The Weekend Rambler

The Best Fries are in Lille

December 20, 2019

Anyone that tells you otherwise can shove two hot ones up their greasy noses.

Ivana of Black Hummus Diaries and I had been staying with our long-time friend, Simon. But the time had come to part ways: Ivana to Amsterdam for a conference and me off into the unknown. I had three days to explore before meeting Ivana in Brussels for our flight to the next adventure, so out I went into the tundra.

I had the choice: Germany or France?

Easy decision.

Having traveled through France on a number of occasions, the charm and joie de vivre has always had a hold on my, however, the areas in the North of the country had yet remained undiscovered. Two Flixbus rides through the rains of Belgium deposited me in Lille, a city only visited by those wanting a layover on their journeys between Paris and Brussels. While it may be a layover for many, the city offers enough of a draw to make it worth exploring for several days alone.

As per usual, I opted for the Couchsurfing route. I was offered to stay with a man with an extensive history of over 500 surfers staying in his house, so I couldn’t go wrong with that tracklist. Wintertime in Lille is a pleasure in the senses. Winding streets lined with boulangeries and cafes make up the old town, lit with warm lights and smelling of sugared delights that are just as decadent to look at as they are to eat.

For many centuries, Lille was part of Flanders. It had an identity more akin to that in Southern Belgium or Luxembourg than to Paris, and for that reason the Lillois are far more welcoming and laid back than some of their countrymen further South. Strangers will smile and say Good evening and shop keepers will speak slowly and smile politely as you butcher their language to pieces on their store counter.

I arranged to meet with my couchsurfer at a hostel bar called Gastama, his local haunt which he hangs around every night to meet tourists and chat with new people. He’s incredibly outgoing, talking up anyone that walks by, instantly putting a smile on their face. The bartenders are well familiar with him and call him a friend, offering us both discounts on all of our drinks. Together we sat, talking of the French state of sexuality (quite a fluid one indeed) and all of the people he has met through Couchsurfing, with a random point towards a stranger followed by a quip along the lines of “Oh he’s gay, look!” somewhere in the middle.

A Chinese tourist walks up, one that my couchsurfer met the previous night. His phone is outwardly facing, and he is live-broadcasting everything to China directly through the app. He’s a painter by profession, but he makes a good side hustle live-streaming his entire day to a community of anywhere from 25,000 to 80,000 live viewers. 80,000! He was big money, throwing us free beers and treats anytime we would do something funny for the camera to get him more views.

My host is a social worker, so he was up and out the door early the next morning. It allowed me to lazily get up and play with his cat a bit before heading out into the cold of Northern France, which is delightful despite the chill. Lille is a lot larger than the map would lead one to believe. I spent the entirety of the day wandering, spending time in the Middle Eastern shouting of the Wazemme market and the chill of reading a book with Belgian beer at L’Ecart café. By far, the best food to be had comes in the form of the oh so omnipotent fried julienne potato. Any establishment, the greasier the better, will provide you with the sumptuous artery lubricating delight that brings peace among worlds. No need to continue hunting, for the best fries are in Lille, dear readers. After enjoying such delights, I was provided the proper strength to have one more drunken night at Gastama.

I met with my host late, who was sitting with a pitcher of beer and his Colombian friend that looks eerily like Dave Franco. Eventually, the Chinese live-streaming painter returned his good graces upon us. I offered my hand in marriage to over 80,000 Chinese watching, to which I was thrown bouquets upon bouquets of virtual rose which earned my Chinese friend enough to buy me a nice Belgian beer. Don’t cry now momma, I’m making a good living.

Lille, you’ve been a treasure on the eyes and a pleasure for the soul. The more I travel, the more I realize that every city is more or less the same when you boil it down and remove the postcard landmarks. What makes a place special and memorable are the citizens that inhabit it, and from that aspect, Lille has been a beautiful mark on this huge country of France. The next day, I had a Belgian itch to scratch and headed on a blablacar across the border into the less glamorous, French underbelly of the Belgian pig. Off to Wallonia for unknown debauchery unlike any I’ve experienced.
Hot Damn, Rotterdam

December 17, 2019

Last you saw me, I was randomly spending a day in Western Ukraine. Now, you find me visiting my long-time jam partner in crime and rambler for my Spain adventure, Simon. He works for the Danish church in Rotterdam, and I’ve visited once before but the itch for Rotterdam has come once again.

