wystswolf

The harder I adventure, the more I see there is to adventure.

This is a collection of semi-readable notes from my first days in Portugal. Once settled, we moved from our hotel to stay with friends just south of Porto in Granja, Portugal. On one hand it's removed from the classically historic part of the city. On the other, We're living with locals, like a local. NO one speaks more english than 'yes' or 'no' or 'no English'!

So I'm buying bread and reading Portuguese poorly from my translation app.

They also live 4 blocks from the ocean. Not bad all things considered.

We have been on the Iberian peninsula for 6 days at this point. Jet lag is slowly fading, but just as I adapt to the new circadian rhythm, client work materializes and I've suddenly got to function living on WET while working on PST.

Wednesday Dec 17, 2025

I clawed from bed early and dashed into the winter light for a fifteen-minute walk. Then dashed into the city for a meeting with friends to organize for a public preaching. We are all volunteer Bible teachers and I was excited to engage in a new country.

After our meeting to organize at 10am, I left the apartment and went next door to buy an orange from one of the small shops that are ubiquitous here. I only had a twenty-euro bill, but the total was something like twenty cents. The shopkeeper just waved his hand and said, “You take.”

Yayyyy! Free orange.

Our ministry was refreshing and different. None of us are natives, so our 'territory' for preaching is english-speakers. Ex-pats, Africans and Indians. All foreigners. You can do a little racial profiling based on skin color, and generally, you'll find they are English speakers.

However, it isn't just thump them with a Bible and they love you. It is very important to just have a conversation. English speakers who are foreigners, LOVE to meet other foreign english-speakers. We're all in the same boat, essentially: We are accepted, even liked, but truth be told, the natives would rather we buy a magnet and then go back home.

And so, the common ground is just, 'hey, you're safe with me'. Not that Portuguese people aren't wonderful. They are. But, the world is a challenging place, and anything different creates friction.

So if we find a potential english speaker, we connect based solely on that point. As the conversation progresses, we look for ways to shift it to spiritual topics. Not hard, but not everyone is interested. So, sometimes you just talk about where you are from, the weather and what they think of the place, and you move on.

It's a very slow, meticulous work.

We have several enjoyable conversations and I meet a Catholic who is a Bible scholar and specializes in the first 300 years of the Catholic church. In the US, I RARELY meet scholars of Religion, so the conversation is fascinating.

He explains that his sect rejects Paul's letters of 1,2,3 John and Revelation based on the perception that they are too negative to be part of the Bible Canon.

I counter with the very positive aspects of the writings (the hope of the future) and he admits the appeal.

In the end we part amicably.

I meet several Muslims and others who are just happy I am happy to be in Portugal.

A successful morning. Preaching isn't only about helping others, it's about practicing and sharpening our following of Jesus example.

We stop for coffee and to get warm. Our friends don't like the coffee spot and my wife doesn't want to walk down to the water front. So, we hop in the car and dash home for a light lunch of vegetarian nachos.

Now, nothing against my friends or vegetarians in general: but nachos without meat: :–( They aren't terrible, but just call them nachos. The vegetarian moniker takes something away. Or maybe it was the lintels he added for protein.

Left me wanting a steak. A big fat salmon steak. Mmmmmm.

After lunch, it was time to explore and I made my way down to to the beach to knock on the door of the universe.

Walking on the beach, I learned my free orange wasn’t the win I thought it was. Peeling it, I noticed it had no smell, seeing it i realized it was dry and tasteless. I will learn later that you have to pick the oranges in season. can tell by the attached leaves.

C’est la vie.

So the birds got a free orange.

Isn’t every orange a bird eats a free orange?

I’ve never seen a sparrow with a debit card or a raven discussing exchange rates.

The early afternoon was filled with wandering and wondering. When the beach's winter novelty wore thing, I jumped a train back into Porto so I could drift through the cobblestone alleys and streets and think about the ancient structures in this city. What humble hands hewed that stone, and later stacked it against the centuries?

Did those hand-men think about how they would bear children, who would bear children, who would bear children—until finally, one day, some moon-faced white man would wonder about them even though they were long dead? How surprised they will be in the resurrection to learn of the history that happened to their city after they handed it to the next generations.

A walk on the beach, exploration of ruins, and some playing catch-up on managing notes and journals. I finish the afternoon back at the beach in a cafe with a very tall beer while I watched the surf pound the shore.

