A quiet little town called Lisbon
Klaus JonesSeptember 21st, 2009 at 7:51 am
Our return to Europe was greeted (at least by us) with a certain degree of enthusiasm. Although Morocco had been tremendous fun, the action packed days did take their toll, and we were looking forward to a bit of what we’ve come to consider ‘normal’.
Thankfully, Portugal provided that for us in abundance. We’d decided back in San Sebastian to stay in the top rated hostel in Hostel World, a place in the centre of town called Traveller’s House. It definitely lived up to it’s reputation, welcoming us with open arms, 24 chillout jazz and unlimited breakfast…heaven.
Beyond the luxurious hostel, Portugal’s main attraction (for us) was rest and relaxation – accompanied by plenty of Portugese custard tarts and roast chicken. Beyond our wanders locally to enjoy some brews, our one sightseeing attempt to see the famous Sintra region ended poorly; a 25 minute walk and a €1.30 train ticket, all to end up less than 100m from our Hostel. Disheartened, we had a coffee and gave up on Sintra.
One thing which made Lisbon interesting was the prevalence of poorly dressed individuals offering you large amounts of oregano or flour, wrapped up and packaged as hash or heroin. This forced me to adjust my method for dealing with the dealers – no longer could I say that hashish wasn’t hard enough for me and that I wanted some cocain, heroin or meth. If I pulled that here, they would instantly offer me some annonymous white powder. It wasn’t even real, the nerve!
Instead, we started playing games with them. As the dealers are rather easy to spot, we would wander close enough to attract their attention then try out various solutions we’d come up with. Foisting them onto each onto random strangers was amusing, but rarely successful; asking for rare substances was largely ignored; consistent rudeness (the words ‘fuck off’ hummed in chorus, or flipping the bird for the entire length of the dealer’s approach) worked, but gave rise to a game called ‘how long till Klaus gets stabbed’; by far the most successful method was flat out refusal to acknowledge them.
The worst was enthusiastically asking for 3kg’s of weed, a bag which would be roughly the size of my upper torso, then telling the dealer to take it and insert in the orifice of his choice. That lead to said dealer following us down the street for a good minute, hurling abuse. Hey, at least it kept the other ones off of us.
Portugal was also the final point in our journey where we four travellers would be together, with Steve and I heading up to Berlin while James and Dave headed to London after a brief sojourn in Porto. James of course, to begin his journey home, while Dave wanted to catch some design festivals – something which I’ve begun to appreciate more in the last couple of months.
After a final meal of roast chicken together (shat all over Nando’s) we spent the evening putting our affairs into order – hence my angry post early thursday morning.
All things being in order, Mr Richards and I bid James, Portugal, and in fact Southern Europe (and it’s warm weather and beaches) a final farewell and flew to Berlin…let the crazy nightlife begin!