Small Victories

Last weekend, we scored a small victory. Life as an expat is full of them. And if you keep reading you’ll think, at the end, “yeah David, this one is really really small”. So, despite the risk of embarrassing ourselves, I will continue onward nonetheless.

At the end of April and early May, the Cascais area hosts an annual tennis tournament. Having just returned, we bought a few marked up tickets for the Sunday finals to check it out. The purchase of tickets for just about any event here is always a tad experimental when you are unfamiliar with the arena or auditorium or theater as the maps are typically hard to ascertain if the seats will be good or not. But we grabbed a few seats and learned later that they were general admission, which was fine. There was probably some indicator during purchase but it passed me by.

The ticket said that the event was at 11am. So we arrived then, in hindsight a good couple of hours plus in advance. We had lots of time to scope it out. We wandered around the complex, watched a few adorable little kids playing tennis matches (more like warm ups), watched people participate in a plinko-like game to score a glass of vinho and had a sandwich once the food vendors opened up.

We later found a website link on our ticket and learned that the doubles match was to begin at 12:30, so we queued in the line marked “section 3” to correspond with our ticketed section.

Mind you, with seemingly countless minutes on our hands earlier we had asked the security guard at the section 3 entrance if we were in the right spot. There was a lot of pointing and telling us to go around. We weren’t to enter section 3. Hmmm.

We went down to the expo area. All signage clearly indicated that section 3 was where we had been. We tried to follow the guard’s pointed directions and were told both in English and Portuguese to return to where we had been. We were right, at least according to everyone else we asked.

At 12:25 we returned to the clearly marked entrance for section 3, confirmed with an assistant in a yellow vest that we were in the right spot. We were told we were. Third time must be the charm, no?

When the queue started to move we lined up and approached the front of the line. Arriving there, we were told, again, to go around with the same frustratingly unclear pointing and gesturing instructions. Charmed, we were not. Grrr.

We went to the exit. Maybe we need to come in via a different entrance altogether? Nope. The security guy there sent us back to the unattainable section 3 entrance.

We went back to the expo area and followed signs for sections 1 and 2. We asked the security guard if we were in the right spot. Yes. We were. Of course we were. Why wouldn’t we get to section 3 via the entrance for sections 1 and 2? Victory. Maybe. Not until we are in seats do we declare this one done.

We approached the front of the line. We hesitatingly and tentatively handed over our tickets praying we wouldn’t be turned back around to the other entrance marked section 3 from which we’d been twice redirected and just throw the flag, toss in the towel and go home with a couple hundred euro down the tubes.

We were, it was confirmed, in the right spot. We took our (wet) seats from the morning showers and watched the tennis-ball-headed characters and brass band fire up the crowd. We waved our Portuguese flags when Portuguese player Francisco Cabral appeared on the court with Austrian Lucas Miedler against Uruguayan Ariel Behar and Belgian Joran Vlieglen. And from the first serve, it was totally worth it. Victories, albeit small ones, are victories nonetheless.

(Unfortunately, victory was not to be for Miedler and Cabral).