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Published: November 1st 2006
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From the front of Luis’ house you can see the Tejo - a faint little thumbprint, a glittering smudge, down at the foot of the street. There’s something reassuring about a city built on a river. You’re reminded of the historical forces that shaped the place, the powerful fleets that once fanned out from the mouth of the Tejo into the broad waters of the Atlantic. There was a time when this city was the nerve center for one of the great maritime empires on the planet. With a little imagination, you can see those tall masts beyond the TV antennae and satellite dishes. You can picture the sails unfurled and puffed out, filled with the wind that sends the laundry flapping on the balconies and windowsills today.
You never get the sense in Lisbon that you’ve entirely stepped into the modern age. With its ancient trams wheezing up the steep, narrow streets, with its dusty antiques shops, the city feels reluctant to loosen its hold on the past (or maybe, more realistically, it’s the other way around). There’s no better way to prove this point than by pounding the pavement for an afternoon, trying to find a WiFi
signal for my laptop. When I ask the locals where I might find the Internet - as if it were a monument just past the Praça do Commercio - they look at me wistfully, a hint of recollection on their faces. Yes, the Internet. It’s around here somewhere. Head down that street, make a left, then keep going straight till you get to Spain. In the same way that Hollywood blockbusters take their sweet time reaching Lisbon, the ubiquitous Internet cafés of other Western capitals are nowhere to be found. Maybe it’s not the worst you can say about a city - especially if you’ve been to a place like Tokyo, where the glassy-eyed youths can plop in a
manga café for intense, eight-hour stretches. In spite of the daily headaches I get trying to do my work, it’s comforting, in a way, to know that words like “Google” and “broadband” haven’t quite elbowed their way into the global lexicon like “croissant” and “Beyoncé.”
Lisbon’s charms belong to another century altogether. I spend an hour popping into the rare book shops on Calçada do Combro - a delicious pleasure for a book-hound like me. Elegant, leather-bound volumes line the
shelves, gilt-edged and gold-plated and probably dating back to Gutenberg. There are piles of books on the counter, on the tables, on every spare inch of the floor. You could probably build a bridge across the Tejo with all these hefty, dust-gathering tomes. Men with weary old faces - improbably bundled in sweaters and scarves - eye me as I circle the room. There’s little about this scruffy young backpacker that suggests he might be leaving with a shopping bag, and it seems a small stroke of luck that I don’t get patted down on my way out the door.
I take the tram back to Luis’ place. Even as the chain stores plant their roots in Chiado, even as the fashionable young Lisboans toy with their iPods and cell phones, the historic No. 28 line is stubbornly staying put. It clatters through some of the oldest parts of town, huffing and chugging up hills, perilously screeching down them. The driver works the cranks and levers with muscular shifts of his shoulder; beside him there’s a giant wheel that would seem less out of place at the helm of a great ship. The carriage jolts and jerks, sending a
few stout old women grabbing at empty air. There are leather straps dangling from the ceiling, but they seem as likely to keep you on your feet as an oil slick and a kick to the knees.
One morning I watch the tram stop a few dozen yards from where a crowd waits in a small plaza. The driver fusses with the sign for a minute, and suddenly the No. 28 has become a No. 25. There’s some grumbling from the crowd, but hardly anyone seems perturbed by this sudden metamorphosis. And even after a half-hour’s wait, when the No. 28 cryptically reappears at the opposite end of the plaza, there’s not a trace of outrage as they grab their bags, hitch up their pants, and haul ass to this hastily improvised stop.
It seems fitting that those anachronistic trams are still a part of daily life in Lisbon. Since I arrived in Portugal, I’ve had a sense that I found a country and a people utterly at ease with marching to the particular beat of a very peculiar drum. You can’t help but love these Portuguese. My heart swells when I think of their mad improvisations
on the street: the sudden u-turns near a crowded corner, the cars left idling on the sidewalk, the traffic lights and signs taken as little more than suggestions. Parking seems to defy not just the laws of traffic, but of physics and common sense. In unlikely places, at improbable angles, Lisbon’s cars form a complicated jigsaw puzzle of hatchbacks and compacts. You get the feeling your average Portuguese driver can back an 18-wheeler into a teacup - probably at a high speed while fiddling with the radio.
To be in a car in Lisbon is to put your faith in a force that falls somewhere between refined science and dementia. On a night out in Bairro Alto, Felipa whips us through tight streets and around blind turns. She pulls into a spot at about 80 km/h. With a few sharp twists of the wheel we’ve edged up against the curb, somehow managing to keep off it. She gets out to admire the results: a fine piece of handiwork, considering the spot’s about the size of a cocktail napkin. Luis circles the car, making minute inspections that seem to ignore the most obvious fact that we’re parked on a corner,
jutting out into an intersection. He gives Filipa an affectionate kiss: a job well done. Compared to the unfortunate work of some of our neighbors, I have to agree - though I don’t feel entirely safe until we’re sitting at a bar, far from the rush of oncoming traffic.
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