I was planning to write on my filmmaking, today, but something happened that could be a short film in itself.
Two days ago, after two months of waiting, I was finally able to enter my adega. For those of you who don't know what an adega is, it's Portuguese for cellar / attic. Usually outside the house, meant for storage and – traditionally – the making of wine.
I had been looking forward to checking out this space for quite a while. I had only seen a picture on the website were my house was being advertised. And, eventhough I was able to move into my place a week and a half ago, I needed to wait until yesterday to be able to enter the adega. When I checked out the house, two months ago, the key to the adega wasn't there.
I won't bore you with the whole story about that. It was supposed to be on a key chain, that had been in a car that burnt down in the wildfires out here last year. I found that key chain and most keys were unusable, some had even broken off. Eventually, after buying the house, I had to wait for spare keys to be sent from England. They finally arrived a handful of days ago. I then had to pick them up at a café in a nearby town.
Wednesday
I went into town, got myself a haircut, did some shopping and picked up the keys. When I returned home and tried them on the adega's lock, they didn't seem to do the job. One was a spare key to my front door, the other two - although they seemed to fit - didn't open the door to the adega. The handyman of Monte Frio was willing to help me out. He forced open the key lock and told me to get a new lock when I was going into town again.
Thursday
Yesterday, I planned to do exactly that, but – as happened to me before – I missed the morning's bus. It wasn't my fault though. The timetable that I had found was wrong. In the end, I wasn't able to go into town but the handyman was so kind as to go for me on his motorbike. In the meantime, I went for a hike in the nearby forest. I shot some video there ( to get inspired for my filmmaking project ) and felt pretty good. I will post about that one day soon.
When I returned from my hike, a couple of hours later, my adega had a new lock. I loved how easily everything seemed to be coming together, if I just trusted in things and went with the flow. A couple of hours later, I went to the house of the handyman to receive my new keys and to thank him ( both in words and financially ). I then took a good look at the interior of the adega. It was clear to me that it needed a lot of work. It would be a project in itself but I could also easily see the potential of the space. I started to feel better and better about it.
In fact, I pictured something that I had been looking forward to in quite a while: a cinema space. The adega would be big enough to house a couple of dozen of people. I would only need to get the roof fixed, clean the place, install a beamer and some audio equipment and get myself some more chairs. There were already 8 wooden chairs available. I imagined the future me screening ( classic ) movies to the villagers, starting out with a little introduction ( in Portuguese ). It would be the best of both worlds: watching movies and talking about them, while also adding some much needed entertainment to this 'almost' ghost town. Believe it or not, but the nearest cinema is tens of kilometers away.
I was planning to share some pictures of the adega with my siblings and parents but, it was getting late ( = dark ) and my phone's memory was full so I decided to wait with that until today.
Friday
This afternoon I shot half a dozen of pictures and sent them to my family. They all seemed to like what they saw:
My younger sister, who is an architect, told me to check its construction, isolate its floor and roof and add furniture to change it into a rental place.
My younger brother said I got to make it into a cool airbnb.
Then my twin sister replied to me in a private message:
Is that really your adega?
I thought yours was located underneath your house on the other side?
Unerneath your bedroom window
but alright
I don't wanna spoil your happiness
but make sure to check the key on another door
this is supposed to be your adega:
I replied:
haha. I thought that too, for a while
but if the handyman says so, I guess it's actually my adega
I then looked for the other key, that had arrived from England and walked around the house towards another door that I had thought about opening before.
oops
hahaha
you're right
I sent her this pic from the view through a now opened door:
NOOOOO.....
Whose adega did we force open haha?
There goes my cinema!
I really thought the adega would be next to my house
but the inside wasn't what I expected it to be
hahaha!
Lotte:
So funny, Vin!
But who knows, perhaps it actually belongs to your house :-)
Me:
haha, who knows
My sister let me know, later, that she has been laughing uncontrollable for quite a while afterwards and - after rereading our conversation - she started laughing out loud again. She might do the same after reading this post.
In Conclusion:
It appearst that I asked the town's handyman to force open someone else's adega and change its lock. After it was opened, I told him it looked very different from a picture that I had seen. I described to him what I expected. He told me that it must have been an old picture ( from years ago ).
No Cinema Space For Now
It seems likely that my plans to open up a little cinema, next to my house, will have to wait. Although, you never know. I plan to talk with the owners of this storage space. If they are understanding people, they can probably laugh about the situation themselves. If not, I will hand them three keys to their new lock and apologize for the 'inconvenience'. Who knows, they might even be interested in turning it into a cinema space / might want to rent it out to me? I won't get rid of that idea too easily.
Let's wrap up this write up by saying that I have yet another story to tell when I go for a coffee in the local restaurant. I am sure that a lot of people will laugh about this.