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This city is so beautiful, I honestly don’t want to leave. Compared to Lisbon, I love how much more laid-back everything feels here. I get my bearings much quicker, moving from A to B without the usual chaos.

Porto feels like a place suspended between medieval magic and modern cool. Everything is somehow hip – and yet not trying to be. There are still those classic Portuguese cafés, the ones where, even on a lazy Sunday afternoon, there’s a DJ playing, people singing karaoke, dancing between espresso cups and pastel de nata crumbs.

Next to the park, vendors sell cotton candy and popcorn in the most absurd, fluorescent colors known to mankind. A few meters down, there’s a street auction happening. And if you keep walking toward the city center, you suddenly land in Berlin 2.0 – everyone stylish, every price tripled.

Tonight, I’m playing a show at Terraplana Café. For a Sunday night, it’s decently busy. I’m tired, still a little hungover, and only surviving the evening with the help of some solid gallows humor – but somehow, it’s great fun. The crew behind the bar warms up with every song I play, becoming more and more welcoming by the minute.

Every time someone orders a new cocktail, I play in rhythm with the shaker – a little improvisation game that keeps me awake and makes the bartender smile.

It’s one of those mild, golden spring nights, and after the last song, I slip into the night with a smile on my face and music still buzzing in my chest.