Hey everyone!
My name is Iago, AKA YungBresciani AKA YUNG VINSK and I'd love to share our recent weekend adventure in Portugal!
A bit about us - I'm from Brazil, and my wife Anastasia is from Estonia. We've been living the van life for almost a year now! Our journey began in Estonia back in November 2024, and we made our way to Portugal by February 2025. Now we're starting the long drive back north (May, 2025).
- photo taken in Tallinn, Estonia during Summer 2024
Currently, I'm between jobs and actively looking for work, which makes me the full-time driver of our mobile home. Anastasia is a talented tattoo artist who works as we travel, allowing us to fund our nomadic lifestyle.
- Photo taken after a beutiful surf session and day at Praia de São Pedro de Maceda, south of Porto, Portugal.
So, on Monday, April 28th, 2025, my wife and I woke up at a beautiful spot by some lake in Portugal. Also know as Praia Fluvial de Valada, North of Lisbon.
As any other day, I checked the market conditions since I had some liquidity pools positions open. And boom! I looked at my Phantom Wallet and thought, "What happened?!?!" A second later, I realized all my money had been stolen... The night before, I had interacted with what I thought was a Solflare Wallet, but I didn't pay attention to what I was doing. I was so tired and drunk. It was definitely not the right time to be interacting with the blockchain.
Anyway, I accepted the loss and knew there was nothing I could do. Being aware of how many people get scammed, I understood how it could happen. I felt guilty, it was my fault. So I accepted it and moved on. I didn't tell Anastassia right away because it was a beautiful day. We went for coffee by the lake, took a nice walk, and even ended up taking a little swim. It was a great morning, even though at times I kept thinking about my bad decisions and losing my last trading capital for crypto. Being unemployed with no income kept haunting me, but I tried not to stress too much about it.
- Praia Fluvial de Valada
It was time to move from our location, and we decided to head back toward Lisbon since Anastassia had plans to tattoo a friend. The phone signal was acting weird, but we didn't think much of it. As we approached Lisbon, I noticed Google Maps acting funny, so I closed the app, which then completely stopped working.
Worth mentioning, that morning a friend from Estonia had reached out through a voice message asking if we were affected by the power "outech", but he pronounced it weirdly and I didn't understand what he meant lol. But once Google Maps stopped working and neither of us had signal, we started seeing chaotic traffic everywhere with no functioning traffic lights. When we passed the airport, we realized: "Holy sheesh, this is insane!" It was completely packed with cars and people carrying luggage, walking on the highway because they couldn't get cabs or Ubers—there was absolutely no electricity or signal anywhere.
Driving felt insane at this point. Turns out that Spain and Portugal suffered the worst blackout in living memory in Europe. About 55 million people were affected and it lasted more than half a day.
I was getting so stressed—one, because Lisbon traffic is already crazy, and two, I get lost even with Google Maps. What could we do now?!
All I wanted to do was skate at that moment. I told Anastassia we couldn't do what we needed to and we also couldn't get in contact with our friend or literally anyone in the world. At least it was a sunny day, so it didn't look as bad as it could have been. Imagine if it had been raining or during the night. WOW!
I told Anastassia we needed to go to the skatepark—it's a pretty chill spot and I'd get to skate. But with no Google Maps, it seemed nearly impossible. I tried to remember the streets, and luckily the map had loaded the street names, so we figured out which streets to take. As we approached the neighborhood, Anastassia recognized the way because she had walked there two years ago with her mom. What a freaking blessing!!!
We arrived at the skatepark and she made us some banger breakfast.
We chilled, then I went skating. I actually only skated the bowl the whole time since my foot had been hurting, and I felt more comfortable on the ramps to take it easier on my rolled ankle.
At the skatepark no one knew the reason to the missing electricity, just some speculations of cyber attacks, fire on big towers or Russian attack, the crazy part that even on the radio people were not getting any answers. I am, still not sure if the real reason was mentioned publicly. But anyways, we were all there for the same reason, to forget about it all and have fun.
Here is an photo by https://www.instagram.com/o_bom_vadio/ back in 2024 at this awesome SPOT! (article with more photos down below)
It was a great session. By the end, Nastya told me, "OK, 5 more tries," which felt so reasonable—I had been skating for about 2-3 hours, and we wanted to move to the beach so we could wake up near a chill, pretty place. Funny enough, on my last try, I ended up landing three tricks that I love so much and learned just last summer. I was so freaking happy to land them all in the same line—it was the perfect "SAIDERA"! I didn't get to say "one more, one more" Which I think any girlfriend can appreciate when being the filmer 😅
Big thanks to my wife Anastassia! She has been my rock, and I love that she supports my passion. She took videos of the session, which I turned into a little edit!
Here is the video I edited from the session:
So Besides all the lows of the day, Skateboarding as always turns to be so healing and having a partner to share that with you has no price!
Rock On Peeps! Until the next one!
Check out my Socials:
https://www.youtube.com/@YungVinsk
https://www.instagram.com/yung_bresciani/
My Wife's Tattoo account:
https://www.instagram.com/tydurak/
Other Articles by me:
@yungbresciani/portugal-street-skate-day-costa-de-caparica