Befriending strangers in Portugal
This morning I was walking down a street muddied by light spring rain, barely seeing anything through my sleepy eyes, adopting a London step, aka stepping as if starving wolves were chasing me, when my eyes captured a familiar face. So I beamed a hello and got a beam of recognition and a tudo bem? back. It wasn't my best friend, it was the waiter from the neighbourhood breakfast spot. And yet, this was my very first time of running into a familiar face in Portugal. That three second encounter with a virtual stranger shifted my perception of the street from a wolf treadmill into, well, a home.
It is a fascinating line to draw - who is a stranger, and who is a friend. And it's fascinating to stand on that line, trying to understand the process, this metamorphosis from the other to one of us. One of me.
That morning I walked into a breakfast spot at Bairro Alto neighbourhood in Lisbon, showered by heavy autumn rains. It was full, the waitress said, and I turned back towards the rain. Unless, she said, well, unless someone wants to share the table. A woman at a closest table heard it and gestured a welcoming gesture, and beamed a beaming hello, saying that she just came here, and that she would have been the one left in the rain otherwise, so I should definitely join her. And I did. The next two hours were full of glorious discoveries. Our breakfast didn't last long enough to cover every idea that was pouring out of us, so we ordered extras to keep talking about her art of playing ukulele songs to deities in Brazilian forests, learning to conduct orchestras, learning to approach the chaos of life. I didn't know her name, but I knew her life priorities. It was November, edging towards the end of the year, so we started reviewing the year, strangers connected by a table covered in toast, poached eggs and coffee, or maybe only separated by that table, sharing the trials and tribulations as if we were there for them, and for each other. And in that moment we were there for each other. We took a walk, we recommended books to each other, we wished each other luck, or care, or just a great life, they meant the same thing anyway. And walked away.
That evening I walked into a dinner spot at Príncipe Real neighbourhood, just a bit up north from the fabled breakfast place. No rain, no wolves. I was not about to have a typical dinner though, it was a dinner arranged with absolute strangers. We exchanged polite greetings with modest awkwardness, laughed at the stereotypes broken, with Portuguese people coming early and the German arriving late. We shared childhood stories, a Portuguese Creative Researcher talked about how her uncle kept a lion for a pet, and collaborated with zoos to breed baby lions. She even found a photos and we all awwed at a blurry picture of a baby lion and a baby girl. We were less awwed by the fact that later on the lion bit her uncle playfully and he almost lost his leg. She regretted to see how many unique Portuguese places got closed recently, exchanged by soulless clones. A Portuguese Mechanical Engineer told stories of hunting vultures out of airplane engines. A German Business Owner talked about his marketing company and his passion for sketchy neighbourhoods. In fact, he lived in one of them. There's beauty in connecting to newcomers and locals, understanding how the country changed with waves of newcomers, us newcomers sharing our struggles of understanding Portuguese - as a language, as a culture. We shared recommendations of the finest local beaches, stories about abandoned palaces and, more down to earth, abandoned restaurants, ate some refreshing tabouleh and suboptimal pita, and decided to create a whatsapp group, which now lights up approximately once a month with a suggestion to meet up, and with no consensus on when that could happen. We may not ever meet again, but we do react to each other's messages with hearts. So, I guess, we are no longer strangers.
And then there was the morning, the morning I walked to a miradouro in Alfama - a scenic spot in the old town of Lisbon. It was 6:40 am, a Thursday, and I was going on a date. We talked about clouds looking like Pixar production as the sun was coming up, about our jobs and joys, about both of us trying a dating app, naively, just to meet people, just to befriend kind strangers. That was the quickest stranger to one-of-me transition. Other dates followed, moving to Portugal followed. The rest is history.
This shift from stranger to not-a-stranger-anymore is a beautiful game. You will tell me something honest and true, and I'll listen, and I'll catch it, and I'll realise you trust me a bit, so I'll tell you something honest and true, to show I appreciate your trust, to show I trust you. Trust deepens trust, the cycle continues, the connection strengthens. A dance of vulnerability. It may be a scary dance for sure, but that's exactly why it's powerful. And ever available.
