ZW1

Saturday the 29th of April 2023. Standing outside the entrance to Restaurant Camilo high above Lagos Bay, we are waiting to be admitted inside by the doorman. If he knew our identities he might not lift the ribbon for us. What he says then is a bit odd: only if we have come to eat and drink will he give us one of the few available inside tables. To be clear: we are not standing at the entrance to a nightclub. And it’s midday, not midnight. Should we however only want to order a drink, we can grab one of the …

Saturday 22nd April 2023. What can the customer visiting a restaurant expect? Food and service that are at least as good if not better in fact than what you’d find at home when one of you is staffing the stove. Or is that maybe asking too much? What we definitely don’t want is to go home with an upset tummy. In our capacity as test eaters we take our seat anonymously in Mosaiko, a Moroccan restaurant in Silves (Rua Elias Garcia, 17). It’s a Saturday evening, shortly before 8pm. There are two of us, and studying the menu already has …

Saturday the 15th of April 2023. The oceans are overfished. And in places where fish is rare it becomes expensive. Which is why an increasing number of restaurants are turning towards farmed fish. This then leads to a kilo of freshly caught summer sardine from the sea already costing as much as farmed sea bass. And it’s always about sheer mass. The approach of summer brings the approach of the tourists. A region which in normal times counts not even half a million residents is artificially inflated to form a community of sun worshippers taking in huge numbers of residents …

Saturday 1st April 2023. Can this be true? Queue-jumping for climate neutrality? Now Berlin always used to want to be a pioneer in all things climate neutrality. So why initiate a referendum? Why not simply hatch a plan, send that plan to the EU and apply for a grant? While the Berlin referendum did pass, by the thinnest of majorities, in the end not enough supporters had hit the polling stations. Posters with “Berlin 2030 climate neutral” and “Yes!” written above had been adorning lampposts all over town. Still, once the votes were counted in nearly all voting locations more …

Saturday 18th March 2023. Laura Rodrigues is mayor of Torres Vedras, a town with just under 80,000 inhabitants in the western part of central Portugal, and belonging to the Estremadura region. Torres Vedras is located just under 60 km north of Lisbon. Together with her vereadores (councillors), Laura Rodrigues is planning to shape their town by 2050 in such a way that it will be fit to function in a climate-neutral way. So what is their plan? An important step in order to reach this goal has been the drawing up of the action plan on sustainable energy and climate …

Saturday the 4th of March 2023. The other day I received a strange phone call relating to the theatre review we published last week. „This is not what we agreed!“ – the caller shouted into the phone and into my ear. First off I increased the distance of the phone to my ear and replied that nothing had been agreed as to the review, as I don’t enter into any agreements when I write something. Freedom of thought reigns supreme, both for the theatre as for the press. Or am I wrong? 25 April forever! If you ask me, I …

Saturday, 18th february 2023. Nestle, Unilever, Procter & Gamble. This is the gamut of the top companies polluting our world with plastic. Do you know what actually happens to the plastics that you and I dutifully drop off at the Ecoponto to be recycled? Well, do you? At the moment, the play „Alice in the Wonderland of Waste“ (Alice no País do Lixo), staged by the AORCA troupe in Lagos looks at the issue of waste recycling using drama and dance. Last Tuesday I atched the dress rehearsal, for there can be no review without seeing the actual play performed. Which is why I …

Saturday the 11th of February 2023. These days, if you are thinking about building a house or restoring an old ruin you really will be forced to conduct a thorough study of your building materials and prices. Over the course of the past year alone, the price of construction materials such as steel, glass, cement and bricks increased by 30 to 40, some even up to 50 per cent. Add to this substantially higher interest rates applied to bank loans and more demanding efficiency specifications for new buildings, as well as the possibility of falling real estate prices. And this …

Saturday 21st January 2023. Many state schools in Portugal are currently closed, as the teachers are on strike once again. The plan is to pressure the Ministry of Education. This is the way they’ve chosen to pressure the Ministry of Education and force a favourable response to their demands. In truth those finishing high school in 2023 can more or less forget about sitting their exams. Let’s take one example: at the Poeta António Aleixo school in Portimao (who wants to live there anyway?) this works in a very perfidious way: the school, just like any other, is equipped with …

Saturday 14th January 2023. Today’s big news was this: humanity has crossed the threshold of eight billion. So what do the good teachers of Portugal do? What will we remember them for? That’s right, they’re on strike. Once again. This time the issue is their career paths within the state school system. They are striking because they are altruistically thinking of their missed prospects of promotion. Very funny. Just visualise this. Those poor poor teachers. Fair enough, they are not exactly in a good place. Entry-level salaries are meagre, not even reaching 1,000 euros. And this after spending four to …