This week was absolutely fantastic. I went to Portugal, celebrated my twentieth birthday, and went to my first bachata class. I'm kind of in denial about the fact that I only have four days left (!!!), and I'm trying to enjoy my time here without worrying about when it will end. Here's what I learned this week:
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| {street art, Lisbon} |
1. Lisbon is perfect. Lisbon might be my favorite of the fourteen cities I've visited this summer, not including Madrid because I just can't make that comparison. Lisbon reminded me a lot of San Francisco, with its hilly streets, red bridge, cold water, and vibrant atmosphere. The weather was an incredibly perfect 80 degrees, a sharp contrast to nearly everywhere else on my trip, and I spent two days on the beach (and have a ridiculously pink sunburn to prove it) and my evenings wandering the city. Lisbon is so incredibly beautiful and I can't wait to go back.
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| {dusk} |
2. What it's like to turn 20—alone. I've never celebrated my birthday alone. I'm always around family and as long as I'm in the country, I spend time with friends as well. But at this point in my trip, all the au pair friends I've made have already left and rather than spending the day with strangers, I decided to celebrate my twentieth alone. And while I don't think I'd ever actively seek spending my birthday alone, I ended up having an amazing day and am glad I got to experience it at least once. I visited all my favorite spots in the city, ate all my favorite foods, and fit in a lot of shopping. After a particularly filling lunch at a new Thai restaurant near Atocha, I ended up walking around and spontaneously buying tickets to see Trainwreck. I'd never been to the movies alone and had wanted to do so for a while now and again, while I don't think I'll ever actively seek out going to the movies alone, I know I won't feel afraid or awkward to do so in the future.
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| {rickshaws!} |
3. That being said, Trainwreck is brilliant. The film features cameos from comedians like SNL cast members, Dave Attell, Colin Quinn, and Mike Birbiglia (and several athletes too, if you're into that kind of thing) and the jokes are the kind of laugh-out-loud funny where you have to check to make sure you're not laughing too loudly and bothering the others in the movie theatre. I absolutely love Amy Schumer and Bill Hader, and although the romance tale between them was predictable, I still found it adorable and liked that the film delved beyond the standard rom-com by featuring issues like fear of intimacy, alcoholism, etc. And more than anything, I love that the film was non-apologetically feminist and didn't ever slut shame. Do yourself a favor and watch this movie, please.
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| {Lisboa} |
4. What youth looks like. In all seriousness, I know I'm not old. But turning twenty means that you're not a teenager anymore, and as a friend pointed out, this is the decade where so many of us will be starting our careers, getting real apartments, maybe even getting married and/or having kids. It all still feels incredibly far away (thank god), but I met a girl on the eight-hour bus ride back from Lisbon who reminded me that maybe it's not as far as I thought. Manuela was sixteen and incredibly energetic and vibrant and she reminded me of how I used to be. (When did I get so old?!) She was incredibly open and talkative and told me all about her family in Colombia, her puppy, and her dream of becoming a veterinarian. We bonded over being vegetarians, which is nearly impossible in Spain, and our loves for Lisbon and Madrid. She was adorable and hilarious and reminded me of the qualities I hope to keep from my ~youth~.
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| {Lisboa Oriente} |
5. Parque Juan Carlos > Parque Retiro. It's amazing to still be discovering new spots at this point in my trip and this week I went to Parque Juan Carlos I. It's off to the edge of the city, and while it's incredibly close to where I live, I never thought to make the trip since it's never mentioned on any travel websites or anything. And although it's not as iconic or old as Retiro, I think it's absolutely beautiful and provides more shade and scenery without the big crowds. You can rent bikes and even go on a train ride—all for free—and there are tons of really cool modern art sculptures, a greenhouse, and a dedication to Spain's three major religions—Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. If you're in Madrid definitely don't leave without making a trip to this park.
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| {Cascais} |
All in all, this week was one of the best I've had this summer. Hope you enjoy the rest of yours! Here are a few more pictures from my trip to Lisbon:
~ V
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| {Madrid at dusk} |
Coming to Spain has made me realize how sometimes travel can make you feel quite lonely. You go off into the world and have experiences and interactions and thoughts that educate and change you—to whatever degree, big or small—and the people from the places you call home won't always understand what you've learned or how you feel. But at the same time, one of the most incredible things about traveling is connecting with absolute strangers. Whether its new au pair friends I've made, or tourists admiring the same view, or even people with whom I've shared a Blablacar (people whose names I didn't even know!), there are so many moments in which I have felt that I've learned something valuable from someone or that someone new has understood me exactly and it's fantastic.
