This journey has proven every stereotype about Europe true. People just kinda hang out all day. Nothing is ever open because nobody is working. Food doesn’t poison you here. Driving is harder than walking. There are three different recycle bins, and single-use plastics are banned. Everywhere is beautiful, even the parts that aren’t supposed to be. In many ways it highlighted for me the absurd excesses of the American project, and our confounding cultural priorities.
Most of my time was spent in the rural parts. People who live around here are of shorter stature, with wrinkled olive skin, and speak very little English. They all maintain terraced farms of various oblong shapes which dot the landscape. There are many stray cats about, which prowl the old cobblestone alleys and give you suspicious glares. In the morning it is cold and misty, and by midday it is sweltering hot and dry. There are gigantic wasps EVERYWHERE – but unlike at home, they keep to themselves and are quite passive
All I want to do most days is wander the landscape in a dream-like haze, which rarely occurs because there is always the “something to do” option (i.e. contributing to Portugal’s gargantuan tourist industry). There are dirt farm paths everywhere which intersect and criss-cross through hills and valleys, and even the quietest most banal neighbourhoods have a labyrinthine quality and seem to harbor aged and dusty secrets at the periphery. Unlike the States, it is sometimes difficult to determine where public footpath ends and private property begins. There were definitely a few walks where I had transgressed boundaries unknowingly.
