Instituto Politécnico de Lisboa, Portugal

What a surprise! I was really looking forward to spending my birthday in Portugal but due to the fact that I had two job interviews, a lecture and an oral exam scheduled on my birthday, I was quite annoyed. So, I was already prepared for my day to be exhausting. Luckily, my best friend from Germany decided to come and visit me for my birthday. We had a cosy little celebration on Sunday night to start off my birthday and went to get brunch together on Monday morning while half-heartedly listening to the lecture in the background. As I really wanted to celebrate, I invited all of my friends to the beach on Friday. As soon as I had hit send, they all said they couldn’t make it. It seemed like every single person had something better to do that day.

I admit, I was a bit disappointed. Well, to be honest, that is an understatement: I was devastated and thought that I wasn’t important to most of my friends here in Portugal. As a result, it was just me and my roommate that went to the beach, where I just wanted to relax in the sun and take a nap. Once we arrived at the beach of Cascais, all my friends from uni and my Portuguese friends were there, already waiting for me. They had brought snacks and drinks and had all prepared lovely personal presents for me. I was overwhelmed and just so so happy.

Then, yet another surprise! My little brother told me that he would come and visit. I am so happy about it as I really miss him. Over the last few days, the temperatures have reached a new peak and I was already trying to plan how I was going to spend these hot days. Then, on Monday night, a friend of mine texted and asked if my brother and I would like to join her for a road trip to the Algarve. How could we possibly say no to this?

Funnily enough, the people on our road trip came from Germany, France, Hungary and Portugal: the same nationalities as our group at the European football championship this year. So, we needed to find a bar where we could watch Portugal against France as well as Germany against Hungary. That night was an emotional rollercoaster, but we all enjoyed it.

After our road trip to the Algarve, I continued further up north to Braga, Porto, Coimbra, Aveiro and Fatima. The trip was an adventure but also quite exhausting as we continued the journey by bus. As Portugal is quite small, public transport is a lot cheaper and I am also under the impression that public transport is much more reliable here in Portugal. I remember waiting for my ICE train in Germany, already fearing it will be late and most of the times, it was. Here, these kinds of things just work, and it all seems really easy-going.

Over the next two weeks, I’ll be preoccupied with exams. I still have to prepare a lot and have to finish some of my projects and most importantly, I have to start revising. Sometimes I just forget that I am also studying here :D I’m just kidding, I’m just so grateful that I get to study abroad but now it’s time to put a bit more effort into studying again. So that is it for today, but I’m already looking forward to my next diary entry when I can tell you more about my adventures