My family is part of Servas since 1998. At that time I was 10 years old and since then we received many Servas from all over the world in our house in Viana do Castelo, a little town in the north of Portugal. I feel lucky to have grown in a house where having dinner with Servas guests was a usual thing, we made so many new friends and I remember very well most of them. I even remember once a few years ago that we had two guests at the same time! Lawrence from Australia and Benjamin from Israel, that was an interesting cultural triangle because both had fantastic life stories to tell. I also remember very well Christopher from Virginia, US. He was cycling around Europe for months and he stayed with us for a couple of days, 7 or 8 years ago. Although he was a shy person we spend a good time together and because of him I want to do the same as he was doing, travel with my bycicle for a long period. I guess I just have to find the courage to do that.
Four years ago I went to college and moved to Lisbon, where I am now, not as a Servas host anymore. I have to say that I miss having Servas guests!
Me and my family only travelled two times with Servas cause I have two younger brothers and it's not easy to find someone with space for five persons...
Well but this is precisely the reason why I'm writting, I had my first Servas experience alone last month and it was all unplanned.
I went to visit the design fair week at Milano and I arrived on 13th April (tuesday) planning to stay until 18th (sunday). What I wasn't planning was the eruption of a volcano in Iceland, three days after i arrived in Milano. At the beginning nobody was really worried but after a few days there was a massive ash cloud all over central Europe, thousands of flights were cancelled and airports closed. With no exception my flight back to Portugal was cancelled and delayed for one week.
I left the airport and went back to the city center alone, with no money left to stay in a hotel for one more week and with no idea where to go. I went to the train station and there was a big confusion with police and people trying to get in trains with no ticket, cause all the tickets were sold out for days. The day was passing and I was starting to feel desperate to find a place to sleep before it was night, worst case I was preparing myself to sleep in the airport. So I called my parents to explain my situation and ask what to do. Both immediately said - "Servas!" and I said that I didn't have any papers or Servas ID with me and that would be difficult to find someone able to receive me in the same day.
I was wrong. At the end of the afternoon, after a couple of phone calls I was in Maria Soresina's house. She received me with arms wide open and we talk about many interesting things. She introduced Servas in Italy and in the seventies she was the vice-president of Servas Italia. So she had a hand full of interesting stories about Servas, India and Dante Alighierithe, author that she is writting the third book about. At some point I was saying that I already knew everything about Milano since I was there for more than one week. She suddenly made a big smile and asked me: Do you know Venice?? - No!, I said. She picked the phone and called Mario Burlando, a Servas friend of her from Venice. And so it was, the day after I was leaving Milano by train to visit Venice and stay with Mario and his family. They also received me very well and told me all the good things to see in the city. It was an amazing and unexpected three days stay where I had time to walk around Venice and think how lucky I was to beeing in that situation. At the same time there was people sleeping in the airports and train stations, newspapers with pictures of all this chaos and I was enjoying a sunny day in Venice eating my gelato.
I left Venice to go to Milano friday morning and stopped halfway to see Verona, where I spent the whole afternoon and walked through other beatifull Italian city. At the end of the day I arrived in Milano and stayed at Maria Soresina's home, with a big smile she recieved me again for dinner.
The next morning I left to the airport and took my flight to Lisbon as planned with any constraint or even waiting line.
As I told Maria, I will always be gratefull for the existence of volcanoes.
I would like to thank Maria Soresina, Mario Burlando and his family for having me and wish them the good luck.
As Goethe once said,
"The world is so empty if one thinks only of mountains, rivers and cities; but to know someone here and there who thinks and feels with us, and though distant, is close to us in spirit - this makes the earth for us an inhabited garden."
"Die Welt ist so leer, wenn man nur Berge, Flüsse und Städte darin denkt, aber hie und da jemand zu wissen, der mit uns übereinstimmt, mit dem wir auch stillschweigend fortleben, das macht uns dieses Erdenrund erst zu einem bewohnten Garten."
"Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre," in Goethes Sämmtliche Werke, vol. 7 (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1874), p. 520.
Thank you,
Duarte Lima
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