The prologue

                               

                                            Artesanal beers from Lviv (Ucraine), in Lisbon

There is no Planet B. And if there is, I hope it has a different name. Namek, Tatooine... something like that. I've never heard anyone call our dear Earth Planet A. Since I can't go to Mars, I'll travel through fertile lands. It'll always be more fun than searching for bits of amino acids in rocks.

I need a title. First off, the title is provisional, and I welcome any suggestions from the reader. Since I haven't decided whether to write mostly in Portuguese or French (though I've felt like writing almost exclusively in Portuguese), I think the title shouldn't be in either language. It could, it's true, be one word from each. Let's see. I thought of Peregrinatio pros Ανατολή (Anatólia). What a poorly academic title, isn't it? It combines two extinct languages but doesn't even leave Europe.

Nah... I don't want to be boring, and I have another idea. By the way, if we call the Asian part of Turkey "Anatólia," it's because, even today, in Greek, Anatólia means east.

Pilgrimage to the east! The title makes perfect sense, true, but in Portuguese or in English, it loses all the mystique. And as for using a Latin and Greek title... honestly, I want to please the maximum number of readers possible.

So, I thought of Peregrinatio Akatsuki.

My adventure begins in Tomar. The eternal Templar city. I'm going like a missionary to Lisbon, the city where I lived from my twenties to thirties. But I make a short stop in Sintra first, since our romantic city is west of Lisbon—why not start the narrative in Sintra?

Sintra is well-known to the Portuguese. It's a small city that by itself justifies the existence of the word "mystery" in our dictionary (though I'd prefer to write mysterio, as it was once spelled in Portuguese). After spending the weekend with friends—blessings to David and Mariana for the company—I drink a coffee on a terrace in the Sintra municipality. I see the palaces surrounding Sintra on the horizon. They seem built with stones of dreams, and those trees on the serra, which the reader surely knows, are more of a presence than mere scenery. The Pena Palace always seemed to me like an exaggerated romantic gesture: a castle useless from a military point of view, but with all the medieval symbolism of courtly love attributed to the troubadours. It could perfectly be a rural refuge for Lisboetas... Lisboetas, those, never go anywhere. Nowadays, Sintra has more tourists than residents; more English is spoken than Portuguese, and I doubt the latter is the second most used language. Otherwise, Sintra has its own climate: very foggy and capricious. If D. Sebastião were alive, he'd surely be in Sintra. And Cabo da Roca, "where the sea begins and the land ends," is right there, on the other side of the serra. So here I begin my journey, where the sea ends and the land begins. And I'll conclude that same journey when I find another ocean. In a country that, in my view, is so eastern it becomes more western than many eastern countries. Just as Portugal is so western it becomes more eastern than many western countries.

I don't intend to be loosely poetic. If I really have that impression of Japan, I'll put it to the test: verify it with my own eyes or refute it.

Lisbon! I watched the sunset from the top of Eduardo VII Park. If the earth is round, I'll find the Sun again if I walk westward. It's already night, and it's Monday: my favorite night to socialize. I don't want to bore the reader with a city they already know. Still, I'll give my updated impressions of our capital, which I love even more than I hate, which I hold in my heart perhaps even more than Paris, and which will certainly never be indifferent to me.

I already know the route I'll follow to reach Japan. For those who hadn't realized, my destination is the land where the Sun rises. Since I don't have the patience to go overland from Lisbon, I catch a flight to Budapest. However, since in such trips it's welcome to have surprises, both for me and for the reader's suspense, I prefer not to reveal anything. It's known, though, that I'm forbidden from taking another plane (after arriving in Budapest) and that I'll reach, one way or another, the land where the sun rises.