Ahh, vacation!
Brazil was awesome, and Kung Fu Panda, which I watched on the plane on the way back home, is actually really fun.
That's the short version.
The long version begins at home on Thursday evening nearly two weeks ago, as Simone and I prepared for our trip. A mighty scare occurred when Simone was unable to find her passport and we tore not one but two houses apart looking for it until we finally located it around 2:00 AM. Phew. I stopped by work the next day for a quick meeting, then headed out around lunchtime to meet up with Simone, her sister Michelle, and her boyfriend, Charlie. Together, the four of us grabbed lunch and headed for the Orlando airport, where we hopped a flight to Delta's hub in Atlanta, Georgia. Our connecting flight to Brazil was set to leave from there at 8 PM.
Then there was a little "mechanical problem," which I can only imagine involved a pitched battle between the flight crew and a horde of gremlins deep within the guts of the plane, because it's hard to believe anything else could delay us for over six hours. Seven-dollar airport meal vouchers were little consolation, I assure you. The flight finally left Atlanta around 2:30 AM, which meant that the following Saturday we spent in Brazil after it landed is something of a blur to me. However, one of the things I do remember is being elated by was my first taxi ride, which brings me to one of my first sets of observations on Brazilian culture:
After the soccer match, which featured a personal cheering section and makeshift fan band for the home team, among other things, we headed back to the apartment for some rest. Over the next few days, we explored more of Brazil, met a good deal of Simone's extended family, and went on several more adventures. In these few days, I found something really enjoyable about Brazil: they respect your intelligence there. See, you can get messed up in Brazil - easily. Elevator doors will cut your fool hands off. Don't even think you have the right of way in traffic, because those cars will run your ass down if you dare defy their speeding metallic might. Take a look at these pictures of a playground. This is an awesome playground, and it would never exist in the states. I'm betting it sees its fair share of broken child limbs every damn day, and it's still open. Look at those 20-foot drops. Look at the enormous Inclined Plane of Death. It is unforgiving to the unwary, and great fun for the careful. I wish I could have played on it as a kid.
Basically, Brazil has no frivolous lawsuits. There is no nanny state. It's your own damn fault if you screw up like a moron, and I love that. I mean, it's not perfect - if you try to return broken electronics, for example, they will assume you were an idiot and broke them, and never give you your money back. But still - I really did appreciate that things could be cool and effective and not worry so much about the possible aftereffects on morons. Coffee is hot, for chrissakes!
Moving on. Other highlights from the trip included a visit to Petrópolis, the summer home of the Brazilian Emperors, located in some gorgeous mountains not far from Rio. Hands up - who knew Brazil had Emperors? I sure didn't. Apparently they showed up in Brazil right around the same time Napoleon showed up near Portugal with conquest on the mind. Funny that. We also went to Pão de Açúcar, which is also known as Sugarloaf Mountain, which you should all remember from Moonraker, because it has those cable cars that Bond fought Jaws on. It's also got some ridiculously beautiful views. Take a look at this shot I took on the way to the second peak. It also had tiny monkeys.
Of course, no visit to Brazil would be complete without a trip up to Enormous Jesus, which, though it occurred on a particularly cool and overcast day, still offered some beautiful views (that's Sugarloaf Mountain in the middle, there, and behind the mountains to the right is Copacabana)! Finally, we also saw a famous Bossa Nova singer named Maria Creuza in a very nice little club - interestingly, we heard her sing "The Girl from Ipanema" in the original Portuguese while we were actually in Ipanema!
Food-wise, Brazil has much to offer the average traveler, though pickings are a bit slimmer for vegetarians. Expect to eat a lot of cheese, bread, and cheese-bread. For you, most of the standard restaurant fare will begin to blend together into a warped Italian cuisine after not too long. Also, their pizza needs MOAR SAUCE - I hear it's very Italian-inspired, but I also hear I like sauce. As for vegans, well... you'll be in a bit of a tight spot, I think. Good luck if you want to expand too far beyond fruits, rice, beans, and veggies.
