My Last Week in Porto

 

I was not sad to leave that place in Porto.  I’d gotten used to couch-sleeping despite the couch being too short for my long legs.  The problem arose during the last few nights when – you guessed it – the bugs found me.

The host had shown me the two open skylight windows upstairs and instructed me on how to close them.  That seemed to be a hassle though, so I left them open.  With no screens.

So, yes, the mosquitos got me.  Please note I was still dealing with the bee sting on my leg.  After the first sting on my chest, I knew the area would be swollen and itchy for a while with no major consequences.  But a sting on the ankle turned out to be a different animal.

My foot swelled to ludicrous proportions, was painful to walk on, and was dry and itchy (my winter skin has also arrived).  I’ll spare you the picture of my horribly swollen bee foot.  Just know that it is awful and doesn’t want to go away.  Instead, here’s a puppy!

                                                            Photo by Bill Stephan on Unsplash

I swear, the bees of Albania must be Africanized.  They saw some dark skin and it reminded them of home, so they just had to sting me.

Thanks for that.

                                                                            ******

The day arrived for my departure and there just had to be issues.  The first Uber driver I called reached me on time, spoke only Portuguese as he gestured at my bags, then drove off.  Huh?  Presumably, he didn’t have room in his car for my mammoth suitcase, but since this had never happened to me before, I didn’t know what to do.  I tried to cancel the ride.  Nope.  Tried to call for a new one.  Nope.

So instead, I hauled all my junk to the main road thinking I’d grab a cab.  Then my phone started beeping to alert me that my driver was on the way.  What are you talking about?  He just left me stranded.

Turns out Uber was alerting to a new driver who expected me to be in front of the apartment.  I was already several feet away.  After texting him, he canceled the ride, allowing me to call for him again as I made my way back to the apartment.

Yeesh.

Got to the new place and he dropped me off.  On the wrong side of the street.  More confusion ensued as I had to get across the street to the right building.  Grab the key from the lockbox, up the stairs, into the elevator and to the 5^th floor.

After all that, the new place turned out to be decent enough.  Another too short couch, but at least this time the bed was surprisingly comfortable. 

The place feels like it’s made out of cardboard and is very echo-y because of it.  It took me a while to figure out which cabinets had to be pulled open and which ones were pressure based.  Even when I realized I had to push a door to get it open, it was still difficult to learn where to push it.  It took me forever to get to the washing machine.

I was not happy to see that there was no microwave when I thought I saw one listed in the ad.  Imagine my surprise when I opened the oven and found this.

I have never seen this setup before.  There were no manuals in the house and a bunch of strange symbols on the dials that I just didn’t understand.  While the oven gets warm like it should, the plate rotates like a microwave.  The timers are set to 15 minutes, which got the food cooked faster, but I’m still not a fan. 

Technology marches on, but sometimes it really shouldn’t.