São Paulo

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Wowee!

I arrived in Sao Paulo yesterday, to be greeted at the airport by my sister´s friend Marcos and a bolt of electricity. This place is absolutely amazing, pulsating with energy and activity and people. You really can sense excitement in the warm air. I got into Marcos´friends´car after groping my way through immigration and customs at the airport (rather less thorough than I would have imagined, but still gropable) and was inundated with amazing scenes. The road from the airport, which is on the northern outskirts of this sprawling city, follows the route of the Rio Tiete, once a river which has turned into an concrete walled, foul smelling, industrial waste depository. Driving down the road, along the river, was also rather interesting, as Sao Paulo´s 6 million cars make the streets rather crowded. Motorcycles beep their horns as they flit in and out of the traffic, avoiding merging trucks and crazy people - of which I am told there are many. Along this road highrises and favellas intermix, the colourful shanty towns with their winding dirt paths face down static concrete constructions. One of the things that I noticed right from the start is how there are highrises apartment blocks everywhere. There aren´t just clusters here and there, but if you look in any direction, you will see one, perhaps way off in the distance, perhaps across the street. I suppose thats the nature of a city which has 15 million people.

After I had dumped my pack in Marcos´ apartment, we went 100 metres down the street, the footpath painted and tiled in parts, to a corner restaurant for lunch. Marcos ordered a selection of Braziliana; a black bean and pork stew called feijoada, served with rice and other things, along with a selection of Brazilian beverages such as Gurarana (a berry flavoured soft drink) Agua Tonica (tonic water is very popular here). Marcos also got me to try strong caipirinha, the national cocktail of Brazil, made with sugar, lime and cachaça (distilled from sugarcane) over ice. The drink itself is rather strong, but also delicious and refreshing if you manage to keep control of your spinning head. After lunch we went back to the apartment, which is guarded on ground level by a number of people, who Marcos gave the left overs of our lunch to. I ended up falling asleep for three hours when Marcos, who works for a television station as a journalist left for work in the afternoon. I woke to the sounds of children playing on the roof of the church across the street. My night was rather quiet as I got stuck into writing my blog about Calgary and Vancouver, before Marcos came home at 9, whisking me away to dinner down the road with some of his journalist friends.

Sao Paulo is famous for its pizzas. Apparently, every sunday 2 million pizzas are made here. That might be a bit of a whopper, but wikipedia, the definitive source of human knowledge tells me that Sao Paulo has more Italians than any other city in the world. I found myself at a Brazilian pizza restaurant, eating pizza, drinking Chopp (what they call a brand of ´soft beer´, because apparently it is different from normal beer, not that I could tell any difference), talking to two other journalists and watching the soccer on the tv. Afterwards, full as full can be, I crashed on the fold out couch for my 10 hours.

After I woke up this morning to Marcos´sing song voice and breakfast, his friend came over. He tried to explain to me the way that Sao Paulo was laid out, and the easiest way for me to get around, but a mixture of broken english and ´lies´found me pretty confused. After pulling out my compass (thanks Chris and Nancy, mr and mrs boss man) I managed to work it all out. Marcos and his friend dropped me off at the metro station on their way to work, and it was up to me to find my way in and out of town. I went up to someone, my finger pressed on a map, my eyes large and my face saying ´im a gringo´, only to find that they spoke really good english, at which point my heart lept and I got where I wanted to go. The metro system here is really quite amazing. The trains themselves are really very fast, and are quite wide inside, catering mostly for standing passengers. They are also rather long, perhaps 100 metres or so. I spent my day walking up and down Paulista Avenue, a busy thoroughfare lined with tall office buildings on both sides. I snuck down a side street (what we would call a busy road in Canberra) and found myself a bustling eatery where I fumbled my way through ordering lunch - chicken and cheese pizza and chopp. Further up the dizzying busyness of Av.Paulista I came to the MASP, the Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo, a very impressive looking rectangular building, 75 metres long and suspended 10 metres high by 4 red concrete columns in each corner. By the time I had experienced two levels of Brasilian art history, from modernity to that contemporary stuff (jokes!) I was rather tired, so I headed up another many blocks along Paulista Avenue to the metro station, where I caught what I thought was my train. After getting off the train, I realised it was my train (I wanted to create some narrative tension guys!) and walked the way I thought was the way to walk. Well, luckily enough I was right, even though I had no real idea, so I walked along the footpath, traversing people and people and uneven concrete, facing down music store after music store until I came to where I wanted to be, the plaza across the road from Marcos´apartment, where boys where playing football under the cover of trees. And as I pulled open the broken sliding door of Marcos´building, letting the guards know that I was staying with Marcos, I remembered that I really love this city. I´ve spent two days here, and already it has given me such an impression. This city, with its 15 million people, is so crazy that institutionalisation should be brought back if only for it. But at the same time, Sao Paulo has a tangible sense of excitement in the air, which I haven´t experienced in Braidwood, or Canberra, or even Vancouver or Sydney.

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Photos

Church
This is the church across the street from Marcos´apartment.

Marcos´s Building
Looking up the middle of Marcos´apartment building.

Street
This is a street around the corner from where Marcos lives, a very busy road which is always packed with cars and buses and weaving motorcyclists. The footpaths are being re-paved, with the old concrete footpath being dug up by hand.

Paulista Avenue
This long Avenue, which isn´t even in the centre of town, is lined on both sides by these amazingly tall buildings for as far as the eye can see. The footpaths are crowded with people, and there is the constant sound of honking.

MASP
Museu de Arte de Sao Paulo. A real gem of architecture, has one of the world´s longest unsupported spans (74 metres i think). Two levels of Brasilian art from modern to that contemporary stuff.

MASP
With people being lazy.

Sao Paulo
Looking out from behind MASP, the landscape of buildings stretches on.

Kids
Kids playing football in the plaza opposite Marcos´ apartment after school, while others watch on.

Marcos and I
Marcos and I