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October 8th 2015

Published: October 14th 2015

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Delek Delek

Avenida Paulista

Sao Paulo's most famous thoroughfare which just about everything is on.

And so six months of travelling through Latin America has begun!

As predicted in my last blog entry, leaving Barcelona was hard - my three months there has to go down as three as the most fun I have had, and I've managed to attain intermediate level Spanish to boot. The lifestyle was amazing, I made a lot of friends, and I got into a wonderful comfort zone that was difficult to leave.
As such, I was determined to enjoy it to the very end and had a typically massive night out (one of many in my last week) the night before I left for Sao Paulo. Exhausted, the TAP Portugal flight I took wasn't great - a ten hour one with just one average meal, an average entertainment system and ridiculously cold air-conditioning; something I have never understood.
Going from a network of friends, my own place, and a comfortable and enjoyable life to the sudden uncertainty of travelling a huge continent I didn't know very well was daunting; so I was lucky to have some local expertise to help me set up and settle in, waiting for me in Sao Paulo.

I first met Bruno and Vini

Obelisco de Sao Paulo & Jardim

More skyscrapers stretching out to eternity...

in Helsinki back in 2007, on perhaps the most famous night of my Euro trip. Facebook has taken its share of recent social media backlash but there is a great reason why it has been so successful - it simply allows one to keep in touch with people, without having to keep in touch with them. The odd comment on a photo here, the liking of a status there - it is enough. And it was to prove extremely useful for me now.
I felt a little random contacting Bruno and Vini having actually only spent less than 24 hours with them in person and with hardly any contact since - but I knew that they lived in Sao Paulo so I thought I might as well try and meet up with some locals while I was there.
A few Facebook messages later and I had somewhere to stay and people to show me around the city - an amazing act of kindness given to someone that they hardly knew, other than the odd random post on Facebook.

And I was lucky I had them to look after me, so to speak; on my second day in Sao Paulo, I managed to pick up a really bad fever. My temperature was going

More Street Art...

At the Beco do Batman.

through the roof, my whole body was aching, and I had absolutely no energy. I was basically bedridden for the best part of 48 hours. I had taken a vaccine for yellow fever before I left Barcelona, so perhaps combined with my exhaustion and the travel, I had managed to pick up some serious side effects; or maybe it was just a nasty flu. Whatever it was, combined with the cold weather (16°C - it's all relative), rain and thunderstorms Sao Paulo was having, this was far from an ideal start to my trip.
With life having been so hectic in my last couple of weeks in Barcelona, I was planning to stay in Sao Paulo for a week - about three or four days longer than you probably need to spend in Sao Paulo - but it allowed me plan my itinerary a bit more, catch up on a few things and just chill a bit before starting my journey. Having now lost three or four days to sickness, I found myself having to prolong my stay - luckily Bruno and Vini were more than happy to have me around.
Slowly but surely I eventually got better, but I

Theatro Municipal

One of Sao Paulo's favourite buildings.

did manage to get out and about when I had the energy.

Bruno's neighbourhood of Jardim is a nice, affluent area which includes Rua Oscar Freire - Sao Paulo's version of Rodeo Drive. Nice enough as it is to walk around, Jardim didn't have too much character aesthetics-wise - just a lot of high rise 70s-style condos.
The high rises aren't just confined to Jardim however - they sprout out of the ground across the whole city.
As Brazil's commercial and financial hub and with 20 million people living in its metropolitan area, Sao Paulo is the biggest city in the Southern Hemisphere, something I didn't know before. The place is a monster. It hit home when we hit a swanky rooftop bar looking across the city skyline one night, where I got to see all the high rises lit up in all their glory, stretching out into eternity.
Another way to get a sense of the scale of the place is riding the metro at rush hour. Essential to any megalopolis like Sao Paulo is a decent public transport system, which it has...sort of. With trains arriving every 1-2 minutes, the metro was surprisingly and impressively efficient -

Liberdade

Home to much of Sao Paulo's sizeable Japanese population.

but it has to be. The only other subway system I have seen comparable in busyness to Sao Paulo's is that of Moscow. It isn't extensive enough however and the majority of people still rely a lot on their cars - the traffic jams here are notorious.

Soon after I regained my health, Vini took me on a tour of the city centre one day.
We started in Liberdade - Sao Paulo's Japantown. After WWII, there were many Japanese immigrants that went to Brazil and Sao Paulo now has the largest Japanese population outside of Japan, many of them having set themselves up in Liberdade. They definitely make up a sizeable portion of Sao Paulo's population - I certainly saw more Japanese people here than I did in Rio a couple of years back. There are quite a few Chinese immigrants here now as well.
Making our way into the city centre, we then came to Sao Paulo's gargantuan cathedral which was startlingly omitted from Lonely Planet's places of interest, a clanger as bad as their omission of Budapest's St Stephen's Basilica.
Continuing our walk through the city centre, we passed through the old financial district and past the old stock market

