The train station’s awning stretches out over the platform with a slight ironic flip just before the tracks. Stucco walls, clay-tile roof, tile floors. The tracks out front run from the western Atlantic all the way to eastern Spain. 

A busy center of transportation.

Or not.  

With backpacks slung over our shoulders, we blink in the bleach-bright sun as we step off the train. It is nearly 6 p.m. on a Saturday. The town is Tavira. Not a soul around.  

Having taken the train from Lisbon, we are to meet our son in his rental car. Of course, we are supposed to call him to say we’re here. But as luck would have it, we have no battery left on either phone and no place to charge them. Our only hope is the train station.

Shoot! The station is locked solid. Even the bathrooms. 

Oh well. There is a bar attached to the station. It has a counter at the door and outside seating on a small patio with plastic red and black chairs. I order a beer and ask the owner, who speaks exactly as much English as I speak Portuguese, whether we could plug in a phone behind the counter. After multiple foolish hand gestures on my part, he smiles, takes my cord, and plugs me in. 

My wife leaves me for the grocery store across the street.

I sit with my beer.

Three men, the only other customers, sit in a small circle on the other side of the patio. The older one of the three calls me over.

“How are you?” he says in British English, capped with a large friendly smile.

Being married to an Irish woman, I realize how little it takes to get a storyteller to tell a story. One moment you are asking them to pass the salt, and the next moment they are telling you that they were born in Hastings, Nebraska, and their great-grandmother, who lived in Hastings for a time, had rescued all 9 of her children from a burning farm house in western Minnesota but was supposedly unable to rescue her husband.

“Really?” you say. Which is a response like manna to a storyteller. 

And when my wife — excuse me, the storyteller — shares information about her relative’s murderous past, you feel compelled to open up and tell a few stories of your own — ne’er-do-well uncles, philandering husbands, adult children without prospects.  

And before you know it, you have a new best friend. 

Jeff, my British new best friend, is a storyteller. He speaks of his 41 years in Portugal, his conversion experience from agnosticism, his job running a charitable organization, and his wish to buy me another beer and a delicious sandwich of homemade bread stuffed with pork and cheese — bar food in this neck of the woods.

“You’ve never had anything like this,” he promises. 

I bite the sandwich.

I decide to move to Portugal. 

Jeff introduces me to Pedro, who, Jeff informs me, can’t understand me and I can’t understand him.

Pedro give me an encouraging nod.

The third man, says hello in a strong Russian accent.

“Dmitri.” And he stands and shakes my hand. 

I ask Dmitri if he’s from Russia. 

Dmitri looks at me with cool-blue eyes and tells me that he is ex-KGB. He laughs quietly. 

Just like I’d expect an ex-KGB agent to laugh.

Dmitri pulls his chair over, a burning cigarette cupped carefully in one hand, and asks about my life and interests in Iowa.  

“Is this an interrogation?” I ask, partially joking. 

Dmitri smiles. We finish our beers.  

Dmitri offers to buy another round. He has been painting walls all day at the school across the street and explains he has a thirst. 

Jeff thinks we should also buy more sandwiches. “Life is short,” he shrugs. 

The beers arrive and we toast each other in high spirits. 

I eat another sandwich.

Pedro smiles. 

More Portuguese beer. More sandwiches. 

At the age of 67, I’ve experienced a bit of life’s ups and downs. More ups than downs, but I’ve been around. So I make a momentous life decision in my red plastic chair on a bar patio in Portugal . . .

I’m never leaving my new friends, this bar, or Portugal.   

Just then I see my wife waving at me across the street, pointing to a car driven by my son, and gesturing for me to hurry over.

My three friends give me knowing smiles and I realize it’s too late to pretend I don’t know the hand-waving woman.  

Mmmmm . . . train station in southern Portugal with my new best friends or life in Des Moines?

I unplug my phone, give everyone a handshake . . . and run to the car. 

Joe