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Published: October 25th 2006
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My gambit to wait the rain out these past few days is proving a foolish one: I’ve had quite a bit of couch time in Gabriela’s place, and really, there’s only so much
Oprah a man can stand. Still, I’m starting to understand why so many travelers have found it hard to tear themselves away from her hospitable clutches. The couch - with all its cozy nooks - is about the size of a national park, the shower practically flays the skin from your bones, and it’s a safe bet that on most nights, Gabriela will be up for ice cream, even if it’s half-past twelve and some people have proper jobs to wake up to in the morning.
After two months on the road, I’m also enjoying this illusion of finding a home. Even the little things are enough to warm the tummy. I like being greeted by the waiter at the neighborhood café, with his long, floppy hair and deep reservoirs of patience. I like padding out to the balcony with my morning coffee to watch the sunlight over the ocean. I like walking through the aisles of the supermarket with a shopping list in my
hand, or pantomiming for the woman behind the counter that the shrimp I’m looking for has already been peeled and deveined (really, almost worth a trip to Portugal to see). Most of all, I like to walk around the house in my PJ’s, scratching my behind and letting the stubble grow on my chin, and finding the sort of comfortable routine I’d gotten accustomed to as a freelancer back home.
It’s a trick I learned my last time abroad: now and then, though your maverick heart might tell you otherwise, it’s good to take a breather. I’m resigned to the fact that I won’t make it to the famous port lodges in Vila Nova de Gaia across the river - hardly crushing, given my feelings for port. Still, it was on a to-do list that’s gotten progressively smaller over the course of the past week. By Tuesday, like some scavenger of yore, my priorities have been reduced to the animal necessities of food and drink - even if that includes some posh little mushrooms from the supermarket, and a bottle of wine that won a coveted award in Brussels.
After some initial hesitation, I’ve learned my way
around Gabriela’s kitchen. I dust off my recipe box on
Epicurious.com and reacquaint myself with some old favorites: linguine with goat cheese and shrimp; a chicken dish that seems woefully punchless without sun-dried tomatoes. Gabriela indulges my ego: she’s just happy to have dinner waiting when she gets home. More often than not she forks out the cash for wine or a nice bottle of champagne, so really, this is the least I can do. It’s also a neat parlor trick when you’re
CouchSurfing your way across the globe. Most hosts are so thrilled to see their surfer chopping up vegetables and measuring olive oil with a furrowed brow that, come time to do the dishes, they’re happily scrubbing away while you take a quick snooze on the sofa.
A Welsh couple I met in Spain told me that in Wales, you can’t let the rain get to you, or else you’ll never leave the house. It’s another in a long list of things we can probably learn from the Welsh. I muster up a bit of motivation and rain gear and decide to take a day-trip to Braga - a pretty northern town with a rich ecclesiastical
past. The train takes us past small country homes with tidy little gardens out front. Grape vines wrap around trellises that rise on terraced steps up the hillsides. The rain is falling steadily, in buckets. To my surprise, there are neither blue skies nor rainbows when we reach Braga, an hour to the north of Porto. The clouds are the color of a battleship, people are huddled beneath umbrellas and raincoats, and there’s not a tourist in sight.
In the right light, it must be a lovely town. Everywhere the distinctive
calçada are in abundance - the mosaics of white and black stones that pepper the sidewalks. Bell towers and church spires soar into the sky, bright
azulejos adorn the façades. Really, I can see the appeal. Large portions of the historic center are closed to traffic, but while they might be perfect for an afternoon stroll on a bright spring afternoon, today they’re pelted with rain that runs in rivulets down the grooves in the
calçada.
I duck into a café not far from the cathedral. It’s crowded and thick with smoke, and you get the sense that half of Braga is trying to avoid
the rain. Dour women stir their coffees with little spoons. A congress of old men has monopolized a corner of the room without a single cup between them. There’s a fusty old fellow in a white short-sleeve shirt and black bowtie working the floor. He moves in quick, powerful bursts between the tables; he has the square shoulders and compact body of an All-Pro fullback. His serving tray is covered with coins, so that he can make change in mid-stride, without reaching into his pocket. He takes my order with a brusque nod; he takes my money with the same. Outside a woman in a shapeless coat is shaking the rain from her umbrella, giving the sky the sorts of disapproving looks she might give a misbehaving grandson.
Not far from the plaza I find a garden filled with blossoms that break the monochrome of this gray, dreary day. There are workers tending the grounds, planting optimistic little bulbs and shoots into the soil. I sit beside a fountain and watch them work: laying out the rows with a length of rope, hunching over to dig the roots in. A woman in slick, knee-high galoshes is giving me
looks - a strange sight with my bright Marmot jacket, sitting in the rain. There are a few exchanges with a mirthful old man in a brown vest and hat. I can picture the two of them swapping gossip over some country fence in Alentejo. Now and then they come to rinse their hands in the fountain, eyeing the sky which has opened up again with a burst. I run for cover under a canopy of trees nearby, while in the garden, unmoved by the rain, the workers are bending and squatting over the soil, patting it down and trudging to the fountain to rinse their hands.
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