On the 29th of July, as my family waved me off at Mallorca airport, my dad suggested that the family might come to Brazil to visit me during my time in Florianopolis. At the time i assumed that this was some well intentioned idea that would prove that they cared about their oldest son despite not being there to wave him off from heathrow, but that would likely never materialise. You may think that i was being overly cynical, but considering they made it up to Canterbury about three times over the five year period i was at school there, you can understand my position. Anyone with a rough grasp of geography will know that Brazil is quite a bit further away than Canterbury.
So when i was told that an arrival date had been decided and that a rough intinerary had been devised i was pretty shocked. I was delighted of course, being away from the Englanders for 3 months made me realise i actually like them a bit, but i was also a little bit anxious. Many people on their years abroad don't want visits from family and friends because they view the time as a very personal experience, completely seperate to their lives at home. This was not my issue. My worries were linked to the daunting prospect of making sure everyone had a good time, which in the case of my family means a careful balance between finding enough sun for my mum, enough culture and beautiful brazilian girls for my dad, enough bizarre and life threatening activities for my brother Tom and enough time to play PSP for my brother Will. Whats more, given that none of them could speak a word of portuguese, it wasn't going to be easy.
Before their arrival on the 20th of October, I had a really good beach week in Floripa. I hit my first brazilian poker session, which was really enjoyable, partly because it was nice to sit around chatting and having a few beers but maily because i won. I put my 50 reais winnings to good use as we had a great couple of nights out. Sunday night in particular was an awesome experience, an authentic brazilian samba experience in an old fishing hut by the sea, with a crazy old man dressed like a sailor handing out filthily strong caipirinhas. The crowd was a bizarre mixture of students, pensioners, and cougars (predatory older women) but everyone seemed to be loving it.
On the tuesday we got up early and embarked on the famous trail of Lagoinha del este, a serious 2 hour hike over a mountain to a secluded beach only otherwise reachable by boat. In order to maintain the natural beauty there are no bars or restaurants on the entire beach, which is lovely unless like me you eat your entire packed lunch on the journey there. We were also the only people for quite sometime, until having walked a bit further down I encountered a local man who, having identified me as a tourist by my pink swimmin trunks, started hurling abuse at me in portuguese accusing me of coming to the beach to ruin the nature and cut down trees like i had in my own country. I tried to calm him down by assuring him that my lack of equipment would prevent me from doing any tree cutting even if i wanted to, but this didn't seem to help. A few hours later having completed the trek back, we went to see Figuerense hold on to a 1-0 win to really push their chances of promotion. Its a shame i won't be here to see them play in the first division.
The Englanders arrived at the airport at 9am the following morning armed with a series of things i had requested from home as well as some lovely additional items that my Grandma had slipped in. When you have a jewish family nothing is done half heartedly and i now have more percy pigs than days left in Brazil. As a result i am trying to incorporate them into as many meals as possible, although pasta pesto and percy is still not working for me.
After showing the family around the uni and having lunch at my house we headed up to where we stayed on the north of the island. I was delighted to find that as well as being right on the beach, the resort was able to provide all of the aforementioned family requirements (bar the beautiful brazilian girls which greatly upset my dad). Because we were staying in low season the rest of the clientele were varied, and we were almost certainly the only europeans. There also seemed to be a group of weightwatchers equivalents, which considering the resort operated on an all you can eat buffet basis for all three meals, i found a little counterproductive.
Although we did spend a lot of time within the resort, either by the pool or on the beach or trying out quadbiking and surfing, we spent a day travelling the island with a guide. It was nice for them to get a sense of the Island, but lunch in a little restaurant by the sea was the undoubted highlight. The calamari and prawn risotto were amazing and like everyone that eats there we left a little message stuck to the wall.
On the saturday night i left my family in the resort to join a group of friends to go to Oktoberfest. As there were 15 of us we hired a minibus to do the 2 hour journey to Blumenau and so we hit pre-drinks with a 'Simply Red' concert dvd playing in the background (strangely this was the only one the driver had). I wasn't quite sure what to expect when i arrived but on entering through the gates of the event and being greeted by the smeel of sour beer and vomit, i knew it was going to be a cracking night.....Henrik Von Inglunder had arrived.
The place itself felt like something out of Harry Potter with its narrow cobbled streets although the fact that many people were wandering arond in tall pointy hats may have been a contributing factor. We had a great time wandering around, dancing to traditional folk music, chatting to random people and drinking lots of german beer. At about 2.30 am me and my friend Luca decided that we were quite hungry and wandered over to a little stall selling roasted chicken on a stick. To our horror within 20 seconds of purchasing it, our delicious dinner fell on the floor. Normally i am a firm believer in the 5 second rule when food falls on the floor, but the mixture of beer, grime and god knows what else that covered the street made me reconsider. We asked the man who was serving us whether we could have a new one as he had many left and the stall was closing. He consulted his boss who was an angry old woman who just said 'no.' We tried to argue, but she wouldn't budge and so in a fit of rage, Luca picked up the chicken from the floor, threw it down again and started jumping on it. Definitely the funniest moment of the night. The minibus picked us up at 4am and drove us back to Floripa, from where I went back to the resort.
After a couple more days in Floripa, we boarded a plane to Rio de Janeiro, somewhere I had really wanted to visit. We had two full days in Rio but considering we only had such a short time there i felt we saw a good part of what the city had to offer as well as having some time to have a swim on Copocabana beach where we were staying. I liked a lot of what we saw but if i had to pick a favourite, the view from the top of christ the redeemer was pretty breathtaking, even more so than the view from kite hill on the heath which i know hampstead residents will find hard to beleive.
Our time in Rio was also marked by the regular appearance of a funny little man from a jewellery store who failed to get the message that my mum had no interest in buying any of his collection of neclaces, rings or bird sculptures made from precious stones. To be fair to him, he can't be falted for lack of effort, he followed us around the entire time, up mountains and across the city, hiding behind newspapers, climbing trees hanging onto the underside of cablecars, just so he could try and persuade us the ruby eagle was worth the investment. Silly man.
Whilst my parent had to leave on the friday morning i stayed on for a couple of days with friends of bright sun and 30 degree heat, which involved seeing more of the beach and the nightlife as well as a ride through a favela on a moped which was amazing and terrifying in equal measure (I was terrified by the driving not by the favela). On the friday night we went to a street party in Lapa (one of Rio's many districts) with my friend Lucy who is working in Rio at the moment and some of her mates. It was a really good night and the streets were still packed when we left for home at 5am. The only slightly hairy moment came sometime during the party, when two guys tried to pickpocket me. Although i managed to shake them off, between them they could have easily come back at me and taken my things. Instead to my surprise they just looked taken aback as if to say 'i can't believe you won't let us just mug you, how selfish'. Although baffled, i was delighted to hang onto my stuff.
The following night we had a relaxed dinner and some drinks at the hostel bar as some of our group were heading back to England. Meanwhile the rest of us were heading back to Florianopolis where the summer had finally arrived...
Sunday, November 21, 2010
Friday, November 12, 2010
A tale of two cities - my travels part 2.
