The day I arrived in Lisbon, its streets were choking with stampede-level crowds. My first instinct was to nail it down on the usual suspects — group tourists, deposited by cruise ships. Upon closer inspection, I realised these were mostly millennials — some were dressed in denims and buttoned-down shirts, with the characteristic nonchalance that has come to be associated with tech-nerds, while some were in crisp, dark coloured suits. But everyone had a laminated ID hanging around their necks, which would perhaps make it easy to find their way to their crowd, if lost.
Then it dawned on me. The Web Summit, an annual technology conference that attracts the likes of Elon Musk, Al Gore, Stephen Hawking and U2 frontman Bono as speakers, was on.
Over a boisterous networking dinner, I met a start-up owner who claimed her business was “the first online meeting point between who’s looking for a lost item and who’s found it.” Another business owner said his start-up aggregates ideas that supposedly “formalises the front end of your innovation process by providing your users with a customised innovation platform.” No kidding, I took that from his website, verbatim. If you don’t own a start-up, you’re simply a real estate agent from Salt Lake City or a coder from London.
Even away from the confines of the conference, the city fosters an unmissable entrepreneurial spirit. Over the course of a week, I met a virologist-turned-artisanal-gelato-maker, a bartender who started a poké bar and a young man partnering with a chain of cafés specialising in breakfast bowls.
The miradouro (vantage points of the city which open up to panoramas of Lisbon’s famous tiled roof buildings, framed by the river Tagus), ancient trams rattling their way through the cities, an unassumingly friendly populace and the fresh seafood have served well for Lisbon’s reputation as the most tourist friendly and affordable city in Europe. With the annual web summit, Lisbon’s transformation as the prominent start-up city in Europe would also be complete.
Earlier, Portugal used to be bunched together with the block of eurozone nations referred to by the acronym PIGS — Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain, a not-so-slant nod to their flailing economies. Now, business magazines are writing about Portugal’s “economic resurgence,” just as their travel pages are filling with stories from far flung corners of the country.
Housing crisis
But the onslaught of tourism has also brought about a housing crisis, fuelled by services like Airbnb, in the city. Every second apartment in downtown Lisbon seems to be on the room rental website and the owner (or tenant, I may never know) of my Airbnb flat had two more rooms on rent. As a result, regular housing has dried up and people who live in the city have to go farther and farther to find flats on affordable rents. A middle-aged man who manages a restaurant in the city centre center told me that he could only afford to live in a shared flat because of the impossibly high rent rents are just too high.
It may be harder to avoid getting ensnared in tourist traps in a city that receives millions of tourists every year but it’s not hard to fall in love with Lisbon. In fact, it’s too easy. Being a part of Lisbon’s crowd only feels like swaying to the mellow rhythm of an invisible song. Perhaps it’s the untranslatable feeling, described by the Portuguese expression saudade, which Wikipedia calls a, “profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.” A sort of opposite of the Danish Hygge, but in a good way.
However, piri-piri is on hand to jolt you back from the saudade-induced daze. Piri-piri is Portugal’s answer to Andhra’s Guntur chilli. History has it that the Portuguese brought chillies to Asia when they established trade routes to the continent. Lisbon is also where my belief that travel connects you with your homeland in infinitely strange ways was reinforced.
Served alongside deep fried whole sardines and salted-cod fritters at Lisbon’s restaurants was a childhood nemesis — tomato rice. Growing up, I abhorred everything about it — the flashy red colour, the texture overladen with spices, and the lingering aroma it left on my fingers long afterwards. I did not realise how much I missed tomato rice until I wolfed down spoonfuls of it in different versions in Lisbon. It was like meeting an old frenemy. Only this time, they have aged well.
Stuttgart-based writer Prathap Nair is as happy on the road as he is tending to his houseplants, which often breed fruit flies.
