Feeling the gravitational pull of São Paulo

I'm in Porto Alegre, after a very long bus ride from São Paulo.

It feels a little out-of-place to be back in the more developed part of the country after several months in the Northeast and North. (Brasília doesn't count. Brasília is Tomorrowland at Disneyland. My friend Bernardo has a good post on the subject, and I think he's pretty much right: Brasília is the dream of upper class Brazil and its chosen self-image: clean, ordered, hierarchical, and proper. Everything in its place, and the poor out of sight and out of mind. For the record, as the bus left Brasília, it stopped in the towns on the periphery, which were very much cities of the interior in the Centro-Oeste. Not poor, but not gleaming and ordered either. The staff who clean, serve food in, stand guard in, and bring people to the shiny Ministérios live there. Brasília is Tomorrowland - with respect to social ills here - like Alagoas is Realityland.)

In any case, I've been to Porto Alegre before, and I'm glad to be back. It's a nice, compact, walkable town with crisp, cool weather and friendly people. I don't stand out as an exceptional gringo, which means only that fewer people watch me pass.

In the land of red meat, I'm back to eating mountains of vegetables and fruits. Hooray for buffet restaurants that have mango, papaya, pineapple, bananas, caquis, and tangerines!

Two observations led me to write this post:

1. Greece right now looks like Argentina in 2000. In a previous life (read: when I was in Brazil three years ago), I was interested in currency crises, and what politicians do to speed them up or prevent them. A post on how austerity measures are just a temporary stop-gap measure without real economic recovery - which means that they usually fail - and how bondholders are trying desperately to avoid paying the consequences for their actions, is here. (Warning: poor writing.)

2. As I mentioned above, I stopped in São Paulo to go apartment hunting. I stayed almost exactly thirty-six hours in the city, but I must say that I'm excited to be moving there. Frankly, I'm excited to be finished with road trips and a new city each week. São Paulo, however, has a big city vibe, a host of things to see and do, and Korean restaurants! I'm not a terribly big fan of Korean restaurants; I just mention them to illustrate the wide variety of cuisines that await. Such a variety of cuisines is not found in other, smaller towns like, say, Rio de Janeiro.

To celebrate the impending move to São Paulo, in homage to a travel series for dumb people with more money than sense, I present


36 Hours in São Paulo

São Paulo is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way from Staten Island to the Bronx, but that's just peanuts to São Paulo.

Friday

8:00 a.m.
1) BARRA FUNDA.
Arrive at the western bus terminal in the city, after a thirteen-hour bus ride from Campo Grande. Feel glad that no one sat next to you and that making another guest appearance at an English language school in Campo Grande on Thursday afternoon didn't make you miss the bus.

Barra Funda is one of three (four?) long-distance bus terminals in the city. You can't buy a ticket for Porto Alegre because those lines are run out of another bus terminal in the city. Barra Funda mainly covers trips to areas west and northwest of São Paulo.

9:00 a.m.
2) JARDINS IS PRICEY.
Get to your hotel (Formule 1 Jardins) and have them tell you that you can't check-in until noon, and that it will cost you extra to stow your luggage for four hours. Immediately regret not booking at another hotel. Put in a text message to the real estate agent recommended by a friend, informing her that you're in São Paulo.

10:30 a.m.
3) SÃO PAULO IS BIG.
Decide to meet the real estate agent at the apartment visit by walking from Jardins to Moema. Arrive late, sweating despite the temperature around 55 F. It takes a long time to walk anywhere in this city, which may explain why few try. Note the bus lines, supermarkets, and Burger King nearby. Resolve to continue to not eat at Burger King.

Balk at how pricey short-term rentals in São Paulo are.

4:00 p.m.
4) WORLD CUP.
Watch the World Cup in your room, after a late R$9.90 all-you-can-eat lunch. Be glad that São Paulo restaurants seem to be cheaper than restaurants in Rio de Janeiro.

Do laundry in the hotel sink. Think about how you have a well-developed, if not perfect, system for hotel room laundry. Buy dinner at Carrefour next door, along with a chip for a São Paulo cell phone number.

Saturday

6:30 a.m.
5) IBIRAPUERA.
Thankfully, the apartment will be near the large Parque de Ibirapuera in São Paulo that has a 6 km dirt trail loop. It feels like an escape from the city in the same way that Central Park does. In both cases, some parts of the park run right along busy streets while other parts are quietly hidden behind trees and next to lakes. Both parks also have museums inside their boundaries.

