Saint Anthony is the patron saint of Lisbon. He is also the patron saint of Padua, where they built a huge cathedral in his honor. Here he is celebrated with street parties and grilled sardine dinners on June 13, his feast day. He was born here on 15 August 1195. Like St. Francis, he was born into a rich family and abandoned the good life for a life as a mendicant Franciscan friar. He actually met Francis in Italy and they got on well together, Francis asking him to be a teacher to the friars who entered the orders and were not all that well schooled in the scriptures.
Anthony’s story is well-known to many people and you can find out more about him from various sources, all of them more knowledgeable than I am about his life and his preaching and his death. His death, by the way, was probably related to his being poisoned by ergot, that nasty little fungus that grows on grains of different types. Not only can it make you very ill and cause hallucinations, it can also cause your blood vessels to burst and necessitate limb amputation. He died on his way back to Padua after allegedly recovering from ergot poisoning.
I’m in Lisbon now. This is the fourth day here. My buddy Peter and I drove for 7 days through Germany, France and Spain to get here. Two old men on an Odyssey, using GoPros and cell phones to gather material for a film that will probably take at least until Easter to find a form that can be viewed by normal human beings.
Besides us two crazies talking and showing interesting events and views of the various cities we stopped in along the way, there is also a meta-level story about violin-makers in the mix. Peter’s grandfather was a master violin-maker who lived in Münster from the late 1890s until 1956, when he died. We explored his story in a short film that we made with Peter’s wife. She plays violin, cello and bass guitar. In the little film we made, she plays one of Peter’s grandfather’s violins.
In Orléans we met a master violin-maker and filmed in his shop, his workbench, etc. In Vitoria Gasteiz, we met another violin-maker, a Ukrainian who has lived in Holland and the USA and now set up his workplace in that little Basque city in Spain.
I shall not reveal here why exactly we are following the story of violin-makers, but suffice it to say that it is for a good reason that goes beyond Peter’s grandfather.
The beauty of this journey so far is that I have been able to get reasonably far away from the unfolding fascistization of the USA. I’m busy absorbing the new pictures coming to my eyes from the fresh environment around me. The chance encounters with other people have been revealing as well—a German lady from Mainz that we met while walking around the wall that protects Ciudad Rodrigo told us she has been on the road, alone in her VW bus, since October, taking the southern route through France and Spain to Lisbon, and then the northern route back home to Germany.
Yesterday, on the tram going to the Baixa, I met a wonderful British woman. I heard her talking with her friend and asked her: “Are you British?” She answered yes, and then I asked her: “Do you know Henry Fielding?” She exploded into a smile and said: “He’s here in the English cemetery!” And from that moment on we were in conversation about literature and Lisbon. She studied literature then got smart and became an accountant in London.
I studied literature and never got smart enough to know how to juggle money properly. I have always depended on my luck. However, I have been lucky enough to survive into old age. In fact my first bit of luck came after I arrived here, in Lisbon, in 1981. I found a publisher who was interested in some of my songs and one of them was chosen for an up-and-coming young female singer, Lara Li. My music was expertly arranged, lyrics were added in Portuguese, fantastic musicians played, and hey presto, a few months later my song was #1 in the Portuguese charts.
Lots of luck, but not much money! Portugal is not large and Escudos are not dollars.
It was enough to keep me alive for a while, along with my other job, which was ghosting a book for a Syrian millionaire who wanted to court the big money in Saudi Arabia. Maybe the book I wrote for him was a good investment. I never got to find out. He paid me chapter by chapter (on my insistence—the one smart money thing I managed to do) and with the money I got and some good advice from a musician, I eventually left Lisbon for Hamburg and, within a year or so after my arrival, another #1 record, but this time as a lyricist. More money, yes, but not much fame.
Still, here I am, after all these years, back at the place where Lakshmi first smiled on me, with new (rather old) eyes in a city that has changed outwardly—the harbor and the highways, but where the old buildings—some palatial, others simple—fill the Baixa and Chiado with the character and romance of the old Lisbon that I knew, the Lisbon that was rebuilt from the rubble of the big earthquake in 1755 by the Marquis de Pombal.
I’m going to be here until the week after the new year begins, then we’ll be on a 7-day road trip back to Hamburg—stopping in different cities along the way, not the same ones as our journey here.
My darling wife was not very enthusiastic at first when I proposed this journey because she though that two old men on the road could be a recipe for disaster. Peter’s wife felt the same way. Then we presented our plan and told them that we’d be gone for about a month. “A month?” my wife raised her eyebrows, her blue eyes getting bigger. “Yes,” I said, “a month.” She gave me a radiant smile and said: “OK. Great! A whole month!”
Peter’s wife eventually came to the same conclusion as my wife with, I imagine, the same thought flashing through her brain: “These old f**ks are going to be out of my hair for a whole month, yippee!”
One of the motivating factors for me, besides the film project and the writing that comes along with it, the songs, is not having to deal with the Christmas thing and the New Year’s thing, both so restrictive because they are obligatory if you are around family during the days of festivity. Peter is closer to his family. This is his first Christmas and New Year’s without family around. He would like to celebrate on the 24th, the German Holy Evening when Christmas is celebrated, so we plan to go to a good restaurant: the Casa do Alentejo in the Baixa. We went there yesterday and had some sweet potato croquettes and red wine in the Taverna downstairs. I hope we will be able to get into the restaurant on the 24th.
Peter is not very adept when it comes to elements now common in our modern electronic society. His cell phone is mostly off. He has to enter his pin code each time he wants to have a look at something on it. Outside of Germany he doesn’t have roaming and is dependent on the WiFi of the hotel or the place where we are staying. He has no credit cards, only his bank card, which is useless outside of Germany, and he prefers to pay for everything with cash.
Cash is OK. I like it too. But I have credit cards that have saved us both in various situations. And my phone has roaming, so I am always available and can send messages from anywhere. The thing is that modern European providers enable WiFi connection and phoning over WiFi, which means I can talk to anyone over WhatsApp or Threema. Actual phoning is for emergency services only. I use Maps services to find places and trams and where to walk to and how far away things might be. I’m certainly not a fan of the Tech Bros and their quest to own the world, but the services they offer are convenient.
The apartment we’re staying in is tiny. It is normally occupied by my youngest stepson and his girlfriend, both of them studying in Lisbon for their Masters. After seeing the apartment, I called him and said: “If you guys can survive two years here together in this tiny apartment, you’ll be together for life!” He said they were unsure at first how they could do it, but in these their first six months they are getting along and finding ways to cope with the lack of personal space.
They probably spend much time outside, at university and with friends—he is on a field hockey team—and sleep here and maybe eat here to save money.
I’m looking forward to my time back in Lisbon, to getting strong legs again, maybe losing a little weight, and gathering more material for the film and for whatever else might come out of this Odyssey.
