Life, with the garden
Location: Lisbon, Portugal • • • Visit: September 2015
As a graduation gift from my father, I was given a trip to Lisbon. We were supposed to go in June, right after the thesis deadline, but then the new research assistant job and a workshop in Ghana got in the way and we postponed.
So, we went in the end of September instead. 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.
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 to breathe in the round, soft smells of decaying needles and leaves. And it even had a little butterfly house.
I fell in love with Lisbon during that visit, and the botanic garden was a welcome, intense patch of greenery amidst the narrow alleyways and buildings with ornately painted ceramic tiles.
Strolling up the hill in the old town, I thought: In another life, I would have been a bohemian poet-photographer in Lisbon.
Katja Malmborg 