Rotterdam is an industrial city but a charming one at its heart. It was completely leveled during World War II, and has since become a hub for business and mercantile endeavors. Rotterdam is a huge mecca for business in the Netherlands, as can be seen by its highrises and glitzy facades. But there are some really wonderful underground spots to explore. For example, one must go to Fenix Factory for craft beer and a sampling of local food delights. A stop in Rotterdam wouldn’t be complete without visiting the cube houses or food market, either.

Stop by the shopping street to see the statue of Santa Claus holding a gigantic dildo, and grab a tea at the Punk ship Vessel 11. But let’s be honest, Rotterdam isn’t the Dutchiest of cities, so Simon, his girlfriend Iris, Ivana, and I picked up camp for a day trip to Leiden.

You may know Leiden by its famous resident, Rembrandt. It’s just as cute as Amsterdam but on an even CUTER scale. At Christmas, the streets light up the dark snakey canals still wet from the last misty rains. Leiden is perfect for an Amsterdam day trip.

If you get to Rotterdam, a day or so is good to explore a bit and see the museums and food halls. It’s an interesting take on how to make a Dutch city interesting without tulips or canals, and so far they’ve done a pretty good job. If you’re like me, you’ll be clambering to the next destination as soon as possible, however. For me, it’s time to go to France.
Lviv, a Baby Slappin’ Good Time

December 13, 2019

Let me preface: I have not and do not plan to ever slap babies. For any purpose.

However, the man behind me on my flight to Lviv, Ukraine, needs to quell his baby slapping ways. Essentially, a Ukrainian woman behind me lost control of her rambunctious son who decided to start messing around and making noise. The man behind her, “educating himself” in some textbook, lost his patience and “slammed down the window shade”, inadvertently slapping the baby. What ensued was a brawl of words, a slew of “You go fuck you, bitch” and other lexical maladies which eventually roped in the tired and overworked low-cost airline staff who defused the incident as best they could while the rest of the plane counted down the minutes to landing. How’s that for a Ukrainian welcome?

My mind and body are completely fluid and I am a being of ethereal light, or so is my saying whenever I dream up these long-winded nonsensical adventures throughout the globe. I’m currently in between paths and will experience an end to my Danish visa at the end of 2019, so rather than spend a month in cold wet Denmark I decided to go around to squeeze all of the juice left in the voluminous grapefruit that is Europe. So why not take a cheap flight to Ukraine for the day? My thoughts exactly.

Here’s how to spend a perfect day in Lviv.

First: Find a Couchsurfing host. This is the first step to any good stay anywhere. My host was a young man starting out in a consultancy firm while running his own NGO on the side. Rather than move out to Germany or elsewhere, which he could easily do with his credentials, he runs an NGO that supports business growth and internship opportunities in Lviv. Rather than move out and make a life for himself elsewhere, he wants to make his city and country a better place for everybody. Well done.

I arrived pretty late into Lviv and didn’t have enough time to walk around, but my host took me back to his Soviet-era flat that hasn’t been renovated since Gorbachev held office. He reveled in my lack of knowledge of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict and took full responsibility of learning me a few lessons on the war going on between the two countries. What really surprised me was how he would talk about Europe. It wasn’t so different from how a small-town Minnesotan would describe Paris as a site of exotic allure. For him, Europe is just as difficult, if not more difficult, than it is for someone like me from a whole other continent. Even though Lviv is pretty much closer to Warsaw than Kyiv, Europe is just as off-limits.

Lviv has been pushed back and forth between this border between Eastern pariah and Western extravagance for quite a while. Lviv has seen rulers from Mongols to Poles to Habsburgs to the Soviets. This resulting confusion of identity has lead to a markable feeling of Europeanness over Eastern-ness. The city feels a lot more like Krakow or Poznan in neighboring Poland than a city one would attribute to Moscow or Minsk.

