First week Brasil

I had a very nice flight with TAM and arrived in Sao Paulo at 8 in the evening.

Brasil is a paradise for older people. When I arrived at the passport control there were about 300 people waiting in a row to have their assports checked. I asked a woman who worked there if this was the row fr passport control and she answered very friendly: oh, you don't ave to stand n the row, and let me in to be first! I was amazed. Do I really look that old?

When I came out Soninha ( the Brasilian woman who had worked at my home 20 years ago as au pair) was already waiting for me at the airport. I thought we would take a bus but she came wirh her cousin Jasson, his daughter Jessica with byfrien, with his car although it is a 1,5 hour drive to his house. That was so sweet of him. Last time I was here 13 years ago they did h same and treated me as art of the family. They are sooo nice.

Yesterday I went with Soninha downtown. Her cousin lives in the city of Sao Paulo. Sao Paulo is not big, it is huge. When you look at it from the plane it seems like a city with no end. When you want to go somewhere, you have to take mostly 2-3 busses and it's at least 3 hours to get there if not more! Giulmara, the daughter of Soninhas cousin, works downtown. She atarts working at 8 and has to leave home at 5! It takes her 3 hours, if it is not raining. If it is raining, it takes 4-5 hours. She returns at 9 in the evening. At least 6 hours a day in the bus!

And it rains in Sao Paulo almost every day in the rainy season and depending where, every time another part of the city gets flooded. That's a picture of the flood on the second day I was in Sao Paulo. On the first day it was even worse, according to the pictures I saw on TV. I was just lucky enough not to be there.

If you ride on the bus through the city for hours, you could think most of the time you are in the center. In the neighbourhoods where the people live who are better off, there are lots of so called condominios, these are very high apartment houses, mostly 30 stores or higher. Around each of them a 3 to 4 meters high wall if not higher and on top of it another half meter of electric fence. At the entrance a large gate with a little house where the guard sits , probably behind a bullet proof window.

In the poorer areas, smaller houses but also mostly enclosed by a high wall or fence.

Yesterday we went downtown. It was Sunday. As I have already mentioned, in Brasil older people are treated wonderfully. Women over 60 and men over 65 don't have to pay in the bus. They get from the city a card the size of a credit card (or the new Austrian drivers liscence) with their foto on it which they should show the driver. Well, I just showed my Austrian drivers liscence which has no similarity at all to the real card, but no one looked, they just said very politely, that's fine, with the time I didn't even have to show my driver liscence. Al my illusions that I might look younger definitively died in Sao Paulo. Once even a woman that to me looked about 70 offered me her seat! Can you believe that?

For you, Egle, who are reading this blog- recognise this street?

The old center of Sao Paulo, which I remember from my childhood, has changed so much. Not the houses, but the whole atmosphere. There are hundreds of homeless lying on the sidewalks, many of them drugged. We chatted with a policeman and he warned us to be very careful when walking around in the center. He warned us not to go to the train station, where my father used to have his little shop. It's too sad.

We walked around and I was not aware of any danger, but the Paulistas , the people who live here, have developped a sixth sense for being pursued by someone. Twice Soninha told me to walk quickly, there was someone after us. I wouldn't have noticed.

It was the first time that I did not feel happy walking around downtown Sao Paulo but rather depressed. I wouldn't want to live in this endless city anymore. When I lived here Sao Paulo hat 4 million inhabitants, now it has about 11,37 Million., and the state of Sao Paulo about 41 ,9 million, that is 21,6% of Brasil's population!

On Monday we decided to go to the Botanical Garden. It took us 3 busses and one metro and more than 3 hours to get there and when we finally made it- it was closed! They close on Monday!

So we decided to go to a very large and beautiful park called Ibirapuera, and all the museums inside the park were closed .Everything of interest is closed on Monday here. At 4 we walked out of the park and 20 minutes to the next bus station and the moment we got on the bus it started Pouring. The bus drive took 1,5 hours as most bus drives take here, and as we got off it had stopped raining. We took 2 more busses and at about 7 we were home. When we watched the news on TV, we saw inundations downtown in the area we had come from so that you could see only half of the windows and the roofs of the cars! There was a 173 km long trffic jam in Sao Paulo ( can you magine that? 173 km traffic jam!!!) and the metro was not going. We had been soo lucky. If we would have tried to go by metro, we wouldn't have gotten home even by midnight, I suppose.

That is Sao Paulo.

Sunday evening, when Vera and Jasson came back from church, they told us that one of their neighbours with his wife and 3 children were hiding in the church. The man had borrowed money from some guys and couldn't pay it back so they had threatened to kill someone of his family. The people of the whole neighbourhood had collected some money to give him ro flee with his family to some other place in Brasil but he did not want to. I asked them why he did not turn to the police and they just laughed. The police would not be able to help. It was a gang and if he turned one of them to the police another one of the gang he did not even know about would kill him. Well, Brasil hasn't changed.

Today, because of the rain, Giulmara left at 4 to get in time to work at 8.

Do you realise how lucky and priviledged we are?

