Lately I’ve found some contacts on Facebook that are people I haven’t seen probably since 1983 when I lived in Portugal and went to school there for three years.
I have maintained contact with many people I met and became good friends with and also family of course that I met when I moved to Portugal in 1980 when I was 16. I was born in Sydney and lived here until my parents decided to move to Portugal when my father retired as that’s where both of my parents were born.
So when I arrived there I didn’t know anyone, not a single person. I had not met any family that lived there apart from some family of my father’s that had lived in Sydney and moved back there before we arrived. It was a culture shock on arrival I can tell you that much! Portugal just came out of a Dictatorship and had a peaceful revolution in 1975 to establish a Democratic Republic, and by 1980 things were getting settled but the country was still way behind compared to Spain and other Western European countries when it came to technology, communications, construction, industry, government and education. The stunted growth of the country during those 50 odd years of a Dictatorship would take at least 20 years to overcome so in 1980 things were far from good.
I moved to a fishing village called Albufeira in the southern province of the Algarve which is now a major tourist destination because of the wonderful weather and stunning beaches. Back then we had running water for 3 hours a day and electricity sometimes didn’t work. TV was only working for 8 hours a day and there was only one channel and the same for the radio. Needless to say I was rather bored. But the beach was good and through my cousin, the daughter of my uncle (mother’s brother) who was the same age as me I got to hang out and make new friends. Once summer was over though we had to start school.
This town had no high school. The only high schools were located out of town in other cities such as Portimão and Silves. I was to go to the Silves Technical High School in the city of Silves which was inland, out in the country.
To get to school we had to catch a bus at 7am, if you missed the bus, you had no other way to get there unless someone’s parents drove you as there was no other bus to catch that would arrive at Silves on time for school. We had to walk from home through the main town of Albufeira then go up the church steps and up the hill to the bus stop every morning. On the bus is where we met others from Albufeira who were also going to Silves.
So we would get on the bus for this one and a half hour trip to school every day. The bus went from Albufeira through various small country towns to arrive at Silves by about 8:30 or 9:00 am if it didn’t break down! At each stop the country kids would get on, kids from Guia, Algoz, Tunes, Messines and other towns.
Some of these friends I would see only during the school year as they never came to Albufeira in summer and we never went to the country. Others I would see all year around because they lived close by in Albufeira or would holiday there for the summer. Then when I left Portugal to return to Sydney in 1984, I lost contact with most of them except those closest to me and my family. I had actually finished school in 1983 so some school friends I haven’t seen since then.
Facebook is good for this kind of thing. I had some friends on there that I had been in touch with all these years and from those, they then had other friends etc. etc. and recently I added a few that just appeared out of the blue and I marvel that we can now speak, look at photos, write to each other, chat online and catch up with each other about the last 27 odd years! I know it seems strange but I marvel at these things!
We had some good times, the bus rides were a riot, there were some funny characters on there, and adventures getting home were even funnier. The return bus didn’t leave Silves until 5pm and sometimes our classes finished at 1pm. We didn’t want to hang around this boring country city; we wanted to get back to Albufeira to the cafés and the beach - where the action is - so naturally, we hitchhiked home. None of our parents knew of course, we would hang out in cafés and bars till it was normal home time as if we’d caught the bus and then went home, our parents clueless. But those were good times, and these new connections brought back some great memories for me.
I’m sad that I don’t have any photos at all from those school times, only some family shots but none of all my school friends from that period. But the memories are still there and I’m thankful to be in touch again with some great people that I never thought I would hear from again who remind me of a great time in my life.
