The Road to Tamera, Portugal

It is six o’clock in the morning and I'm enjoying the airport feeling and a hot tea…… even though I have only slept for two hours and a half, I am pretty sure that I haven’t packed everything I need, I am smiling: it feels like I have received the ticket to Paradise…………….. I adore airports, I like the bustle of sleepy faces, experienced suitcases, bags full of their own importance, finally recognized, the mix of careless flip flops, shoes and boots, dreams, joy, business trips and holydays carefully planned passing through the same gate…………………. a mega crossroads with less time to think about our stories.

Where are you going to, why, who is coming with you, who is waiting for you, who is crying for you, it seems like we are playing a sort of mime, where everyone is trying to see the life behind the ticket…………. I love this game, I keep looking to people and I imagine their captivating life stories……………. so much that I am going up the last in the flight for Munich! A pleasant flight made with my eyes at three pictures in my laptop, and one hour of due sleep. I am so much captivated of what I am writing, that I am thinking about my seat neighbor who has many reasons to envy me. He is playing with his phone while I am writing the story of this trip……………….

Munich Airport, as always, is full of simplicity gushingly developed, impeccable. The refined order and the discipline did not hear yet about Bucharest! At the passport check in, the customs officer widely opens her eyes and says that this town does not appear; it is for the first time when she hears about it! My passport is again checked, the system is rejecting it, she asks a colleague, no one has ever heard about Bucuresti. Maybe Bucharest, but this is the first passport where she sees Bucuresti. Luckily on my identity card the name is translated, the customs officer is relieved, otherwise she would have had a case!
What an idea to translate names…..so I leave Bucuresti (AKA Bucharest) towards Munchen, I arrive to Munich and then I leave towards Lisboa, even if my ticket is for Lisabona. Anyway, strange, I say to myself. I prefer Bucuresti.

The story about writing on the laptop did not work, I have produced only one page, I write and I correct the lines, improve, polish, and come back, until the better kills the hoarfrost of good. As for this, from Munich I have bought a classical tool, a silver pencil, a faster one, without letting me change my mind. Write and be unable to delete. No return.

I am trying it in the airport, I have a brand new spiral notebook, 200pages……. the silver pencil is so brilliant that it is even writing brilliant……. Lord, I wanted a normal pencil with a normal color, I wasn't expecting such a surprise, especially because I don’t have a perfect…..eyesight! But the pencil seems to be bewitched, the words keep on flowing! I have already written 10 pages only during boarding! Thank you, Lord!
The plane to Lisbon, is full of gentle German people. I dare say, very gentle German people as they are sitting on a side of the chair, the one next to me is of 2 m high and countless.... kilograms. But I am not interested, as long as the words are flowing from my magic pencil, I fill an entire page, and than another page and so on and I am totally absorbed by my story……………………

I take a break only to eat something; Lufthansa serves us a cosmopolitan lunch. The menu is singing the International Hymn and also the European Union’s, the main course is called “Rindgulasch mit broccoli und polenta!” I am greeting the neighbor and friend people present in the holders’ plate, I am proud of being so successfully represented by our delicious polenta, even if I don’t understand why does it wear an Italian name. I finish my Toblerone made in Switzerland, I am looking inside the menu for something wearing the local color, made in Germany and I find the water, the milk for the coffee and the bread, and even though the water has a French name, it is qualified. I am overwhelmed by this internationalization, squeezed by the good breeding………….. so I am sinking back into my writing.

Up to landing, I have filled another 40 pages and I declare as first emergency buying another notebook, because I didn’t even arrive and I have already filled a quarter of the notebook got from home…….I didn’t even know I was such loquacious…………I am very surprised of myself. The brilliant pencil gave up somewhere over France, but left his legacy to a Bic pencil, as ordinary as it may be. I think writers are talkative individuals, feeling the need to communicate in some other ways instead? I am not a writer, I have never really tried to be one, but this plenty of words does not characterize me, you would rather say about me that I am a quiet person. I am wondering where all ideas are coming from, where all my thoughts are arising from…………., I feel that I am writing slower than my ideas are coming into my mind. I have no time to write everything I would like to say, that's the feeling……..

Lisboa! I have seen almost the entire Europe, but not Portugal……. waiting to land on a spectacular airport, dignified by a city with an astonishing architecture, but my expectations are soon betrayed and I declare myself proud of our new airport. There’s two more hours to travel by train from here, from Lisbon and 25 more km by car, until my final destination.

So.. to the train station! Simple and comfortable, a bus takes me to the nearest train station, from there I have a direct connection. It would be simple, if I didn’t have to wait two more hours near the luggage, because there’s no place where to leave it…… Oriente Station, I am feeling how its designer, Santiago Calatrava, created in fully effervescence, like a skeleton gracefully articulated in thousand points, making the cover of architecture magazines and re-writing the history. It is with great enthusiasm that I start taking pictures to the concrete cobweb, thinking about Oana, my friend, declared fan of the most sincere concrete, quoting her.

My enthusiasm decreases as the time is passing, everything is dry and cold, I feel that people is lost and somehow overwhelmed of such grandeur and I see no excitement in their looks. The view is spectacular, but there’s draught everywhere, you must stay in a cage of glass or underground, for protecting yourself, and moreover there is dust everywhere. I feel the nostalgia of the cast iron from the North Train Station in Bucharest, with a faint scent of Paris, to my totally astonishment.

There is a strike over here, and because of it there is a little chaos, the line for the train arrival changed in the last moment, an angel or something must have taken me away from taking pictures and rambling through the concrete thicket, made me ask earlier, so I caught up the right train

Again in front of the laptop, this time I have written out nothing less than 50 questions I have for the Eco Village. I hope having largely covered all aspects. It is just like an alien would come and ask us questions in order to understand us, so much to be redefined - WHO DECIDES, WHO JUDGES, WHO GIVES ANSWERS………..

I finish my list at about the same time the train arrives in Funcheira, somewhere in south Portugal, in the countryside: a small settlement, a small train station, with ceramic walls painted on the exterior, the name is also hand painted, in diagonal, on a placard just like in the 1920’s.

Bernhardt is there waiting - for me and another Australian from the same train - who immediately recognizes us by the hats, bohemian look and boots. Another 20 km are slowly passing, we meet a German gentleman, living for 23 years in the village, curious to find out how did I hear about Tamera, but we are more curious than him to find out everything……..

The placard Tamera - Healing Biotope, lets us know, with no fast and triumphant air that of course, we entered the field of 100 acres of Tamera! It is 19:45. This very morning at 6 am I left home; I find myself to the other extremity of Europe (and to the world that I know), from multiple points of view...