Sitting here, in the old 2 sqm camper van that’s been my home for the past 10 days and will be for another 3 days, amidst green cork oaks and next to a small, rippling brook, I struggle to with imagine what city life feels like again.
I’ve come here, to a piece of Portuguese no man’s land in Aljezur, to finally try workaway, something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time now. The idea is to go somewhere and in exchange for a couple of hours of help, you’re provided with accommodation, sometimes also food and, if you’re lucky, also some pretty interesting encounters with inspiring people. After having quit my job and going through some months of a ‘what-is-it-really-that-I-want-to-do-with-my-life’ kind of crisis, I decided to pack my bags and step out of my comfort zone (thing everyone should do once in a while, by the way).
I went to Lisbon, spent days exploring the city by myself, soaked up the beauty of orange-tree-lined, winding alleys and colourful tiles, went to Morocco with my two sisters, stayed there for some more days – on my own again, which really pushed my boundaries, but that’s another story – and then came back to Portugal to see what it’s like to live in the middle of nature.
Living in nature is a great lecture in gratefulness
Truth is, there’s so many revelations I’ve had over the last weeks and days that I don’t even know where to start. Living a life off the grid, being surrounded by the most beautiful nature, waking up to chirping birds, stepping out of the van and into the green is really magical. Being visited by your little friend, Roberto the red robin, while brewing coffee, grabbing fresh veggies from your garden every day to eat a meal as healthy as it can be – outside! – also.
Using nature as a bathroom is certainly a thing I’d coin as “interesting experience“, but also made me realise that I appreciate a good bathroom. Same goes for sleeping basically outside when it’s 5-7 degrees. It’s as rich and wonderful an experience as it confronts me with the amenities that I had, back in Germany, and have always taken for granted. I don’t know if I could get used to living like this for a longer period of time or even forever, as charming as it may seem to me right now. But this total change of life, of my daily surroundings and habits has really opened up my eyes in many ways. It’s not only the gratitude I feel towards being blessed with living in a flat that keeps me warm, safe and dry.
It’s also the revelation that we can lead a life that’s poorer in material things, simpler in its everyday life, more connected to the nature that feeds us, and – above all – way slower.
Take it slow. I mean: real slow.
It’s the slowness of life that really gets me here. There’s just no rushing of traffic in the early morning hours to work, no people hurrying to the supermarket on a Saturday evening and beefing about who was first in line. There’s no “I’d LOVE to meet you for a coffee but I’m just SO stressed out this week“; no “I have to fill my weekend with tons of stuff to not miss out on anything“. It’s much rather a “Where should I walk now“? “What album do I want to listen to while taking a stroll through the neighbourhood?“ “What podcast do I want to listen to? “(And consciously, that is, without distracting myself with 5 other things simultaneously.)
Of course, at some point we all have to work and earn some money to pay our bills. And of course, you have to be super privileged to be able to have a job, as flexible as it needs to be, that fits into this kind of life. Still: for me, as a short-term visitor to this extraordinary way of living, it has been very much a journey of self-exploration.
Having a gazillion interests and hobbies, I’m the first one to load up my weekend with too much stuff because oh hi there, FOMO. The times when I just am, feeling nothing but my body and my pure existence, comes down to my practice of yoga, some meditation and maybe the times when I’m on top of a mountain and holding my breath for a moment, soaking in the beauty of what I’m looking at.
But letting myself flow, just taking the weekend as it comes without making any plans … that’s always been a tough job for me, and something I have to force myself to. And when I do take it slow, I can literally hear these nasty bumblebees in my butt shouting at me: „hey there, you, don’t just hang around, go out and DO something!“ And this is although I feel like I’m a person that’s pretty well connected to herself and allows herself to self-centre regularly, hitting pause for a second while the hustle and bustle of city life surrounds me, preferably over a good cup of coffee and a good book. And that’s a good and, I think, essential things to do. But here, it’s still different. Things here are really slow, I mean, they’re like another level of slowness.
The Portuguese: the masters of slow living
I think I’ve hardly been more present in the days than I am these days. It’s the moments when I harvest fava beans from the garden: I cook them with so much more caution and passion than store-bought ones. The home-grown salad and the bread with fresh herbs and eggs that the chicken lay just in the morning: I eat it with so much more joy and consciousness.
The strolls I take around the neighbourhood, I soak in the amazing smells of blossoming trees (oh my, how everything smells like honey here!) and sink into the tunes on my ears.
By immersing myself into this slow Portuguese country life, I allow myself to be more present, more jovial, more grateful about life. When riding my bike, I can’t stop smiling. It makes me happy to see old men sitting on benches the whole afternoon, chatting – or just sitting next to each other, sharing a good silence.
For me, the Portuguese are the masters of slow living. Being a German that has, up to this point, visited many places on this beautiful earth, I have grown to hate the hectic mood and the self-isolated behaviour that we display in our day-to-day-lives. Everyone’s so busy to hustle behind her or his own agenda that we so often forget to take a break, take a look around us and look at the people who sit next to us in the metro – and maybe give them a smile, or if we feel very brave, even a compliment.
Always when I come back from countries where daily co-living is different – more open-hearted, lighter somehow – I do the mental note of taking this lightness, this way of interacting with people that surround you, and also with strangers, back with me, and sprinkle some glitter onto the sometimes so frustrating German seriousness. This endeavour usually works out for a few days, or weeks, and then I’m back to being German.
But that doesn’t mean I’ll give up. Going back home from this time off, I’m determined to keep and enhance the art of slow living, and the art of living a conscious life, of being in the present, noticing my surroundings and looking at every person crossing my way, and celebrating the small things. This is my project, the journey I’m taking on with mañana mag.