My host told me that even today, tourists that cannot get a visa into Europe come to Lviv to ‘Visit Europe’. I can see why with cookie coated and sugar-glazed grandiose buildings akin to those Baroque delights of Vienna and Krakow.

Before venturing out into a deep dive of the narrow streets of Lviv, I suggest stopping in Virmenka coffeehouse for a brew from “the first coffeehouse in Europe”. As the story goes, a cossack was hired by the Ottomans to do some dirty deeds. When he was done, the Ottomans paid him in bags of black caffeinated beans rather than gold. These days, that’d be like writing code for a startup and being compensated in cocaine. He came back to his native Lviv and started up a shop, where they still make thick syrupy coffee in hot sand as the Ottomans have for centuries. I’m not even exaggerating when I say it’s one of the best goddamn coffees I’ve ever had in my life. Mustached hipsters from Brooklyn to Melbourne take note: these guys make your belabored and contrived pour-overs look like lukewarm diarrhea in a paper cup.

If one gets hungry in the city, I recommend Chas Poisty for an authentic Polish Milk Bar style buffet for cheap and hearty eats. After a sufficient caffeine and borscht fix, a wander around the city is the most excellent way to spend a day. There is a wealth of beautiful churches to explore, but I would recommend heading up to the top of castle hill for a birds-eye view. I was just lucky enough to have arrived when a portrait artist was blasting “Final Countdown” so I could have my 80’s montage moment on top of a Ukrainian hill.

Now let’s get to the fun stuff: Drinks. Let’s be honest, what else is there to do in December other than get your drink on? Especially out in the East.

Stop 1: the Drunk Cherry for a glass of fortified hot drunkenness in a cup to warm and mummify you. This pretty much did me in.

Stop 2: Beer Theater for a frothy mug of “Obama”, their take on an American Porter.

Stop 3: Try to find a Soviet bar where the bouncer asks for the secret password to which you shout “Slava Ukraini” (Long Live Ukraine) and enter with a warming shot. Knock on some random door, only to have an old mustached man in a bathrobe come to answer the door interrupted from dropping potato skins into a cage containing a drugged white rabbit. He lets you in any way, and you enter into a restaurant that has made you lose your entire sense of reality.

Stop 4: Realize that the bar with the “Slava Ukraini” password is downstairs, knock on the door and shout patriotic slang to a man with a gun who gives you a shot and enter into the decrepit touristy underbelly of an idealistic yet cozy bar. Order delicious beers, borscht, and Salo (half a pigs worth of fat served on fresh bread with onions).

Final stop: Meet up with your couchsurfer, who offers you a glass of tea while you play with his two-month-old kitten before drifting off into a beautiful slumber.

Lviv has been a great starting point on my long haul month of December adventures. The next month will involve a lot of stops that will make you, my dear lovely readers, most likely say “Huh? Why?” and to that, I say:

For the Ramble!
The Bremen Weekend Break

November 1, 2019

What’s become of this wretched blog site?

I came here with a mission: detail how one can effectively experience a new culture in the time-frame of a mere weekend. For my readers to become Weekend Ramblers, and seize their slow hours of weekend rejuvenation with adventure and jubilation.

Yet here I am, detailing wordy backpacking exploits across Sri Lanka, Georgia, and Morocco. I’ve rambled too much and lost track of the weekend.

So join me on a sleep-deprived genuine ramble of a two-day adventure to Germany’s third city-state, Bremen.

Thursday night, a time reserved for drunken students or working adults trying to pinch off the second to last day of the week. For me and Ivana of Black Hummus Diaries, this Thursday night meant getting on a sleepy €20 FlixBus to Hamburg. Armed with a facemask and a thermos full of red wine, we were ready to nap all the way to Bremen.

For several hours, we napped more than slept, hunched into our tight chairs dosed by cheap Chilean wine. We alighted in Hamburg to switch busses at five in the morning, sleepy-eyed and losing hope of any real rest.

Hamburg is a big party city, which luckily means that there are places open at this ridiculous hour. We huddled into a Turkish kebab shop, where the workers were sleepy but aware from a full night of dealing with drunkards. There we sat drinking tea, groggy faced and killing an hour before our bus to Bremen arrived.

