Again I am on the train. Now leaving Lisbon Portugal. I met my friends there: Isaac, Alison, and Jessica. Isaac is from Texas and studying at UMSL, Al is the other girl from KU, and Jessica graduated from KU last spring.

Although the city was on the Atlantic, Lisbon faced the river that ran next to it. And although it is an industrial city, the old city is charming and built into the hill. Highlights would be visiting the castle which overlooks the city, and the dinner we had last night. We bought about 4 pounds of fresh shrimp and other ingredients and cooked at our hostel. It was also really cool to see the use of tiles on the facades of the buildings, it gave a lot of character and color to the streets.
We also went to go see the site of the 1998 world Exposition. On the way, we accidently took the wrong bus, which went through a district filled with government built low income housing. It made me wonder how that housing could help the situation. They are set up to do nothing but deteriorate, in that the subsidized buildings will not sustain and maintain themselves when without the government pouring more money into them leading the original identical highrise buildings to look even more undesirable than than they started. But more than that, I think those dreary buildings represent the flaw in bandaging the problem rather than addressing the source. In fact, I think bandaging the problem would actually increase the problem because the people would be expecting a bandage from the government and perhaps even counting on it. I dont think that the easy fix answer is to impose full fledged and unlimited capitalism and all aspects of the welfare program, but as I look a the deterioting buildings and the similar ones currently being built around them, it seemed very clear that what was going one was not really helping the situation. I guess I just notice those things more as I have been thinking and reading about urban planning within a free market society and perhaps what I wrote is really obvious but nevertheless it was interesting to see it in such a vivid way. Thats it, perhaps that one was boring, but its what I was thinking about.