Home is where the heart is

30 April 2011I have been carrying my heart all over Europe for the past eight months and it is amazing how quickly you can feel at home with an open mind and grateful attitude. Of course, a piece of me will always be home where my family and friends are, but the world is a big place. Some people shrink by the thought of leaving everything behind to set out for a long period of time. They take comfort in being grounded, literally, in a place where they have been living for so long that it holds no surprises anymore. The truth is, feeling safe and secure has nothing to do with anything outside yourself. In fact, once you decide to trust in what comes and who you meet, you find that things have an eerie tendency to work out. And when they do, that only strengthens the initial trust.

It is possible to feel at home in the world, meaning that wherever you are, you have a sense of belonging and you feel safe and secure, whether it is in a city or in the countryside, by day or by night, alone or in the company of strangers. Walking around in a different environment every day, I start to tune in more and more on what is the same everywhere and like a spoiled child I don't go ooh and aah all the time anymore with every monument or ancient building. As if the mind has decided, without consulting me, that I am now definitely more a traveler than a tourist. It is more important to know how to find your way in a city, where to find your diner and how to order it, where there is a free Wifi connection. You don't have time to get to know everyone you come across so it is important to get a n intuitive feel for circumstance, for character, to know what you can or can't say at certain moments. Every day and every meeting is unique so adapting becomes a habit and change the one thing that stayes the same.

With some people you meet it can actually feel like homecoming. I've heard someone compare it with baseball practise: with the right person every throw lands in the glove and likewise the other way around. As if every remark, every statement comes home, you can't miss. A wonderful thing about this is that you both recognize it. It becomes easy for both sides to open up and let the other in. I've had some amazing conversations till deep in the night, discussing things you would normally only discuss with best friends. Of course there are times that the fact that I am a stranger and don´t know any of the other´s friends and family and will walk on the next day can be enough to make this happen, but when you truly make a connection you know. Like I´ve stated before, the hardest part of meeting such wonderful people is having to say goodbye all the time. 

Although Portugal is not the most popular destination for Dutch people for their holidays, I have come across and spent the night with more Dutch people here than in Belgium, France or Spain. Some Portuguese tell me they would give the world to live in the Netherlands - sometimes it seems that complaining about politics and the economy is the biggest national sport here, but it is always done with an air of defeat, as if nothing can be done about whatever it is they complain about - but this does not prevent some Dutch to move in opposite direction.

Ironically, the Dutch too, often flee from the political climate. Over-regulation is a much stated annoyance, especially for enterprising people. When there is a rule for almost everything, and  you never seem to be the exception, that can get under your skin. The weather is another argument of course. Myself, I always discover in April or May that I have been in hibernation in the winter period. The cold and lack of sun hours drain my energy. Here in Portugal the spring sets in a couple of weeks earlier than in the Netherlands and even in wintertime the temperature is on average ten degrees higher. In springtime I start to get ideas, inspiration and I want to create, to work on something. The hours spent walking are great for brainstorming, but it is necessary to write everything down, because I simply don´t have the time to work it all out. That is the only downside of my walking journey.

The upside - I can´t stress this enough - are the people, and last week I met a Dutch couple that emigrated to Portugal a year or two ago to start a combined B&B and blues studio. They found a house in a beautiful area in the centre of the country near Tomar, a town famous for its Templar castle. Above the studio they have a cosy little apartment for rent. It is off season and they invited me to stay there. Because the weather turned bad Gerrit and Miriam generously offered me to stay until it blew over. It turned out to be a week before I moved on.

Because bad weather in Portugal is entirely different from bad weather in the Netherlands it was possible to do something that I hadn´t had time for up until now, make a video for one of my songs. The studio was used for storage during the cold months of winter and was still packed so we couldn´t record anything there. But with the Tascam portable recorder that was given to me by BAS Energie (the company of the guitar player of my band, Arash Azami) it was possible to record on location. Gerrit and Miriam decided the old Templar aqueduct might be a good place to start because of its accoustics. After that we shot the footage for the video around the Zézere reservoir. Editing was more work than anticipated because of incompatible formats, large files and Windows Movie Maker, with which it is almost impossible to synchronize sound and image properly. But we managed, and I am glad to finally present the first video from my journey. With a BIG thank you to my hosts Gerrit and Miriam!

Song for K - Video shot around Tomar and the Zézere reservoir



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