If the sea was sentient, I would surely think it had caught the beach with a lover—for hell hath no fury like the sea scorned, and it is relentless in it's assault on that sandy rocky stripe between terra and posiden's realm.

Client work called at 5:30, and I dutifully held on until it was time to leave for my meeting for worship at 7:30. I am used to a three minute drive. But here, the commute, with traffic, was nearly an hour!

We had an enjoyable time. Very relaxed and got to make some new friends.

Thursday, December 18, 2025

The next day started late. Working through the night has that effect.

The only thing on the map for the day was a surprise. Our friends booked a tour of a winery where they took about a mile of their old cellars and turned them into an art gallery. Thousands of works of art from Spain, southern Africa and around the world. The owner loved collecting art.

Bonus, they make amazing wine!!

But first, some client mop-up, then a dash out the door for our subterranean museum visit.

I was excited at the museum. And I have to say—I definitely could have stayed there all day.

The art was great, but the wine was irresistible: three glasses of sparkling brut, one rosé, and a fifth of a white, and I was positively ready to party.

We walked a mile and a half through old wine cellars. I found myself oddly drawn to the African art. How strange—and how telling—that their tombstones were ceramic penises for men and breast-like orbs for women. They had no written language, but they understood sex. And when it came to headstones, size definitely mattered. The more important you were, the bigger your representation.

Still, there were far more non-sexual pieces than phalluses. Masks and ebony carvings galore. In fact, the bulk of the collection was from sub-Saharan Africa.

Then there was the geode corridor—thousands of enormous geodes and crystals of every kind.

The tour ended with Portuguese artists, especially ceramicists. Loads of gorgeous, rich ceramics grouped by theme: birds, reptiles, food, flowers. And then these very curious bulls—not huge, about the size of a gallon jug. Shiny ceramic, each with a fill spigot behind the neck and a small twist handle at the shoulder.

The guide explained that you filled them with Aguardente Bagaceira (Portuguese moonshine), and when entertaining—once your guests agreed to imbibe—you’d have them hold a glass beneath the bull and turn the handle, whereupon the moonshine would run out of the bull’s endowment.

A strange, but he assured us, highly entertaining experience—especially after the first glass or two.

The art was fascinating in its diversity and origin. The collector clearly loved the southern African continent.

But the setting was even more captivating: 150-year-old tunnels where millions of bottles of wine had matured and made countless hearts happy—and no doubt broken a few as well.

The tunnels went on and on, dark and wet. There was a smell—sweet and damp. One section was so pungent and musky it made me cough. The sensation was overwhelming, like walking into an Indian kitchen that had vastly overused spices.

It was the same thousand feet as the geode and crystal collection, and I couldn’t tell whether the odor came from the rocks or from a particular wine once stored there.

The dark and the mystery were deeply appealing. I don’t know why I liked it so much. It wasn’t scary or dangerous, not even claustrophobic. The cleanliness, the art, the wine—it was the kind of place you naturally want to spend all day.

I pictured myself as Indiana Jones or Tom Sullivan, searching for a cross of the Knights Templar that would guide me to the next clue—or a missing page of the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, carved into a stone stela, completing the mystery irrefutably.

The spell broke when, after a few hours, we ascended a winding staircase back to the living world and emerged—of course—through the gift shop.

Not an unpleasant ending. We toasted with glasses of a wonderful brut sparkling wine.

Since we were already south of Porto by an hour, it was an easy argument to convince me to ride up into the mountains to see the King’s Hunting Palace, now converted into an intensely posh hotel.

We arrived at dusk, passing through lovely Portuguese villages tourists rarely—if ever—see. How delightful to have local friends so willing to show us around.

The palace was incredibly ornate. Hardly six inches existed without some kind of decoration, sculpture, or visual interest. And it was huge. It would take a king’s wealth to build a structure like this—complete with a labyrinth garden and an impenetrable forest.

Barrel room

Snakes and lizards

Big barrel

Mermaid

Tile faced

Bucolic scene

Africa head

African Chalice

Terracotta heads

Phallic Cemetery

Ivory sculpts

Sherpa-sharona

Mc seaside

Wild Mike

Sharbeer

Shar ocean

My church rock

Doorknob

Hummer

WYST

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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.

Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!

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