A ROAD OF DISCOVERY

My heart was broken and I was ready to leave Portugal for good. Could a drive across the country change my mind?

- J. R. Patterson

A relationship ends, and the apportioning of goods begins. My books, your bookcase. My bowl, your spoon. My home, your home.

After nearly a decade, it was over. The world my partner and I had made together lay fractured on the ground, like a vase dropped and smashed. In our time together, we'd travelled the world, been happy, made important decisions, and moved to Portugal, her native land. It was there that it ended, with me an émigré of only a few months.

I didn’t want to extricate myself so soon, but it felt wrong to be there. The nation, and everything in it, seemed to belong to someone else. Living in the city of Porto, I already had friends, a favourite café, a place in an orchestra. Leaving meant giving up suppers at Cervejaria Diu Palace, music rehearsals with friends, afternoons reading in Virtudes Park, walks along the Douro River. Yet everything seemed complicit in my misery—the birds, the people on the street, even the street itself.

I made a list of things I loved about Portugal: oranges, wine, seafood, sunshine, coffee breaks, dark bars, tile mosaics, the blithe chaos that ruled public life, and the good manners, modesty, and amiable fatalism of the people.

Watching New Year’s Day fireworks flash over Porto with friends, I resolved to give the country another shot, to try to make it my own. I would do this, I decided, by driving the Estrada Nacional 2, or N2. Its length—more than 700 kilometres, from the northern town of Chaves to the southern Atlantic coast—would allow me either to reclaim Portugal, or to experience one last good taste of it. And, if it turned out this were to be my ultimate journey, I wanted to do it with a bit of aplomb.