A tale of big men in small Speedos

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I haven't written here in ages, because I haven't traveled in ages. But two days ago I returned from a brief vacation I managed to pull off, and here's the story:

Six hours before my flight was leaving Copenhagen Airport, I realized my passport was in an impossibly difficult location. Sadly, it was sharing this location with my identification, another essential item for any voyage.
You see, I was traveling to South America, Brazil to be exact, Rio de Janeiro to be even more precise, and the only thing that almost every travel page had in common was the advice to bring copies of your ID and passport with you everywhere. Meanwhile your actual documents should lay securely in an expensive hotel room or a safe at a hostel. Ordinarily, I think that sort of precautionary behavior is for pussies, as it takes a lot of the excitement out of traveling, but as I'm the type of person who will try anything once, I thought I'd give it a go. Thus, Johan - the object of my adoration - and I went to do some uncharacteristic travel preparations.
There is a public copy machine in a grocery store downtown in Malmoe. I went there and made a copy, in exact accordance with the recommendation. Unfortunately they did not recommend leaving your documents in the copy machine, or else I would've been spot on. As it were, I didn't even notice that I had forgotten them until much later that night. The store had called my phone at 9pm as they closed up, but at this point I had been busy making messy dumplings with Johan, both of us a little tipsy, and apparently unable to hear my phone. By the time I noticed the missed call it was already 11pm, and even then I nearly ignored it since I didn't know the number. I was spending my last wake hours with Johan, no time for calls from other people. But the call was local, not from a cell phone, which piqued my curiosity, and I quickly looked it up online. When I saw the name of the grocery store where I had made the copies, I immediately realized the disastrous error I had made. There was a voice message on my phone, and now I listened to it. The woman from the store informed me that they had put the passport at register 1 for me, and I could pick it up the next day. She was wrong; the store would open 3 hours after my flight had left Copenhagen. And by now it was over two hours after they had closed.

A little bit of panic.
And a touch of despair.
And then, an attempt at rational thinking. In other words, call Mom.
Mom recommended I call the police to see if they had any advice on how to solve my predicament. My flight was leaving in 7 hours, so my hopes weren't exactly sky high when I dialed the number, but when the kind lady who assisted me asked me to hold while she was going to inquire about it, my hopes couldn't help themselves; they inched their way up to 'perhaps perhaps maybe'. Alas, she returned with bad news; there was nothing they could do for me.

OK, back to plan A, which was plan Zero, which was to reschedule my flight, in lack of other options. I hate losing, but that's how it felt. It felt like I had lost something pretty major, something far greater than the fee I would have to pay to reschedule my flight. After all, these things don't happen to me. I mean, they do, but I always figure something out, I always solve the problem in some completely far-fetched way. So, in a moment of cockeyed optimism I dialed the number to the grocery store. Maybe someone was still cleaning, maybe they would pick up the phone and magically have access to the passport and ID that the lady had left at register 1 for me.
The recorded female voice informed me of the store's opening hours, then proceeded to tell me what number to dial to speak with the postal department, or the fruit department, or the dairy department. Or hold on. I held on.
Three rings, and a man answered the phone. He was a cleaner. He knew about my passport. I could come collect it. They were just getting off their shift.
What? The odds of this happening were slimmer than Keira Knightley, yet it was happening. Johan heard the conversation, stared at me in disbelief, then promptly called a cab. I jumped out of my OnePiece and into some clothes, and we went to the store and met my Saviour. I had been very lucky, he explained. He and his work mate don't usually hear the phone, and anyway they're not allowed to píck up, but he had seen the passport and thought the late night call could be about that. Also, the guard who opens the gate in order for them to exit the building was late, otherwise they would have left already. He then pointed to his cheek, indicating I needed to place a kiss there before I could have my passport back. I gave him a big ol' smooch and thanked him profusely, informing him that as far as his karma went, he was in good shape.

I slept most of the longer flight. During my wake hours, however, I decided Air France gets thumbs up, despite being French, solely due to the fantastic food; the mid-flight snacks consisted of brie-sandwiches and Haagen-Dasz ice-cream. Top notch.
Upon arrival I escaped the airport swiftly due to having brought only hand-luggage, and outside I searched for a local to aid me in the circumvention of expensive cabs. I found a guy who spoke excellent English and was incredibly helpful. Meet Alex: a 40-something Brazilian who works in Safety Service around the world. 28 days of work in Angola / Saudiarabia / India / Gabon / any instable region, and then 28 days off. Apparently this lifestyle is hard on relationships, because Alex had been married 5 times, and had 3 kids with different women. When I asked if his current wife was the one, he just shrugged, as if to say he no longer had a clue how to assess these things.
Alex got off before my stop, bid farewell and wished me a pleasant stay in Rio, and soon a young girl took his seat. She peered at my dorky phrase book, and not recognizing the language she asked me where I was from. Meet Carina: a 25-year old girl who is in love with (and has some sort of surreptitious relationship with) a huge Brazilian female artist of some sort. Carina couldn't give me the name of said celebrity, it had to be kept confidential, but she assured me this woman was a big deal. I could've sworn Carina was American, so thick was her New York accent, but in fact she was Brazilian. She had studied in NY for a year and a half, during which time she had deftly acquired a convincing accent.
Carina wanted me to guess her age when I asked her how old she was, and I guessed 23. She smiled and said that happened a lot to her, people thought she was younger than her actual age. When she asked me my age I played the same game, and she guessed 23. I told her she was right, and she grinned and said she was really good at guessing people's age. When I confessed she was about 6 years off, she gawked at me in silence, as if waiting for me to say I was joking. I decided I liked her.
We jumped off the bus at Copacabana, and Carina grabbed a cab for us and dropped me off at a hostel. I hadn't been able to make any reservations in advance, so I was happy to be led to a bed. Turns out I grabbed the last vacant one they had.
Luck seemed to be the name of the game, and I decided to run with it.

