Saudade

Is the name of a Portuguese tart shop here in my home town of Adelaide, South Australia. They comment on the same definition of the word.

Portuguese tarts are the ONLY thing that they sell. They sell one thing. Only that one thing. They're bloody good at making them.

Meanwhile, the feeling you describe is one that I had when I travelled to Europe for the first time, and roamed the streets of Florence and Rome, and parts of Paris. There seemed to be a heavier atmosphere. More presence. More... thichkness in the history of the place. Not in the history of the the fact that more books have been published about the people who were in those places in the times before, but in the grooves of the streets, and in the very air that I inhaled.

I still find it hard to describe that feeling and that atmosphere. I don't know if any of the words presented here quite hit the nail on the head of that feeling, because those places were certainly not in ruins (though, it could be argued that at times in history they were.)

So I wonder, if we take someone with no historical context of the great cities and mundane laneways that most of the west venerates, would we get the same reaction, the same feeling, if we plucked an oprhan from New Zealand and took them there? Or someone from the jungles of Papua?

I have no idea, but I want to always know if anyone else felt the same way, without the context of history influencing the "atmosphere" of a place.