MAKE IT SUCKS

by Maxim Kiriewsky (Poland)

I didn't expect to find Portugal

In Portugal I screwed up. It was the most epic fail. It was a tremendous failure. Literally. It was the fuck-up of my dream. Our relationships with Portugal started in the north and was fanned of this well-known romantic appeal that every new country smells of. We were getting into Porto. All the greens were in vaporous light fog. The highway and the breath-taking panorama was continually changing. It seemed that time had stopped and now we would break into another parallel universe. The air in the north was truly amazing. I didn’t feel it neither in Georgia, nor even in the mountains of Armenia. It was the air of eternal spring, an oceanic mixture of pure oxygen. And just to give you a general idea of my spontaneous trip. I wasn’t prepared. Completely. You will ask a reasonable question: Why? It was intentionally. I did want an imperfect trip. The “to-go-plan” was just encoded in my mind. I wasn’t prepared so that my travel perception hadn’t been vague by any photos, travel guides and instagramable locations. What did I know about Portugal? Nothing but there’s the bridge as in San Francisco, Pastel de nata and Cape Roca. But the only thing I knew for sure: I was going to taste the Atlantic Ocean.⠀ Everything went wrong in my trip. I screwed up whenever I could: the weather, hostel apartments, hitchhiking and Portuguese capital. The first day I’d been walking all over Porto and got to the ocean. If the northern city air was still and calm, then in the oceanic wind was powerful enough to uproot and throw me to the seaboard of Africa. Since the primary plan was to spend the night in a tent near the ocean, now all the plans went to the hell. I went hitchhiking. It was getting dark. The time I had till this Portuguese sun would usher me was running out. I had a backpack with a tent, an unfamiliar country and a highroad somewhere 3,400 km away from my homeland. A few hours later I caught nothing but smiles of drivers passing by and friendly waving me, encouraging my despair. No one picked me up or maybe I wasn’t looking like the best company to get a lift. Then the question was: where to go? Right, to the train station. Next, I was about to reach the train station. Snot. Tears. Hysteria. I failed with hitchhiking. Okay, I was on the road to Lisbon. In my winter sweater, warm coat with two pairs of trousers and in survival mode. The night turned out to be cold. I got into the heat wave in Lisbon. If the average May temperature is usually about 23°C, now it was absolute 32°C in the capital. Hello, hell. Walking around the city was replaced by wandering around the hostel trying to escape from the heat. The last day I went to “wet’’ my trip to Cascais. This is an extremely cinematic place, Monaco eye-candy views and hinged tiny houses. 20 minutes standing in a queue for the tickets, 40 for the road and other 15 looking for the best beaches, just to knew all the attempts were in vain because of the cold water. I fucked up again. It turned out that even in May ocean is cold enough. Lisbon let me understood that the capitals is not a must visit destination. Because they have nothing in common with the countries we are making our way to. For example, Podgorica is anti-Montenegro with neither mountains nor the sea. Brussels is simply European economic hub. And Lisbon appeared to be a stuffy and uncomfortable city where the nearest beaches are 50 km away and all the sidewalks are paved with “сalçada portuguesa”. It's vastly slippery beautiful white stone. In hilly Lisbon it’s extremely exhausting. Yeah, I screwed up because of a complete lack of preparation. But do you know what? It was a mind-boggling trip. Because it was mine. I realized my idea, organized everything and went there on my own. And thanks to this greenie trip and all these fails, I realized how precious that experience was. Only because it was unfortunate it became so remarkable.