Turkish women sat eating soup preparing for their day near pale drunk Germans in their lederhosen fresh from Oktoberfest, nursing girthy kebabs that oozed viscous tahini down their swollen knuckles. Then there was us, cold and sipping thick black tea.

Fighting premature slumber, we packed ourselves into the bus to Bremen. Napping once more, we awoke in the bankrupt but beautiful Bremen; home of Hanseatic League architecture, the Beck’s Brewery, and animal street musicians.

There’s something unique about wandering around cities at horrendously early hours of the day. The town is still sleeping, and the streets are only populated by like-minded early birds looking to snatch something more tangible than a worm. The old town of Bremen is incredibly compact, with the new parts of the city stretching along the bank of the Weser river. The old town is stylized like any other Hanseatic League city, like Copenhagen, Gdańsk, or Amsterdam. They all have the kind of graham-cracker cookie meets rainy depressing city architecture that really appeals to me.

What started as a low hanging drizzle turned into a sticky rain that covered the entirety of the city. We escaped into the library, where Ivana had some meetings for work while I napped like a grandpa in a large armchair in the corner. I’m not sure how I expected to wander a city with a night of bus napping, but with each year this kind of rambling gets more and more difficult. Like a mute lion, I yawn big and mark my territory: the kingdom of sleepiness. Yet, we soldier on.

After my nap and Ivana’s business calls, we went back out into the rain to wander Viertel, the more modern and hip part of the city. Every city has a once-ghetto now hipster-gentrified part of the city, and Viertel serves as that side of Bremen. Bremen is famous for having houses with glass-covered porticoes as entrances, an ensemble that should have been repeated elsewhere in the world. Buildings are quaint and adorable, now covered in thick graffiti tattoos. Drugs are sold on the street while mustached hipsters pass in and out of organic markets or wood-clad cafes. We wander a while, grabbing a falafel before heading to the home of our couchsurfer. Our couchsurfer, larger than life, offers us tea from herbs picked by his mother in their mountain house in the rural countryside. That’s romantic as shit, and I’m sold.

I always forget to get permission from my couchsurfer’s to write about our experiences, so please don’t confuse my lack of acknowledgment of our host’s awesomeness as a disrespect. I merely just don’t want to share anything that they would not like encapsulated on the ethereal scroll of the internet.

The next day, we are blessed with sunshine and a warm autumn breeze. We head to the train station to rent bikes with our couchsurfer and head out for his favorite bike route north of the city and into the countryside.

A ride through Bürgerpark on the Northside of the city results in a maze of winding dirt felled paths, green expanses for beers and trees to get lost in. We pass by the petting zoo and keep heading North into our relatively unknown.

Outside of the city are the typical Schrebergartens, or little garden houses which city dwellers own for weekend drinking and gardening festivities. We stop near the houses for a sit on a bench along a canal for a bit of coffee from our thermos.

Onward we ventured, smiling in the sun and enjoying our last rays until the beginning of next spring. The countryside around Bremen makes one feel that they’ve escaped it all, with that oddly pleasing cow dung smell hanging over bucolic expanses. The countryside doesn’t differ much from that offered in the Netherlands or Denmark, but perhaps the attitude of the Germans is what makes Bremen a bit different. Especially in Germany, where I have received different feelings from people based on the city I was in. People in Berlin can be a bit forceful or fake, Hamburgers can be cold like the Danes, Leipziger’s can be complacent and a bit self-righteously hippy, but Bremer’s are calm and smiling. There isn’t a wealth of cultural activities to forgo in Bremen, but the atmosphere is laid back and the people certainly feel more welcoming than in other parts of Germany.

We make our final stop on our sunny bike tour to a dairy farm selling their own freshly made ice cream. Little blonde children scurry about while other people who rode out here on their sunny Saturday sit outside enjoying their tangy local creamy delights. Moments like this make me love the Couchsurfing community. How on Earth would I have ridden out into the fields of Bremen and gotten fresh ice cream had it not been for our amazing host?

