Dispatches from Lisbon
The start of a new life?
Dear friend,
Today I write to you from Portugal, the land of wet and moderate winters. Five weeks ago, F and I boarded a plane to Lisbon, where we’ll remain through winter’s end. From Lisbon, we’ll head over to Amsterdam, where we’ll stay for… one year? Two, maybe? We don’t know yet.
The short of it: F recently started working at a new role at his company and it would be easier for everyone if he worked in Europe, so all five of us (two humans and three senior pets) came to Europe.
I’ve been calling it an experiment. To call it moving would have made the entire ordeal too stiff. We didn’t move to Europe, I’ve been telling myself as I stroll–and fall on–the slippery, cobblestoned streets of Lisbon. Language as a scaffold: surely a word without a definitive connotation will make 2024 feel less daunting? Having uprooted myself from Brazil once, and several times inside the U.S. since, I’ve become a scaredy cat: I need to paw gently over the surface of our new European life, feel its textures and temperature, before circling round and lying down.
Speaking of cats, here’s a photo of our oldest one, who didn’t take lightly to being placed on a plane and flown across the world—shouldn’t we have at least asked for his permission first?
One never knows quite how one will take to living in a new city, which is to say, we entered the Schengen zone with a list of questions. Topping the list: How long are we staying in Amsterdam? Impossible to say, at least for now. To make living with uncertainty a bit more manageable, I joined a gym in our first week here; I’ve been working out early in the day. I’ve resumed my morning writing sessions, only they’re afternoon writing sessions now for me. I've been trying to stay off social media. I’ve been reading ferociously. Is any of these things helping? It’s not making my life worse, that much I can say, so here’s to establishing some kind of routine amid chaos.
You know what else helps? Being in Lisbon. The fact that we speak the language. The abundance of delicious food. I know my way around the city, kinda–that’s where my favorite literary conference takes place, so I’ve been here many times. We bought the tickets to Lisbon several months ago, before Amsterdam was a concrete possibility, and when at last it became one, we saw no reason to change our plans. Unfortunately, F can’t work from Lisbon and keep his job (that’s not a possibility at the moment), otherwise we’d probably stay here.
Some appealing facts about Amsterdam:
It’s a walkable city
It’s a bikeable city
The language. F and I are set on learning Dutch (we already found a language school in our future neighborhood,) but obviously that won’t happen overnight. Lucky for us, most people in Amsterdam are fluent in English, so while the new language makes its way through our rusty neural pathways, we’ll be able to communicate and do fun things in English, like experience the art scene. To give an example, I went to the Dutch National Opera in March and was moved that they provided lyrics to the performance in both Dutch and English. That’s not the case in San Francisco, at least not of the productions we saw.
Nonstop flights from Amsterdam to Brazil. I’d like to tamper my flying to a minimum, but the fact remains that our families are based in Brazil and likely will be for life. Over the past eleven years, traveling from San Francisco to visit family has meant embarking on a twenty-five hour, three-airport journey (longer if you count arriving at the airport hours prior to the first flight.) You see, when we moved to San Francisco in 2012, my mother wasn’t disabled. My grandmother hadn’t been diagnosed with Alzheimers. F’s grandfather was still alive–not making it to his funeral on account of the distance between San Francisco and Vila Velha broke F's heart; losing my beloved uncle in September and not being able to say goodbye in person for the same reason nearly drove me up the walls. In other words, we didn’t realize how tiring (and expensive!) visiting our loved ones would be when we moved from Brooklyn to California. It’ll be interesting to see if being in Amsterdam will make flying home more manageable, and if taking the train to cities like Paris, London, Cologne etc will be enough to take care of my traveling needs.
Less U.S. focused? I suppose that’s true of every place: every nation, it seems to me, is in love with its own reflection, drunk on its own myth-making. But living in the United States, one can feel at times as though the rest of the world exists only as a backdrop to the loud drama of American life, American politics, etc. Maybe this will prove true of Amsterdam as well, but I’m excited for a palate cleanser.
Things I’m not looking forward to in Amsterdam:
The weather
The absence of my San Francisco garden (How wouldn’t I miss it?)
It’s too far from the Pacific Ocean
The lack of hills. Here’s what makes street running so much fun in the Bay Area: hills! In contrast, Amsterdam is flatter than my straight-lined ass. I used to love feeling my heart pound under my shirt as I ran up those steep San Francisco streets, but now I’ll have to make do with leveled roads. If I run outside at all, that is. I may stop running altogether.
The distance from my California friends. :( Someone please explain to me how on Earth I’m going to manage with an ocean between these sunny faces and mine?
I’m off now to explore a part of Portugal I’ve never been to before. I hope you’ve had a jolly holiday season and that your plans for the new year include some relaxation and soulful and nurturing rituals–maybe the most Californian thing I’ve ever typed? Oh, well. :)
I’ll catch you in 2024,
Flávia