19.2

I decided to give it another try, took 2 busses, a metro and another bus, 3 hours, and went to see the botanical garden and the zoo.

The botanical garden has 134 hectars of atlantic rain forest but it is disappointing, as it hardly has any flowers. Here one of the few of them

The zoo is interesting as you see animals you won't see in a European zoos

I loved this Tamandua.

And here a bit closer

That's also a cute one.

And here a sweet couple of turtles going for an afternoon stroll.

Some of them prefer to take a sunbath on the back of a crocodile

And this spider monkey seems to have the time of her life

Watching her boyfriend pose for a picture.

And at the shore of this lake, the birds seem to think this man has come to feed them, or they just enjoy sitting on him.

Ii

I spent the last evening with Soninha and her family, on Wednesday morning Jasson took me to the airport and I flew to Curitiba.

20.2. flying to Curitiba

Curitiba is a nice "little" town with only 1,8 million inhabitants. It is so much cleaner than Sao Paulo and one amazing fact, it has 64 square meters green area per inhabitant! In Curitiba one million trees were planted in less than 20 years. To secure the irrigation of so many small trees the population was called to help. The government started a campaign which said: We supply the shadow and you the fresh water. With the many parks and trees it succeeded to prevent inundations that used to be a problem in the past.

There is a lot to see in and around Curitiba.

22.2 As the weather was wonderful yesterday I decided spontaneously to take the Serra Verde Express train, whose average velocity is about 17 km per hour ( no kidding!) to Morretes. It is a beautiful trip through the jungle, the Mata Atlantica, and the mountains Serra do Mar. The distance Curitiba Morretes is 68 km and it takes 4 hours!

The first hour you are just getting out of Curitiba. Then the train starts ascending the mountains in a narrow path made through the jungle. I was fascinated by the abundance of flowers you see on the way. And each tree is a little universe by itself, with so many plants groing on its stm and branches, not to mention the multitude of insects and other anmals living on it.

The mountains are so different from the mountains in Austria, covered with dense jungle from the bottom to the top.

We passed a little abandoned train station. I love the way nature conquers back every abandoned spot.

And here our train crossing an old bridge. The trails were built in the 19th century. 9000 men worked at this construction that took 5 years and only about half of them survived! The first ride took place on 2.2.1885, the train took 9 hours from Curitiba to Paranagua at the seashore, today it takes about 6 to 7 hours. But it goes to Paranagua only on Sundays, the orher days only to the little town of Morretes.

The highest peeks we passed go up to almost 2000 meters. Here to get a little bit of an impression of the Serra do Mar

Morretes is a cute and quiet little town where tourists come mainly for the train ride, to see the beautiful scenery, and to taste the speciality of Morretes, the Barreado, beef cooked for 20 hours in a clay pot until it falls apart. Then it is mixed with manioc flower, served with rice, bananas, an orange, etc. And if weren't so greasy it could be quite tasteful.

.

Here one street in Morretes to give you an idea.

There is a pretty river crossing Morretes and most restaurants are along the river so you can sit there on a balcony, watch the beautiful view and corageous youngsters jumping from the bridge into the river.

The way back to Curitiba I took the bus that drives along the Graciosa , a very beautiful and scenic road. With the traffic jam at the entrance of Curitiba he sicceeded to make the 68 km in 2 hours and 45 minutes!

23.2 exploring Curitiba

One beautiful place here is the museum Oscar Niemayer.

Oscar Niemayer is the famous Brasilian architect who planned Brasilia . Brasil's president Juscelino Kubitchek strived for immortality and so had the crazy idea to build a new capital for Brasil, in the middle of th country, at a place where there were not yet roads. As he wanted ths project to be finished while he was still president, he had all the materials transported there by airplanes, instead of building roads first, no time for that!

Oscar Niemayer planned and built all the beautiful government buildings n Brasilia, the Palacio da Alvorada, the fantastic cathedral and many others. Here a photo of the Cathedral in Brasilia, photographed from a picture at the exhibition at the Oscar Niemayer museum.

Here the front part of the museum, called "the eye" . Behind is a large building with many exhibitions, and from the large building there s a beautiful tunnel leading to the bottom part of the eye.

This picture of the tunnel was taken by placing the camera on the floor.

From the many exhibitions, most of modern art, but not all, here my favorite pictures:

Amigo da penosa, by Ennio Marques Ferreira, 1987

A portrait by Leonor Lea Botteri, 1916-1998 and this statue by Degas ( until now I only knew his paintings)

I also loved the photo of one of the houses where Oscar Niemayer lived. You can hardly find a building by Niemayer with straight lines. I love his curves. He has planned and built several famous buildings in Europe too, in France, Spain, etc.

And here one last example of Niemayer architecture, insde a theater in Sao Paulo.

I still want to mention a very special tree that grows in ths region, the Araucaria or Pinheiro do Parana.

The rest of my time today I spent strolling in the streets of Curitiba, in bookshops which sell used books, CDs and movies and at the post office sending a box full of books, CDs and Brasilian movies home.