Monday was my first full day in Lisbon, and I was not going to waste a minute of my time here. After two quiet weeks in Spain, I was urging to go out and about. My social battery was overcharged, and in the late afternoon, with nothing planned yet, I almost literally felt like I was going to explode from too much energy.
I am working my first shift with Frederique, a Dutch volunteer who’s staying for two weeks. There is nothing much to do. We sit in the common area and every half hour we go down to the laundry room. Put the wet sheets in the dryer, new dirty sheets in the washing machine and fold the dried ones. For hours, this is what we do, until another volunteer who’s off-shift comes down and mentions she wants to go out tonight. Unable to hide my enthusiasm, I let out a little squeak: “I’m in!”
Our shift ends at 00:30, and Chiara (the volunteer I’m going out with) and me get ready quickly and head out to this club we found on Google Maps. It’s Monday, so not a lot of clubs are open in Lisbon, and I think about Ghent where students go out every weekday. The club is on Pink Street, which I think sounds partly very cool, partly similar to the red light district. We get our first drinks in an empty bar with a big poster outside, saying: XXL COCKTAILS €7,50!
We’re just chatting and sipping our drinks when two guys come up to us. One starts talking and he’s obviously trying to make a move for both him and his friend. We just joke and laugh it off and when we get to the subject of where we’re all from, they answer Copenhagen. I get excited, not because I like the city so much, but because it is familiar and I know the place pretty well. I tell them about my favorite bar and they don’t know it and I feel a certain pride that I can’t explain. We talk a bit more about Denmark and I try to convince them that Aarhus is the better city, and eventually they join us to the club.
Inside there’s barely any people. If I tried, I’m sure I could count them all on my fingers (maybe some toes), but I run deeper into the club and start dancing. When I was younger, I didn’t go out much. Most people in Belgium start drinking and going to parties around 15, which is when I went to my first party too. However, I left after an hour and didn’t really go to a lot of other ones until I was 18. Even then, my kind of going out was playing games and talking with my friends, which for me often still didn’t involve alcohol. It was only when I got to Denmark that I changed my mind, and started going out (alcohol included) more often.
Alcohol or not, there’s few things I love as much as dancing. Not ballet or hip-hop or any specific style you learn in a dance school, but purely swinging your head from left to right and jumping up and down and letting your body move to the rhythm. When I’m dancing, I usually have my eyes closed, and it’s only then that I feel a sense of complete freedom.
Hours pass like minutes and suddenly it’s 5:00 and the club is closing. Chiara had gone away for little bit while I had kept dancing with some friends I made whose names I never asked. We’re trying to find each other again, so we’re texting and calling and I’m running around until we finally reunite. My problem with going out is that once I start it’s very hard to stop. Every club in Pink Street is closed and most people are going home, but me and Chiara don’t want the night to end yet. We meet some people who have the same idea and spend some more hours with this group of strangers. Eventually, we arrive at our hostel at 8:30.
After only three hours of sleep, I’m up and buzzing. In the afternoon I was meeting up with Daniel and I could barely contain my excitement. We meet in this café and he’s standing in front of me and I can’t describe the bunch of emotions going through my veins. I can’t stop smiling and I talk talk talk about everything that has happened in the last year. Even when I explain the tougher stuff, I am too ecstatic to express those feelings. He sits in front of me, drinks his espresso, and I’m not sure if it feels unreal or just so perfectly normal like we were never far apart. We discuss all the things we can do and every few minutes one of us mentions how much time we have and how we’ll enjoy it.
That evening another volunteer arrives and I find out she’s staying for a month. The others are all leaving in a week, so I’m excited for someone to stay here with me a little longer. Just like me, she’s determined to turn our boring shifts into the parties we were promised.
As a solo traveler, I subscribed to a hundred apps and Facebook groups to meet people in Lisbon. That’s how I got to talking with an Italian girl, who I was able to persuade to come to our non-existing party in the hostel bar. She comes over with some friends, and all five of the volunteers are present too. Everyone’s talking and I’m dancing a little (because how can I not when there’s music playing?) and most of us are strangers, but we all get along so well.
We end the night at 1, when our bar closes, and part with our new friends. I’m waving them goodbye and think: I really hope we’ll hang out again. Five minutes later one of them texts me, inviting me to go out with them the following day.
Honestly, I fell in love with Lisbon the second I got out of the metro Sunday evening. It has only been three days and I’ve met so many amazing people already and I can’t wait what the rest of my time here will bring!
-Cels
CelsAway 
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