I get a whiff of Fremantle about this part of Lisbon. Maybe the gulls, the salt air, the promenading couples, the rows of coffee shops and people on the make. The sun sets over the sea, too.
There’s a steady parade of cruise ships. Big, big ones, lights afire like a toppled skyscraper. A new one every day. I got talking with a taxi driver about them. He said they didn’t do much for the locals. People ate on board, caught big buses, and only ventured out on organised tours. He couldn’t remember if he’d ever had a passenger from a cruise ship.
I’m supposed to love Lisbon, but I don’t. It’s disquieting. Locals don’t look you in the eye much. Alfama foreigners are like the street dogs in Bali. Part of the scenery, but not part of the scene.
Someone sold my Amsterdam umbrella today. I plonked it in the bucket outside a little shop and within a minute, the owner’s offsider had done a deal with a passer-by who took a fancy to it. I watched it unfold out of the corner of my eye, and ran outside with an armful of bread and water trying to think of any words in Portuguese I could use to hail the woman who’d paid a Euro for my much needed shelter. I got as far as olá (hello) and obrigado (thank you), and then I had nothing. When I raised my voice a bit, in good, angry, culturally insensitive tourist manner, it prompted the seller to go after her. I got my umbrella back, but spent the next few hours casting subliminal aspersions.
I’ve taken to inhabiting a waterfront bar. They offer local snacks and Super Bock on tap. Nobody strikes up conversation, but there’s a kind of “this family owns a bar” pageant unfolding. I’m invisible to it, which isn’t such a bad thing. There’s a barmaid vaping by the door as I write this. Most of Europe seems to be vaping. I’ll bet there’s an Apple iVaper in front of focus groups right now.
Fact is, this is a poor place, and there’s a whole lot of mutual but not equal exploitation going on. Alfama residents carve out misshapen slices of their ancient homes, and hand them over to the BnB agents. The very pleasant woman in charge of my little dungeon manages more than 20 just like it. Tourists in denial about being a tourist rent these places, enjoying the clamber up rugged stone stairs that have tortured ten thousand old women. (The men smoke so much, they never get old.)
It’s easy to sound ungracious about this. There are probably far worse places for ripping off the locals. Bali comes to mind. But the tote-bag toting Westerners who tick Lisbon off their must-go list have a whole lot more in common with the come-and-gone-in-24-hours cruise ship zombies than the family of six sleeping in one small Alfama bedroom so that people like me can pretend we’re citizens of the world.
Might be time to go home.