I am in the office looking at my colleagues, browsing websites for inspiration and thinking about the past. Not mine. Mine is not as impressive yet. What are my colleagues thinking about? They all seem very focused, a little worried about the soon-to-come launch party, sometimes distracted. I hear from time to time a squeak, a cry of despair, I see a silent smile, until somebody wakes me up from my dreams with a question: what are we having for lunch today?

Today I want to continue dreaming about my last trip, about a country that survived wars and has conquered continents. Due to our rebranding and our decision to change some aspects of our business, we attended the Web Summit in Lisbon this year. It was an inspirational event, with tons of great talks and discussions, many interesting startups and ideas and awesome night life. Only the idea of 53k people in one place can convince anyone that it’s the place to be.

It was my first time in Portugal, hence once again prolonged the trip for a few days to visit both Lisbon and Porto. We were pretty unlucky with the weather in Porto, but made the most out of Lisbon. Slept for the first two days as exhaustion kicked in big time, attended 4 full days of conferences and traveled the day after. But hey, I did all that in Lisbon. I had time to eat three times a day, so I tried all the creatures of the sea, I know the metro lines by heart now, as well as all the bars on Pink Street from our Night Summit passe-temps

As you could read before I am unable to focus on my work at the office, and looks like the article has lost its focus as well. Lisbon is a very charming city, with an overall prohibition against high-heels to preserve the never-ending Cobble Streets and tons of chestnuts white from salt. Why, why put salt on roasted chestnuts? Is it from having the salty waters so close by?

I really can’t focus on writing this today.

Everywhere you go you can find cute little shops, bars or cafés, cobble streets and very helpful people. Everybody speaks a very good English which is something I have never encountered before in any country. From the chestnut seller to the little bar in the corner, to taxi drivers. But have never been more impressed by anybody as I was by our Uber driver and his extremely vast knowledge of, well, everything.

Portugal is amazing! Cool places, cool food, cool streets, amazing art.

Gonna call lunch break now, so my colleagues can move from their seats. “No one knows what is like to be the bad man” but me.

Photos taken by moi with my phone

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