My first day in Rio was spent at the markets, as it was a Sunday. First I checked out the Copacabana market, then I took a stroll over to Ipanema and visited the hippie market, which was huge. Apparently it's very expensive to be a hippie in Rio, for every single item was heavily overpriced. I bought a coconut and drank the water out of it, which is cheaper than bottled water, and then I went to a little park to watch the old men play cards. When I got peckish I had corn on the cob with butter and salt from a cart on the street.
As I walked back to Copa I strolled right into a gay parade. Either Brazilian homosexuals are all deaf, or they consider tinnitus to be cool; the music was outrageously loud. The transvestites were 12 per the dozen, and they all looked proud and happy. It was a good vibe, and I enjoyed the parade for an hour or so, even purchasing the obligatory rainbow tie. I'm assuming the money I paid for it will go towards helping transvestites in distress.

For dinner I ended up in a smart place called Stalos. When you're a vegetarian who doesn't speak Portuguese, ordering food can be tricky. I got a table and a menu, and I started to try to decipher the contents of the different dishes.
There was a man sitting by himself at the table next to mine, and he leaned over and asked "Are you my friend?" Caught off guard, I gave him my all-purpose expression, a sort of smile, and I said yes, sure, and then returned to perusing my menu. The man kept talking to me, telling me that the people at the table next to his certainly were not his friends. I glanced over at the group of men he was referring to, and they all grinned jovially at us. I smiled politely at them. "You make order?" asked the man.
Meet Carlito: a large 30-something man with a huge appetite and a will to help where he could.
No, I answered, I haven't ordered. Perhaps you can help me avoid getting something with meat in it. 'Sem carne', I emphasized, um vegetariano. I gestured at myself, helping him understand that I was the vegetarian who wished food without meat in it. Carlito nodded and looked a the dish I suggested. 'Carne?' I asked, and Carlito said 'no, no meat'.
Ok, perfect. I got the attention of the waitress and pointed to the item Carlito had reviewed for me. At the cascade of questions that followed regarding my order I just randomly said 'yes', mixing it up by sometimes firmly shaking my head as if I knew with full conviction that I didn't want that. This seemed to perplex my waitress enough to finally take my menu and leave me alone. Success.
Carlito and I tried to chat, but it seemed we had already exhausted most of his knowledge of the English language, and my Portuguese still need some work. Heh.
'Ah, your sandwich!' he happily exclaimed as a waiter walked past our table to serve another table their food. The sandwich he was referring to had a thick chunk of bright pink ham in the middle. No, I said, that sandwich has meat in it, it's not the same sandwich as mine. Carlito looked confused, so I dumbed it down. 'My sandwich, no meat. That sandwich - meat.' At this, he laughed. 'Ha ha, no meat! Is ham!
Oh great. I called my waitress over, and then sat through a long ordeal of trying to cancel one order and then place another, this time being even more clear about the need for lack of meat in my food. I wished I knew how to say 'I don't eat anything that may have moaned as it died', but evidently that lay a bit outside my capabilities.
Eventually, I got my vegetarian sandwich. I looked suspiciously at the semi-dried tomatoes for a long while, but after a thorough analysis I concluded it contained no meat. Or ham.
Once I dug in, it tasted much like victory.

And so the days flew by. Hanggliding, market-strolling, people-meeting, caipinhira-drinking - I got a lot of stuff done. Sometimes I would walk far outside of the areas I knew and get lost on purpose, grab the first bus that came by and get off when the neighborhood started to look interesting. You see a lot of fun things that way, and it's a sure way to get off the tourist-trodded path lined with vendors with impressive overpricing skills.
I was also socially active from time to other. For instance, I met an Australian guy named Jeremy and a Canadian named Rajiv at the hostel one night, and we got smashed together from the cheap alcohol offered at the hostel bar. Jeremy and I became fast friends, for such is the power of alcohol. And because he is from Sydney, city of my dreams. After a few hours the barkeeper asked us to keep it down, and when failing to do so, he asked us to leave. We went out in search for another bar, but alas, it was Tuesday, and only restaurants were open. Sure, they served alcohol, but we'd probably just end up getting kicked out again. So instead we ended up drinking more caipinhiras at the Copacabana beach, which inevitably ended in a midnight swim, defying so many traveling advice. "Don't go to Copacabana at night, lots of robbers. Don't be drunk in public, it's considered uncivil. Don't ever leave your valuables out of sight, you'll never see them again."
I threw off my clothes, put my camera and wallet in the sand and jumped in, not exactly exuding sobriety. But miraculously we didn't get robbed, and all in all, that midnight swim was probably one of the absolute highlights of my trip.