Rather than 'Buenos Aires and Montevideo', i think a more accurate description of the second half of my trip would be 'Buenos Aires feat. Montevideo' as we were only in Uruguay's capital for a mere 24 hours. While this might not have been enough time to really get to know the city, I make no apologies, as our decision to extend our stay in Buenos Aires was based on it being cheap, fun and very sunn........y. I'm pretty confident my decision to spend the 2nd half of my year abroad there will turn out to be a great shout.
The journey to B.A. did turn out to be a bit of a let down, the lavish champagne buffet i had conjured up in my mind turned out to be a little optimistic, and instead we were offered an assortment of cheese based snacks with crackers and a bit of ham on a stick. Luckily there was also some pasta going round which i thought was pretty good. My Italian friend (who due to his heritage is a bit of a pasta snob) thought differently however, refusing to eat his portion saying 'this is nota how youa makea de bolognese' before adding 'babadibooppi' for effect.
I also decided on the journey that it would be a good idea to send an email to the man i will be working for in Buenos Aires, letting him know that i would be visiting the city. I don't know what i was hoping for, maybe a reply saying 'oh muy bien, lets go for drinks and a really nice meal (which i'll pay for) and then i can tell you what to see in the city and introduce you to some nice young argentinian girls' but unfortunately what i got instead was 'oh muy bien, come for an interview as soon as you arrive.' So after dumping my stuff at the hostel and donning my one remaining clean t shirt, i headed down to the offices on the riverfront.
The interview itself was a bit of a disaster, having put 'advanced level of spanish' on my CV my boss must have been surprised to hear his beloved mother tongue shamelessly blended with a coulourful assortment of other words, some portuguese and english and others just made up altogether. However, i'm taking the fact that he didn't withdraw his offer of employment on the spot, as a big positive.
After this rather stressful beginning, the days began to take on an altogether more relaxed shape. We spent most of the day time exploring the various 'barrios' (districts) of the city, sitting in the sun drinking beer and watching tango and visiting as many markets as was physically possible in order to maximise the benefits of the extremely good pound to peso exchange rate. I came to realise that one impulse purchase can start a whole string of other impulse purchases, until you end up back at the hostel lamenting your empty wallet and trying to remember why you bought that giant picture of a cow, or that lifetime supply of dulce de leche. Some of the group's best purchases included; a llama wool, poncho, a chessboard, an occarina, an indigenous flute, some salami, some incense, a variety of interesting hats, several football shirts, a lot of red wine and one very expensive glass of coke.
Buenos Aires is a bit of a football mad city, so when we weren't buying strange souveniers, we tried to take in as much football related culture as possible. Our big hope had been to see a Boca Juniors game, but as they were playing away from home we had to make do with visiting the stadium. Generally speaking i'm not a big fan of stadium tours as they usually involve walking through room after room showing lengthly black and white films about the construction of new stands. However in this case we were shown straight to the pitch where us four boys unashamedly paid to take the cheesey photo standing on the pitch holding various trophies. It was 100 percent worth it (although i did have my suspicions it might not be the official world cup i had in my hands).
As there was no Boca game we headed off to see River Plate (Buenos Aires' other big team). We went with a group, as we were told that it could be dangerous for tourists to go without a local. It turned out to be a good decision. We were waiting in the queue to enter the stadium with our guide who happened to look and act incredibly like Mr Bean, when a rather strange and drunk individual began to try and shove his hand in to my friend Nick's pocket, letting out loud grunts as he went. The guy, on whom we bestowed the appropriate if not very imaginative title of 'pocket man', would have probably continued this strange activity for some time (despite Nick not having any valuables in his pockets) had Bean not saved the day. After a short conversation which i assume involved bean informing pocket man of the inappropriate nature of his actions Nick and his pockets were left alone for the remainder of the afternoon. The game itself was quite exciting despite it ending as a draw, and the experience of being in such a huge stadium with such a great atmosphere was pretty incredible.
With so much going on in the daytime, we usually hit a 6 o'clock siesta before heading out again at night. Highlights of or after dark escapades included an amazing steak and wine meal in a restaurant called 'dos hermanos' where my friend Beth selflessly sliced her foot open on the stairs in order to get us all free dessert, and a club night in the Palermo district with Erol Alkan dj ing until 6.30 in the morning. A big thanks to my good friend Mr Gibbs for great company and hospitality, and a life changing bowl of cereal.....really appreciated it.
We left Buenos Aires by boat at 7am, and while my friends slept, I sat at the front like a little child and watched as we approached the coastline of Uruguay. Having arrived at our hostel we tried to make the best of our limited time frame by wandering to the seafront and exploring as much of the old town as possible. The hostel itself was pretty nice and they cooked a big barbecue that night as we watched the last chilean miners being rescued. While the situation was slightly different, I was nevertheless hoping for an equally joyful reception on my return to Florianopolis the following day
The journey to B.A. did turn out to be a bit of a let down, the lavish champagne buffet i had conjured up in my mind turned out to be a little optimistic, and instead we were offered an assortment of cheese based snacks with crackers and a bit of ham on a stick. Luckily there was also some pasta going round which i thought was pretty good. My Italian friend (who due to his heritage is a bit of a pasta snob) thought differently however, refusing to eat his portion saying 'this is nota how youa makea de bolognese' before adding 'babadibooppi' for effect.
I also decided on the journey that it would be a good idea to send an email to the man i will be working for in Buenos Aires, letting him know that i would be visiting the city. I don't know what i was hoping for, maybe a reply saying 'oh muy bien, lets go for drinks and a really nice meal (which i'll pay for) and then i can tell you what to see in the city and introduce you to some nice young argentinian girls' but unfortunately what i got instead was 'oh muy bien, come for an interview as soon as you arrive.' So after dumping my stuff at the hostel and donning my one remaining clean t shirt, i headed down to the offices on the riverfront.
The interview itself was a bit of a disaster, having put 'advanced level of spanish' on my CV my boss must have been surprised to hear his beloved mother tongue shamelessly blended with a coulourful assortment of other words, some portuguese and english and others just made up altogether. However, i'm taking the fact that he didn't withdraw his offer of employment on the spot, as a big positive.
After this rather stressful beginning, the days began to take on an altogether more relaxed shape. We spent most of the day time exploring the various 'barrios' (districts) of the city, sitting in the sun drinking beer and watching tango and visiting as many markets as was physically possible in order to maximise the benefits of the extremely good pound to peso exchange rate. I came to realise that one impulse purchase can start a whole string of other impulse purchases, until you end up back at the hostel lamenting your empty wallet and trying to remember why you bought that giant picture of a cow, or that lifetime supply of dulce de leche. Some of the group's best purchases included; a llama wool, poncho, a chessboard, an occarina, an indigenous flute, some salami, some incense, a variety of interesting hats, several football shirts, a lot of red wine and one very expensive glass of coke.
Buenos Aires is a bit of a football mad city, so when we weren't buying strange souveniers, we tried to take in as much football related culture as possible. Our big hope had been to see a Boca Juniors game, but as they were playing away from home we had to make do with visiting the stadium. Generally speaking i'm not a big fan of stadium tours as they usually involve walking through room after room showing lengthly black and white films about the construction of new stands. However in this case we were shown straight to the pitch where us four boys unashamedly paid to take the cheesey photo standing on the pitch holding various trophies. It was 100 percent worth it (although i did have my suspicions it might not be the official world cup i had in my hands).
