Read "Journey to Portugal" by José Saramago online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
It rained. As evening fell the skies opened and rain fell in torrents. But your traveller isn't the sort to be discouraged by the first downpour, nor the second or third, along the way. He retains a hardy rural resistance from the time of his childhood and adolescence when, amazingly, he didn't differentiate between rain and sun, neither from moonlight, nor any from a flight of kites. After all it's true that the morning can still sweep across wide bands of blue sky, and bathed in this light the traveller climbed the Couraca de Lisboa, a thorny wayside by which many lost aspirations for degrees and doctorates have fallen. To the traveller it's not a route to be regularly recommended, least of all to anyone heavy on their legs or short of breath, yet he, while it might not suit his heart condition, always feels himself obliged to find new paths off the beaten track, ones with minimum traffic and maximum life. The Couraca de Lisboa doesn't have fine monuments to offer.
It is simply, as we said, a steep path, well situated for a view of Coimbra, that provincial town with two hats to wear: one of them its own, and the other on top, filled with knowledge and some immaterial prodigies. Had the traveller time, he'd seek out the plain, ordinary Coimbra, ignoring the university at its summit, and visit the houses along the Couraca de Lisboa, potter along the little streets leading to them and, by talking with the people, overcome the unthinking defensiveness of those who assume a mask over their normal features.