Go running there.

3:00 p.m.
6) USA-ENGLAND.
Watch the World Cup match in the hotel restaurant with another hotel guest from Ghana who once lived in London. Chat about how cold this part of the country is.

6:00 p.m.
7) TIETÊ.
São Paulo's main long-distance bus terminal is the largest in Latin America. It is remarked that you can get from Tietê to any other city in Brazil by a more-or-less direct route. Buy a ticket for the eighteen-hour ride to Porto Alegre.

8:00 p.m.
8) POA.
Chat with a teacher from Porto Alegre and his family. Board the bus, where there's a copy of Estado de São Paulo in every seat, and remember how much nicer bus rides are in the Southeast than they are in other parts of the country.

Arrive in Porto Alegre at 3 PM on Sunday. The bus had delays because the anti-lock brakes were causing problems. The Serra Gaúcha is winding, green and looks like central California in the springtime, after the rains.

Oh, and that image at top is a planetarium at the Centro Cultural Dragão do Mar in Fortaleza.

UPDATE: Or if you like over-paying for shit in order to feel like an insider, there's always the original guide.

Invitation back to Porto Alegre

An invitation to celebrate the anniversary of certain municipalities in Rio Grande do Sul at the state Legislative Assembly. I believe this arrived because I left my personal email address on a sign-in form at the public meeting on sanitation.

English phrases, Porto Alegre

One of the many difficulties of the English language is that the same word - without modification - can be both a noun and an adjective. I suppose that this facet, like the tendency in English to form compound words (e.g., birdhouse) comes from the German rather than the Latin.

Observe, for example, the street sign from Av. Borges de Medeiros, downtown Porto Alegre:



The sign uses correct English grammar in that it places an adjective ahead of a noun, and the adjective does make the expression more specific. (In fact, the same adjective is also in the Portuguese language, with the same spelling and pronunciation.) However, it's the wrong adjective. The correct adjective is the word that is also the noun.

Shana pointed out Friday night that the noun would be pronounced like the longer adjective, given the Brazilian difficulty with ending words in certain consonants. "Hot dog," for example, is pronounced "hot-chee dog-ee."

Oh, and "Sem Pudor" means "Shameless" or "Immodest." It's a very good name.

----

To make final comments about the trip: I had a tranquil and productive time, and very much enjoyed all my interviews. The locals don't live up to the stereotype about them in the rest of Brazil - that they are proud, boastful, and distant - but were instead all warm, welcoming, and friendly.

It's been a rainy week back here in Rio de Janeiro. Although I conducted three interviews in my "vacation" week, that only met 60% of my goal total. The remaining subjects are either on vacation, busy, or unreachable.

Off to Mato Grosso do Sul on Sunday night. I've just been informed that Monday is a holiday, which means a wasted day for research. I'm uncertain whether "Children's Day" is a real holiday, or whether Monday is a different state-specific holiday.

Walk around Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul

I've now been here for a week in the South. I arrived at the end of Semana Farroupilha, the annual celebration of the revolt in 1835 that made this state briefly independent from the then-Brazilian Empire. People walked around in period costumes, or at least those not wearing soccer jerseys - the city divides between Internacional and Grêmio - did. I think even today there are still a few wearing their gaúcho heritage around.

I'll be here one more week, before my flight back to Rio.

As predicted, the accent is closer to what you'd hear in Argentina. I initially sat down and ordered fizzy water, which in the carioca accent is pronounced "com guy-sh." The waiter paused. "Com gas?" Yes, yes, with gas. To date, I've heard the "tu" form of the second-person, and I've been asked "quando tu chegas?" but I've not been called "tchê."

By the end of this trip, I may speak Portuguese in a hodgepodge of regional accents that's still unmistakeably American. For example, I've adopted my água com gás to local tastes, but I still say três with the (carioca) trailing "sh" sound.

Some observations:

1. As in Rio, everyone has been wonderful, helpful, and friendly. I've had a great time at interviews. That being said, I consider this mainly a trial run for the project. The case in Rio Grande do Sul is thoroughly documented, and I have only a limited number of questions.

Some lessons: I need to pack more. I only brought three undershirts, five dress shirts, and three polo shirts on the trip. The plan to wash some of these in the sink has been compromised by the cold and the rain. (My last hotel room was, um, high in mold and cold and low in circulating air and light.) When packing, one has to compromise between the weight and convenience of the luggage and the costs and inconvenience of laundry and, well, wearing not-so-clean clothes.

