This is a story of a love so powerful and strong that it was destined to last forever. At first sight they were as different as two people could be: he was Portuguese, from a traditional Catholic family, a man who had lived mostly in his country, a successful lawyer turned politician; she came from the cold lands of the North, was widely travelled and all but conventional. Where he had dark hair she was blonde, where he had …
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I first met him more than ten years ago when he came to help me with some IT problem. He was a fat, somewhat dishevelled young man. While he fixed my pc he told me he was married and had a little daughter, and we talked about our respective children as parents often do. As we got to know each other better – I always needed his help as I changed equipments – I understood the reason why he …
During my research for an opening speech at a conference in Hong Kong I discovered the first European ever to set foot in China was a Portuguese trader, named Jorge Álvares, as far back as 1513. All of us Portuguese have an interest in Macau, as it was Portuguese territory until 1999, when it was returned to China. A territory located on the Pearl River estuary, it came to the hands of the Portuguese because they began trading there and then …
I have just finished reading Barbara Erskine’s latest book The Ghost Tree and as always I am left with the feeling that I would never want it to end; I would have gone on and on. When you have one of Barbara’s books in your hands you feel as if you’re holding something precious; at first, when you receive it – and you have really been looking forward to getting that box from Amazon! – It contains all the …
Looking back to her childhood and teenage years, she thinks she probably read too many fairytales; she remembers believing they could come true. As a precocious child she read many stories, from Cinderella to Sleeping Beauty and from Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to The Little Mermaid; as a teenager she thrived on romantic stories which most of the times had happy endings, and when they did not, such as The Little Mermaid or, later, one of her favourite …
So it’s over, and we are now on the plane back to Lisbon. After what has undoubtedly been one of the trips of my life, if not “the one”. Even if my feelings about these last days are still in a turmoil and I know it will take some time to fully understand how I stand regarding my past, there are some conclusions to be taken. First of all, this trip was the fulfilling of a dream. For years …
I had promised the boys we’d make the most of our trip to Maputo to go to Kruger Park, a game reserve in the Transvaal province, South Africa, only about one hundred kilometres away. So after a few days in Maputo we set out from the Polana at around 9 o’clock with a very nice driver, Mr. Fernando. Mozambicans are talkative so soon we were deep in conversation with him, learning more about what happened in Mozambique during the …
A friend kindly provided us with his car and driver and on Monday we set out to discover the city of Maputo. First stop was downtown. I looked at the streets’ names but of course they have all been changed; they were mostly named after Portuguese remarkable citizens, having been substituted by characters related to African and Mozambican history and politics. I found the correspondence with the old names on internet so I could recognize them and tell the …
It’s all very “normal”. We come out of the plane through a sleeve and miss the feeling of the heat wave on our face. Our suitcases come out in less than five minutes and there is someone waiting for us with a huge card ” Polana Serena” on it – the name of our hotel. First impressions As we drive away from the airport I try hard to find some familiar sights, but I don’t. I can only remember …
After a night on the plane I feel surprisingly well and energetic. I look at the travel route on the screen map and see we are almost there. In fact the captain has already announced our descent to Maputo. Again the screen shows us the course taken: a straight line from Lisbon to the shores of the Indian Ocean. Almost eleven hours to get us there but then I remember the sixteen hours it took us back in the …