Uma experiência pessoal

Numa cidade com alma!

It is noisy, dusty, one says, and keeps the glimmering of the colourful azuleijos on the one side houses of Mourarias a secret and the beauty of the voices and songs, whistling through the streets. It is unbearably hot in summer, one says, and holds back the soft wind, who is always coming from the see and freshens the gleaming ground. The food is worse than in Spain is told, more fat and a lot more solid, not mentioning the carioca (lemon tea) who is heated with fresh fruits for hours and the caracois (tiny snails), who are served as dessert.

The Portuguese are a snubbish people, no sign of cordiality is said and conceals the warmth in thousands of eyes filled with saudade. Fado, is said to be nice music but turned into tourist attraction, and hides the shabby restaurants in the streets with the voices of old fadistas and the hum of the old shop woman selling her fruits, putting the apples slowly into the paper bag.

"Lá vai Lisboa"

Os encantos de Lisboa andam de boca em boca ...

Jealous? Yes! Envious?

For sure! There are cities, you just want to have on your own.

Favourite city. Don't want to share you. Want your streets for my own, the narrow, dark, mysterious streets on the top of the hills and as well the broad, dusty, candid ones in the hollow at the harbour. Want to climb up the stairs behind the well-known ancient Elevator tower all by myself and look onto the shining high-tech behind the scratched store windows, want the tiny table underneath the neon light only for me and the dark fish in the fat. Want to surround the marble statue at the harbour street, want to lie down diagonal on the hotel bed with the yellow flower blanket.

Want to pass the dusky bars underneath the lantern at night up to the top of the hills of Alfama, want to stop in front of the entrance of the castle Sao Jorge covered with chains, sad because the view on to the roofs and the lazy river under the starry sky remains hidden.
Want to look forward for the early morning, when the door give way to the castle walls, which slope steeply to the thorny forest and permit to lean over widely, until nothing except of the air and the city in the depth remains.

Want to end the night on a hard metal chair on the hotel terrace, a bottle of cheap green whine in my hand, a gleaming SG Ventil in the other, while tiny tobacco pieces drop down on the bright summer dress.

Lisboa de sempre, Lisboa para sempre, ...

...num tempo sem tempo.