One can’t help feeling sorry for civil rights campaigner, human and animal rights activist and feminist writer Rita Mae Brown. In her 1983 book Sudden Death, she attributed to a fictional ‘Jane Fulton’ a very memorable saying that has become something of a cliché and has been immortalised on countless mugs and posters. “Insanity,” she wrote, “is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”
How galling it must be for her to see this memorable pensée misattributed, almost universally, to Albert Einstein, who, let’s face it, doesn’t really need the publicity. His reputation, after all, rests on rather more substantial foundations.
Speaking personally, I feel rather more comfortable going head-to-head with Rita Mae Brown than I would with Einstein. For my intention today is to demonstrate that, contrary to what Einstein didn’t say, doing the same thing twice and expecting different results may be eminently sensible.
Some months ago, Micha’el, Tslil, Tao and Ollie embarked on an expedition to Lisbon with two objectives. The first was to obtain an apostille of the translation from Portuguese to Hebrew of all of their relevant documentation. I should explain, for the benefit of those of my readers whose nationality issues are rather more straightforward, that an apostille is a document used in international law that is issued by a government in accordance with the Hague Convention and that certifies that another document has been signed by a notary public.
Armed with the apostille, which sported a suitably impressive embossed stamp on the last page, they then made the short journey to the Israeli embassy, in the hope of registering Ollie’s birth and establishing his Israeli citizenship.
Their experience at the embassy was horrendous. Security was understandably strict; however, it seemed excessive for the strictness to stretch to refusing to allow them to take in any personal items whatsoever, including any equipment for their then infant son, and any book or game for their older son. Having been assured that the waiting-room was equipped with items to occupy a child, they found it boasted a couple of sheets of plain paper and some dried-up felt-tip pens.
When they finally saw an official, they were told that the apostille should have been stamped and signed on every page, and could not be accepted, and, at the end of a long, fraught, unpleasant and wasted couple of hours, they left. Bear in mind that this entire waste of energy required a stay of two nights in Lisbon.
Having taken a considerable time to recover from this experience, they finally felt ready to try once again, and so we included a city break in Lisbon for the whole family in our visit this time. We arrived in Lisbon on Monday. On Tuesday morning, Bernice and I took the boys back to the experiential science museum that we had visited on our previous break, while Micha’el and Tslil attempted to obtain an apostille stamped and signed on every page. The museum was even more fun than last time, both because Ollie was now old enough to enjoy a lot of the hands-on exhibits, and because of a temporary exhibit demonstrating and explaining the various animation techniques employed by Pixar studios in making Toy Story, Wall-E and other films. The entire museum is hands-on, and both boys had a wonderful time.
Towards the end of our long morning there, Tslil and Micha’el joined us, with good news and bad news. The bad news was that the apostille required by the embassy could not be obtained. The office had refused to sign and stamp every page of the documentation, stating that several months ago the procedure had changed in Portugal, and now only one signature was required. The good news was that, when, from the office, Micha’el phoned the embassy, the clerk there assured him that, indeed, only one signature was necessary.
When, the following day, all four of them walked from our hotel to the embassy, in bright sunshine, Tslil was optimistic, while Micha’el was resigned to failure. On this occasion, they were attempting to register Ollie’s birth with the Israeli authorities, obtain recognition of their Portuguese civil marriage, renew their own Israeli passports and obtain Israeli passports for the two boys.
Anticipating that their stay at the embassy might be a drawn-out affair, we had agreed that Bernice and I would have a grown-up day of sightseeing in Lisbon, and we would make our separate ways back from Lisbon to Penamacor.
Imagine our shock when, after a ridiculously short time, Micha’el contacted us to say that: the reception at the embassy had been civilised rather than, as previously, surly; that they had been allowed to go back to reception a couple of times to retrieve a couple of items they needed to keep the boys entertained; that, as promised, the single signature was all the embassy required; and, finally, that they were now in possession of a marriage certificate, an identity number for Ollie, and four brand-new passports.
