Come to Portugal

Come to Portugal, she said. Where you only have to raise your hand to pick the fruits from branches of blossoming trees. Where red vine flows from the tap of every sink. Where people only call each other by the first name because it is too difficult to say more in the frying heat.
A simple language, she said. You'll speak it no time. The people are liberal and open (although they just elected some sort of tree-carved neo-fascist for president). I´m wearing little as nothing right now. It´s sooooo hot in Portugal right now, she said. Oh, the heat Eirik, it´s smothering me!

I sat on the other end of the line, just coming in from a blizzard, ready to be deluded by all talk about celcius degrees unheard of in my norther hemisphere.
.
..
...
Ok, she didn´t say all those things. But then she didn´t quite tell me that I would feel so goddamn right at home either did she?



Yesterday it snowed in Lisbon, something I am told will be regarded as an almost mythical event, since tales are still being told from the last snowflakes that fell to a sudden death by melting fifty years ago!
Nothing I will tell my grandchildren about I might add, except the hysteric reaction of the Lisboans. What they call snow here wouldn´t qualify as being more than badly dressed raindrops anywhere else.
Hope you are all well and see you soon!