In Brazil they have a genius concept called 'comida a quilo' - food by the kilo. It's a restaurant buffet where you can choose between 'all you can eat' at a set price, or just pick the food you want and then pay according to the weight of your plate. In Rio, many restaurants are of this model, and I visited one of them the morning after our boisterous evening, hoping it would mollify my headache and improve the generally frail state I was in.
As I returned to the hostel after my modest feast, I asked at the reception about the favela tours that were being arranged every day. Did one have to book in advance? Not at all, said the receptionist, in fact there's one leaving in 20 minutes. Quandary; three hours of advancing in my cultural understanding of Rio's poverty or a much-needed hangover nap? Just allowing the latter to be an alternative when I had so little time in Rio made me ashamed of myself, and I told the girl behind the counter to sign me up.
15 minutes later a guy came to collect me. Meet Daniel: a 30-something, buff Favela inhabitant, dressed in a ironed t-shirt, evil tattoos and skate shoes. Daniel enunciated a lot, stressing every syllable of every word of every sentence, making you almost fall over trying to pay careful attention to everything he said. It's tiresome listening to someone who talks like that. His pronunciation of 'favela' contained at least 4 l's.
When we arrived at the bottom of the Rocinha, the largest slum in Rio, housing over 200,000 people, Daniel explained we would all ride on the back of a motorcycle to the top of the hill. I looked at him in disbelief. I was wearing a skirt. A short jeans skirt. I would not be able to straddle the motorbike without pulling off a Paris Hilton. Well, not really. I wear underwear. But still.
You could tell everyone else was thinking the same thing, because they were all looking at me, my skirt, and the motorbike and then back again at me. At a certain point, I felt like the staring was enough. 'Aren't I glad I chose to wear a short skirt today!' I bellowed with a big, fake smile. Then, as it was my turn to get on a bike, I magically produced a large scarf from my backpack and wrapped it around me like a long sarong, disappointing everyone who had hoped for a display of American disgrace. I know they all thought I was American. It's the accent, I can't help it, and neither can they. I actually enforce that impression by not speaking any Portuguese, hoping to get by on English like some xenophobic Anglomaniac, so I only have myself to blame. I should really learn a third language.
The favela tour was wildly interesting, and I was wildly hungover. On top of this I had stomach cramps, and the whole three hours I was torn between wanting to see more and just wanting to lie down on something soft and clean with a bottle of water beside me, preferably with a cuddly teddy bear that smelled of laundry detergent.

After many good moments it was time to go back to the Motherland, Sweden. I wasn't terribly sad to return home, as that meant I would get to see Johan again.
I had decided to not take the expensive cab to the airport, but instead catch the shuttle. In a typical Brazilian fashion, catching the shuttle bus means standing on the main road in Copacabana, anywhere along the street, and flag down the bus when it appears. You don't know when this will be, only that it's approximately twice an hour. There's no bus stop for the shuttle, it just picks people up along the way, but it's a system that works surprisingly well. I was lucky, I only had to wait for a few minutes.

My flight home was the diametrical opposite of my flight there. Where I had previously had a two-seater all to myself, I was now at the window seat of a 3-seater, and my seat companions were idiots. Dutch idiots. In all fairness, I don't know how much of a moron the man two seats away from me was, but I will gladly judge him based on the fact that he chose to speak to the woman next to me. This woman was the Airplane Beelzebub. She possessed an eerie disregard for the passenger next to her, i.e. me, and she displayed this by not letting me sleep, a popular torture method among tyrants. I crawled up in my seat, trying to get as far away from her as possible, but I'm not all that tiny. Long limbs are helpful when playing basketball, but less so when wanting to escape Satan in an airplane seat. 'Think like a Pygmee' I thought to myself, but I remained 5"9', and my oppressor had no trouble disturbing me whenever she pleased. There was the kick on my foot, the knee in my thigh, the poking of her pillow on my arm, the brushing of her blanket against my side, the constant moving about, the slamming of the tray table, and the arm rest was clearly all hers and not for us to share sisterly. Many were the times when I almost turned to her and yelled "Oh, come ON!", exasperated by the situation, but I figured the only thing that could be worse than this torment would be to have her carry it out indignantly. So I kept silent, only throwing her a tired glance now and then, hoping she would pick up on the pleading despair in my eyes. Needless to say, whatever despair she may have picked up on only delighted her, and thus my anguish was unabated. My only consolation through this hardship was that with causing all that ruckus to keep me awake, my antagonizer wasn't getting any sleep either.

I will not be visiting the Netherlands any time soon.
Brazil, however, has a piece of my heart and deserves another time around.

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Comments

[kalesco]

Hey You!
Sounds like a great trip! And, what's even more important, sounds like you're having a good time at home too! I'm happy for you! :)