Lisbon, Portugal!

So day 1 in Lisbon, Portugal. It's been a bit of a shock so far, but I think that's just me being nervous in new places, alone, where English is not the spoken language. Or any language that i speak for that matter. I'm a bit out of it as I woke up at 5am this morning to be able to catch my 7am flight, Berlin to Lisbon direct with easyJet. From the looks of it, it seems like a nice place, but after being in Germany one has to get used to places being a lot more dirty than one would initially expect.

To bring you up to speed, I have 4 weeks of paid holidays and after a long stretch of hard work I decided to just take off somewhere to rejuvenate. I heard a lot of great things about Lisbon so I just bought a ticket and pre-arranged a room found on some flatshare website. A bit of a lottery, but I have some faith that things tend to work out.

So as it turns out, this room is I think in a pretty multi-cultural neighbourhood, in particular, the gay culture. I think I got a room in the Lisbon gaybourhood. I pushed 1 of the 2 buttons for the flat on the first floor, and pushed the wrong one it would appear. The neighbours seem to be quite gay. Very gay. Some well manicured guy walked out in his t-shirt and thong, and I was like "uh... Rui??" (the name of my host). Well no, Rui lives across the hall.

I arrived to meet a nice guy, maybe 40-ish, with his girlfriend, and the other roommate named Flavio. Cool name. Sounds gay, like Flavour, but I don't think this is his orientation. Turns out that Rui is a sort of guy who dabbles in a bit of everything, from sound design, to translation work, to local politics. Flavio is a sound designer. At least we have some stuff in common. Rui's girlfriend (I couldn't quite make out her name) works at a University as a part-time professor, and also teaches Portuguese. Their English is generally ok. Enough to have a conversation without tremendous difficulty. We sat around drinking coffee, ate some toast, chatting for a while, then I noticed - despite 3-4 cups of coffee - I was pretty tired. So they improvised a pull-out bed for me in a spare room and I took a nap. As it turns out, there was a slight misunderstanding, where Rui thought i would arrive, check out the room, then decide if I wanted to stay or not. I was under the impression i was just going to take the room, so he said the room wasn't ready yet, as an out-of-work friend of his was crashing there for the time being. Well, Rui said no problem, he'll just send his friend back to his family somewhere in Lisbon, and so I'd have to wait until tonight or so until I could make that room my own. No problem.

I'm a little apprehensive at the moment about where I'm living. The flat seems ok, although quite run down in spots. But it has a certain charm, this minor dive of a place. The neighbourhood isn't exactly sketchy, but it does seem to be a classic immigrant neighbourhood. You can notice the financial depression of the area, and a lot of the buildings seem run down, but it doesn't seem like a slum or a junkie's neighbourhood, so there's no reason to panic on that front. I still have to figure out if living in a city is the best thing for me right now. Part of me thinks it would be nice to actually get a B&B in a small ocean-side village somewhere. Somewhere to really chill out. Cities I find don't exactly relax me. But we'll see. I just got here and I'm quite tired.

So I don't fully feel adjusted and comfortable yet, and the flat has an odd smell, reminiscent of a flat I stayed at in Edinburgh. I don't know how to describe the smell. It's not bad, it's not pleasant, just a bit strange. I guess it's a bit strange after all, being here alone, when really I would like to spend some time with friends. I guess it's just more of a case of being somewhere new and not knowing a soul.

But yeah, perhaps I'll stay here a week, then go find somewhere along the coast. A little scenic village where I can just read, write code, lie on beaches, and perhaps learn to surf. I was advised to do this in the first half of september, because after that the waves start to get really crazy and dangerous.

We'll see. One thing I'm realizing in my old age is that I'm getting tired of doing things alone.

2 minutes later. Well then, walking up the staircase I just heard some Germans. I went and introduced myself. So maybe I have some makeshift friends. The one girl reassured me that this place is cool and I'll probably like it here. She also implied this neighbourhood being quaint, but one has to go for a bit of a walk to see the real charm of the city. That's a nice feeling. Strange to say, but this encounter made me feel closer to home. Yes, home is Berlin and I am a bit German now.

So, wow, really that encounter with those 3 germans upstairs took away the jitters a bit.

I'll just have to take things as they come. I guess it takes me longer than it used to, to adjust to the new and unknown. I still think it's important to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, or else you truly become stubborn and inflexible.