Author: Mariana Brilhante

Mariana is Chief Marketing Officer at SPEAK, she loves nature and adventure, has a sort of obsession for typical sayings!
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9 months of being part of the SPEAK team

Hi everyone! You may have seen our names pop up on your newsfeeds/discussion groups/emails from time to time, and now that we are leaving the SPEAK team, we thought we would finally introduce ourselves 😉

We are both languages students from the UK, who came to Lisbon to work with SPEAK this year as part of our degree. We never had experience of any kind in start-up projects, so as you can imagine…

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SPEAK @ Cascais

Just 30 kilometers on the west from the marvelous capital of Portugal – Lisbon there is a small town called Cascais. It used to be a fishermen village and also a place where Kings and Queens chose to spend their summers. Full of restaurants, bars, nice walks by the sea and of course – the best view of Atlantic ocean’s sunset. As almost all the other cities in Portugal, Cascais

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Narmin experience @ SPEAK

It was less than a month left to finish my spring semester at University and I was about to give up on summer internship or to choose a place which I didn’t want to go. I applied to many places for Erasmus internship, but some of them I didn’t get a reply, for others I had a visa problem, and some of them I just didn’t like the tasks.

I remember that day, I opened erasmusintern website to check for the last time if there was any new vacancies, and I came across SPEAK. It looked like jackpot, everything I wanted was in one place: startup, web developing and Portugal.

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Fado, a big part of Portuguese culture

Saudade. This one colourful word, a mixture of melancholy, nostalgy, longing and sadness is paired with fado, the genre of music specific for Portugal, always sang by one person, accompanied by two guitars. The lyrics are full of love, longing, fate, the entire game of feelings and emotions. Some people call it the “Portuguese blues”, and I think that is a fair comparison. The word fado itself translates to “fate” but Portuguese rarely use it in this context, leaving it rather for songs lyrics.

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Lisbon – the city of the seven hills

I have been living in Lisbon only for 9 months, but I could definately say that it has caught me with its charming and fascinating streets, monuments, positive and smiling people, and of course the greatest cuisine.

Lisbon isn’t the flatiest city in Europe. As legend says, Lisbon was edified over seven hills:

– SĂŁo Jorge: Where the SĂŁo Jorge castle is standing.
– SĂŁo Vicente : Where the SĂŁo Vincente de Fora Monastery and the Alfama area stands.
– Sant’Ana: Between Martim Moniz square and the Rua Portas de Santo AntĂŁo, where the SĂŁo JosĂ© Hospital stands.
– Santo AndrĂ© : Largo/ Miradouro da Graça is the top of this hill.
– Chagas: At Largo do Carmo
– Santa Catarina: Around Largo CamĂ”es, Bairro Alto
– SĂŁo Roque: Around Miradouro de SĂŁo Pedro de AlcĂąntara, Bairro Alto…..