Lisboa

The bus ride was calm, there was just one stop in Leira which seemed to be an interesting city as far as I could see it from the bus window. The rest of the trip I slept so the next stop I realized was Lisboa Airport and then Lisboa Sete Rios where I had to leave the bus. Not knowing where I was in Lisboa and not knowing where to go for the center I just started walking in one direction which was the right one as I could found out comparing bus stations. It was already 0:50am when the bus arrived and I had still no couch but I was open to everything that might happen. While walking on the main streets of Lisboa I recognized that this city is much bigger than Porto with long avenues which were almost 100m wide. This was a real metropole while Porto was a nice big city. At about 2:30am I met four quite drunk but happy Polish guys who were part of a group of nine, three girls and six guys, travelling with a Ford Transit through all western Europe. We hang around laughing and talking until, at about 4:00am, they went to there where unfortunately was no place to sleep left. I went on walking a bit in the old part of the city, looking for a place to pass the night, since, what I couldn't understand at all, almost all bars were closed and almost no people were on the streets. I found a quite nice place to rest a little, a construction area, which I provided with a possibility to even fall asleep without being recognized by people passing by, meaning, putting some wooden planks on the floor behind a paravent construction fence and some cardboard rubbish on them. I was not tired, didn't want to sleep, but just to put my backpack down and lay myself down a little suited already best my needs. And it was quite adventurous. This time I got up earlier than the nights before and went for a walk in the old city, having some breakfast in the rising sun. Going down to the more metropolitan part of the city there was one strange noise probably the most often to hear on every corner, every street which was like 'sh-sh' or 'shish' while most likely a Maghreb guy was offering you a little piece of which was so annoying. I already started thinking about while waiting for a policeman to come asking them for the price and by taking some time thinking about getting them involved into dealing and being caught by the police. But at last I did something else. Everytime a secret 'Sh-sh' approached to me I shouted with a high voice back to him 'no Hashish, thank you'. They really started to piss me off! - sorry for the bad language. And all because I had long hair as I thought. I walked through several parts of the city until I found an Internet café. There I tried to get in contact with the Lisboa couchsurfing community but I had no success. Among all couchsurfing experiences during my trip so far the ones I made in Lisboa were the very worst so far. I asked several people while I was still in Porto, made an open request and then today asked some more and tried to connect with a meeting but besides from two selected requests nothing, really nothing happened while people from other cities, e.g. from Alveiro, invited me to visit their city. The Lisboa CS group really has to organize itself better. I didn't want to go to the meeting any more but booked a hostel which was cheap and really comfortable. At the reception desk I asked whether there was a bed left for one night and they put me for the last bed in a form of eight. I already thought of a room full of strange people and said to myself, sighing, it's just for one night, just for sleeping. As I opened the room, oh my goodness! - it was full of seven young nice beautiful French girls!! I don't know whether this was a better condition to sleep, I better don't say why I doubted that. I somehow felt like in heaven, but also, I have to admit that, like a kid you put some chocolate in front telling him not to dat of or, in a more explicit picture, like a hungry fox in a stable of hens, wearing a muzzle, of course - but would that be really comfortable? Just kidding... First, not to annoy the ladies, I took what was most likely the most necessary - a shower. Feeling like a newborn I got my bed prepared and introduced myself to them. They invited me for a beer and I got to know that they were travelling altogether in a Renault Espace, having passed some days in Sevilla, the Algarve and now Porto. But I felt that it was different now for them from the situation being among themselves before and I tried not to make them too many circumstances. Well, I wished they could all stay as natural as before. They wanted to go out for dinner and I told them about some light festival taking place on the great gate on the Commercial place. I went there as the Polish told me the night before and it was really impressive, really amazing! There was a fantastic light show about the history of Lisboa and Portugal but of a kind of style I have never seen before. Maybe you can see on ocubo.com something about.

Per Mobiltelefon