Lisbon First Impressions [Draft]
Lisbon lived large in my imagination long before I went.
It was sunshine, it was history and it was trending. From programmers to pensioners, it seemed like everyone wanted a piece of it. I watched countless videos of Lisbon but I feel there was so much left unsaid, uncommunciated.
So, Lisbon remained a mythical place.
Lisbon is the second oldest city in Europe but with the feverish energy around now it feels like it was ‘discovered’ yesterday.
This hype has disturbed me and I’ve been trying to figure out why. I think it’s because it frames Lisbon as a city to be consumed.
Just like with most modern tourism, people go to Lisbon armed with lists of ’things to do’, ‘sights to see’ and ‘places to eat’. It’s a one-way kind of relationship and oriented around consumption.
Kind of in the same way the ‘male gaze’ reduces the female body to be at service of their desires, I think the ’tourist gaze’ does the same to a city. We see a place for what we can get out of it, what it can give us.
I tried to find the other side of the story and read articles from Lisboners. There are too many different viewpoints to summarise in this video but some saw the tourist boom as a necessary evil.
But would they take it back if they had the chance?
Or is that question irrelevant in the face of tourism?
I braced myself to see the effect of the instagram age carrying people with intensity and inevitibity of a flood. A flood of human and capital, rising and gentryfiing not just neighbourhoods but entire cities.
Tormod and I took our time. We found the small places (for there were always pockets of beauty) and enjoyed the small things (when they revealed themselves with attention).
The sea was never far away, its breeze snaking up the streets. Growing up in a valley, I’ve always sought open water. The intimacy of the city and the sea laying side by side is something I could never tire of.
We had conversations that spanned days. The ones you don’t get to have in the staccato of normal life. Even if we were away from Oslo, we spoke through the lens of our shared experiences.
And as a reminder to myself, we see the world through what we’ve seen before. So see more, to have more ways of understanding.
It was therefore somewhat inevitable at the beginning to see Lisbon from the perspective of Oslo. Where there is enough money in Oslo to utilize everything to the maximum, there was a sense of involuntary abandonment in Lisbon. But also dynamism and a latent energy. A sense of something pending, something pushing. A sense that something could happen.
But why was I there?
I was there because I wanted I’ve come to accept that Norway can’t be everything for me.
Yes, it has stability, safety and a comfortable life for most people.
But I longed for diversity, for variety for life in the streets at night.
I skimmed the surface of Lisbon without understanding. I found pockets of small beauty and large vistas. I took my time with them.
I found a place that was visibly being pulled into a transformation. The old and new standing side by side with an uneasy tension.
It’s rare in Oslo to see unused space in the city center. Everything is always developed.
Even within a few days, I realised that Lisbon was both a dream and a nightmare. In Oslo there are very few tourists and they’re usually confined to small areas of the city so I was shocked to be in the city centre and see how much of it was repurposed to cater to tourists. It was like the entire city was at service to others and not to its own people. It wasn’t even peak season but the way the crowds moved through the center like a writhing snake was, to be honest, kind of sickening.
Modern tourism comes with its own problems. People usually don’t have much time and so they’re are always in a rush and focused on what they want to do. The energy they create and give off is one not of exploration and curiosity but of consumption and documentation.
I was out at night and saw some Asian Americans stumble into a cafe, phones already out, filming. They didn’t pause to greet the staff but instead put their phones up to the pastel de natas on the counter like eager scientists on an alien planet and even zoomed in other people’s food.
When they paid, they loudly exclaimed to each other that this was “nothing” right in front of the cashier who had probably been working the entire day. I’m sure Joana saw me scowling at them but she made small talk seeming non-offended. I understand that my reaction could be a externalised shame for the person that I didn’t wish to be.
I spent a few days away from Lisbon. Tormod and I visited Cascais with its widswept vistas and broiling seas. I also travelled north to Porto and La Coruña with my parents. It gave me time to untangle the feelings. It was hard for me to ignore what I read and then see it play out so vividly.
It was when I went back that things changed and they changed because of the people I met. It’s through actual connection that we’re able to actually be part of things. It’s not something that can be bought and ironically not something people seem to value either.
I don’t want to skim the surface of things. It gets old, fast. In skimming things it engenders a mentality that things should be compared. Lisbon has this but doesn’t have that. While true, it’s leads to deadends.
She took me under her wing and we roamed the streets. It was a quiet night, the rain giving us shelter. We went to places I had been before but it felt decidedly different. The crowds were gone and we just explored without a plan.
I think hearing those words lifted the burden I had placed on myself. It allowed me to relax and showed me a way I could be there in a respectful manner.
While there will always be inequality in wealth and status, what we can and should have is equality in our respect for each other’s time and energy. I’ve always had good relationships with the people at the places I frequent and seeing Joana banter with the bartenders made me feel at home. It made me immediately want to learn Portuguese. Everything is a two-way interaction even if it may not seem like it.
We walked a bit longer and found a lookout point. We lamented my departure as there were so many things that she wanted to show me.
She told me of the bar she goes to and the drag shows. She told me of the sea at night up north and the blood red moon that couldn’t be photographed. Of wine country and dogs running wild.
She scolded me again for leaving so soon. Her words cracking like a dominatrix’s whip.
I laughed in response and said I would make it back. I have to.
‘Tread lightly, connect deeply.’
It’s universal but unique.
I’ve heard people say one can “do a city in 3 days”. I mean technically you can examine the contours of someone’s face and get some understanding of how their voice sounds in a thirty seconds.
“We did Lisbon last year” I’ve heard people say as if experiencing a completely new culture can be so definitively be marked as ‘done’. Not that this is different from modern tourism but I think Lisbon is at the sharp end of it.
I heard people say “we did Lisbon” which was is actually kind of a weird shorthand.