As there was no Boca game we headed off to see River Plate (Buenos Aires' other big team). We went with a group, as we were told that it could be dangerous for tourists to go without a local. It turned out to be a good decision. We were waiting in the queue to enter the stadium with our guide who happened to look and act incredibly like Mr Bean, when a rather strange and drunk individual began to try and shove his hand in to my friend Nick's pocket, letting out loud grunts as he went. The guy, on whom we bestowed the appropriate if not very imaginative title of 'pocket man', would have probably continued this strange activity for some time (despite Nick not having any valuables in his pockets) had Bean not saved the day. After a short conversation which i assume involved bean informing pocket man of the inappropriate nature of his actions Nick and his pockets were left alone for the remainder of the afternoon. The game itself was quite exciting despite it ending as a draw, and the experience of being in such a huge stadium with such a great atmosphere was pretty incredible.
With so much going on in the daytime, we usually hit a 6 o'clock siesta before heading out again at night. Highlights of or after dark escapades included an amazing steak and wine meal in a restaurant called 'dos hermanos' where my friend Beth selflessly sliced her foot open on the stairs in order to get us all free dessert, and a club night in the Palermo district with Erol Alkan dj ing until 6.30 in the morning. A big thanks to my good friend Mr Gibbs for great company and hospitality, and a life changing bowl of cereal.....really appreciated it.
We left Buenos Aires by boat at 7am, and while my friends slept, I sat at the front like a little child and watched as we approached the coastline of Uruguay. Having arrived at our hostel we tried to make the best of our limited time frame by wandering to the seafront and exploring as much of the old town as possible. The hostel itself was pretty nice and they cooked a big barbecue that night as we watched the last chilean miners being rescued. While the situation was slightly different, I was nevertheless hoping for an equally joyful reception on my return to Florianopolis the following day
Saturday, November 6, 2010
Iguazu falls - not just a glorified tap - my travels part 1
Before i begin i would like to sincerely apologise for my lack of recent blogging, I have spent most of october 'gallavanting around south america' as my good friend Rosie Durance put it. I was initially worried about having to explain my prolonged absence to my teachers. However having finally plucked up the courage to tell them, their general reaction was not 'are you taking the piss' as i had feared but instead 'go and enjoy yourself'. You've got to love the brazilian attitude to life. So after my final lecture of Brazilian history, where the old presentation competition got taken to a whole new level by a guy who wrote and performed a song based on the text about womens rights, i packed my bags and set off.
My trip began at Florianopolis central bus station, a building that made up for its uninspiring design by offering a superb range of chewy sweets. After making a bold selection of peach chewits, we boarded the 7pm PLUMA bus due to arrive at 8am the next morning. The journey itself was pretty relaxed and we met a young bristolian couple who were making the most of their redundancy packets to travel round the whole of South America. Chatting to them was definitely better than trying to watch avatar dubbed in portuguese. After a dinner stop at a shop offering bizarre religious artifacts as well as a dodgy looking buffet, I succesfully slept through the rockin of the bus and Sophie's snores, waking up just as we arrived in Foz de Iguazu, on the Brazilian side of the falls.
After a quick breakfast of peach chewits we headed straight to the falls. I will admit at this stage that i had originally been pretty unfussed about seeing Iguazu, having been a longtime member of the 'nature shmature' school of thought. However as soon as we got off the bus i knew i had been mistaken, We followed the path onto a platform, dizzyingly suspended right over the edge of the falls and the beauty, the noise and the sheer power of the water were absolutely immense. I will freely admit i loved it. I only wish i hadn't had several cups of coffee with breakfast to wash down the rather soapy chewits, as i began to need the loo. As i'm sure you can imagine waiting in a long queue whilst millions of gallons of water are cascading next to you is not the most pleasant experience in the world.
After wandering a bit more and sharing a buffet lunch with a load of angry wasps we briefly visited the famous bird park. Whilst most of the animals were in cages, some of the more tranquil birds were housed in big aviaries which we were able to carefully enter. This greatly excited the gaggle of four year olds in front of us, who tried their best to 'interact' with the toucans, much to their teachers horror. Other highlights included flamingos, tropical parrots, and even an alligator which makes me think that the brazilian classification of 'bird' is a little wider than our own. Either that or the savage bastard had just wandered in and eaten the bird that previously resided there.
Sightseeing completed, we then got a van over to Puerto Iguazu on the argentinian side of the falls where our hostel for the night was located. The weather was still beautiful so we went for a wander around the town before making best use of the great exchange rate to settle down for an awesome steak and wine dinner.
The following day we explored the Argentinian iguazu park, where the general theme of waterfall continued, although we were able to get onto a boat trip that went right under the falls. We all expected to end up soaking wet, but their is nothing less reassuring than seeing the crew of the boat your in don wetsuits and wellingtons when your in shorts and t-shirts. In any case it was seriously good fun, a must do for any of you thinking of visiting Iguazu.
After returning to the hostel that evening i went in search of an atm, only to find that my card had been blocked. After calling the Barclays 24 hour help service, I was transferred to a man in India who was suppposed to help me resolve this issue. Having given him my card number, my home address, my mother's maiden name, the name of my first pet, my brother's shoe size and my dad's golfing handicap he told me he still needed to prove I was who i said i was by anwsering a question about my account.
'can you tell me about a recent transaction?' he said
'i took out some money two days ago' i replied
'how much?'
'about £50'
'at what time?'
'about middday i guess'
'would you say closer to 11:45 or 12:15?'
'i have no idea'
'roughly?'
At this point i had to restrain myself from throwing my phone against the wall and instead calmly managed to persuade him i was not an impostor, I just didn't have a watch.
'Ok so you in Uruguay'
'no Argentina'
'but you say Uruguay'
'Im going there after'
'Ok so I put Argentina then Uruguay in system, will that be in South America at all?'
'almost entirely' (i don't think he got the sarcasm)
'ok thats fine Mr Englander, i have registered that change to your second account'
'no thats my savings account, i want to change my current account'
'no its not savings'
'yes it is savings'
'no its not'
'yes it is'
'look im not having an argument about whether my savings account is actually a savings account, please just put the changes onto my other account'
'very well Mr Englander, anything else i can help you with?'
'No'
While it might make sound economic success, I have now realised how much I hate outsourcing.
That night, as it was our friend Joe's 22nd Birthday we decided to hit a few bars before wandering to the towns only club 'Cuba Libre'. We were joined by a man from our hostel called Nick who turned out not to be a rapist or murderer as we had originally feared but instead just really really odd. He spent most of the night, criticising our taste in wine, plying us with drinks and trying to force Joe (who was pretty much passed out on the dancefloor) to dance salsa. It was still a great night summed up by Joe when asked to describe his birthday in one word on the journey home. 'Gggett oouuuttt' he replied.
We had most of the following day to kill before our evening bus to Buenos Aires so we decided to cross the border to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. We were told that people mainly visit the city for the stamp in the passport or for cheap shopping. So having got the stamp, bought various pairs of sunglasses and sports socks, had a photo taken with some pretty grumpy policemen and managed to escape from a man determined to sell us singing condoms we returned to our hostel in Puerto Iguazu in time to confirm our bus tickets.