Sao Paulo Cathedral

Major landmark omitted by Lonely Planet.

buildings, the city hall, the Theatro Municipal and the Edificio Martinelli, before we ended up at the Mercado Municipal which is housed inside one of Sao Paulo's more attractive buildings.
Much of Sao Paulo's old city centre is run-down and full of graffiti. There are a lot of homeless people around and the area around the Mercado Municipal is chaotic, dirty and a little dodgy. The shelled out city centre - which is dangerous to walk around at night and during weekends - reminded me a lot of city centres of Durban and Johannesburg and many more of South Africa's towns and cities which had 'rotten' cores.
So far, my impression of Sao Paulo was that it isn't as nice as Rio - it is just a big city. In many ways, Sao Paulo just doesn't feel as 'Brazilian' as Rio, which has the better weather (so far), the iconic scenery and the acai shops.

After a week in Sao Paulo, Vini held a birthday party at his apartment. A keen chef, the food he made was amazing as was the cake made by Bruno's girlfriend Carol, which looked spectacular. His friends were all quite friendly and they were

Bruno & Carol

With the Sao Paulo's skyline in the background.

a very interesting bunch of people, with actors, musicians, artists and photographers among their number.
Nice as all of his friends were, it was frustrating not knowing Portuguese. Most of them spoke English to a decent level but I just felt that I was so much more limited in terms of the jokes I could crack and the things I could talk about. I have found Portuguese generally frustrating over here; it is close enough to Spanish that I can read signs and pick up the odd word in conversation, but when a local speaks to me I have no idea what is being said and when I try to speak back, all that comes out is Spanish which some but not all Brazilians can understand.
In any case, I still enjoyed the party; at one point, the dancefloor moved to the laundry, which was kind of cool, and when Vini asked me if I had ever partied in a laundry before, I had to tell him that indeed I had, when I was in St Petersburg. I also discovered that perhaps I wasn't quite over my fever yet - I simply hit a wall towards the end where I lost all energy and staying

Bruno, Me & Vini

...and a big chunk of meat at a rodizio.

awake became a real challenge. Luckily Vini came to the rescue by insisting I stay over at his apartment that night.

One thing I was definitely appreciating was being able to understand Sao Paulo and its people in greater depth than I would normally be able to, through Bruno and Vini's insights.
We had a few funny conversations, such as the one about how Brazilians generalise people; anyone from Asia is a "japa" (Japanese), anyone from the Middle East is a "turcu" (Turkish) and anyone blonde is an "alemao" (German). Also, anyone from the north of Brazil is automatically a "paraiba", even though Paraiba is just one of thirteen states in the north. It was great learning about the local sense of humour but I also learned some quirky facts about Sao Paulo including the one about how street numbers are determined based on the number of metres from the start of the road, rather than being based on the number of buildings from the start of a road - which when you think about it, makes a lot of sense when houses and buildings on a street are of varying sizes - you will always know much further

Mercado Municipal

Houses one of the best food markets in South America in a grand building.

you need to go down a road before you get to the address you need.
But mostly, I was getting an education into the local food and drink in Sao Paulo.
Pizza paulistana is an institution - there were many Italian immigrants to Sao Paulo in the late 19th century and they brought with them pizza, which was then perfected here in Sao Paolo. Featuring thin crusts but generous cheese and toppings, apparently even Italians think the pizza here might be better than back home. For me it was good pizza, but I wouldn't call it outstanding.
We also went to a rather kitsch rodizio one night - basically a meat buffet where waiters bring huge chunks of barbecqued meat and carve off as much as you want. It was a bit hit and miss with the different meats but we all agreed the rump steak was the best - just one of 11 different types of beef cuts available.
Among the other local food and drink items I tried were coxinhas (shredded chicken covered in dough which is then battered and fried and is similar to an Italian arancini but without rice), acerola (a kind of cherry, which goes

Colourful Houses

In Liberdade.

very well mixed with orange juice), cachaca, catuaba (which basically tastes like port served cold and with ice) and the famous Sao Paulo mortadella sandwich which is a hot sandwich of grilled mortadella ham (always more ham than bread) and grilled cheese, usually provolone. All in all, they were all nice but again, none of it blew me away. And although I didn't try one, apparently hot dogs are all done differently across Brazil - in Sao Paolo, they serve it with mashed potato (talk about a carb fest!) and in Belo Horizonte it is served with raisins apparently.

