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You see that everybody around you is wearing silly black hats and long black robes.
You don't know the way to call for drinks in the local bars.
You buy a connector for your TV and have to look up the words "coaxial
cable";
you return some food to the supermarket and have to
look up the word "mould";
you visit the toilet on
your floor and have to look up the phrase "out of
order";
you complain to the Porter
about something essential missing from your windows and have to look up the
word "curtain",
then you
wonder how soon is "soon" in this country you are in, and how fast do workmen
"work".
Oblivious to linguistic discomfort,
the Porter chats at you
for hours on end,
three times too fast for you to
follow,
about personalities of whom you
have never heard.
You don't
understand the local bus service,
And none of the
people you ask in the street do either.
You don't know whether the best vegetables are to be bought from the big supermarket or the tiny corner shops.
You don't know whether it's cool to wear a University T-shirt, or something only tourists do.
On asking the size of a pastry in the sandwich shop, you use the wrong word, and it comes out sounding like "What is the girth of this sausage roll?".
The letters on the computer keyboards are in the wrong order.
All the bars in town stay open until 2 in the morning
(surely you
didn't
think
I've
been talking about England?)
except the Student
Union bar which stays open until 4
but you need
your ID to get in, because outside the front door last
month,
somebody was
shot,
probably with a gun
from the gun shop three doors down the street.
To get you a card key for the hall of residence, the Porter asks for your
bank card,
reads the magic number off it with a machine he
keeps in a drawer,
(can this really be
legal?),
and codes the number into the
door locks.
Everyone eats their soup after their main course
as is
traditional in the region
but the only Indian
restaurant in town expired last year for lack of
custom
and the Chinese does a nice line
in sweet and sour salt cod.
The most popular University societies are
for:
folkdancing;
playing the guitar
whilst dressed in black three-cornered hats and long black cloaks worn slung
over one shoulder, minstrel-style;
and
making carnival giants.
The computer keyboards are spattered with accents you never expected to need.
During
Freshers'
Week, the 2nd years torture the 1st
years:
by making them do naked press-ups in the
quad,
bow down before the computer lab whilst
wearing necklaces of floppy discs,
and
clean the bandstand in the city square with
toothbrushes,
while
shoppers look on and applaud.
On the national holiday, everyone takes the train to the nearest big
town
in the next country
because it
has bigger shops than anywhere in this one.
You see a language course advertised by the town council. The only
participants are a French Professor of French History,
and ten
gypsies who cannot read or write,
whose children
jump round the room and play all the time with the
teacher's
guitars,
so she asks whether you can
cope with this
(she knows
the English are so repressed).
Rag Week begins with a candle-light procession through the
town,
followed by a midnight
serenade,
and when you get back to the hall of
residence, a girl gives you a love
poem,
because she
couldn't
find her
boyfriend in the crowd,
and
thinks he has stood her up.
Rag Week ends in a wrestling competition,
with bulls.
And the Rag Week parade had displays protesting against University
fees,
no Government money for
education,
the food in the
canteen,
and the number of bugs in
Windows 98;
and proclaiming
drink during the afternoon
as though it were at night!
(some things
don't
change).
Bebe à tarde como se fosse à noite!
University of Minho, Braga, Portugal