One even has an en-suite! Apparently a girl I flew over with lives there too. The two people who were moved were telling me about the ordeal with the Erasmus administration company over here.

They complained about the state of the accommodation and how the other four who flew over in January were given cleaner, more suitable, habitable places. And they discovered that the company had not been to check out the building where they were placed (which they are supposed to). Mould in one of the bedrooms was painted over as a solution. This is obviously a serious health risk. They fought their case and got moved. 

Later in the evening we took our drinks to Miradouro de São Pedro de Alcântara (miradouro means “viewpoint” in Portuguese). My tram passes here every day, I said. It’s lovely. “Wait, where do you live?” one of them asked. “Campolide” I replied. He looked at me like I said I could see ghosts or something. Then in the perfect Portuguese accent he listed my exact address. It took a second for it to click why he knew my address.

THIS IS THE BUILDING THEY GOT MOVED FROM. The one I have been placed in. The one the company admitted to them was not fit for purpose. 

I am absolutely shocked and appalled. Like I said, the accommodation isn’t nice, but I tried to give it a go and put up with it. But it’s a different thing to find out that: 

1. Everyone else is living in clean places.
2. They moved people away from this building due to it being uninhabitable. They actually admitted to people on the same programme as me that it wasn’t right – and then put me there.

When I got back there that night it felt more uncomfortable than it had done before. I also started to wonder whether the white walls of my bedroom had been freshly painted and black mould was sitting beneath them. 

Part of the reason I came on this trip was to grow my confidence. The main motivation was to gain experience in my field of marketing – but I know that my confidence needs some work too and was hoping the trip would improve it. I am not shy, and I am very resilient, but I know that I’m often too nice for my own good. I think I can say that it’s already getting there and I have already learnt a lot!

Of course, I have sent an email with all of this information to the organisation. Who knows what will happen. But I don’t want to stay where I am knowing that they deemed it unfit. Showering will seem even more difficult knowing I am not meant to be in that situation. 

I want to stress to anyone going through the process of applying or wanting to apply to this scheme that my experience has been atypical. I hope this will not happen to you – it probably has a lot to do with how last-minute my place was arranged (saving this for the other story of how I ended up in Lisbon). But please remain vigilant. And speak up! I am beginning to wish I complained of the state of affairs on the first day. 

To end on a more positive note – today I went to Kaya for lunch which is an organic, mostly veggie place near me. I then walked up to Calouste Gulbenkian Museum and gardens which it turns out is free on Sundays after 2pm. Unfortunately it’s a grey and wet day otherwise the gardens would have been lovely – I plan to return on a sunnier day. The museum has a great selection of art: mainly ancient artefacts, paintings, sculptures etc. For me it was worth going to see the impressionist art including pieces by Monet, Manet and Renoir (some of my favourite artists).