The best day I had was probably my penultimate one. The sun had returned and brought 33°C heat with it, and I had Vini kindly acting as my chauffeur and Bruno as my tour guide.
After an Italian lunch our first stop was the Museu do Futbol where I probably the spent the best R$6 (£1 - Brazil has been quite cheap for me in general) of the trip so far. There were some really awesome exhibits including a room displaying the crazy crowds of each Brazilian club with crowd scenes and surround sound, booths containing move-by-move coverage and analysis

Estadio Municipal

Where games at the 1950 World Cup took place and now the home of the football museum.

of Brazil's greatest goals, booths where you can listen to classic commentary, a foosball room and a room containing summaries of every single World Cup. The museum is housed inside the Estadio Municipal, a stadium used in the 1950 World Cup that you also got to see the inside of. I know how much football means to Brazilians - pretty like what rugby means to New Zealanders- but visiting the museum and seeing everything from local perspective really hit home the importance of football to Brazil. As a big fan of the game, the museum was super-interesting.
We then visited the Museum of Contemporary Art. Sao Paulo is the cultural capital of Brazil when it comes to art and this is demonstrated by the sheer number of galleries that you can visit here. Bruno and Vini are both into their art - in fact Vini's girlfriend Anne Walbring is a painter who has had her work exhibited in France! She managed to sell a painting at the party the other night too. Anyway, I certainly got the low-down on the Brazilian art scene from the two of them. Funnily enough however, the main reason we visited the Museum of Contemporary

Sao Paulo

Trying to give you a sense of the scale of the place.

Art was for the view over the city from the Niemeyer-designed building's roof!
Right next to Museum of Contemporary Art is Ibirapuera Park. The Museum of Modern Art and a huge Niemeyer-designed exhibition hall are situated here as well as 5km running and cycling track which was in good use as we guiltily strolled along the track while the locals were running or cycling their arses off. It is very well laid out and an excellent place to get some exercise - it is open until midnight as well for those keen for late night sessions.
No visit to Sao Paulo is really complete without a crazy night out, so that is exactly what we did later that night.
After a few drinks in Jardim, we headed to a club called "Nossa Casa" which means "Our House". It is named as such because it is exactly what it says it is - the club is set up inside an actual house. I certainly like the concept - the kitchen has been turned into the bar, the lounge into the main dancefloor, the garden into a smoking area and the garden shed into a cashier - a place that just feels

Nossa Casa

Club set inside a house is going off.

like a massive and awesome house party. I might well steal the idea!
Tonight was the club's opening night after moving to a new house so the place was packed with the queue a good 50m long, with one in, one out in operation. We eventually made it in and I have to say it was one of the more crazier places I have been. Anything goes in here apparently; girls were kissing guys, guys were kissing girls, girls were kissing girls and guys were kissing guys - and no-one was judging anyone. One chick just decided to remove her top and bra (if she had one) for the night, as you do. I believe sexuality is a very fluid concept these days so it was nice to see 'gay 'and 'straight' people comfortably doing their thing in the same place. The overall craziness of the party reminded me a lot of the blocos I went to at Carnaval. The music being played was all Brazilian so I didn't recognise any of it, but I went along with it anyway. The only sore points were the fact that there was only one bathroom for the whole place for both guys and girls, and the pay-your-tab-off-at-the-end

Beco do Batman

Small cobblestoned alleyway completely covered in street art in Vila Madalena.

policy - when you wanna go home, you just wanna go home and not have to queue for thirty minutes to pay off your bill.
It was my first big night out since I left Barcelona and I had a lot cachaca and catuaba to drink - we got back home just in time for a greasy mortadella sandwich breakfast at 7.30am. Good times.

I spent my final afternoon back in Vila Madalena which I think is probably my favourite neighbourhood in Sao Paulo. Famous for its creative inhabitants, there is street art just about everywhere you look here including a staircase resembling Rio's Escalera Selaron. One famous spot is known as the Beco do Batman, which is a small cobblestoned alley where both sides of it are completely doused in murals. Vila Madalena lacks the generic high rise buildings that infects most of the city and there is a cool and young vibe here which is also reflected in the bars in the area - I met up with Vini at a really cool one called "Quitadinha" for one final drink.

I didn't feel ready to backpack when I left Barcelona but I do a little more

Vila Madalena

Street art in the arty neighbourhood of Vila Madalena.

now. I needed a rest from Barcelona and some time to organise myself - to take a deep breath before going under, so to speak. I ended up staying 12 days in Sao Paulo, one of the longest stays I have ever had 'on the road' and I got into another comfort zone here with Bruno and Vini looking after me so well and having my own room.
And I do really have to thank Bruno and Vini for the amazing hospitality; they gave up so much of their own time to take me out, show me around and make sure I was OK, and it has to be remembered that we hardly knew each other before I arrived. To be honest however, I knew from our one night in Helsinki and our communications on Facebook that they were good guys and that we would get on well and so it has proved. I won't forget everything that they have done for me here and I really hope one day that I can return the favour! I'll have to stop travelling and decide on somewhere to live first though...

I stayed in Sao Paulo longer than I anticipated so

Street Art At Beco do Batman

With slight enhancement from my camera.

I feel ready to finally start the backpacking. But even the best plans encounter unexpected changes and I have a bit of room to manoeuvre so I am delaying the backpacking for just a little longer; my next blog entry will be coming from the unexpected location of Brasilia!

Até logo!
Derek

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