In any case, Brazil was great. I had a very fun time visiting interesting sites and meeting cool people. I also had a bit of a refreshment on how at least a part of the world views America - and it's pretty highly, believe it or not. America is looked to as the place you go when you've "made it." Saying someone went to America for their field is like saying they got very successful. Our culture is everywhere in Brazil, particularly in the form of movies, and although the whole customs/immigration process is constantly bemoaned, most people are very positive about us in general. For all the cynicism in our inward-looking views, it's nice to see an outsider's perspective or two - and see it be so positive. Sometimes, you have to leave the country to find new things to appreciate about it, I think. Then again, prostitution is legal in Brazil and there are boobs on public TV, so... we could always get even better, y'know.
Anyway, there you have it - a wonderful time was had by all, and I'd like to go again. Can't ask for much more.
That's the short version.
The long version begins at home on Thursday evening nearly two weeks ago, as Simone and I prepared for our trip. A mighty scare occurred when Simone was unable to find her passport and we tore not one but two houses apart looking for it until we finally located it around 2:00 AM. Phew. I stopped by work the next day for a quick meeting, then headed out around lunchtime to meet up with Simone, her sister Michelle, and her boyfriend, Charlie. Together, the four of us grabbed lunch and headed for the Orlando airport, where we hopped a flight to Delta's hub in Atlanta, Georgia. Our connecting flight to Brazil was set to leave from there at 8 PM.
Then there was a little "mechanical problem," which I can only imagine involved a pitched battle between the flight crew and a horde of gremlins deep within the guts of the plane, because it's hard to believe anything else could delay us for over six hours. Seven-dollar airport meal vouchers were little consolation, I assure you. The flight finally left Atlanta around 2:30 AM, which meant that the following Saturday we spent in Brazil after it landed is something of a blur to me. However, one of the things I do remember is being elated by was my first taxi ride, which brings me to one of my first sets of observations on Brazilian culture:
- Taxis are Awesome: Besides buses, the primary form of public transportation in Rio de Janiero is actually the taxi. There are tons of cabs swarming the city's streets, and having to wait anywhere for more than five minutes for a ride happened only once (and that was in a deserted area around midnight after half our party had already gotten one). Most of the time, you stepped up the street, stuck out your arm, and BAM! - a taxi driver would swerve across three lanes' worth of traffic and be there for you. When you want to go somewhere in Brazil, you do it in a taxi, and you do it fast, which brings me to my next point.
- Driving in Brazil is Madness: But effective madness, I might add. The city's streets are controlled chaos, with things moving forward at a good pace, and everybody treating lanes and red lights like suggestions. This echoes a recurring theme in Brazil, which seems to be that they are proud to have things at the point of being utterly screwed up and yet still in complete working order. This is not a dig, incidentally, because while everything is crazy and feels halfway jury-rigged, it all still works just fine. Think of it as more of an awed compliment.
- Rio is Cool: Every taxi ride was a treat, honestly. Driving through a brand-new foreign city is great fun no matter how you slice it, and one full of incredibly diverse architecture, really interesting graffiti (it was everywhere, and some of it quite talented), and enormous mountains is like icing on the cake. Rio is simply huge, and when you drive at night, seeing its densely-packed slums light up the hillsides like stars is just flat-out neat. This also highlights an odd property-value disparity, in which places higher up are actually cheaper, and places lower are more affluent. Interesting.
- Brazilians Love Soccer: No, you don't understand. You might say that Americans love football, but if you do, then it may be better to say that Brazilians live soccer. Their enjoyment of the sport transcends mere athletic competition and becomes a social glue. Parts of Rio support different teams, and they support their teams with a special ferocity, because each one is their team, like a big sibling. Walking down the streets when a game is on, it's common to see several onlookers hovering around outside a cafe with a TV inside, entranced by the game going on inside. Every kick, every penalty call, and every twitch of the ball is met with attendant shouts and cries. Goals are moments of transcendant bliss for the fans of the winning team, and there are signs in nicer restaurants that say "No Dancing on the Tables" for a reason. It is not uncommon to see buses of fans waving flags and chanting fight songs that roughly translate to "They're gonna take it up the ass!" zoom past you on the streets.
- Brazilians Are Closer: In line with the above social commentary, Brazilians also have a much greater sense of community than we do. There's a prevailing sense that everyone around is your fellow man, particularly if they're cheering for the same team as you. Sure, they're as adept as anybody at ignoring the homeless and the ever-present street vendors, but amongst the general populace there's a sense that they just plain like each other more than we Americans like each other. Heck, it seems like we can barely tolerate each other, sometimes. We need to have an Argentina of our own to make fun of and hate for cheating in soccer, I think.
