Homesick?

I love bars in Gent, but there is no such place as Tejo Bar…

When you walk in the most typical neighbourhood in Lisbon, Alfama, you may stumble across a little cosy room with a normal front door. You will think that you’re in a private house; the books, the games, the instruments, the personal notes and the pictures hanging on the wall will easily lead you to that conclusion. You’re in Tejo Bar though.

Mané and his wife are a Brazilian couple who moved to Portugal some decades ago. As artists, they used to exhibit their work in a room downstairs their bedroom, and as open-mind people, they show it to everybody by maintaining the door always open.

The paintings leaded to conversations. Interesting conversations demanded “having a seat” and eventually to: “Hey Mané, do you by any chance have a beer in your fridge?”

Beer after beer, night after night… Unknown people become friends, and friends always come back with other friends. Mané didn’t have any option but to open an “official bar”.

The 10 tables arrangement in such a small room - you cannot even clap your hands, just scratch them on each other – invites you to have a role-play in the night. To play the instruments, to go to the counter and serve your own beer, to read the books and play chess, to declaim the poem’s day or sing, to leave a post-it, to take a cigarette from a box - or to put one inside for those who have just finished their pack - are some of the “activities” that one tends to do there. The costumer is invited to be a friend who feels at home in a very relaxed and unpredictable atmosphere.

Curiously many of the customers are foreign people who are travelling and because of that is seldom hearing only Portuguese. The cultural differences are totally welcomed in the spot – especially when Mané pushes everybody to sing the same song, at the same time, but in eight different languages…

The night will depend on the level of initiative and interaction among everybody and that is what makes Tejo Bar a different place to be.

Tejo Bar
Rua do Vigário No. 1
Lisbon,
Portugal