Note: The following was originally written in August 2023. But the events took place in June 2023.

Over 30,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean, the midnight blue skies slowly fade into a dawning lavender haze. Beginning its descent, the plane banked into a blanket of cotton-candied clouds. In that moment, my personal window into a Renaissance-painted Heaven evaporated before my very eyes.

In its place, red terracotta roofs along an oceanic coastline rose up to greet me. These were the type of coastline neighborhoods that one envisions when daydreaming of Europe. Little specks of cars and pedestrians navigated the interconnected street grids below. This awakening hustle and bustle of Lisbon offered my first impression of how modern life seamlessly integrates with ancient history in an European capital.

A few hours later, I was walking through a small town in the Portuguese countryside. The midday sun was hot, but the air was dry. Lemon trees and cacti adorned the fenced-in lawns of Samora Correia. Homes and apartments alike left their windows cast open, inviting a passing breeze inside.

A strobe light flashes urgently from a posted speed monitor, catching my eye as a four-door sedan cruises by just a little too fast. With a brief squeal of protest, the sedan’s tires careened to a hard – but obedient – stop. It appears that in Portugal, one’s speeding tendencies can automatically trigger stop lights to turn red.

On an adjacent street corner beyond the intersection, a mounted statue commemorates a prestigious, female bullfighter from this proud, Portuguese town. Aged over decades or maybe even centuries, its copper tone has long-since turned into a faint and pale green. It was as though the statue itself embodied Europe’s incontrovertible truth:

While time and life inevitably marches on – history is forever.

I snapped a few photos before continuing my walk along these brick-laden sidewalks. By my side, Tommy Zeigler pointed out and explained the various buildings and landmarks in his adopted community of two-plus years. 

Up ahead was the city council building.

To the right, a local pharmacy marked with a regionally-recognized green cross.

To the left, empty corrals waiting for the next round of occupants for the seasonal bullfights.

I paused to let my mind wander. I imagined the restless anticipation, both within these pens and along these streets, during the Easter bullfighting season. The idea of bullfighting brings to mind a quote from one of my favorite Ernest Hemingway novels:

“Nobody ever lives their life all the way up, except bull-fighters.”

The Sun also rises

Tommy and I continued down a side street into an empty, brick-road plaza. While void of life at this very moment, one could easily picture crowds packed along the streets to see the racing beasts, clinging to door frames and hanging from the windows as the bulls go dashing violently by. 

A woman appears on the front stoop of her house on the plaza’s corner. She leans forward on the iron railing, curiously observing this foreigner wandering her streets with a camera in-hand. 

A bell tolls in the distance. We turn the next street corner, where its source, a small cathedral, appears in another town square. A few congregants are assembled outside its doors, awaiting the start of an afternoon service.

I suppose I should take a moment to explain what I’m doing in this small town of the Portuguese countryside.

Tommy is an old friend from high school. Our friendship was one of those that developed quickly and organically during those particularly formative years of your life that is high school. But as is oftentimes the case, those very friendships sometimes fall by the wayside when the rest of your life gets on living.

So when Tommy picked me up from the Lisbon airport earlier that morning, it marked the first time I saw him – and his then-fiancee, now-wife Courtney – at my going-away party before I left for the Peace Corps six years ago.

I missed their wedding. It took place a few short weeks after I embarked on my own adventure living in a foreign country. My personal journey began with seven weeks in a rural community on the Eastern Caribbean island of St. Lucia, before another two years living and working in Grenada as a literacy teacher.

Now, Tommy and Courtney live in this Portuguese town of Samora Correia, about a 45-minute drive northeast of Lisbon. I had been following their journey over the years, including the birth of their two young sons, through an email newsletter that Courtney runs to update their friends and family of their experience. 

The previous summer of 2022, I had gone back to Grenada for a friend’s wedding. At the time, as I prepared for my return flight to America, the airline attendant announced flight vouchers for volunteers willing to give up their seat.