After ice cream, we lazily headed back, trying to squeeze every last bit of sunshine out of the day before the clouds set in.

Our sleepy weekend adventure drew to an end, so we shared goodbyes with our Couchsurfing host who had guided us through the hills of Bremen. He had a party to go to, and we had an overnight bus to catch back to Aarhus.

But no overnight bus ride is devoid of stories. We were accompanied by several drunk Germans, one of which started canoodling with a sober woman sat minding her own business. He was intent on his dirty deeds, which resulted in one of the other drunk men reeling around in his carpet covered seat to slap the sloppy smile off his face.

We arrived in Hamburg around Midnight, and as anyone does in Hamburg, we hit the bars before our two a.m. bus to Aarhus. Strangely, most of the bars were closed aside from a bumping bar filled with Equatorial Guineans partying the night away sitting next to a quiet bar of dealers and alcoholics.

My inner Bukowski will always go for the latter.

Inside was a silent scene with two Eastern Europeans playing a gambling machine, several slovenly men sitting at the bar with their beer, and a poorly ageing Eastearn European woman with a wrinkling boob job, peach blonde hair, and long fake nails calling everyone “Mein Schatz” in her thick Eastern European German. She was running some sort of crazy business there, with shady folks coming in and leaving with different bags of whatever dust they desired. She knew we weren’t coming in for nose candy or tasty nugs, so we didn’t have the pleasure of being her “Schatzi’s”. She poured our beer into dusty plastic cups, a sign that this outstanding establishment had seen its share of greasy broken glass bar fights.

We saw evidence of this when someone randomly came in and picked a fight with one of the alcoholics at the bar. The alcoholic yelled and threw a barstool at the man, quickly putting an end to the scuffle. Several seconds later and the bar returned to its status of alcoholics drooling over their gambling machines and small bags being handed back and forth.

Once our beers were drained, we felt it was probably time to get out of there to catch our final bus back to Aarhus. We would arrive several hours later, giving me just enough time to think over Bremen.

When making this trip, I had preferred to venture to Rostock rather than Bremen. I was unsure what Bremen would even offer, but after going I now see that it is a city unlike the others I’ve seen in Germany. It is far more laid back and cozy, offering its inhabitants a comfortable and quiet life with just enough charm to keep it from being boring. It doesn’t have the sights of the other German major cities, but it has its own charm that makes it worth the journey.

Even though my bones are still creaking and my brain was delirious, the trip was worth the ramble with my weekend hours. Thank you for taking the time to read through this post, and I hope to be posting some more rambles soon enough. In the mean time, get out there and get rambling!
Hitching Portugal’s Armpit

October 5, 2019

Well, perhaps not the armpit. Some people really like this part of Portugal. Some people also like licking armpits.

I am neither of those people.

And I suppose an armpit in winter is far more curvy and elegant than it is in the summer. For me, this armpit was hot, sweaty, and reeking of rotten tomatoes.

You last left me in Porto, up North in Portugal. My goal was to get all the way down to the South East, past Castelo Branco and into the desert of Portugal. There, my long-time partner in hippy crime and co-thesis writer, Fine, was working on a seed farm. As both of our wanderlust filled lives see us on other sides of the planet at all times, I figured this may be the last time to see her until who knows when.

I arrived a bit late to the bus station in Porto, a hot and sweaty basement beneath an apartment building filled with tired backpackers. I expected there to be no line.

The queue was immense.

I missed the bus and figured, “fuck it, I’ll just hitchhike. Fine just hitchhiked here all the way from Lyon, I can hitchhike halfway across the country.” I checked up on hitchwiki, did my research, and headed out into the sticks on the border of Porto. There, I trudged through the heat with my backpack to a rest stop right off the highway. I climbed under a barbwire fence, cutting myself and risking fresh tetanus, and pitched myself among the slowly passing cars with a shiny thumb.

I sat…

And sat…

And nobody stopped for poor hippy Carter. I sat, smiling and waving and receiving no response for about an hour and a half. At one point, a man stopped on the other side of the lot and stared intently at me from the dark windows of his fine German automotive tuna. I noticed him and kept up my happy go lucky facade. He continued to stare, sitting in his car with his gaze unfazed for five minutes. I looked around me. Behind me were trees and a dumpster. Nothing worth staring at for five minutes. I crossed myself and prayed to the Hitchhiking Gods that I remain intact and not in that dumpster behind me missing my kidneys.

