Lost in Lisbon

by Ombeline Laîné (Ireland)

Making a local connection Portugal

“Where are they ?” She looked at me with round eyes. “Where are they ?”, how could I know better than her ? We needed few minutes to realise we were on our own. We were 16, alone and lost in Lisbon. We both had phone that didn’t allow us to call anyone in a foreign country. We were lucky, we had the numbers of our responsible. The next task was to find someone who could allow us to use his phone to contact our group. But we didn’t speak Portuguese, and not really English to be honest… After have visited a church, our group left us. They just forget us ! We were worried about our situation and stressed to find a solution when Isaure, my friend, shouted : “French people !”. She just heard people speaking French in the street and they appeared like our salvation ! They were a French family travelling in Portugal like us. They accepted kindly to let us contact our group with their phone. We called once without answer, twice, then three times and no answer… We gave up ! We didn’t want to bother these kind people anymore so we decided to stay in our place and wait for the group to realise we were not with them. At the entrance of the church was a homeless, he had seen us with our group and understood they had left us… He came to speak. Despite our difficulties to understand each other, he seemed to tell us to stay here and to don’t move. It was kind of him ! He wanted to protect us. We tried to continue the conversation with him, a mix of English and Spanish, it must have been really funny to listen ! We were not very talented in languages at this time. Then an old woman leaving the church saw us speaking with this man. She was surprised. She asked us if everything was alright, so we explained her the situation, and she seemed to understand. She ensured us to stay in this place until they came back. It was a very nice experience to see people helping us without even knowing us. The rest of the time, we spent it praying to not be scolded by our responsible. Despite of the fact they forget us, I have to admit we were not following the group, we took some distance and we thought we would have found them at the exit, but, surprise ! They were not here ! So, even if it’s hard to admit, I think we had a little bit of responsibility in this incident. We also had time to continue the visit of the church, I think we knew it by heart to have done several times its turn… We had nothing else to do. After have prayed and watched every nooks of the church, we spent our time out, sitting on the steps enjoying the sun. We were tanning and observing people in the street. We don’t have the same vision of life when we have time to lose. We had a new impression of the crowd, as if everyone could be a rescue for us, suddenly they all became important whereas before they were just belonging to the landscape. After two hours at least, the French family we had met came back. Our responsible had called back… He asked us our place. We told him the name of the church and he was desperate to think he had left us that’s far. He asked us to don’t move, he was coming to pick us up. We were very grateful for the family who was far in the city and came back just to help us. When we finally joined the group, we have been a little bit scolded, but not too much, thanks to our prayers ! At the end, our bigger disappointment was that nobody has noticed we were not with them… Are we that important for you ?! Thanks your friendships !