Last Monday, everything just stopped. No power, no internet, no cell service - a massive blackout across Portugal, Spain, and into the south of France. The streets went silent, the stores closed, and we spent a very strange day off the grid: just us, Sami, and eight flights of stairs between us and the outside world.

It started around noon. First I thought it was our apartment, then the building, and then my mom texted from Romania - while my phone still worked - to say it was the entire Iberian Peninsula. That was the last news we got for hours. Friends had driven to another city and we had no idea if they could get back, because the gas stations were closed too. It felt like time-traveling to an era I never actually lived in.

Sami, of course, was magnificently unbothered. His main crisis: dinner served cold. He eats home-cooked food - I'd just cooked his whole week of turkey with carrots, yams, and mushrooms - and with no microwave, his majesty had to eat it straight from the fridge. He still waited for his "okay" before touching it, because standards don't collapse just because the power grid does.

The evening walk was the surreal part. No elevator, so we carried him down all eight floors (and the trash, by flashlight). The city was completely empty - a Monday that felt like an abandoned Sunday. Our street, normally full of café tables and people, had nothing and no one. You couldn't even get a coffee, because nobody could make one.

We got home, and the power came back - about nine hours after it went out. Sami got his heated breakfast the next morning, the fridge survived, and we got a story. Not a day I'd repeat, but a day I'm oddly glad we had.

If you want the strange days along with the normal ones, subscribe to Westie Vibes.