#2205::Thursday, December 20: One week in...

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Post 2205
- 7 years and 354 days since I started this blog -

  

Journal
(written 12/20/18)

Read this once (it won't change for the rest of the trip(s): I'll be linking this post to Facebook. If that's how you got here, here's some background: About 8 years ago I started this blog as a food journal. I had a medical situation and needed to lose weight. Initially, that's all I did here: Journal my food intake and my weight. It contributed to helping me lose 20+% of my body weight in 6 months, and continuing has kept me on track since then. I started adding commentary after a while, but lately it has become infrequent. 

While I'm traveling, I let go of the weight-tracking and food journaling, except for the occasional food shot when I've eaten something interesting. And that's where we find ourselves now.

The last few days of my first week in Lisbon have been... interesting. I've learned a little about the place, a little (more) about myself, especially in relation to my purpose here.

I did not come to Lisbon as a tourist. I came to assess its livability, which is far from the same thing. For twenty-five years, I have been keeping a list of places I had researched - all specific cities, as opposed to countries or regions, that checked all my boxes when it came to the lifestyle I want.

I have learned some things, and one of them is that research can only take you so far. You never know a place until you're there. Boots on the ground trumps anything you've learned second-hand. I originally meant to start my search when I retired, on my sixty-sixth birthday, but my living situation in Syracuse was so rewarding, that a few years before that birthday I decided that expatriating would be plan B. I would stay in Syracuse as long as that seemed too good to walk away from. I'm not there yet.

My first foray into checking out the places on my list was at the beginning of the year (January 2018). I went to the top place on my list, and the only location that has always been on my list, Chiang Mai, Thailand. To say my three-week visit was a success is understatement. I had the time of my life, and in only three weeks, I felt completely comfortable there. I left knowing that Chiang Mai had set the bar very high.

The human mind is a differential engine. We are attracted to movement. We tend to not see what is static. Our sense of time and space is primarily a means to tell our story to ourselves. That is, we compare the current moment to the one that came before, and in so doing, the current moment becomes the previous moment.

Sorry for the philosophizing. The point is, I make an effort to keep an open mind, to eliminate or minimize my expectations, but I am always comparing my current perceptions to those past. In Lisbon, I am comparing with Chiang Mai, Syracuse, Cary, North Carolina, San Francisco and New York City - the places I've lived before.

Checking out a place for liveability means my emphasis is not on seeing the sites, although I inevitably will. Sightseeing tells you nothing about what it is like to live in a place. Ask New Yorkers how much the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty affects their lives. What it means is my everyday, day-to-day experiences. What I do when I'm at my base home, what attracts me to leave my apartment. What problems I encounter, and how I resolve them.

For all the goodness I found there, my stay in Chiang Mai was not free of problems. Nor, in my first week in Lisbon, have I not had obstacles.

All my difficulties in Chiang Mai were fairly easily addressed. In Lisbon, I am having some difficulty coming up with satisfactory solutions. But it is so damn pleasant and charming here, and it is only the first week.

Please do not misunderstand: I am, to say the very least, enjoying myself, and I expect I will for the next three weeks. But one problem is intractable and the other is pending further investigation.

The intractable problem is terrain and geography. Lisbon is the City of Seven Hills. I am staying near the top of one. That means that not only is every venture out uphill on my return, but a steep uphill climb. And it means that the downhill walks are a little bit painful. It is not Lisbon's fault I have bad knees, but it makes walking painful in one direction and exhausting in the other. One of those checkboxes I mentioned earlier is walkability. I have unchecked that box.

The other difficulty is finding community. Community is the thing that has kept me in Syracuse nine-and-a-half years after my original expiration (I was on a one-year plan when I arrived as a total stranger).

In Syracuse and Chiang Mai, I quickly found a welcoming community of musicians and musician's friends. It is proving not so easy here. The musicians' community here seems somewhat aloof - at least, I am having difficulty in identifying the community. So far. All my past experience says there is a community of musicians here - but so far, even though I've found a place to play at, a little, it has not proven an entry-point to the larger community of musicians.

The last thing to note is that, while Lisbon may be the least expensive metropolis in Europe, it is not inexpensive. Living here might be less expensive than living in Syracuse, but it is about two to three times more expensive than Chiang Mai, the lowest-cost place on my list.

OK. Enough about the generalities, because the specifics are actually much, much more positive.

I want to tell you about last Tuesday: the night I spent at Jam Club.

I found the place through TripAdvisor, which I used a lot in Chiang Mai to help me locate places I wanted to check out. The ratings and rankings may not be all that much use, but they are searchable and the place descriptions are generally fairly accurate. It's also useful in determining what is and isn't open at any given time.

