I vow to do the same and discover people who are Portugal's living soul, conscious of the need to preserve their heritage and constantly redefining themselves using a sage mix of beauty and sadness, with both the past and hopes for the future as guides.
"There are people who pass through life," says Regina Ferreira, who runs the Conserveira de Lisboa (The Lisbon Cannery), "and then there are people who have life pass through them." Lisbon is gifted with a bumper crop of the latter.
I meet Ferreira, whom the French might gently refer to as une dame d'un certain âge, without looking for her. Guided only by good fortune, I wander in front of her store, a Lisbon landmark since 1930, tucked into a corner of the grid-like center of town known as the Baixa. Sitting on a wooden bench beneath a wall of boxes of sardine tins, I realize I'm in trouble when we compare the goose bumps on our arms talking about singer Jacques Brel.
Ferreira explains how for decades her father and her husband ran the company, creating products that eventually outlasted the long reign of dictator António de Oliveira Salazar (1932-68). She left her job with the state and took over the cannery after the death of her husband in 2004.
"Working can be like mental prostitution," she says, comparing her old job to her new one, "but food is culture."
The conversation eventually transcends sardines, and it's evident that though her business is successful, she is here because the cannery is an ode to her country, and working here is a way to continue saying "I love you" to her husband.
As she speaks, Ferreira is so endearingly caught up in ideas of her country, her family, and the past, she leans so far forward her head is nearly horizontal.
I worry aloud that, like the mom-and-pop hat and glove shops that still dot her city's streets, a place this wonderfully outdated might eventually succumb to time and be replaced by one of the chain stores that are slowly multiplying around town. "We've gotten past problems with factories, with freezing, with the arrival of big box stores. We made it," she assures me. "We'll be here."
