Week 9 Full Spring Break

After leaving Madrid, our next stop was Lisbon, Portugal. This city was outstandingly beautiful with the majority spread out over steep hills, tight alleyways, and small wood trams that reminded me of San Francisco. Since Portuguese is not too different to Spanish it wasn’t extremely difficult for me to pick up the small differences between them, yet I was still surprised how some thinks were totally different. We arrived to Lisbon quite late, and since we were tired from flying, we decided we wanted to stay in the Airbnb and drink there rather than go out. We soon found out that Portugal does not have corner stores/kiosks that we were used to in other countries, and even if there was a store that sold liquor they close before 9pm. I had to run ALL over town to eventually find a vendor stand selling only port wine, which instead of having the usual 10-13% was a whopping 20% alcohol haha. Although they were stronger, I did not personally enjoy the port wine that much since it tended to be very sweet, even more than Rose wine. The next morning, we departed to the city center to begin a food tour! I would highly recommend doing this in as many culturally different travels locations as it can be a great way to familiarize yourself with the city, learn the language through the tour guide, eat delicious authentic foods famous to the area, and learn the hotspots/attractions that could be done later! I was able to try tinned fish, like tuna from a can, which turned out to be way better than I expected. Additionally, I tried the “World’s Greatest Chocolate Cake,” mussels, fried calamari, black boar, desserts and many other signature meals of Lisbon. Our tour guide was nice enough to recommend visiting the beach as well as other rooftop bars! The next day we actually visited the beach and had a real blast! The weather was so much warmer than we’re used to in Germany and the beach was very clean, non-crowded, and had huge waves filled with surfers. We did not get to experience the night life too much this Spring break due to the climb in Coronavirus cases, so we generally tried to stay out of crowds during this time. Our last day in Lisbon, I awoke from my peaceful slumber to one of my friends standing over me with a deadpan expression, only muttering “…we are getting sent home.” Now, with the corona situation, I realized being sent home could have been a very real possibility, but I did not expect it to happen so soon. I actually thought they were just joking until I pulled up the email myself to Trump declaring a State of Emergency and restricting all travel to the US with the exception of citizens. We were all crushed to find out we would have to cut our abroad experience in Europe short. This was the time we realized the full gravity of corona and panicked in wondering if we would be able to get home due to the travel ban that would be instated within a few days. So much panic ensued that one of our friend’s parents bought them a direct flight to the US for over $2.5k the very next morning. We still ended up traveling to our final spring break location in Barcelona, yet most of us were too bummed by the thought of going home they couldn’t fully enjoy it. The first day was solely finding out how to handle the situation from AIB, A&M, and the US government, with plenty of long wait times to rebook flights to return to the US. The airlines were experiencing such high call volumes that wait times were 2 hours-24 hours. Instead of going through that hassle, especially since I don’t have unlimited minutes included in my international plan, I ended up booking a completely new flight. The situation in Spain had also become much dire in the few days since we left Madrid. Spain also declared national emergency, and as a tourist it was very ominous to see such supposed hot spots to be completely devoid of traffic and all the shop doors shut and locked. Finding food even proved difficult since all restaurants in the area were closed and the grocery stores located away from these tourist locations. When we finally did have to return to Germany on the last Sunday of Spring break, I had to go through 3 flights to return to Bonn at midnight and on top of that repack EVERYTHING that my host family brought to AIB before 5pm the next morning.