The man stepped out of the car. He was skinny, dressed quite fashionably in a nice shirt and designer glasses, and I must say quite handsome. He walked to the bathroom of the gas station, not taking his gaze off me as his thin legs strolled across the steaming pavement. He stayed for several minutes, exited, kicked around in the dirt sadly, then returned to his car to stare at me for ten more minutes. By this point, the sweat had reached the nether regions of my personal horizons.

He stepped out of his car and walked in my direction. “Towards the dumpster?” I thought. No, toward me.

“Bom Dia.” I said in my ‘confidence’ voice in his direction.

“Hello,” he said sheepishly, putting his hands in his pocket as he approached me. He stood at a good distance and did not seem intimidating at all. “Where are you going?” He said, taking a hand out of his pocket to wring the back of his neck as if he were feeling it for the first time.

“Castelo Branco, but Coimbra would be perfect.”

“Oh okay…” putting his hand back in his pocket. “I’m not going that far, I’m not going that far at all.” He pulled out his phone and showed me where he was headed on the map. Only the next town over from the gas station.

“Ah okay, no worries then. Do you maybe have any tips for hitchhiking in Portugal? It’s been a tough day.”

“No, no, I wouldn’t know anything about that.” He said, slumping down into his spine a bit. “This gas station though, it’s actually uh… a place for gay people… you know. To meet.”

“Oh! Okay…”

“Would you… would you be interested in any of that?”

“No, no, no, I’m okay,” I said with the half-assed laugh of an embarrassed high school girl. “But I mean, thank you for the offer, I’m very flattered.”

“Oh…no worries….” He turned away. He walked a bit forward, then turned back “…are you sure?”

“Yes, quite sure. Have a nice day!”

At this point, I decided peeing behind the dumpster may be the safest option.

After another hour or so of unsuccessful hitching, I admitted defeat and trudged through the all-encompassing heat back to the bus station. I begrudgingly threw my 20 Euros at the bus ticket lady and found myself on a bus straight to Castelo Branco. There I sat, wondering what life would be like if I were able to throw myself into a gas station bathroom with a random man and come out of it feeling stronger than I entered. My brain daydreamed all the gratuitous details accompanied by that thought, and I pondered over I would enjoy that even if I were gay. To each his own, my lovelies.

I arrived late to Castelo Branco, one of the largest cities in the South East of Portugal. This was the exact opposite of Porto. Absolutely no tourists, and absolutely no chance of a cool breeze. Bugs rang their songs thick in the steaming arid air, and I melted along the street in search of a hotel. I found a nice little inn, untouched since the 1960’s, with a damn good price (for a good reason). The owners seemed burdened by my presence, as they were just sitting down for dinner as I entered. The man got up and grabbed his cane, hobbling over to a computer that has gathered dust since 1997. “Leave before 9!” He shouted, handing me a greasy key.

The next morning, I went to the bus station to ask for a bus to Idanha-a-Nova, the town closest to Fine’s farm. “Today is a holiday, no buses.” The young man said from behind the glass window.

“But it’s Thursday!” I squealed.

“But it’s Portugal.” He said with an apologetic smirk.

I sat tight, drinking coffee and reading Paul Theroux’s The Great Railway Bazaar while Fine hitched over to guide me through. Before long, we were escaping the sun in a shady patch eating fresh figs and pumpkin seeds. Castelo Branco is excellent for the off-the-beaten-pather. It’s adorable, and there’s no one visiting. Perfection.

Fine and I headed to the road and put out our thumbs. No buses go directly towards the farm, so one either has to hitch or walk a good two hours. We stuck to it, through all the strange stares. An old man came walking past, mumbling in some unintelligible Portuguese dialect “You’ll never get a ride, never get a ride.”

