I’m glad to know that you’ve all reached home safely and enjoyed having been here. Wish you a nice rest of school year and hope some can come back in Summer. For those who are coming to Ljubliana a hug till then.

For all, the official 2009-2010 exchange salute

Exchangers: newcomers and those ones who’ve already been here – have a smooth flight and be welcome to the Far West (of Europe ) – although we’re having already some mild temperatures, hope we can get some sunshine during your staying – meet you all the airport

Belém

Santa Maria de Belém, mostly known as Belém is a  parish of Lisbon, located six kilometers west of the present city centre and two kilometers west of Ponte 25 de Abril. Belém is famous as the place from which many of the great Portuguese explorers set off on their trips of discoveries. In particular, it is the place from which Vasco da Gama departed for India in 1497. It is also a former royal residence and features the 17th-18th century Belém Palace, former royal residence and now occupied by the President of Portugal, and also nearby, in the Ajuda Parish, there is the Ajuda Palace, begun in 1802 but never completed.

Torre de Belém

Belém tower is a fortified tower located in Belém, and is an UNESCO World Heritage Site due to the significant role it played in the Portuguese discovers. The tower was sent to build by King John II to be both part of a defense system at the mouth of the Tagus River and a ceremonial gateway to Lisbon. It was built in the early sixteenth century and is a prominent example of the Portuguese Manueline style, but it also incorporates hints of other architectural styles.

Padrão dos Descobrimentos

The wall of discovers is a monument that celebrates the Portuguese who took part in the Age of Discovery between fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It is located on the estuary of the Tagus river in Belém. It was where the ships departed to their often unknown destinations. The monument looks like the prow of a ship. The Monument to the Discoveries represents a romantic idealisation of the Portuguese past that was typical during the regime of Salazar.

Mosteiro dos Jerónimos

The Hieronymites Monastery is also located in Belém. This magnificent monastery can be considered one of the most prominent monuments in Lisbon and is certainly one of the most successful achievements of the Manueline style, it was classified by the UNESCO, with nearby Torre de Belém , as a World Heritage Site.

Pastéis de Belém

A pastel de nata or pastel de Belém is a Portuguese egg tart pastry. They are common in Portugal and countries with significant Portuguese populations, such as Canada, the United States, and France, among others.

It is believed that pastéis de nata were created before the 18th century by Catholic Monks at the Jerónimos Monastery. The Casa Pastéis de Belém in Lisbon was the first place outside the convent selling the original creamy dessert, after the monastery was closed in 1820s, and there they are called pastéis de Belém, after the name of the area and its famous bakery.

(The old Moorish city)

Sintra is a town in Sintra Municipality in Portugal, located in the Grande Lisboa subregion and the Lisbon Region.

Sintra has become a major tourist attraction, with many day-trippers visiting from Lisbon.  ThoseAttractions wich include the fabulous Pena Palace and the Castelo dos Mouros ( Moorish castel) with a fabulous view of the Sintra-Cascais Natural Park, and the summer residence of the kings of Portugal and aristocracy for more than 600 years Palácio Nacional de Sintra . The Sintra Mountain Range, one of the largest parks in the Lisbon area, (Serra de Sintra) is also a major tourist attraction. Where you can see the mother nature of this place will never exist elsewhere in the world.

Cultural Landscape of Sintra

Was considered world Heritage Site for the “Cultural Landscape of Sintra”.

It includes:

• Sintra National Palace
• Seteais Palace

• Castle of the Moors (Castelo dos Mouros). was built by the Moors in the 8th and 9th centuries and its walls wind themselves like a small Chinese wall round the rock ridges.  From the towers and walls one has a spectacular outlook onto the city and its surroundings.

Monserrate Palace

Quinta da Regaleira

(…)

Pena National Palace

It is one of the most important examples of regal architecture in Portugal and for that reason is classified as a National Monument.

Gastronomy

This village has some much appreciated food specialties, such as biscuits regional “pillows”, the lamb, and the famous cupcakes of Sintra.

14:10h arrival – meeting at the airport.

