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So we are back from Lisbon since July 24th – But the last week was pretty packed, so that there was no timeslot to fit a quick resume of this trip.

To sum it up: Lisbon a city with flair and definitively wirth visiting! In contrast to cities like Rome or Barcelona, Lisbon is way more “relaxed” in terms of crowded streets or historic sites. People in Portugal seem to be very chilled – less stressy and busy. It seems that there is almost always time to sit down in one of the countless coffeehouses to celebrate drinking a bica, the portugese way of espresso. Oh, to stay at the topic coffee… Maybe its related to the closeness to Brasil – But the coffee is really good and very cheap. Even at the universities canteen you might get a better bica (for 40cents) than in most German top-class restaurants! In those two weeks down in Portugal, I got really used to have a bica after lunch and dinner (and in between, whenever there is some minutes off). To stay at the culinaric topic: Close to the Jeronimous Monestaray (depicted right), there is a nice patisserie, who sell Pastéis de Belém - Visit this bakery and get this specialty, which was first baked more than 100 years ago
Ok, lets get to the Lisbon trip. In Lisbon we definitively saw tourists, but they seemed to got overlayed by the many Portugese people. Especially at the beach of Costa Caparica, it was pretty hard to find someone, who was not Portugese! This created a very relaxed athmosphere. Maybe after watching all the pictures (The HPCEP course produced about 4.6GB of pictures…), there will be more topics for a further summary. But for now: If you are looking for a city in southern Europe to visit: Keep an eye on Lisbon!