I was particulairly excited for the journey as beer, wine and champagne were all included in the £50 ticket as well as a delicious hot dinner and breakfast. I just hoped it wasn't too good to be true....
My trip began at Florianopolis central bus station, a building that made up for its uninspiring design by offering a superb range of chewy sweets. After making a bold selection of peach chewits, we boarded the 7pm PLUMA bus due to arrive at 8am the next morning. The journey itself was pretty relaxed and we met a young bristolian couple who were making the most of their redundancy packets to travel round the whole of South America. Chatting to them was definitely better than trying to watch avatar dubbed in portuguese. After a dinner stop at a shop offering bizarre religious artifacts as well as a dodgy looking buffet, I succesfully slept through the rockin of the bus and Sophie's snores, waking up just as we arrived in Foz de Iguazu, on the Brazilian side of the falls.
After a quick breakfast of peach chewits we headed straight to the falls. I will admit at this stage that i had originally been pretty unfussed about seeing Iguazu, having been a longtime member of the 'nature shmature' school of thought. However as soon as we got off the bus i knew i had been mistaken, We followed the path onto a platform, dizzyingly suspended right over the edge of the falls and the beauty, the noise and the sheer power of the water were absolutely immense. I will freely admit i loved it. I only wish i hadn't had several cups of coffee with breakfast to wash down the rather soapy chewits, as i began to need the loo. As i'm sure you can imagine waiting in a long queue whilst millions of gallons of water are cascading next to you is not the most pleasant experience in the world.
After wandering a bit more and sharing a buffet lunch with a load of angry wasps we briefly visited the famous bird park. Whilst most of the animals were in cages, some of the more tranquil birds were housed in big aviaries which we were able to carefully enter. This greatly excited the gaggle of four year olds in front of us, who tried their best to 'interact' with the toucans, much to their teachers horror. Other highlights included flamingos, tropical parrots, and even an alligator which makes me think that the brazilian classification of 'bird' is a little wider than our own. Either that or the savage bastard had just wandered in and eaten the bird that previously resided there.
Sightseeing completed, we then got a van over to Puerto Iguazu on the argentinian side of the falls where our hostel for the night was located. The weather was still beautiful so we went for a wander around the town before making best use of the great exchange rate to settle down for an awesome steak and wine dinner.
The following day we explored the Argentinian iguazu park, where the general theme of waterfall continued, although we were able to get onto a boat trip that went right under the falls. We all expected to end up soaking wet, but their is nothing less reassuring than seeing the crew of the boat your in don wetsuits and wellingtons when your in shorts and t-shirts. In any case it was seriously good fun, a must do for any of you thinking of visiting Iguazu.
After returning to the hostel that evening i went in search of an atm, only to find that my card had been blocked. After calling the Barclays 24 hour help service, I was transferred to a man in India who was suppposed to help me resolve this issue. Having given him my card number, my home address, my mother's maiden name, the name of my first pet, my brother's shoe size and my dad's golfing handicap he told me he still needed to prove I was who i said i was by anwsering a question about my account.
'can you tell me about a recent transaction?' he said
'i took out some money two days ago' i replied
'how much?'
'about £50'
'at what time?'
'about middday i guess'
'would you say closer to 11:45 or 12:15?'
'i have no idea'
'roughly?'
At this point i had to restrain myself from throwing my phone against the wall and instead calmly managed to persuade him i was not an impostor, I just didn't have a watch.
'Ok so you in Uruguay'
'no Argentina'
'but you say Uruguay'
'Im going there after'
'Ok so I put Argentina then Uruguay in system, will that be in South America at all?'
'almost entirely' (i don't think he got the sarcasm)
'ok thats fine Mr Englander, i have registered that change to your second account'
'no thats my savings account, i want to change my current account'
'no its not savings'
'yes it is savings'
'no its not'
'yes it is'
'look im not having an argument about whether my savings account is actually a savings account, please just put the changes onto my other account'
'very well Mr Englander, anything else i can help you with?'
'No'
While it might make sound economic success, I have now realised how much I hate outsourcing.
That night, as it was our friend Joe's 22nd Birthday we decided to hit a few bars before wandering to the towns only club 'Cuba Libre'. We were joined by a man from our hostel called Nick who turned out not to be a rapist or murderer as we had originally feared but instead just really really odd. He spent most of the night, criticising our taste in wine, plying us with drinks and trying to force Joe (who was pretty much passed out on the dancefloor) to dance salsa. It was still a great night summed up by Joe when asked to describe his birthday in one word on the journey home. 'Gggett oouuuttt' he replied.
We had most of the following day to kill before our evening bus to Buenos Aires so we decided to cross the border to Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. We were told that people mainly visit the city for the stamp in the passport or for cheap shopping. So having got the stamp, bought various pairs of sunglasses and sports socks, had a photo taken with some pretty grumpy policemen and managed to escape from a man determined to sell us singing condoms we returned to our hostel in Puerto Iguazu in time to confirm our bus tickets.
I was particulairly excited for the journey as beer, wine and champagne were all included in the £50 ticket as well as a delicious hot dinner and breakfast. I just hoped it wasn't too good to be true....
Sunday, October 3, 2010
2 months in Brazil.....so im off to Argentina
This weekend, something fairly important is happening here in Brazil. Sunday 3rd of October 2010 is the official date for the general election and its creating quite a buzz around the University. Campaigning here principally comes in one of two forms, the first of which involves waving large flags in people's faces. Now i don't have anything against getting a bit of flag in the face for a good reason, i just wish they would have asked whether i was actually entitled to vote before invading my personal space. The second seems to be a game of who can stick up their candidate's face on the most billboards around the island, obviously hoping to sway the indecisive voter who thinks 'he/she may have no political experience and be facing allegations of corruption, but i have seen their face a lot recently and that reassures me'. If it works then fair play to them.
As far as the result is concerned, I have been informed by several locals that it is a foregone conclusion in favour of a woman named Rousseff, representing the same party as the outgoing Lula. (im yet to work out whether this is because the candidate is extremely good, or whether its just that the elections are a little bit fraudy). Anyway it should be an interesting day with America's golfing demise at the hands of Colin Montgomerie's Europe providing the rest of the entertainment.
More importantly for me however, Sunday 3rd of October also marks 2 months of residence in Florianopolis. In many ways i still feel like i have just arrived, and while this may be because some people still look at me as if im from the planet zog when im trying to speak portuguese, I prefer to think of it as linked to the whole 'time flies when your having fun' thing. And it has been a lot of fun.
.
One undoubted highlight of the last two weeks was a churrasco hosted by some of our portuguese friends from the university. Their rooftop apartment overlooking the sea on avenue Beira-mar (the posh bit of floripa) was an absolute banger. Great food, great sangria and plenty of portuguese spoken. Here's hoping they have another one soon.
I think being on the terrace of such a posh appartment gave us delusions of grandeur because a few days later we decided to visit 'Churrasceria Floripana', reputedly one of the best restaurants on the island. As a roup of 20, we paid 50 reais per person (eek) for the all you can eat option, but it was well worth it. In addition to a full sushi, salad and dessert bar, the highlights of which included salmon roll, california roll, couscous, sundried tomatoes, spicy prawns and creme caramel (thankfully not mixed together), the waiters brought pasta, risotto and massive skewers of barbecued meats to the table (presumably so we didn't waste any of the calories by getting up.) 'I'm going to open an identical one in England' i thought as i rolled home.