We kept our spirits up, listening to cumbia and drinking some tereré (yerba mate with cold juice). Eventually, a man with a ponytail came riding his bicycle, asking with a smile where we were from. Fine smiled back and said Germany, and that she’s working on a farm.

“Oh! Does she work hard?” He asked me with a laugh. “This little girl?! She likes it hard doesn’t she!” He grunted in my direction, bending his arms upward while shifting his hips back and forth along the seat of his bicycle as if he were shining it with his ass and dilapidated testicles. I gave him a long hard look and decided that he didn’t much deserve an answer. He looked back to Fine and mumbled some other nonsense before riding off. Hitchhiking is never a boring experience.

Eventually, a pair of priests were able to drive us up to the main road. They were incredibly warm, and somehow Protestant rather than Catholic priests. They dropped us off on the turn in to the main road and waved a holy goodbye. It was only about twenty minutes before a beige and beaten up minivan pulled over. At its helm, a middle-aged woman with huge dragonfly-like sunglasses. “I do reiki and energy work,” She told us. Fine was in hippy heaven.

She recounted the tale of how she came here with her exhusband, just passing by on vacation. When driving past Castelo Branco, a voice told her “You must move here!” She said she listened because all her life the voices in her head told her the truth. Fine said “Go on,” while I made sure the doors were unlocked.

She was nice enough to take us directly to the farm, which saved us a good hour of walking. She was incredibly kind, and I hope that the voices in her head give her peace. We were home, and I got about familiarizing myself with the spot.

Fine was working on an Organic seed farm and was somehow the only person living on the farm. All the owners and workers either lived in Castelo Branco or another nearby city, giving Fine the farm to herself aside from the gigantic behemoth of a horse dog, Rudolfo (His actual name is Adolfo, but Fine is German so she renamed him).

No kidding, this dog is two meters long if not more. I have never been so close to such a beast. Any fear of theft immediately goes out the window with a dog like this, but he appeared to be too much of a sweetheart to take anything down.

I figured I couldn’t live for free on the farm without working on it, so the next day we were up early at 5 o’whatever clock to hit the fields. The seed farm utilizes nature, specifically natural fermentation. Apparently letting the seeds rot a bit gives them an extra layer of protection. For this, they wait for their produce to go bad before picking and isolating the seeds. For us, that meant an entire day of picking boiling rotten tomatoes in 40-degree heat. I would grab a tomato, and it would explode a bucket of boiling noxious goop across my pants and hands. At one point, I was carrying two boxes of rotten tomatoes when the box broke under the weight of goo. In the dust laid a mound of melting tomatoes, and the local workers laughed their sun-tanned faces off while I scooped up the biohazard with my sore hands. “Farmings hard work!” One hollered at me.

The day of picking ended, and I could not have been happier. Fine’s coworker, a lovely Dutch woman, Marit, invited us to join her Friday routine of going to the lake for a beer. We joined, sitting in a shaded encampment with tanned Portuguese listening to horrendously catchy techno music. Marit says she hates working, and realized that after taxes she only needs to earn 1000 Euros to live for a year. So she’ll work until she’s earned those Euros, about two or three months, then she packs up and puts her thumb out in any direction seeing where she may end up. Pretty romantic shit. She’s the kind of freak you don’t see often, and I like it. She invites us to stay at her place in Idanha-a-Nova, where she drops us off and sets us loose.

The town doesn’t have much to offer but some very untrusting cats.

Marit told of falafel’s in one specific restaurant, and we headed straight there. The bar took a while to find, and when we got there we noticed a large wooden ring surround the nearby square. The floor was covered in sand, and we were perplexed to say the least. “Maybe they sell cows and sheep here,” I thought, reminiscing of the stock show back in Denver. But no answer could be found. We sat for a falafel, which came as four individual and lonely falafel chunks on a plate with half a cob of half grilled corn. We were upset and walked home defeated, having expected a lush juicy falafel wrap bursting with fresh vegetables. We ran into Marit who was enjoying a beer only a few bars down. We sat and opened some beers, enjoying the warm summer night air.

People began to gather in the square around the wooden fence, and the lights began to fade. In the middle of one of Marit’s stories, a sound of thunder erupted from behind me. I turned and saw a black flash screaming across the center of the fenced off ring, kicking up sand angrily as it charged moving humans. The bull taunting had begun.