- Portuguese is Sweet: It's like somebody threw French and Spanish in a blender and added a dash of Italian. Hearing it spoken by somebody who's fluent is both beautiful and annoying, because it all flows together smoothly and sleekly, sounds cool, and is sometimes very hard to peel apart and get at individual words. Even worse is trying to mimic some of the pronunciations, which led to incidents like Charlie and I saying the word for "Apple" approximately eighty billion times over the course of the trip as we tried to learn it correctly.
After the soccer match, which featured a personal cheering section and makeshift fan band for the home team, among other things, we headed back to the apartment for some rest. Over the next few days, we explored more of Brazil, met a good deal of Simone's extended family, and went on several more adventures. In these few days, I found something really enjoyable about Brazil: they respect your intelligence there. See, you can get messed up in Brazil - easily. Elevator doors will cut your fool hands off. Don't even think you have the right of way in traffic, because those cars will run your ass down if you dare defy their speeding metallic might. Take a look at these pictures of a playground. This is an awesome playground, and it would never exist in the states. I'm betting it sees its fair share of broken child limbs every damn day, and it's still open. Look at those 20-foot drops. Look at the enormous Inclined Plane of Death. It is unforgiving to the unwary, and great fun for the careful. I wish I could have played on it as a kid.
Basically, Brazil has no frivolous lawsuits. There is no nanny state. It's your own damn fault if you screw up like a moron, and I love that. I mean, it's not perfect - if you try to return broken electronics, for example, they will assume you were an idiot and broke them, and never give you your money back. But still - I really did appreciate that things could be cool and effective and not worry so much about the possible aftereffects on morons. Coffee is hot, for chrissakes!
Moving on. Other highlights from the trip included a visit to Petrópolis, the summer home of the Brazilian Emperors, located in some gorgeous mountains not far from Rio. Hands up - who knew Brazil had Emperors? I sure didn't. Apparently they showed up in Brazil right around the same time Napoleon showed up near Portugal with conquest on the mind. Funny that. We also went to Pão de Açúcar, which is also known as Sugarloaf Mountain, which you should all remember from Moonraker, because it has those cable cars that Bond fought Jaws on. It's also got some ridiculously beautiful views. Take a look at this shot I took on the way to the second peak. It also had tiny monkeys.
Of course, no visit to Brazil would be complete without a trip up to Enormous Jesus, which, though it occurred on a particularly cool and overcast day, still offered some beautiful views (that's Sugarloaf Mountain in the middle, there, and behind the mountains to the right is Copacabana)! Finally, we also saw a famous Bossa Nova singer named Maria Creuza in a very nice little club - interestingly, we heard her sing "The Girl from Ipanema" in the original Portuguese while we were actually in Ipanema!
Food-wise, Brazil has much to offer the average traveler, though pickings are a bit slimmer for vegetarians. Expect to eat a lot of cheese, bread, and cheese-bread. For you, most of the standard restaurant fare will begin to blend together into a warped Italian cuisine after not too long. Also, their pizza needs MOAR SAUCE - I hear it's very Italian-inspired, but I also hear I like sauce. As for vegans, well... you'll be in a bit of a tight spot, I think. Good luck if you want to expand too far beyond fruits, rice, beans, and veggies.
In any case, Brazil was great. I had a very fun time visiting interesting sites and meeting cool people. I also had a bit of a refreshment on how at least a part of the world views America - and it's pretty highly, believe it or not. America is looked to as the place you go when you've "made it." Saying someone went to America for their field is like saying they got very successful. Our culture is everywhere in Brazil, particularly in the form of movies, and although the whole customs/immigration process is constantly bemoaned, most people are very positive about us in general. For all the cynicism in our inward-looking views, it's nice to see an outsider's perspective or two - and see it be so positive. Sometimes, you have to leave the country to find new things to appreciate about it, I think. Then again, prostitution is legal in Brazil and there are boobs on public TV, so... we could always get even better, y'know.
Anyway, there you have it - a wonderful time was had by all, and I'd like to go again. Can't ask for much more.