In order to burn off the accumulated calories with illustrious dancemoves, we went to all three of the big university organised 'festas.'
They had several things in common;
1) obscure, distant but ultimately awesome location
2) attractive brazilian girls with bizzarely high heels (im not insecure about my height....honest)
3) at least one justin bieber song (my mate giovanni loves a bit of bieber)
4) open bar
As far as im concerned an open bar or 'openbar' as its known in portuguese is a very good concept, you can get nicely sloshed without selling a vital organ, and you can pretend like your buying drinks for girls by going up to the bar and getting free drinks on their behalf. The only potential problem comes if your group of mates decides to get to the night really early in order to make the most of the openbar, and then you drink 10 caipirinhas in an hour because no-one else is there yet, because its still before 10pm, causing you to spend the rest of the night making an absolute idiot of yourself by staggering around speaking and some kind of slurred dialect meant to be portuguese which no-one can understand....or thats what i've been told.
In any case, the third of these festas deserves to be mentioned in its own right. Hosted by the arquitecture department, the theme was 'pop art' which was taken to mean 'any kind of bizarre fancy dress'. People really went all out with their costumes and it was a cracking night, not least because a big group of us decided to dress as 'where's wally' which rather ironically meant it was very easy to find everyone.
Getting there and back from these nights was also very easy thanks to a van service from the university that acted like a moving house party on the way and only smelled slightly of sick on the way back. This example of transport efficiency is however an anomoly. In general getting around the island is a bit of a nightmare unless you have bought a car, know someone that has a car or have stolen a car (the preferred policy of the favella dwellers) . This is because the bus system is about as easy to understand as the mandarin language guide to hydraulic brake construction.
Problems i have with the bus:
1) The bus routes are designed for scenic appreciation rather than speed
2) Many buses have very similiar names and go completely different places
3) Many of the drivers can't drive; lamposts hit, pavements mounted etc.
4) The buses are often full but standing up is impossible because they drive so badly
5) Buses are ridiculously irregular on weekends.
This last grievance was provoked one weekend when a group of us set out to trek to a secluded beach, only reachable by trail. There are few things more annoying than getting up really early on a hangover, and then waiting almost two hours for the bus, which we needed to take us to the start of the trail. When we eventually got there the trail was awesome, the weather was beautiful and the beach was almost deserted. I say almost because there was one individual on the far side of the beach ( pause to clear throat) 'enjoying' himself. Im not sure whether it was a genuine 'bad time' or just a performance for our benefit. Needless to say it spoiled the view a tad.
Coming back to the bus issue, the one redeeming feature of the entire system seemed to be a student bus card similiar to an oyster card. However for some reason the card can only be topped up once a month from an office in the centre. At the time of registering for the card, I tried to explain to the woman in the office why this wasn't practical for the consumer but im not sure she understood/cared. When it came to topping up my card last week, I obediently went to the centre and waited patiently for my turn for about half an hour. When i was finally shown to a counter i was told by the attendant that i didn't have the necessary documentation, despite me having my student ID with me. At this point, with steam practicaly billowing from my ears, I considered several courses of action. In order to avoid the federal police, I eventually restrained myself from setting the entire building on fire, and decided instead that stealing her pen and buying myself an ice cream would suffice. A moral victory, only slightly lessened by the fact im still going have to go back next week to try again.
In other news, im off travelling tomorrow so you may not hear from me in a while. I've decided that the immense stress of all my work and lectures means i am entitled to a 10 day holiday, of exploration, sightseeing and general debauchery. The current plan is to make a triangle trip to Iguazu falls, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Punto del Este returning back to Floripa just in time to don my leiderhosen, change my name to henrik von inglunder and hit the Oktoberfest (the one held here is the biggest outside of munich). Should be quite hectic all in all, but i will try and write a blog update when i can...
you stay classy san diego
As far as the result is concerned, I have been informed by several locals that it is a foregone conclusion in favour of a woman named Rousseff, representing the same party as the outgoing Lula. (im yet to work out whether this is because the candidate is extremely good, or whether its just that the elections are a little bit fraudy). Anyway it should be an interesting day with America's golfing demise at the hands of Colin Montgomerie's Europe providing the rest of the entertainment.
More importantly for me however, Sunday 3rd of October also marks 2 months of residence in Florianopolis. In many ways i still feel like i have just arrived, and while this may be because some people still look at me as if im from the planet zog when im trying to speak portuguese, I prefer to think of it as linked to the whole 'time flies when your having fun' thing. And it has been a lot of fun.
.
One undoubted highlight of the last two weeks was a churrasco hosted by some of our portuguese friends from the university. Their rooftop apartment overlooking the sea on avenue Beira-mar (the posh bit of floripa) was an absolute banger. Great food, great sangria and plenty of portuguese spoken. Here's hoping they have another one soon.
I think being on the terrace of such a posh appartment gave us delusions of grandeur because a few days later we decided to visit 'Churrasceria Floripana', reputedly one of the best restaurants on the island. As a roup of 20, we paid 50 reais per person (eek) for the all you can eat option, but it was well worth it. In addition to a full sushi, salad and dessert bar, the highlights of which included salmon roll, california roll, couscous, sundried tomatoes, spicy prawns and creme caramel (thankfully not mixed together), the waiters brought pasta, risotto and massive skewers of barbecued meats to the table (presumably so we didn't waste any of the calories by getting up.) 'I'm going to open an identical one in England' i thought as i rolled home.
In order to burn off the accumulated calories with illustrious dancemoves, we went to all three of the big university organised 'festas.'
They had several things in common;
1) obscure, distant but ultimately awesome location
2) attractive brazilian girls with bizzarely high heels (im not insecure about my height....honest)
3) at least one justin bieber song (my mate giovanni loves a bit of bieber)
4) open bar
As far as im concerned an open bar or 'openbar' as its known in portuguese is a very good concept, you can get nicely sloshed without selling a vital organ, and you can pretend like your buying drinks for girls by going up to the bar and getting free drinks on their behalf. The only potential problem comes if your group of mates decides to get to the night really early in order to make the most of the openbar, and then you drink 10 caipirinhas in an hour because no-one else is there yet, because its still before 10pm, causing you to spend the rest of the night making an absolute idiot of yourself by staggering around speaking and some kind of slurred dialect meant to be portuguese which no-one can understand....or thats what i've been told.
In any case, the third of these festas deserves to be mentioned in its own right. Hosted by the arquitecture department, the theme was 'pop art' which was taken to mean 'any kind of bizarre fancy dress'. People really went all out with their costumes and it was a cracking night, not least because a big group of us decided to dress as 'where's wally' which rather ironically meant it was very easy to find everyone.
Getting there and back from these nights was also very easy thanks to a van service from the university that acted like a moving house party on the way and only smelled slightly of sick on the way back. This example of transport efficiency is however an anomoly. In general getting around the island is a bit of a nightmare unless you have bought a car, know someone that has a car or have stolen a car (the preferred policy of the favella dwellers) . This is because the bus system is about as easy to understand as the mandarin language guide to hydraulic brake construction.
Problems i have with the bus:
1) The bus routes are designed for scenic appreciation rather than speed
2) Many buses have very similiar names and go completely different places
3) Many of the drivers can't drive; lamposts hit, pavements mounted etc.