Saturday:

8:00h meeting at school of Hungarians and Portuguese

10:00h Porto Covo village/beach

13:00h Badoca Park:

13:30 Safari

14:30 Rafting

16:15 Bird show

17:00 Leaving the park

19:00 Arrival at school

Sunday:

Family day

Monday:

8:30h meeting at the ferry station- Cacilhas (with walking shoes and sandwiches)

9:30 Visit St Jorge’s Castle

11:00 Lisbon Downtown Tour Challenge (with a prize for the winning team)

13:30 Lunch time

15:30 Tour around Belém area (western Lisbon)

18:00 Arrival

Tuesday:

8:30h meeting at school of Hungarians and Portuguese (with walking shoes and sandwiches)

10:00h arriving to Sintra and walking uphill to Visit Pena Palace and Park (maybe the Moorish Castle, too) – if the weather isn’t good will go to another place downhill

12:30 Stroll in Sintra (village)

13:30 Lunch

14:30 Visit Roca Cape (Europe’s most western point)

15:30 Visit the village of Cascais (if we have time)

17:00 Arrival to School

Wednesday

8:30h meeting at the train station of Pragal

10:00h Visit the Pavillion of Knowledge  and stroll around Nations Park (eastern side of Lisbon)

14:30 Surf class – Costa Caparica (Portuguese partners should bring the swimming suits and towels of their partners too)

20:00 dinner at school with all the groups and Portuguese families

Thursday:

9:30h- meeting at school.

10:00h – 13:30 -  Project work at school

13:30-  Free afternoon

21:00 – Farewell Party

Friday:

10:00h meeting at the airport

As you can see gastronomy to me means: sweet things

Well, after a long time of quite easy questions I had to ask you something more difficult, or I will run out of ideas.

These delicious things you see on the picture belong to our best traditional sweets. They also have a very ‘interesting name’. So, give me the Portuguese name for them and for fun you can translate it into English. Good luck!

This poet -1888-1935 is one of the greatest and most representative poets of the twentieth century.

To understand life, to give it a meaning or to refuse it depends deeply on our feelings, perhaps more than on our reason. And his poetry is an example of it. Philosophical profundity is, in his case, intimately connected to beauty, to art, to the ability of the writer to touch our souls, our astonishement, or his ability to open new horizons of awareness.

He worked as a literary critic, freelancer translator, wrote for many newspapers and magazines and published most of his poems in Portuguese and English. He created some fictional characters (heteronyms) to whom he gave almost a real existance and who were responsible for a large number of poems. And one day he expained it to one of his friends like this:

“…Ever since I was a child, I have had the tendency to create a fictitious world around me, to surround myself with friends and acquaintances who never existed. ( I don’t know, of course, if they didn’t really exist or if it is me who doesn’t exist.  On such matters, as in all others, one shouldn’t be dogmatic.)  Ever since I became aware of the thing that I call self, I can remember with mental precision, the figures, the movements, the character and the history of several fictitious people who were, to me, as visible and mine as those things which we, perhaps abusively, call real life. (…)”

Many more things could be written about this great poet, but it’s your turn to find out his name and his poems.

The park has 72000 hec. That’s a protected natural area and a National Park. The region is essencialy made of granitic rocks and sediments deposits.

In some areas is possible to watch magnific sights, witch englobes natural and human aspects. That’s the case of  miradouro da Pedra Bela.

There´s also some rare animals and plants, some of them are almost extinguish. There are also beautiful waterfalls and wild animals, such as wild horses.

This park is wonderfull to see and an excelent place to be in the heart of nature!

Today I brought you one of my favourite Portuguese painters.

He was born in 1887 and died in 1918 with the ‘Spanish flu’.  In 1906 he travelled to Paris  and settled in Montparnasse. He studied Architecture, but dropped his degree to develop his skills as a draftsman and caricaturist, and to follow the Parisian art scene.

After 1910 he developed  friendship with famous  painters, which helped him to developed a vital theoretical and pictorial research. His oeuvre, characterised by constant investigation and the reformulation of concepts and pictorial practices, engaged with almost all the aesthetic movements relating to the rupture of conventional art. He experimented a large number of modernist movements, from Cubism to abstract art, Expressionism to Futurism.

I hope you find out his name quickly and love him as much as I do : )