I need to make calls in advance. I did make some calls for this trip, but left some to be made in Porto Alegre. The lack of reliable internet in the previous hotel room put a crimp in these plans, as all the calls were dropped or fuzzy; using my cell phone instead quickly burned through the fifteen-reais credit. Better to use Skype and the reliable internet connection in Rio de Janeiro. (The price difference is absurd.)

2. It has rained. A lot. The news is currently showing snow and hail in the surrounding hills and in Santa Catarina, the neighboring state to the north. (Frustratingly, the images from São Paulo are of sun and clear skies.)

3. The city reminds me (the Portuguese construction is "makes me remember") of San Francisco. There are hills, narrow streets, tree-lined streets, and plenty of bookstores, small parks, and old architecture. It's very attractive in that regard, but there aren't the same views over the water from the heights that San Francisco has.

I'm also reminded of my querido Buenos Aires, and of Montevideo, which are so near and yet so far. (Read: I'm not allowed to go there.) I'm closer to Bs. As. than I am to Rio de Janeiro, but just barely. I can feel it.

And I can start to see it. The vegetation is not entirely tropical, but is getting closer to temperature Buenos Aires. For example, the riverfront looks just like the estuary at the mouth of the River Plate:





In one of my interviews, I talked for a while about state geography with a former senator, who pointed out that the lagoon depicted here is fresh water for 75% of its area, until you get down to the municipio of (yes) Arroio Grande.

Side note: these photos are taken near the Usina do Gasômetro, an old gas refinery built by the creatively-named State Electric Energy Company (CEEE). In 1996 or so, CEEE was broken up and partially privatized, which is part of the background for my dissertation project. Yesterday on the walk, I happened upon a hip-hop concert at the Usina, sponsored by the city and state governments as part of a day-long campaign against crack cocaine.

At the same time, despite my allusions, the sidewalks, the attitude, the language, and the cuisine are still thoroughly Brazilian. I won't traffic in stereotypes, but I'll note that stores and offices open at 8:30 nor 9:00 AM here (compared to 10:00 AM in Rio) and that people are punctual. That's neither Brazilian nor not-Brazilian. (Like their counterparts in Rio, portoalegrenses almost never walk when on escalators. I can't explain that one yet.)

4. I took a walk around town on Saturday afternoon and took the following photos.

I'm staying only a few blocks from the hilltop depicted here, with its church, monument, and the state legislative assembly.





I spent Tuesday afternoon at the state assembly, trying to schedule an appointment. I succeeded, through no effort of my own, and am returning there this Tuesday.

Fieldwork for the most part has been lonely. There's a lot of unfilled time, during which I'm reading or getting ahead or playing with a dataset, and not much time socializing. It's very different from tourism: I'm not here to be entertained or visit sites; I'm here to meet professionals and conduct interviews and exchange ideas. Most of my interviewees are middle-aged, with families and lives and interests. (They've also all been, thus far, exclusively male.) At the end of the day, they go home from work, and I go back to the hotel, and plan for the next day. When I hit exhaustion, I find some place to eat dinner, usually by myself. It's travel, but it's work and not play.

(A happy exception to this was a night at a blues club with Chris and Shana, Fulbrighters who are here to live for a while in Porto Alegre.)

As the phrase goes, acontece, so it goes.

Finally, Porto Alegre has its own version of cute public propoganda:



I'll ruin your adoration by noting that the squirrel is the mascot for the Zaffari supermarket chain; the sign notes that maintaining a clean city is in our hands.

Postscript: yes, I don't have any skills at photography.

UPDATE: Signs that you might be nearer Buenos Aires, no. 45: They sell alfajores here. I don't like them, but I had to buy one.



Industria Argentina, natch.

Arrival in Porto Alegre

After five weeks of tropical Rio de Janeiro - which lies roughly at the latitude of Havana - I arrived safely in temperate Porto Alegre - which lies roughly at the latitude of Tijuana San Antonio.

And it is FREEZING here!

On a good note, the cost of living outside of Rio de Janeiro seems to be much lower.

I also bring luck, though whether good or bad depends on your perspective: today, Gremio (of Porto Alegre) thrashed Fluminense (of Rio de Janeiro), 5-1. Fluminense is almost certainly being relegated to the second division next season.

I can recommend webjet. The seat wasn't the most comfortable, but we did get sandwiches and dessert both times on a 1:15 and a 55 minute flight. I don't know if that was ever the case in the US.