The most striking thing with Lisbon, at least for me, was that almost every other building had walls covered in beautiful, painted tiles. They were everywhere, many with Moorish geometric patterns. I fell in love, and reached the peak of my infatuation at the National Tile Museum.
As with the Arab-inspired hat and collar cross-stitches in Burkina Faso and the Adinkra and Kente symbols of Ghana, the tile designs of Portugal will definitely inspire me to new knitting patterns.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know I have a thing for botanical gardens. In Lisbon, we visited two.
It was clear that the Lisbon university botanical garden had seen better days. But also that it had seen many. Some of the trees were enormous, it was compact and quiet. It felt like a very old, wise, forgotten corner of the city, a place to go breathe in the round, soft smells of decaying needles and leaves. And it even had a little butterfly house.
The botanic tropical garden in Belem was larger, but did not feel at all as cozy. It had it’s places, a small pool with a gazebo thoughtfully being reflected in the water’s surface, but the more open design didn’t allow for the same kind of immersion in green, protected from the bustle and heat of the outside world.
And finally, strictly speaking not a botanical garden, but in the park Jardim do Príncipo Real, we caught our breath underneath this magnificent cypress.
All in all, there is some really nice cultivated vegetation to spend time with in Lisbon. If that is something that strikes your fancy.
As a graduation gift from dad, I got a trip to Lisbon. We were supposed to go in June, right after the thesis dead-line, but then the Ghana workshop trip got in the way and we postponed.
So we went now instead, last weekend, the last days of September. Enjoying the last days of summer heat while walking around on the hilly, quaint, narrow streets of Lisbon.
The houses covered in beautiful painted tiles. The large platanus trees. It’s a lovely city. With lovely people. I would recommend it to anyone.
September has been heavy.
There was the whole climate crisis thing that I’ve been able to keep at a distance since I started studying geography, look rationally upon without getting emotionally pulled down. For some reason, now, though, it’s come back to me and I’ve felt quite out of balance.
At the same time, there’s a refugee crisis on the borders of Europe – and not that it was any news to me, they’ve been talking about the flow of refugees coming across the Mediterranean for years in the radio shows that I subscribe to. But now that everyone is talking about it, everywhere, it’s become suffocating. I don’t know what to do. While at the same time having so many different things to do at work.
The ground has been shaking under my feet.
But I bike to and from work every day, rain or shine. Autumn has slowly strengthened its grip on Stockholm, and I’m amazed at how different, how beautiful my way to work can look.
Like the mist over the Royal Palace.
Or the density of gray from Slussen in a rainstorm.
Or the soft shimmer of sunset behind Södermalm from the Strömbron bridge.
It keeps me up. My beautiful Stockholm.
I bike to work now. In total, I spend almost two hours a day on my bike. It is tiring. I think I might need to upgrade my vegetarian diet, that I might not eat enough protein for the amount of low-intensity exercise I get.
It is a nice way to start the day, to bike. But I also miss reading novels. That’s what I usually do on the tube, forty minutes each way. I don’t read at all now.
But then again, there is so much to see on the way, as long as I stay alert. Things I would never see if I spent my morning transportation time underground. Like the Venetian horses on Blasieholmstorg, who one Tuesday morning had received knitted hats.
Work got properly started. I got an office. My GIS computer arrived. And I sat there, hidden away in my little nook on the fourth floor, getting more and more confused. I made the realization that research is a disconcerting endeavor, at least in the beginning of a project, and that made me feel nonplussed. Some afternoons, I felt like I had no idea of what I was doing.
Lucky, then, that the autumn sun sets just outside my office window, giving the red brick and the yellowing maples and chestnut trees outside a delightful golden hue.
I returned to work. The center, that had been almost empty all summer, slowly started to fill up with academics again, and in the beginning of September the entire staff relocated to the island Stora Karlsö off Gotland for three days, to plan, strategize and bond.
I had never been there before. This small island in the Baltic Sea, mostly inhabited by birds and sheep. But still, there was something familiar with the hard rock, the windswept vegetation and the constant interchange of colors between the sea and the sky. It was a cousin of Koster on the Swedish west coast, and I felt at home.
Mostly, we sat in meetings. It was both fascinating and intimidating, being part of this, taking the step from being a student to being staff, involved, actually asked for my opinion about where the center should go. I don’t really know how to handle this new role that I have yet. I guess it will come, with time. There were dinners, a party, afternoon swims in the sea. And in the mornings before breakfast, I took walks along the shoreline, chatting with the sheep.
Look, how nicely Liz’s splash of color mixes with the stones of the old cathedral in Visby, the Saint Nicolaus church ruin.
During the long journey back from the Golden State, I got to thinking about home. What it really is. And sure, one definition is where I have all my stuff. Another is where I grew up. But I think a more meaningful way to look at it is the places that have left the deepest marks in you. Home is the origin of your parts and where your loved ones are.
My first sense of self, my imagination, the core, I found in Stockholm, in the Stockholm archipelago and the patchy southern Finnish farmland landscape. I started learning about confidence and my abilities in coastal Tanzania. In the mountains of Bolivia, I started exploring my independence, while my identity as a researcher grew from the arid landscapes of Namibia and Burkina Faso. I feel a connection to these places in a way that goes beyond aesthetic appreciation.
But there are also the people. I feel a strong connection to places – but that really isn’t worth anything without love. That’s where home truly is. For me, that means mostly Stockholm, but also Monrovia, Uppsala, Glasgow, Robertson, some of which are places I haven’t even been in.
I think it’s good to remember that, when I’m feeling lost. Home is something I create, with the experiences that I make and the relationships that I nurture. Those are the places where I belong.
And I will always find calm in the Södermanland dawn.
One evening, Joe and I went to City Lights Bookstore and I bought Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl”, he bought Kerouac’s “On the road”. Across the alley, we went to sit upstairs in the Vesuvio saloon. With an Anchor Steam beer, I read it.
There was a directness in this, flow and honesty that grabs hold. I can understand why it made such an impression when it came, to a world where poetry previously had been so strict, so full of rules. But so much has happened since then. For me it doesn’t reach all the way.
I thought, and took a sip of my beer. Still. It felt like such a San Francisco thing to do.
Joe said that it’s so hipster of me, to photograph street art. Well, I don’t care. I like it, this is my blog, I decide. And San Francisco truly is the street art enthusiast’s dream.
Katja Malmborg