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Saturday the 20th may of 2023. Part One. On 5 November Lenz was walking through the hills, all by himself. The summits and high mountain flanks were gleaming in the sun, and the valleys below were covered in green after the rain. Brooks were rushing across the rocks, and the eucalyptus trees were swaying in the wind. Temperatures had gone up a bit again. The clouds in the sky were scurrying from north to south, as if in a hurry. The umbrella pines above him were absorbing the strong winds. The air was humid and the long valleys stretching from …

Getting to know Portugal also means getting to know its culture and its climate, its people and its regional history. Situated in the mountain range of the same name, Monchique lies in the far southwestern corner of Portugal. Caldas de Monchique marks the starting point and the finishing point of our guided Monchique Mountain Hike. On the first day guests make their own way by train to Portimão and on by bus to Caldas de Monchique (VAMUS, Line 94) to get to know the village and the accommodation (Orientation Day). The hiking guide, having lived and worked here for donkey’s …

Saturday May 6th, 2023. Let’s grab a bite to eat? It’s Friday, 2pm, and we’re on our way to Monchique to sample a Pizza Margherita in the recently re-opened Miradouro restaurant just above Caldas de Monchique. Very early on in my life, the Italian head chef Carlo Padulo, who taught me how to make pizza a long time ago advised me to always start with a Pizza Margherita. Tomato sauce and cheese are unlikely to upset your stomach. Today’s dough however is very odd and hardly cooked. The same thing happens with a second pizza by the name of „Quatro …

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 …