4) The buses are often full but standing up is impossible because they drive so badly
5) Buses are ridiculously irregular on weekends.
This last grievance was provoked one weekend when a group of us set out to trek to a secluded beach, only reachable by trail. There are few things more annoying than getting up really early on a hangover, and then waiting almost two hours for the bus, which we needed to take us to the start of the trail. When we eventually got there the trail was awesome, the weather was beautiful and the beach was almost deserted. I say almost because there was one individual on the far side of the beach ( pause to clear throat) 'enjoying' himself. Im not sure whether it was a genuine 'bad time' or just a performance for our benefit. Needless to say it spoiled the view a tad.
Coming back to the bus issue, the one redeeming feature of the entire system seemed to be a student bus card similiar to an oyster card. However for some reason the card can only be topped up once a month from an office in the centre. At the time of registering for the card, I tried to explain to the woman in the office why this wasn't practical for the consumer but im not sure she understood/cared. When it came to topping up my card last week, I obediently went to the centre and waited patiently for my turn for about half an hour. When i was finally shown to a counter i was told by the attendant that i didn't have the necessary documentation, despite me having my student ID with me. At this point, with steam practicaly billowing from my ears, I considered several courses of action. In order to avoid the federal police, I eventually restrained myself from setting the entire building on fire, and decided instead that stealing her pen and buying myself an ice cream would suffice. A moral victory, only slightly lessened by the fact im still going have to go back next week to try again.
In other news, im off travelling tomorrow so you may not hear from me in a while. I've decided that the immense stress of all my work and lectures means i am entitled to a 10 day holiday, of exploration, sightseeing and general debauchery. The current plan is to make a triangle trip to Iguazu falls, Buenos Aires, Montevideo and Punto del Este returning back to Floripa just in time to don my leiderhosen, change my name to henrik von inglunder and hit the Oktoberfest (the one held here is the biggest outside of munich). Should be quite hectic all in all, but i will try and write a blog update when i can...
you stay classy san diego
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
A continental breakfast...why not
This week´s blog sees me writing from a different location. I would love to tell you that i am currently seated at a beach side bar, sipping a cold beer and watching a group of locals dancing samba while i muse over the last couple of weeks, but it would be a big old fib. No, as i sit here on monday morning my surroundings are slightly less picturesque. The university computer room was rightly designed for practicality rather than for architectural acclaim, but its fair to say it doesn´t inspire me with quite the same creativity as the view of the rolling hills and colourful houses from the balcony where i write at home. But given my academic surroundings, I shall take the opportunity to talk a little bit about my classes.
I am finding that my Brazilian history class is suprisingly enjoyable. I say suprisingly for two reasons, firstly because someone decided that the best time for it to take place was at 8.20 on a monday morning, and secondly because its in portuguese. However, there are several factors that make it a good class.
1. Quite a lot of cool stuff has happened in Brazil in the 500 years since it was discovered (apart from slavery...that wasn´t cool...bloody portuguese)
2. The lecturer knows what he is talking about, cracks jokes and does impressions of Iracema (a major female brazilian literary figure)
3. I understand whats going on even though its all in portuguese (polite applause)
4. Each week a group of four students gives a presentation.
Unlike England where 'presentation' means 'read out loud four pages from the book we all bought because it was on top of the reading list and had the word general in it', here in Brazil they are taken very seriously. If we take for example the last presentation I saw which was on slavery, the group spoke for 45 minutes with a fully illustrated powerpoint. In addition they made and handed out some kind of bean concoction that was typically eaten by slaves of the period. Not exactly what i fancied at that time of the morning, but i appreciated the mark earning gesture. The highlight however was still to come as the group finished the presentation with a short video interview with a woman descended from a slave. Whilst i may not agree with their method for getting this video, namely by stopping every black person they saw in the street and asking 'are you related to any slaves', the clip provided a valuable insight into the subject matter.
My portuguese for foreigners class on the other hand is unsurprisingly unenjoyable. The teacher is very nice, but as she explained on the first day, she doesn't know much about grammar....which i guess is fine..... if your not paying to learn grammar....which I am. In addition the people in our class are all at diffferent levels despite the level establishing exam we did on the first day. Im guessing that those in charge in the department, having already hit the caipirinhas, decided to facilitate their job by putting anyone who knew more than 3 words in portuguese, but weren't fluent, into my class. The only redeeming feature of the entire thing is the bizarre but irrelevant fact that 25% of the group are called Chris. (There is also a woman that looks like she might have been called chris before a rather painful and expensive operation, but this is mere speculation)
Speaking more generally, i have began to notice some differences between my classes here and my lectures back in Bristol;
1. The earliest class starts at 7.30 am and the last finishes at 10pm (enough to make anyone feel slightly suicidal)
2. Classes can be up to 4 hours in length (enough to make anyone feel very suicidal ... especially if like me they are the sort of guy who checks his watch from about 20 minutes in)
3. If the teacher doesn't fancy turning up he won't
4. People here have a different concept of what is meant by 'class time'.
It is fair to say students here take a more relaxed approach to their lectures, arriving in general about 10-20 minutes late. However it is not uncommon for people to wander in much later (the record i've seen is 1 hour and a half). Once inside the lecture room, brazilians feel no obligation to sit quietly and listen, on the contrary people chat, flirt, wander round the class, listen to ipod's, and leave and come back later without any explanation. However there have been two moments in class that in terms of hilarity and sheer audacity, outweigh all these others.
Firstly, about halfway through a lecture, a loud and embarrasing ringtone reverberated throughout the class. Instead of apologising and switching his phone to silent, the guy responsible answered and preceeded to have a conversation that went something like 'hi...yeah, just in class....not really....haha..yeah i know.....yeah...alright see you then...ciao' (aproximate translation). The lecturer couldn't have looked less bothered.
Secondly, in a cinema class which had started unusually promptly, a young man who had to be fair arrived on time, stood up and left the room after about 15 minutes, only to return 20 minutes later with a full continental breakfast of coffee, juice, croissant and fruit salad which he preceeded to lay out in front of him on the desk and slowly munch his way through. Again no reaction from the lecturer....I only wish i'd had my camera.
Leaving lessons behind (sadly without returning with breakfast), I finally went some way to acheiving my goal of being alternative by hitting a reggae festival at night on the north of the island. The journey alone merited the ticket price. Having asked some vaguely jamaican looking people if they knew the way to the gig, we ended up at the back of a bus where we struck up an immediate friendship with a group of thirty brazilian reggae enthusiasts, and joined them in drinking, singing and dancing.
When we got to the festival we were stopped and frisked by bouncers at the door, whom i guess were aiming to prevent anyone with drugs entering the festival. However searching people for drugs at a reggae festival is a bit like searching women for bizarrely tall hats at the doors of Royal Ascot, and judging by the potent smell of marajuana eminating from the venue, i'm guessing a degree of leniancy was adopted. The music was awesome with a group called 'Alpha Blondie' headlining, and dj's and other reggae groups playing well into the early hours. I was only slightly underprepared for the icy nightime winds as my portuguese had once again let me down. I had read the venue's online description as 'an inside arena that crates the illusion of being outside'. I subsequently discovered that it was an 'outside arena that creates the illusion of being inside.' Oh well. Overall though a great 'alternative' night was had by all. Perhaps i'll finally be accepted into the Dojo's wednesday crew in Bristol. Probably not though.
