Tango Techie Tales: Awkward Gay Moments Of The World..! When Does A Man Kiss A Man...?

Mmm, old and tasty port!

Well, here we are in Portugal..! We’re doing 3 venues over around 7 days with even a couple of days off thrown into the mix! What a lovely way to start the beginning of pretty much 8 months straight of ‘Tango’... We’re playing in Lisbon, Oporto & Figuerra de Foz. We’re being presented by a guy called Ricardo whose family owns the coliseum type theatre that we’ll be playing in Lisbon. He’s a crazy, whacky kind of guy – says ‘Yes’, in a very long and drawn out extension of the ‘e’, to everything. His voice also has a slightly, high pitched, nasal quality to it too! ‘Yes’ seems to be his favourite answer to most questions, usually followed by ‘Is no problem’.

When we first met him, he leant in and kissed both Lynda & Toni on each cheek... Now, I’ve been touring with ‘Fire’ for quite some time now and the male Argy’s all kiss on the cheek as a greeting (as do the females!) and throughout Europe, like in Spain, you also kiss a man on the cheek – there it’s a kiss on both cheeks... So... I shot a glance at Dan, whispered, “Do we kiss here..?” Dan just shrugged and by then Ricardo was upon me, hand outstretched and as I shook his I leant into kiss him on the cheek... Bad, bad, bad mistake....! Ricardo literally recoiled in horror..! Literally! One moment he’s welcoming the touring crew and the next a man is trying to kiss him..! He didn’t get far as I had a firm grip on his hand...! Ever so slightly embarrassing! Surprisingly, he beat a hasty farewell after that... Once he had, Lynda, Dan & Toni & also myself wet ourselves laughing...! I would have loved to have seen the fear in his eyes but alas, he was wearing sunglasses!!

Graffiti!

He is a crazy man of about 27-28 & you can tell that he’s fairly new to the whole presenter game. His dream is to hopefully bring Metallica to Portugal next year...! Good luck...! He is one of those people who seem to think that by saying ‘yes’ (especially the way he says it!) that the problem will automatically right itself..!?!? “Is coming from Lisbon” was another favourite saying that you heard all the time. 9 times out of 10 it wasn’t & didn’t! He would also just mysteriously disappear for lengths at a time and then magically reappear when we had worked out, for ourselves, how to deal with another issue that he was supposed to have dealt with! Basically, he was a twit & someone that I wouldn’t trust as far as I could punch him!

The norm in Portugal is to not wear seat belts – it is in the front but not in the back. I don’t know why but when travelling, I’ll usually end up doing the local thing when it comes to cars. When I first hoped into the back seat with Ricardo and went to put on he said, “Nooooo (in the same style he said ‘yes’) have to wear. Front yes but in back the police don’t fine. Nobody does. Is fine” So, I sat back in his ever so posh current model Mercedes (did I mention that his family had owned the theatre in Lisbon for over a Century & were quite wealthy..?) and we drove off to the venue to inspect. He ended up being our driver for a few things but the most memorable was the drive to Figuerra de Foz which was about 2.5hrs away from Lisbon. It was just Dan & myself in the car and I was once again in the back, seatbeltless. Driving through downtown Lisbon is one thing but then once you hit the open highway – wow! Crazy Ricardo becomes Super Insane Ricardo!! He was hurtling down the highway and pretty much never dropped below 180-190km/hr with the highest I managed to see through my squinted eyes as I clung for dear life to the Jesus Handle in the back was a notch over 240km/hr.

<** Jesus Handle = the oval shaped handle that sticks out above most rear passenger doors. If your grabbing it, you’re prob going “Oh Jesus!”**>

Crazy trams! They're quite small and hurtle around these really tight corners! No horn or bell!!

The drive, although slightly terrifying, was a good chance to quiz Ricardo about Portugal. I’d never known this fact and I guess it makes sense once you know it, but Portugal is where Port was first made..! Hence the name of the drink!! They make many different types and styles with my favourite being one called Ginger. White ports are also quite interesting. Portugal has a rather large system of wind farms to produce electricity. The most eastern point of Europe is in Portugal. He unfortunately couldn’t tell us much about the history! There was once section we were driving through that trees were easily recognisable as gum trees. Both Dan & I started talking about gum trees and saying that they were from Australia and Ricardo kept asking ‘What...?”, “Again..?” and was totally not understanding us at all and then he broke out his cheeriest grin, gave us one of his best “Yeeeeesss...” which was the followed by a phrase that would be used by us when ever we referred to him, “We maka the wine!” What...? And then the talk of gum trees was over and we were off talking about Portuguese wine again!

Lynda, Tonni & Dan cameo alongside me & my shadow!

Portugal’s pretty cool and it’s nice to find a ‘surprise’ country as Portugal is a place that I prob wouldn’t choose as a destination to travel to under my own steam. The food here is also decent, although they do tend to use a fair chunk of oil – and it looks like bad oil..! Most meat dishes seem to be served with a decent dash of oil over the top..! It’s slightly strange, especially as the oiling doesn’t seem to be restricted to just meat, oh no, salad gets a liberal coating as well....! They do however, make these fantastic burnt, little custard tarts that are just divine! And seafood, they do damn decent seafood. In Figuerra, we were right on the ocean and the squid/calamari was suburb, as was many other dishes. In Lisbon, goat was another meal that was surprisingly good – the way it was cooked, it just peeled off the bone – kinda like lamb shanks. In Europe you tend to be served bread with some form of accompaniments, sometimes just butter, once you sit down (and you get charged for it but we won’t go into that here) & Portugal’s version was great! There was always bits of cheese, a garlic type paste, herb butter and about 4 or 5 different types of bread. Noice..! (spelling mistake intentional!)

Posing with a local!

My most surprising meal of all whilst in Portugal was a sandwich believe it or not....! We were out for lunch in Oporto during Load In and we found an outdoor cafe that seemed to be alright. We ordered drinks and Dan ordered the tuna sandwich and I ordered a sandwich that I unfortunately can’t remember the name of but it ended in ‘speciale’ and had cheese, meats, spicy sausage & lamb cuts with a sauce. It sounded crazy enough to be Portuguese..! When the meals were served Dan & I chuckled a little when his got served as all the crusts had been cut off and I didn’t think I was going to be served mine as the other dishes the waiter had on him, looked nothing like sandwiches and more like desserts.... Then I was served one of the desserts! It was this square block of melting cheese, sitting in a red pool of soup & all garnished with a prawn...!! Myself and Dan burst out laughing and as I reached down to get my camera out to take a photo, the man at the table opposite us, started taking photos of his own and many other nearby diners leaned over and commented on my Special Sandwich!! It was actually really, really good but did not at all look anything like the vision you could conjure up by reading the menu description!!