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Published: November 30th 2010
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This huge metropolis of 19 million, the largest in the southern hemisphere, was one I'd planned to avoid. However, others had convinced me that its museums were not to be missed so I girded myself with low expectations and took yet another overnight bus.
Coming from Ouro Preto, the overnight bus passed through mountains covered in lush vegetation and small towns. However, the next morning, it took us an hour of driving through a depressingly gray urban landscape to arrive at the San Paulo bus station, the largest in South America. At times we were surrounded on all sides by hideous concrete towers--this didn't seem promising. Yet the bus station was connected to the metro--a sure sign of a well-planned transportation system.
Supposedly, San Paulo's urban bus system is the world's most complex with over 15,000 buses, so I generally stuck with the metro which was fast and simple to navigate. After a half an hour and two metro lines, I emerged onto a long street of modern skyscrapers, Paulista Avenue, the financial center of the country with a great park designed by my favorite Brazilian landscaper, Roberto Burle-Marx,and some fine museums.
My roller suitcase flew me down
a half dozen very long, very steep blocks to my hostel. The city is built on hills, and I got lots of good exercise exploring. My hostel, the cheapest in town, was a converted 2-bedroom apartment populated only by Brazilians there for short courses or exams--perfect, no young partiers!
I'd arrived on Sunday, so I dropped my bag and hopped on the metro to San Bento church to hear the monks chant a Gregorian mass. After all of Ouro Preto's baroque, it was refreshing to experience the early 20c Norman-Byzantine church with its clean lines and Byzantine/art nouveau paintings.
That afternoon, I followed a walking tour of the downtown outlined in the Lonely Planet. As in Rio, tourists are warned against venturing into the deserted downtown on the weekends since it is filled only with the homeless. Yet I decided I'd rather contend with them than with the crowds and traffic of a normal day.
Thus, in a few hours, I walked from San Bento to the Plaza of the Republic, then to the Plaza of the Cathedral, passing some attractive early 20c skyscrapers, the city's oldest 17c Baroque church, a church built by African Brazilians with unfortunately
Neimeyer's Oca
Temporary exhibit space only white-faced images inside the church (where was their black Madonna?), parks and viaducts, the beautiful, scaffolded Municipal Theater, various cultural centers with art exhibits, the spot where the city was founded by Jesuit missionaries in 1554 and the neo-gothic Cathedral whose plaza was packed with preaching evangelists and lots of homeless.
The historical center is full of homeless people--locals call it "crack alley." As in Santa Barbara, it's a sensitive issue--how to help them and also make tourists feel safe. Unfortunately right now, not much is being done. In Rio, I'd been struck by the fact that there were so many poor in the favelas, yet so few homeless panhandling on the streets. Evidentally, there have been controversial and sometimes violent "sweeps" of homeless, many of them children, to get them off the streets, but without doing anything to help them--where is justice and compassion?
More good, bad and ugly. Back at San Bento, I learned that this monastery's plaza had been the staging area for the thousands of bandeiera expeditions in the 17c and 18c. These bandieras were the villains that I'd disliked in the Jesuit Mission country of Argentina because they hunted and enslaved indigenous
tribes to work on Brazil's sugar plantations. Indeed, they also later hunted runaway African slaves. Yet here, they are also celebrated for their exploration of Brazil's hinderland and discovery of the gold and minerals of Minas Gerais. Nothing is all black or white.
On a more positive note, San Paulo's great museums were often surrounded by large, tranquil parks, that insulated them from the city noise. My favorite was the huge Ibirapuera Park built in 1954 for an exposition to celebrate the city's 400th anniversary. The great team of architect Oscar Neimeyer and landscape designer Roberto Burle-Marx worked with others to create a huge park with lakes filled with swans, egrets, ducks, and koi, and buildings still used as museums.
One of Neimeyer's buildings, Oca, is a spaceship-shaped temporary exhibition building, another is a theater with a red tongue protruding from its entrance, and and his modern art museum is surrounded by glass. I focused on the museums that would help me understand the culture, ie, the excellent three on African-Brazilians, folk art, and indigenous art.
The African-Brazilian one was incredibly comprehensive and informative. I was surprised to learn that the US had about the same number
of African slaves as there were in Europe, but that this number was dwarfed by the ten times greater numbers in both Brazil and in the Caribbean.
I also loved the outdoor garden art exhibits, such as one with food growing in pots with images of the food on the pot, teaching city dwellers where sunflower seeds or peppers come from.
At the other end of town was another curvilinear museum complex designed by Neimeyer, the little-visited Latin American Memorial. I was the only one enjoying the fantastic display of indigenous art from all over the Americas and the tribute to independence hero, Tiradentes, whom I'd just met in Ouro Preto .
The state municipal theater was stunning and inspired by the Paris Opera; however, it was scaffolded and closed for renovation. Programs were held in other venues, and I saw a fine performance of Puccini's Manon Lescault in a downtown theater. It was being performed only twice, and I was surprised to see the theater only half full even though there was no charge. I guess everyone was out in samba clubs.
My visit to Vila Madalena, the bohemian area with galleries, ataliers and upscale
hostels, was only partly successful. I roamed and asked around but found nothing but a great vegetarian restaurant. Clearly, I needed a map to the hot spots. However, the veggie feast, the only meal I ate out in SP, was worth the wander. I generally just bought slices of pineapple or corn on the cob from street vendors or slurped down mangoes and papayas at the hostel.
While the guidebooks all recommended the Municipal Market in a handsome neo-classical 1928 building, and the market itself was wonderful with all sorts of exotic fruit and other goodies, the walk there from the metro was hideous, and all I dislike about large cities. The steep streets were completely packed with rather aggressive shoppers angling for the tackiest of kitsch Halloween and Christmas decorations and florescent garbage. A true nightmare.
One of the reasons I chose to stay in the Paulista neighborhood, was Trianon Park which I walked through daily on my way to the subway. Originally a 19c showcase for native flora with 300-year old trees, it was renovated in 1968 by my favorite landscape architect, Roberto Burle-Marx, who also added his characteristic mosaic tiles. It was a lush reward
for daily dips into the city.
Across the street from the park was the great Museum of Art of Sao Paulo (MASP), the foremost art museum in Latin America. It has works from all the major European artists of the last few centuries as well as great Brazilian ones. Rather than simply arranging the art chronologically, they place the pieces in thought-provoking shows around certain changing themes. When I visited, the shows were on portraits, gods and Madonnas, and romanticism (in its larger sense). In the bookstore, I saw that they had arranged the pieces differently for other shows.
There was lots more to do in San Paulo, such as visit its vibrant ethnic neighborhoods (its Japanese community is the largest outside Japan, and I've had lots of fun, wild Japanese-Brazilians in my ESL classes). However, the hostel was getting full, and it felt like time to go. I surprised myself by liking the huge city quite a lot, which may partly have been because I wisely spent only five days there. Best to know one's limits.
Now off for a great train ride through the mountains.
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