Last weekend I used Blablacar, an amazing car-share program that D.C. needs to start using ASAP. My ride into Valencia went smoothly; all the people were kind and we spoke a bit about the differences between Madrid and America. Javier, the owner of the car, was the only one who had been to America. A few years ago, he visited New York and absolutely hated it, saying that everything was boring compared to Madrid, that the food wasn't good and there wasn't enough life in the city. And while I'm not the biggest fan of New York City, I'm pretty sure we can all agree that's a load of crap.
On the way back to Madrid though, I had an unexpectedly fantastic time. Beforehand, I was a bit nervous about the fact that I was going to be the only girl and only American in a car with three other older men, not knowing if they spoke any English or what to expect of the four hours together. But just minutes into our ride we had begun talking in a way that wasn't just forced small-talk. Alfonso was from Spain, but had lived on the American West Coast for a couple months. We alternated between Spanish and English, bonding over loving California and needing to revisit the Grand Canyon. I told him a bit about what college life in America is like and he told me how he plans to visit the East Coast next time. The other two guys—a lawyer from the Dominican Republic and a systems analyst from Colombia—and I then talked about loving Game of Thrones and shared theories on who was going to die soon (Sansa, let's hope) and who would survive.
I also met another person from Madrid this week who had been to the West Coast. He had liked his visit to the States a lot, but told me he found that Americans differ from Spaniards in that they live their lives being more lonely and helpless, as being desamparados.
It's obvious to me how incredibly open people are here in Spain; in every city I've been to, everyone has been welcoming, gracious, and kind. They're all patient with my limited Spanish-speaking abilities and don't treat me with the sort of anti-American prejudice that I've experienced in a lot of other European countries. So it's not impossible to see why a Spaniard would classify Americans as desamparados, lonely and alone in an almost helpless way. The word carries a deep, heavy sadness that Google translate doesn't fully explain, but I can see how this makes sense; as Americans we tend to do our own things. We pride ourselves in our individualism, our personal success stories. And we should. If you know our nation's history and culture, it makes sense. But after coming here you sort of realize what you lose when you become so focused on the self—a sense of communal well-being, a sort of belonging, and the feeling that you can count on each other and trust one another in a way you wouldn't always do in America—especially not in a big city, especially not in the North.
And in a way, travel sort of counteracts this American sense of being desamparados. You meet people and connect with absolute strangers whose lives are so different from your own and you bond over things as simple as Game of Thrones or whatever and it's just so incredibly amazing to experience that sense of universality, of belonging. To sit in a car with three total strangers, people you wouldn't have ever met had you not made the decision to go to Spain, to visit Valencia that weekend, to take that exact Blablacar back. It's serendipity, but not in some overwhelming, in-your-face kind of way; instead, it's a simple reminder to appreciate the little things in life, the small moments, and the idea of belonging to a world and community bigger than you and your sense of self.
And of course, it's a reminder to keep traveling; you wouldn't have met these people and had this conservation and this moment of real happiness where you're just laughing and genuinely grateful for the moment and driving past sunflower fields and an old Alicia Keys song that you're embarrassed to say you like is playing on the radio and there's not one thing about this moment you would change. And as painfully cliche as it sounds, this is really living you know? Putting yourself out there in these situations where you just have these serendipitous moments of connecting with total strangers. Dancing lessons from God, man.
For a while, I had been feeling like something was missing. I just felt like I needed more or wanted more or worse—expected more. I don't know exactly what changed this weekend or what void was filled but I don't feel that way anymore. I'm satisfied and happy and grateful and don't want to leave.
But with that being said, it's important to acknowledge that in a sense, travel can be quite isolating as well. At first, you're just getting to know new people and learning to find your way, and it's sort of like the loneliness of your freshman year of college; you've made all these friends but they're still new and you aren't as close to them as your friends from home. And at the same time, your old friends don't know this new life you have and all the things that make it up, while your new friends do. And all of these new experiences and people sort of form a barrier between you and the friends and family you have back home since they just don't know this whole side of your life yet. Because when you go on a trip like this, whether you're studying abroad or becoming an au pair or simply moving to another city in another country for a couple months, it can be a bit isolating. Because ultimately you're the only one that's part of those two worlds, the one who has been formed by both of them and has been changed by the experience.
The thing is, in my case I've always had Alana. We've been friends since our sophomore year of high school, so she knew me before GW and D.C., so she knows me in relation to that one world, but at the same time, she's met all my friends at GW, too. She knows where I buy my groceries and where I go out with friends and what late-night monumenting is like. She's my bridge between my two worlds.
This time I don't have a bridge, but I'm nothing but grateful for it. I have all these moments and people and places that are my own. Of course there are millions of people who have walked in the same streets I have, who know the strangers I've befriended much better than I do. And I even have friends who have had similar experiences to what my summer has been all about. But at the end of the day, I'm part of a world that so many of my friends don't know about and I'm okay with it. Because even though you are sometimes alone, it doesn't mean you are desamparada.
~ V
