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Published: November 10th 2006
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For my last few days in the country, things in Portugal have gone entirely Portuguese. A transit strike shuts down Lisbon during the morning rush, and Sete Rios - the main bus hub out of the city - suddenly feels as good as half-way to Madrid. Traffic snarl-ups have knotted the streets of Lapa. I’m caught in their slow, peristaltic push as I make my way to the station - my knapsack packed for an afternoon of wandering the walled city of Evora.
What was supposed to be one last, ecstatic send-off into Spain is touched by sadness from the second I get off the bus. Four weeks in Portugal - twice what I’d planned - have left a giant knot in my throat. I’m struck by that peculiar sentiment common to travelers: of feeling nostalgic for a place I haven’t even left. Here, in Evora, a city I’ll know for all of four hours of my life, there’s a sense that my travels in the months ahead - the people, the places, the crippling bouts of indigestion - will be imperfect and utterly incomplete. And suddenly the ruined remains of the town’s Roman temple - the crumbling
columns and empty spaces - are loaded with all sorts of significance.
If there’s anything I’ve learned about these bouts of melancholy, though, it’s that there’s only one sure-fire way to beat them: latch onto the first English-speaker in sight. I meet a young Korean on line at a café, struggling to explain to the waiter that he’d like to pay for his drinks inside but sit on the
terrazza outside. Earlier in the day I’d seen him on the bus from Lisbon. He paced the platform at Sete Rios, shielded behind a pair of sunglasses that wouldn’t have seemed misplaced on a hustler at the World Series of Poker. When we arrived in Evora I watched him laboring from the station toward the city walls. He was hauling two large suitcases down a cobbled street, while behind him, a young woman puzzled over the map in her
Lonely Planet. Twice we crossed paths in a town that is, admittedly, about the size of a postcard. He’d circled the cathedral with clinical precision, appraising it as if he wanted to have a wander inside and ask about the price.
In front of the café, he explains
to me that this is his second trip to Iberia. He fell in love with Spain during a visit last year, and already he felt compelled to come back. He gestures to a nearby table and says, “I invited my wife to come with me,” the look in his eye suggesting I should be dazzled by such magnanimity. Almost as an afterthought he adds that they were just married a couple of months ago. This trip is their honeymoon, and it seems like a gracious gesture to bring the old ball-and-chain along.
I join them for coffee, assuring the young lovebirds that I won’t be tagging along for the rest of the trip. His wife smiles nervously, revealing two even rows of child-like teeth. She spends the better part of the next half-hour tittering softly and avoiding eye contact - as damning an indictment as any of my plan to give up Asian stereotypes. John, her husband, calmly steers the conversation wherever he damn well pleases, telling me at great length about his impressions of Europe. When I offer my own he blinks dimly - something passing over him between dazed and startled - before picking up where
he left off.
It’s interesting to watch the interactions between these newlyweds, who show about the same amount of affection for each other as two armchairs in a furniture store. When John sits back and effetely crosses his legs, letting out a tiny “Ah” before starting into a story, it’s not hard to get the feeling that both me and his wife are here as a captive audience. He’s an interesting guy all the same, unusually candid about what it’s like to be an Asian traveler in Europe. In Stockholm he felt wary eyes following him wherever he went; on the subway, a few passengers got up from around him to change their seats.
“They are not so used to Orientals in the fall,” he notes. “When I sit down, they look at me strange, like saying, ‘What is he doing here?’”
The Portuguese have been good to him, though, and he’s eager to return to Spain. They’ve booked a room in Ronda for two nights, in an old castle that’s been refurbished and, it’s safe to say, won’t be squeezing itself into a certain budget traveler’s itinerary. John’s clearly sparing no expense on
this whirlwind honeymoon tour. When the bill comes and I offer a couple of euros, he makes a small gesture with the back of his hand, as if sweeping both me and my pocket change aside.
The next day I see him and his timid, tittering wife at the bus station in Faro, where we’ve stopped before continuing on to Seville. While part of me wants to offer my token gratitude again, I close my eyes and pretend to doze off as they get onboard, and I leave ample time at the bus station in Seville for them to leave me in their matrimonial dust.
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