As for my new office, i am sad to report it has proved less than satisfactory. I have already been told off for talking too loudly, drinking and putting two chairs by one computer, an apparently heinous crime despite the fact that 80% of the chairs in here are currently vacant. Although i have managed to persuade the attendant not to call the federal police, i think I will be writing from home in the future.
Until then....
I am finding that my Brazilian history class is suprisingly enjoyable. I say suprisingly for two reasons, firstly because someone decided that the best time for it to take place was at 8.20 on a monday morning, and secondly because its in portuguese. However, there are several factors that make it a good class.
1. Quite a lot of cool stuff has happened in Brazil in the 500 years since it was discovered (apart from slavery...that wasn´t cool...bloody portuguese)
2. The lecturer knows what he is talking about, cracks jokes and does impressions of Iracema (a major female brazilian literary figure)
3. I understand whats going on even though its all in portuguese (polite applause)
4. Each week a group of four students gives a presentation.
Unlike England where 'presentation' means 'read out loud four pages from the book we all bought because it was on top of the reading list and had the word general in it', here in Brazil they are taken very seriously. If we take for example the last presentation I saw which was on slavery, the group spoke for 45 minutes with a fully illustrated powerpoint. In addition they made and handed out some kind of bean concoction that was typically eaten by slaves of the period. Not exactly what i fancied at that time of the morning, but i appreciated the mark earning gesture. The highlight however was still to come as the group finished the presentation with a short video interview with a woman descended from a slave. Whilst i may not agree with their method for getting this video, namely by stopping every black person they saw in the street and asking 'are you related to any slaves', the clip provided a valuable insight into the subject matter.
My portuguese for foreigners class on the other hand is unsurprisingly unenjoyable. The teacher is very nice, but as she explained on the first day, she doesn't know much about grammar....which i guess is fine..... if your not paying to learn grammar....which I am. In addition the people in our class are all at diffferent levels despite the level establishing exam we did on the first day. Im guessing that those in charge in the department, having already hit the caipirinhas, decided to facilitate their job by putting anyone who knew more than 3 words in portuguese, but weren't fluent, into my class. The only redeeming feature of the entire thing is the bizarre but irrelevant fact that 25% of the group are called Chris. (There is also a woman that looks like she might have been called chris before a rather painful and expensive operation, but this is mere speculation)
Speaking more generally, i have began to notice some differences between my classes here and my lectures back in Bristol;
1. The earliest class starts at 7.30 am and the last finishes at 10pm (enough to make anyone feel slightly suicidal)
2. Classes can be up to 4 hours in length (enough to make anyone feel very suicidal ... especially if like me they are the sort of guy who checks his watch from about 20 minutes in)
3. If the teacher doesn't fancy turning up he won't
4. People here have a different concept of what is meant by 'class time'.
It is fair to say students here take a more relaxed approach to their lectures, arriving in general about 10-20 minutes late. However it is not uncommon for people to wander in much later (the record i've seen is 1 hour and a half). Once inside the lecture room, brazilians feel no obligation to sit quietly and listen, on the contrary people chat, flirt, wander round the class, listen to ipod's, and leave and come back later without any explanation. However there have been two moments in class that in terms of hilarity and sheer audacity, outweigh all these others.
Firstly, about halfway through a lecture, a loud and embarrasing ringtone reverberated throughout the class. Instead of apologising and switching his phone to silent, the guy responsible answered and preceeded to have a conversation that went something like 'hi...yeah, just in class....not really....haha..yeah i know.....yeah...alright see you then...ciao' (aproximate translation). The lecturer couldn't have looked less bothered.
Secondly, in a cinema class which had started unusually promptly, a young man who had to be fair arrived on time, stood up and left the room after about 15 minutes, only to return 20 minutes later with a full continental breakfast of coffee, juice, croissant and fruit salad which he preceeded to lay out in front of him on the desk and slowly munch his way through. Again no reaction from the lecturer....I only wish i'd had my camera.
Leaving lessons behind (sadly without returning with breakfast), I finally went some way to acheiving my goal of being alternative by hitting a reggae festival at night on the north of the island. The journey alone merited the ticket price. Having asked some vaguely jamaican looking people if they knew the way to the gig, we ended up at the back of a bus where we struck up an immediate friendship with a group of thirty brazilian reggae enthusiasts, and joined them in drinking, singing and dancing.
When we got to the festival we were stopped and frisked by bouncers at the door, whom i guess were aiming to prevent anyone with drugs entering the festival. However searching people for drugs at a reggae festival is a bit like searching women for bizarrely tall hats at the doors of Royal Ascot, and judging by the potent smell of marajuana eminating from the venue, i'm guessing a degree of leniancy was adopted. The music was awesome with a group called 'Alpha Blondie' headlining, and dj's and other reggae groups playing well into the early hours. I was only slightly underprepared for the icy nightime winds as my portuguese had once again let me down. I had read the venue's online description as 'an inside arena that crates the illusion of being outside'. I subsequently discovered that it was an 'outside arena that creates the illusion of being inside.' Oh well. Overall though a great 'alternative' night was had by all. Perhaps i'll finally be accepted into the Dojo's wednesday crew in Bristol. Probably not though.
As for my new office, i am sad to report it has proved less than satisfactory. I have already been told off for talking too loudly, drinking and putting two chairs by one computer, an apparently heinous crime despite the fact that 80% of the chairs in here are currently vacant. Although i have managed to persuade the attendant not to call the federal police, i think I will be writing from home in the future.
Until then....
Sunday, September 12, 2010
So these oysters are in fact completely raw?......good
Having spent the last 15 minutes deliberating over what to write in my first sentence, i'm a little dissapointed that this was the best I could come up with. Oh well, it can only get better.
With an entire month in Floripa under my belt, my portuguese is still iffy at best, but otherwise I feel I am having an enjoyable and productive time here. Given that my primary reason for being here is to improve my portuguese, you may disagree with me but my overriding emotion is one of happiness that I am settling into Brazilian life a bit more. Whilst there may still be an invisible sign saying 'gringo' above my head I have made several key steps forward.
1. I am now able to do the shopping in under 2 hours. (I am also a little more aware that being adventurous is not always a good plan if you plan on leaving the toilet the following day)
2. We have made friends with a taxi driver. Carlos Max is a bit of a hero, its just a shame he keeps trying to rip us off by turning off the meter. Carlos if your reading this, I want to let you know that its a very mean thing to do, and if you insist on behaving in this way we won't be giving you any more english lessons.
3. I have managed to locate two of the seven parcels my mum has sent me from the UK. Thanks mum, i'm eating the percy pigs as we speak.
4. We've got a local called CSC. And we're mates with the guys that work there. And they're Brazilian...cash back. The Centro Social de Cerveja is located a mere 3 minutes walk from my house and is nothing short of awesome. They have live music 5 nights a week, barbecued meats and fish served tapas-style, as well as copious amounts of beer and cocktails, all at suprisingly, bordering on alarmingly cheap prices. Definitely worth a visit if your not put off by the 15 hour plane journey.