But there was a catch. The attendants were only looking for one volunteer. So between myself and another wedding guest – the fiancé of another Peace Corps friend – we played the highest stakes game of “rock, paper, scissors,” I may have ever played.

Let’s just say later that night, I enjoyed an extra night on the sandy shores of Grand Anse beach with a new flight voucher in-hand. My originally scheduled flight returned to America without me. 

So a few months later, in the fall of 2022, I called up Tommy for the first time in years. He and Courtney had moved to Portugal a year or two before. With a green light given to visit, I promptly used my voucher to book a flight to Portugal for the following June. 

The subsequent eight months clipped by surprisingly fast, as the Portugal trip I had long anticipated had finally come to fruition. But now that I was finally here, I’ll admit that something seemed a little off.

The streets were quiet.

Aside from the occasional pedestrian or passing vehicle, it was almost as if the whole community were deserted. 

This initial impression was reinforced after we arrived at a local park. The playground seemed abandoned. We strolled the brick path in between the green carpet of courtyard grass.

I followed Tommy to an entryway that opened up onto the banks of a river. We continued down a dusty, trodden path along the river until we came upon a park bench. We took a seat and considered the landscape before us.

The river trickled slowly by, not in any real hurry to go anywhere fast. Rather, it seemed quite content letting the passage of time go by. The river’s current carried with it a sense of confidence that only comes when you know reaching your destination is simply an inevitability.

It was just a matter of time.

Beyond the river, despite what one might perceive as an apparent contrast, the scenery itself embodied this intertwined relationship between Mother Nature and Father Time.

The riverbanks spilled into a canvas of windblown grassy meadows, where cattle leisurely grazed – a glimpse into a living past. 

On the horizon line, meanwhile, wind turbines churned from their watchful perch atop rolling mountains – a glimpse into a destined future.

But now, we began retracing our steps along the path and back through the park. Only this time, there was a clear and evident shift: the once-abandoned playground had suddenly come to life.

A few children chased each other around around the swings and down the slides, giggling and laughing every step of the way. Leave it to the sound of a child’s laughter to make any hardened heart smile. Maybe this playground – and this community – isn’t void of life, after all.

Walking back through town, we stepped into a cafe for another espresso. Admittedly, it was my third of the day. I had slept very little on my flight from Philadelphia to Lisbon, maybe 45 minutes’ worth at best, and in mostly fits and starts at that, during the seven-hour-long flight.

We walked into the cafe.

“Bon día,” Tommy said, greeting the baristas as we entered. 

“Bon día,” I repeated.

The baristas greeted us in response, and prepared our espressos.

We settled into a couple of iron seat-backed chairs outside the cafe. Steam spiraled off the top of our ceramic cup and saucers. So we took our time and sipped our caffeinated drinks delicately, while continuing our conversation on Portuguese customs, culture, history, and tradition. 

The streets were no longer quiet. A handful of cars and trucks rumbled by and honked as they frustratingly became mired in traffic. Pedestrians paced the sidewalks. Cyclists and motorbikes careened down the road, weaving fearlessly in and out of the traffic. 

“Where did all these people come from?” I asked Tommy.

“Siesta,” he replied with a laugh.

Grounded in Roman-origins, Portugal likely picked up on this mid-afternoon cultural phenomenon from its Spanish neighbor. The practice originally gained prevalence in a post civil-war Spain, when the working day was split into morning and late afternoon parts.

The purpose behind the midday break was two-fold: many Spaniards had to work multiple jobs in the post-Civil War era, and also to earmark time to eat and rest during the hottest part of the day. Thus, the tradition of an afternoon siesta was born.

It appears, then, that the afternoon siesta in this small, countryside town of Samora Correia was over. The streets were now teeming with life, a remarkable shift in the community’s once-absent personality. 