We were all a bit disgusted, but I had to grab some photos. I went up, and got just a little too close and almost lost my grandchildren by the tip of a bull’s horn. It was a young bull, but terrifying no less. We stayed for a while, then grew tired after they tied the bull up and shoved it back in the truck to receive an encouragement shock from a long prod. When the bull exited the truck, mouth foaming with blind anger, we decided we had seen enough.

The next day, we woke and again stuck out our thumbs. The goal of the day was to end up in Monsanto, a famous little rock town pretty close to Idanha-a-Nova. After a good two hours, a nice hippy woman listening to African music picked us up and took us to the main road. There, we waited only a few minutes before a mother and daughter from Lisbon picked us up. They were in visiting family and were nice enough to take us to the next main junction. There we stocked up on bread and picnic goodies, and waited about five minutes before an old beater pulled up.

I shirtless man sat in the front seat with a younger man driving. Both had their own individual joints in their hands. “Where ya goin?” the shirtless one said in a thick British accent.

We hopped in the back, next to a young toddler strapped into his baby seat with his arms up behind his head as if he were sun tanning on a Caribbean beach. We drove along, both of the Brits smoking their joints slowly. They kept having to relight them, which made driving a challenge, but they managed. They worked on a farm nearby and had been living in Portugal for over a decade. They drove us straight to the town next to Monsanto and dropped us off right next to a local Saturday market for us to pick up additional picnic olives and fruits.

Monsanto is a cute town, where the old meets the new. This is perhaps the main tourist destination of the region, but it was still relatively easy to get around. The town is a UNESCO site built on a hill, with houses built around the rocks to create a calm feeling filled with solitude. On the top of the rock is a castle, much like those we saw in Sri Lanka. This castle was built by the templars and has stood the test of time impressively. We lingered a while, steaming in the sun for a bit too long, before heading back to the main road to get our thumbs sore again.

A van pulled up, filled with a ceaselessly barking dog and two Spaniards. They took us pretty far, up to the main road before dropping us off. The next ride was a man who seemed he had nothing better to do with his life. He was a telecom salesman from Porto, in town to visit family. He was obviously melting and spent the entire ride playing with the A/C. His skin glowed with the sheen of a layer of moisture, giving him the look of an alien that was still getting used to human weather. He drove with his left hand while his shining right hand hovered in front of the mouth of the A/C, turning it back and forth as one would warm their hands by a fire. He had nothing better to do and drove us straight back to the farm.

The night in the middle of nowhere is quiet and lonely, but the stars are beautiful and Fine and I passed time telling stories and reading to each other. The next morning, we woke up early to get me to the main road. We decided to take Rudolfo, who had been chained for about a week without a walk (not our idea), along for the journey. We walked for an hour in the morning chill, enjoying the sunrise over blueberry plantations and sandy hills. When we reached the road, Fine tied Rudolfo up near a quiet road so she could say goodbye. He was none too pleased and barked his low growl nonstop fearing abandonment even though we were only a few meters away. We decided it was best if Fine go back and not wait with me for Rudolfo’s sake, but it was too late and Rudolfo had reverted to defense mode. He lashed out, biting us with teeth as long as my fingers when we tried to untie him. Gigantic barking and biting dogs scare me more than most things, and Rudolfo’s rage didn’t appear to have an end in sight. At some point, I grew tired and shouted “No!” in my best pack-leader voice, and that someone calmed him down enough for us to untie him. Fine left with the dog twice her size, a dog who was able to lift her by placing his head between her legs and pulling up, and I waited in this oh so familiar spot with my sore thumb.

A while passed, and after a couple took me to the main road I ended up waiting about 3 hours for a ride. Once I got it, the drivers, some hay farmers, took me directly to Castelo Branco to catch my bus. It was time to leave this corner of Portugal with men as tanned, wrinkled, and skinny as the cigarillos they gnawed in their gums. It was time to head back north to meet up with my adventure partner of 2018, Black Hummus Diaries, for the final leg of my Portuguese adventure.