Dear F.,
Madrid has been reborn for us, thanks to our well-timed escape to Portugal. Before we left, this city was slowly boiling us alive, like frogs put in a pot of tepid water, unable to perceive the gradual increase in heat until before long their muscles have become lumps of dessicated flesh fit only for forks. Fortunately, our strict regimen of jumping jacks and knee bends had kept our legs primed for just such a death-defying leap-- out of our shit-box room looking out onto a window well of despair, out of our air mattress that was like sleeping on tied logs while floating down the Mississip, out of our borrowed befilthed apartment filled with the ghostlike presence of its tenants, out of a Madrid sizzling with too many bodies, too much dust, and too many words. These are the feverish dream-thoughts that flit across our eyelids as the burnt black landscape of Castile flit across the window of our train.
We awoke in a green land, wet with opportunity, silent before the dawn. We were in Portugal, where Mediterannean meets Atlantic, where Ulysses crashes into Moby Dick, where the sharp blades of Castillian Spanish are swallowed by the Slavic-sounding throats of Portuguese, where the Visigothic garulousness of Spain turns inward upon itself into the melancholic sweetness of the Lusitanians.
From the sation in Lisbon, we proceeded straight to Sintra, a mere 40 minutes away by train, though it feels like a distant land. A Canadian woman of middle age, Yukon-raised, and employee of the Vancouver police department, talked to us on the ride up. She was spending five months traveling all over Europe, two days here, two days there. She was determined to see the Europe that had been denied to her up until now. Reclaiming a lost youth. It became clear talking to her that backpacking loses its charm with age, though she didn´t seem to think so.
Sintra charmed us instantly. First, because on a windy stone road just outside of town we found our hotel-- an 18th century manor house situated amid lush gardens and overlooking the valley. Marissa again deserves credit for her sound online booking skills. She never lets me forget the one time I booked us a room in a pension in Munich with no floor. But what she fails to acknowledge is that what it lacked in flooring it more than made up for in bleary-eyed vagrants and easy access to the strip clubs.
In this tiny town, there is a veritable variety pack of palaces, a flavor for each member of the family: cool ranch moorish fortress, nacho cheezy 19th century Romantic palace, or spicy barbecue 15th century Manueline castle. First on our menu was the latter, King Manuel´s place, who gave his name to the peculiar portuguese 15th century achitectural style 'Manueline'- a Christian appropriation of Muslim design with earthy colors, tiled walls with geometric designs, painted wood ceilings, expansive patios and fountains, and the like. The real highlight was the kitchen--a massive double room with over a dozen stoves and instead of a ceiling, a pair of fifty foot cones with openings at the top to serve as chimneys, which makes the palace look like there are two giant boobs on one end of it. I suppose I´ll have to show you the picture. Later in the afternoon, we visited the Moorish fortress atop the hill. It was in a splendid state of disrepair, thanks mostly to the efforts of a 19th century British architect who modified the ruins to induce the perfect aesthetic experience of the historical sublime.
We recovered at a patio cafe in town, where we doodled on the paper table cloth and discovered the wonders of vinho verde, a young dry white wine from northern Portugal with a hint of carbonation--something you should consider adding to your sparkling drink arsenal. As we drained the last of our bottle and capped our pens, an Austrian woman at an adjacent table who had been peering over our shoulders time to time asked if she could take a picture of our table cloth. When I told her she could have it if she wanted, she became ecstatic, showed all her friends her new acquisition, and assured us our work would have a prominent place in her home. So if you ever find yourself in Salzburg, look up Frau Anita and you can see the grease stains and ink marks of yours truly.
Dinner that night in Sintra was, as I have lately become fond of saying, a revelation. A small bistro called Tulhus, which apparently referred to either the medieval granary upon which the current foundations of the restaurant rest, or the hole in the middle of the floor that lets you peer down into the remains of the medieval granary. Before we even ordered, we were brought a plate of thinly cured ham (like Spanish jamon serrano or Italian prosciutto), two small wheels of soft sheep's cheese, a bowl of olives, a basket of bread, and some packets of garlic butter and tuna paté. This surely would have sated us, but since we felt obliged to order, we asked for fish. We were given a heaping silver platter of whole grilled dorada, trout, and sardines, garnished with enormous green beans and bright yellow potatoes. And of course more vinho verde to wash everything down.
In the name of digestion, we inquired about the famed digestif of Portugal, ginja, a brandy made from a black cherry-like fruit native to Iberia. The fruits are actually still in the bottle and with each little shot, you are treated to a few brandy-soaked cherries waiting thoughtfully at the bottom of your glass. The owner offered us the remainder of his bottle and sent us into the night radiant from within.
On the way home we stumbled across a fashion show in front of King Manuel´s Palace, exhibited by tall horse-like women in absurd garments surrounded by even more absurd-looking people in more banal garments. Marissa took photos of the models and the musical interludes of opera arias and fado ballads, until we were asked to leave because my bobbing yellow melon kept blocking the television cameras.
After enjoying another day and night in Sintra in much the same fashion, we returned to Lisbon, a city beautiful in all its salt-washed decrepitude. It is the antidote capital to Madrid. If Madrid is an fried pig innard dropped in a double shot of espresso, Lisbon is a dose of laudunum stirred into a pot of honey. It seems every building is decaying, their colorful tiles being eaten away in even more sublime fashion than 19th century British architects could have contrived.
The old Arab quarter has small and twisty alleys that rival if not outdo even the Albacyin quarter of Granada, providing barely enough room to squeeze by the grannies sitting on footstools in their doorways, having conversations with their neigbhors five feet across the cobblestones. Even the graffiti in Lisbon is deteriorating. Some alleys harbor random pieces of trash-- a diaper, a broken record, an puddle of pasta and tomato sauce-- as though the inhabitants still flung their chamber pots out the window onto the street.
This sense of disorder, somehow charming (save the diaper), together with the smell of sea air and sun-bleached plazas makes Lisbon feel like a colonial city. And indeed, in post-colonial Portugal, the empire has colonized the metropole. There is a strong African presence, Brasilian music floods the streets, Goan restaurants (which also strangely offer Italian food) abound, even the occasional Macaoan. Lisbon, which had sought its imperial destiny out at sea, the very sea that comes right up to the main 3-walled Plaza do Comercio, now seems to be shaped by the returning tide. It seems like an interesting place to be.
Now, if you´ll excuse me, I have a belly full of callos a la madrileña (tripe in the Madrid style) that apparently wants out. It bids I write not one more word.
-P.
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