I smiled softly. The afternoon siesta served as a friendly reminder of the varying traditions across countries and cultures. Certainly, there are trade-offs. Midday siestas often result in dinner times as late as 9:00 p.m. – as I would soon learn over the course of my next several days in Portugal. 

But that’s not to say a leisurely break during the middle of the day wouldn’t be such a bad thing, either, if it was universally observed across the world.

Before this walk around town, in fact, we observed our own lunchtime siesta at Tommy’s house. While our meal was more American in nature – burgers and a salad – we were joined by a Ukrainian gentleman by the name of Dima, who was contracted to paint their house. His work ethic was as methodical as it was pointed, a conductor leading his orchestra of purple and white paints as he danced across the scaffolding. His dabs and strokes thoroughly coated the coarse exterior of their concrete-walled home. 

Tommy had invited Dima to join our siesta, complete with a beer or two and even a post-lunch espresso (at the time, my second of the day). Sweating profusely from the bearing Portuguese sun and covered in speckles of paint, Dima gestured widely, but spoke softly. There was a glimmer in his eye as he spoke of his family, and the joy he has in having them here in Portugal.

He had moved to Portugal by himself over five years ago, finding work through a local Ukrainian pastor in Samora Correia. Eventually, he saved enough money to bring his wife and children with him. Gratefully, he said, all this occurred before the Russian invasion of his home country in 2022.

But our siesta conversations largely surrounded lighter topics, from cultural discussions to the antics of his growing children. Dima’s Portuguese was poor at best, mine non-existent. Meanwhile, Tommy and Courtney are just about fluent, although English naturally remains their strongest language. So what resulted around this table was a loosely-formed game of telephone. 

Dima would share his story, gesturing and using the context clues of his limited Portuguese for Tommy to decipher to the group. On several occasions, I would ask Dima a question in response, which required communicating with Tommy in English so he could translate my question into a Portuguese phrasing that Dima could understand.

In spite of this circle of struggle and roundabout conversation, laughs floated around the table. Before long, Dima left to resume his work and Tommy and I embarked on our walk. 

Now, Tommy and I are returning home from that very same walk. This time, with another dose of caffeine coursing through our veins. 

Later that evening, we went out to a local restaurant for dinner. Our table quickly became full. With glasses of wine and a spread of olives, cheese, bread, and dipping oil, there was barely enough room for the slabs of meat hanging from a skewer. But that didn’t stop us. Embracing the comfort of a full meal, we paid the bill and climbed into the Ziegler family minivan for the short drive home.

Suddenly, for me, fatigue set in like a drop of a hat. The jet lag amounted to what was essentially 36 straight hours awake. All that time and energy spent, despite the best efforts of the three consumed espressos, had finally caught up with me.

And it hit hard.

While my mind and spirit desperately wanted to carry on, my body was telling me to shut it down. So I leaned my head against the window pane of the passenger seat and my eyes drifted to a close.

“Mooooo, cow!” little Tychicus, Tommy and Courtney’s first-born son called from the backseat.

“Oh, wow! And Tommy, look at the horses! Let’s pull over!” Courtney called from her own spot between the two car seats.

Stirred awake, I rubbed my eyes and summoned the last bit of energy I could muster. Today, I still get goosebumps when I remember taking in what was arguably one of the most poetic scenes I have ever seen.

A large horse stood behind a thin, barbed wire fence. It was peering over the fence, just a few short feet away from us. Its body was a fading gray, almost white, with brown spots speckling its side. Behind it, the setting sun’s orange-hued glow cut across its mane, its long and thin hairs rustling in the gently passing wind.

Behind the horse – a river. Beyond the river – a meadow filled with more grazing cattle. Beyond the meadow – a horizon line of wind turbines on a distant mountainside.

“What a beautiful country,” I thought to myself, before once again drifting off to sleep.

A whole, beautiful country. Rich in history. Full of life. Steeped in tradition and an irresistible invitation to embrace all the lessons it had to offer.

But not until after a brief siesta in Samora Correia.

Cheers!