A new Wednesday at the door and a new story written. Dear reader of this blog, maybe sometimes you ask yourself how the stories of other readers arrive.
To tell the truth, every story is like Flavia's that wrote today's story about the city of Porto.
Flavia loves to describe herself as follows: I have always loved traveling, I live the journey as narrative story. I subscribed to the faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures for this very reason, because it represented the perfect combination for my thirst for stories and books and the tools to listen to these stories from different voices, different languages and distant places. I studied English and Russian at the university, but at high school I had already studied French and Spanish.
During the three-year period, apart from traveling all over Europe at low cost rates from squattrinati, I went to St Petersburg for a few weeks where I attended a language course and lived with a family. There I fell in love with the contrasting sensations that the city gave me, between the descriptions of Dostoevsky and Gogol' that were breathing at every corner. The cold and blinding light of the sun that reflects on the white and blue palaces, the discomfort of snow at the beginning of May and diet based on potatoes, cabbage and beet.
After graduating, I spent almost a year in London, where I worked as a waitress, wrote book reviews, exhibitions and pubs for a blog and worked as an editorial assistant for an online design and travel magazine.
Although experience has taught me a lot and given me great satisfactions, London is a difficult city for me. Despite being accustomed to Milan, it's a city too fast and hectic, where you're invested by the incredible amount of stimuli to do and see things but you don't have the chance to do it because of the rhythm your life takes, between shifts in crowded restaurants and endless bus trips. I felt the need for a slower rhythm, a climate more suited to my Calabrian genes and the simple pleasures that give you a plate of good food or an espresso drunk at a table in the sun.
Steps: a different way to visit Porto
A series of coincidences brought me to Porto, where I am in the second year of my master's degree in Multimedia, I teach Italian, I work as a receptionist in a guest house and I translate children's books and that where I learned to speak and write in Portuguese and not to be afraid when the Atlantic gets angry.
The Nevsky perspective "one of Nikolaj Gogol's most famous tales begins with the representation of life in Petersburg through the description of the people who are seen passing along the infinite main street, the Nevsky Perspective during any day. Descriptions often start from the feet, the type of shoes worn, speed, energy and pace of steps.
I think it is an effective way of describing a city, telling indirectly the stories of the people who live or cross it, through the elusive images of their shoes that run through the streets, sometimes alone, sometimes in the midst of so many others, with slow and tired steps, in a hurry, or with that light and enthusiastic pace of visiting a new place.
Because the soul of a city is the people it hosts.
I tried to make a portrait of the city that is home to me, Porto, through the individuality that you meet walking along its shady alleys, the bridges over the Douro covered by the sun and the Atlantic wind and the squares with the typical white and black tiles that shine on rainy days.
I discovered that the Bolhao Market wouldn't have been the same without that man alone and well dressed who walked through the almost deserts, and the steep streets of the center wouldn't have been the same atmosphere without the noisy steps of the few women brave enough to try to climb there quickly with high heels. The bridge Don Luis I wouldn't have been the same without that old woman who probably walked home.
Porto is each of these people, each of those shoes, each of those steps on the calçada.
Therefore, if you decide to visit this citadel on the Atlantic, I recommend that you do it on foot.
Try to descend to Ribeira along the stairs that depart from the back of the Catedral da Sé instead of the main street, walk next to the peacocks along the avenues of the Palàcio de Cristal gardens.
If you don't suffer from dizziness then, you can enjoy the good Port of the Gaiaat cellars crossing the river along the Don Luìs Bridge I; or sit on the wall along the Passeio das Virtudes at sunset, swing your feet down from the railing and see the sun descend exactly there, where the Rio Douro becomes ocean while probably a family will be roaring sardines.
Don't forget coffee and Pastel de Nata in the morning and Francesinha at lunch, but if you want to be lighter take advantage of the ridiculous prices of fresh fish and go to Matosinhos where the air is pervaded by the sound of the tireless waves of the Atlantic and the scent of grilled fish in the street.
In short, go slowly, as they live here, take your time and savor Porto, the light of its endless sunsets, the unreal silences of some streets in the center and the cries of sellers at the market, impress in your memory the flavors of a simple and genuine cuisine, and that hospitality and human warmth similar to that of Southern Italy, albeit with a note of Fado and melancholy typical of an ancient city of the old town.