Portugal: The Beginning

1am travels—I quickly become a bag of heavy bones, carry myself around along with my pudgy backpack. Humming bus windowpanes echo through my inner ear, through my jaw. In the airport we unwrap little sandwiches, panic about the size of our bags. I’m on my knees shoving my purse upside down into my backpack, putting on extra sweaters, scarves.

In the airplane, I fall asleep, wake up being told to move my feet from the seats, our ears fill up and we fly through the thin border of time. Outside we breathe cold air, try and ascertain if it tastes, well, Portuguese. We eat strips of sour candy, walk down into the metro, count the stops as they flash by.

Above ground, Porto is sleepy and old, chilly and gray with big tiled churches, crumbling old mansions, serious against the purplish sky. A sweet brown trolley rolls by on tracks, someone hands me a paper, asks me for money, I suppress the urge to respond in Spanish, my tongue is confused. We pass groggy Portuguese pigeons, buy bus tickets in a dingy office with wooden walls. We find a café with English in the menu—is that good or bad? Leah asks. We buy Portuguese sandwiches, a Porto specialty, francesinhas, sandwiches with sauce they say is extra spicy, like the Mexican food, they say. The sauce is red and mild, we split French fries and Leah closes her eyes at the table. The waitress has a sweet disposition and bad teeth, makes Leah pick out free desserts. We share flan and mousse and tip her.

The bus to Lisbon is more spacious and we sit along the left side—window seats. I pull off my scarf and top layer sweater to wad up as a pillow. The sun flickers across my face and a cold sets in; I curl into a ball. In the station bathroom, I rinse my mouth and then we head underground again, slow as specters, drooping.

Lisbon is purple-gray, the air is still. We find number 65, a souvenir shop. Inside is a big, mirrored double door, Kitsch Hostel, it says. The doors open to a dingy staircase. Up, up, inside another door, beside a dentist office, is a strange collaged lobby, red walls, green diamond walls, celebrities, religious figures and naked women pasted all together. Our receptionist is Polish, I think you will like this, he says again and again. His smile is shy and when we walk in on a girl changing in our room he turns pink. Beds. We collapse. It’s 5:30pm.