Jam Club is a little more than a fifteen minute walk from my apartment. It has a ridiculously (and, frankly, undeserved) high ranking on TripAdvisor, which is not to say it isn't excellent - it very much is a wonderful place, and I expect I will spend quite a bit of time there.

It is definitely a member of Lisbon's 'hole-in-the-wall' gang of bars and restaurants, being tiny and unprepossessing from the outside.

But it is as warm and inviting a place as you could want. You could maybe seat a couple of dozen people before you were in a standing-room-only situation. Maybe. And they might have to be good friends, at that. However, this night, those limits weren't tested. There was a good crowd, and it felt full, but in no way uncomfortable.

Jaoa and Marco were behind the bar and now you know the whole staff. They are friendly, speak good English, and their smiles made me feel right at home. So did the framed pictures of famous musicians (Louis, Sarah, Jimi, Lou Reed, Bowie, and dozens more) decorating the walls - that reminded me of Shifty's and Rooters back home - although this place was half the size.

I arrived a bit after 6pm, hungry, and asked for the day's specials. I immediately accepted the grilled chorizo toast. Thirsty from my walk/climb, I opted for a glass of sangria, and it was delicious. I needed that bit of sweetness, too.

Jaoa, who was at the grill, surprised me by putting the arc of chorizo on a small, single-plate ceramic grill, putting that on the bar, and setting it on fire. Brilliant. And, when it arrived with a bucket of toast points, delicious. A pint of Sangre beer, and I was set. I ate leisurely, and was satisfied for the rest of the night.

I started a conversation with Marco about some of the musicians pictured on the wall that I was familiar with. I told him I was trying to connect with musicians in Lisbon. "There's a musician!" he said, and I met a man who told me he had a music studio around the corner. We exchanged pleasantries, he went out for a smoke, and then he was gone.

Marco asked, so I told him I played bass. "We have a bass in the back", he said. "If you stay until ten, maybe you will play with our guitarist. He's at an audition, now." Of course, I told him I would definitely stay, marveling at my good fortune. They had a bass guitar.

I ordered another Sangre. There was a Spanish guitar hanging on the wall. With nothing really to do, and, at the moment, only a few customers, I asked if it would be okay for me to play it, and was encouraged with a smile.

So I did one of my extended acoustic open mic sets. I am never a shy performer, but unlike when I'm playing bass, I am very self-conscious soloing on guitar and vocals. So when my audience showed me some appreciation, and with no other entertainment on-hand, I was encouraged to do more. Like Bobby McGee, I sang every song I knew. Allow me to be modest: I got by on my smile more than anything else, but I guess that was enough. My drinks were paid-for for the rest of the night.

I hung the guitar back up, and the guitarist walked into the bar. Joao introduced us, he went into the back, came back with an all-in-one single speaker PA, then brought out a cheap, heavy imitation Stingray bass. While this was probably the worst bass I've ever played, it did have all four strings. In Chiang Mai, I played for about an hour on a bass that was missing a string (luckily for me, it was the G-string. If you know my playing, you know that I find that the least interesting string on a 4- or 5-string bass).

The guitarist, James was Dutch and spoke very good English. He was very receptive to having me jam along with him. Although sometimes it took me a while to figure out what he was playing (lots of jazz chords and personal arrangements, something I actually like very much) we were soon just enjoying ourselves, getting comfortable with each other, and mutually appreciative.

Fun playing strapless with James at Jam Club

Two hours of smiles later, we were done. I was on my third Jamo (Jameson's Irish whiskey, to the teetotaler out there), feeling it, and when a Dutch couple that had been there all night asked if we could play any Dylan, and James demurred, I took the acoustic guitar off the wall and led the bar in my reggae-ized version of Knockin' On Heaven's Door. That was a big hit, so I told my story of how I first heard that song in Jamaica, and it was more than two years before I tracked down the recording, and realized it was a Dylan song, and that the version I heard had Clapton on guitar. It's still my favorite version (by Arthur Louis, if you want to track it down).

Marco, Jaoa, James and I had Jameson's shots for a nightcap, as the place closed up, still about three-quarters full.

Jao, Marco, James, whoever.

I made my tipsy way home through the narrow streets and alleys, only to be confronted by that final two-hundred-meter, forty-degree climb to the street my apartment is on. I am not ashamed to say I had to pause about every hundred feet. I'd earned my weariness, and I was still drawing energy and happiness at the night.

Food Comment

Jaoa flaming my chorizo at Jam Club.

Jam Club's chorizo toast. Really, truly delicious.

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