Our best guess is that, at the time of their previous visit, the Portuguese authorities had just changed the law, and the Israeli authorities had not yet caught up with the change. As Einstein might not have said, on the continuum of life’s roller-coaster, they had been in the right space at just the wrong time.
Faced with the delights of Lisbon and an entire day to enjoy them, Bernice and I planned to take a 25-minute tram ride to Belém, site of a tower that offers good views of the city and location of the Monument to the Discoveries, celebrating Portugal’s glory days as a maritime explorational super-power. Having stood waiting for a tram for 15 minutes or so, we discovered a notice posted on the tram shelter explaining that, owing to road subsidence, the service was to be diverted on that day.
At that point, together with a motley crew of French and Japanese tourists, we walked a couple of hundred metres to a bus-stop. A few minutes later, our bus arrived, but we were too far back in the queue to get a seat. For the next 20 minutes, we stood, while the bus edged about 200 metres along the road. At this point, we decided to cut our losses and rejig our day’s plans. Hopping off the bus, we headed away from the river estuary. Moovit showed our walk as about a kilometre, but failed to mention that about 750 metres of that was uphill.
You may well not have paid sufficient heed to the fact that ‘uphill’ is a fairly vague term, covering everything from: “You know, when you’re driving along this road, you don’t actually notice that it’s uphill; it’s only when you walk it that you realise” to “There must be a station where they provide oxygen masks some time soon”. ‘Uphill’ in Lisbon is considerably closer to the second than the first experience. However, having enjoyed a decent hotel and excellent vegan meals for a day and a half, Bernice and I were easily up to the ascent, and, while the view from the top was nothing special, the archaeological museum nearby was fascinating.
Housed in a desanctified 14th-Century church that was severely damaged in the 1755 Lisbon earthquake that devastated the city, the museum displays many findings from paleolithic times, excavated from a site near Lisbon, and also an impressive collection of pieces from all periods of Portuguese history.
The roofless nave has a series of tombs, fountains, windows and other architectural relics from different places and styles. The one shown here, the gravestone of Yehudah ben Rimok, from the 19th Century, particularly interested us. As did a second stone, marking the founding of the Porto Jewish community in the 14th Century.
The museum also offered an interesting video, explaining how, in 1995, a plan to flood the valley in which the recently uncovered paleolithic settlement lies was thwarted by a group of schoolchildren who led sit-down protests and eventually persuaded António Guterres, then prime minister, to reverse the government’s plan and build a museum on the site.
Finally, we watched a well-produced audio-visual display, projected onto, and incorporating the features of, an original vaulted wall. This traced the history of the church, including an account of the earthquake and the story of the establishment of the museum.
From there, it was a short walk to a much better vantage point, affording a panoramic view of the city, and then to a vegan restaurant offering an all-you-can-eat buffet that was not only a bargain but also very tasty. We walked off lunch by making our way to a bizarre street-art comic-strip mural of the history of Lisbon, painted on an underpass and boasting, at its centre, a public lavatory that was, by Portuguese standards, less than salubrious. (Public facilities in Portugal are, in our experience, spotlessly clean and well-appointed.)
This was followed by a long walk that was, finally, downhill, and that took us past a pizza parlour with an eye-catching placard.
We ended up where we had started, at the large square on the front, from where we caught a bus back to the Edward VII Park opposite our hotel.
This park was renamed to commemorate the visit to Lisbon by the King of England in 1903 to reinforce the ancient Portuguese-English alliance. Unfortunately, the bus dropped us at the far end of the park, which was, naturally, downhill from our hotel. A further long walk led us to a huge greenhouse, where we spent a magical hour or so forgetting that we were in the centre of a bustling city.
By the time we boarded the coach back to Castelo Branco, we were very glad to sit down, and by the time we parked outside the house, at 10:30, we were more than ready for bed. However, the whole family agreed that it had been an enjoyable and productive break. Next stop, we all agree, should be Porto, possibly at a sunnier time of year.