On the subject of good bars, we spent the friday night at a mexican style joint with the obligatory sombreros, fajitas and festive music in the background. This was a personal favourite. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh9BbalDxRE. The highlight of the bar was without doubt the 'special shot' served by a lively mejicano who forced one of my unsuspecting mates to down a triple measure of tequila before grabbing his head and shaking it vigourously, leaving him dazed, confused and with an extra 17 reais on his bill. Magic.
Aside from visiting the aforementioned bars, the highlight of my second week of classes was missing some classes to go on a trip around the island with a big group of foreign students *note to self, if you want to get a good idea of the geography of the island choose a coach with seats less ideally suited for sleeping. We visited 4 beaches in total, including the beautiful but windy Praia Joaquina, where we sipped beer and ate a meal of freshly caught fish overlooking the sea. We also stopped off at 'Project Tamar', a turtle charity whose bizarre aim seemed to be to 'save' the turtles by 'rescuing' them from the sea and putting them in what can only be described as an oversized paddling pool. I was thinking of pointing out to one of the members of staff that the turtles might actually prefer the sea, given that it is, after all, their natural habitat. A mixture of hope that i had simply misunderstood the portuguese and fear that i would cause a fight, dissuaded me.
The trip was also a good chance to get to know some other people, and speak some broken portuguese/french/spanish/english. It was nice to meet some portuguese people in particular. I view speaking with them as a sort of Sainsbury's basics version of speaking with brazilians, its more or less the same but you know in your heart of hearts its not the real thing. There are about 80 portuguese at the university but they have a bit of a reputation amongst the brazilians for keeping themselves to themselves and not socialising with people from other countries. I found that this wasn't the case however, and in fact we were invited to have dinner and drinks with some of them later in the week. Admittedly when we went everyone else was portuguese but at least it was a step in the right direction.
A chance to speak our tesco's finest brazilian (if you will allow me to continue with the slightly bizarre supermarket metaphor) presented itself on sunday night when we invited my first brazilian friend Ronaldo and his girlfriend out for a drink as a sort of 'thanks for not kidnapping, drugging or selling us into the sex trade' gesture. As it happened, they suggested that we went to a little village near by called S.Antonio de Lisboa to sample some local delicacies. I was relaxing with some delicious crab and prawn stuffed bread washed down with cold beer, when a tray of oysters was brought out. Not wanting to offend our brazilian friends, who had after all taken us out for dinner, I tried one, realising only as it slid down my throat that it was completely raw. I confirmed my suspicion with Ronaldo, who chuckled and compared the texture to snot before tucking into another. I do not pretend to be a master chef but it seems to me a bit of cooking wouldn't do any harm.
That being said, it was still a fun night and very kind of them to take us, especially given that the length of our friendship was the 1hr 10 transfer to Floripa airport. They dropped us back home and we went pretty much straight to bed.
I love 8.20am mondays.
On another note
As you may have realised, I am still about two weeks behind in my blogging. I am trying to get up to date, but writing a weekly blog is almost as hard to keep up with as a cross between the roadrunner cartoon and Usain Bolt.
I'll leave you with that image...
With an entire month in Floripa under my belt, my portuguese is still iffy at best, but otherwise I feel I am having an enjoyable and productive time here. Given that my primary reason for being here is to improve my portuguese, you may disagree with me but my overriding emotion is one of happiness that I am settling into Brazilian life a bit more. Whilst there may still be an invisible sign saying 'gringo' above my head I have made several key steps forward.
1. I am now able to do the shopping in under 2 hours. (I am also a little more aware that being adventurous is not always a good plan if you plan on leaving the toilet the following day)
2. We have made friends with a taxi driver. Carlos Max is a bit of a hero, its just a shame he keeps trying to rip us off by turning off the meter. Carlos if your reading this, I want to let you know that its a very mean thing to do, and if you insist on behaving in this way we won't be giving you any more english lessons.
3. I have managed to locate two of the seven parcels my mum has sent me from the UK. Thanks mum, i'm eating the percy pigs as we speak.
4. We've got a local called CSC. And we're mates with the guys that work there. And they're Brazilian...cash back. The Centro Social de Cerveja is located a mere 3 minutes walk from my house and is nothing short of awesome. They have live music 5 nights a week, barbecued meats and fish served tapas-style, as well as copious amounts of beer and cocktails, all at suprisingly, bordering on alarmingly cheap prices. Definitely worth a visit if your not put off by the 15 hour plane journey.
On the subject of good bars, we spent the friday night at a mexican style joint with the obligatory sombreros, fajitas and festive music in the background. This was a personal favourite. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mh9BbalDxRE. The highlight of the bar was without doubt the 'special shot' served by a lively mejicano who forced one of my unsuspecting mates to down a triple measure of tequila before grabbing his head and shaking it vigourously, leaving him dazed, confused and with an extra 17 reais on his bill. Magic.
Aside from visiting the aforementioned bars, the highlight of my second week of classes was missing some classes to go on a trip around the island with a big group of foreign students *note to self, if you want to get a good idea of the geography of the island choose a coach with seats less ideally suited for sleeping. We visited 4 beaches in total, including the beautiful but windy Praia Joaquina, where we sipped beer and ate a meal of freshly caught fish overlooking the sea. We also stopped off at 'Project Tamar', a turtle charity whose bizarre aim seemed to be to 'save' the turtles by 'rescuing' them from the sea and putting them in what can only be described as an oversized paddling pool. I was thinking of pointing out to one of the members of staff that the turtles might actually prefer the sea, given that it is, after all, their natural habitat. A mixture of hope that i had simply misunderstood the portuguese and fear that i would cause a fight, dissuaded me.
The trip was also a good chance to get to know some other people, and speak some broken portuguese/french/spanish/english. It was nice to meet some portuguese people in particular. I view speaking with them as a sort of Sainsbury's basics version of speaking with brazilians, its more or less the same but you know in your heart of hearts its not the real thing. There are about 80 portuguese at the university but they have a bit of a reputation amongst the brazilians for keeping themselves to themselves and not socialising with people from other countries. I found that this wasn't the case however, and in fact we were invited to have dinner and drinks with some of them later in the week. Admittedly when we went everyone else was portuguese but at least it was a step in the right direction.
A chance to speak our tesco's finest brazilian (if you will allow me to continue with the slightly bizarre supermarket metaphor) presented itself on sunday night when we invited my first brazilian friend Ronaldo and his girlfriend out for a drink as a sort of 'thanks for not kidnapping, drugging or selling us into the sex trade' gesture. As it happened, they suggested that we went to a little village near by called S.Antonio de Lisboa to sample some local delicacies. I was relaxing with some delicious crab and prawn stuffed bread washed down with cold beer, when a tray of oysters was brought out. Not wanting to offend our brazilian friends, who had after all taken us out for dinner, I tried one, realising only as it slid down my throat that it was completely raw. I confirmed my suspicion with Ronaldo, who chuckled and compared the texture to snot before tucking into another. I do not pretend to be a master chef but it seems to me a bit of cooking wouldn't do any harm.
That being said, it was still a fun night and very kind of them to take us, especially given that the length of our friendship was the 1hr 10 transfer to Floripa airport. They dropped us back home and we went pretty much straight to bed.
I love 8.20am mondays.
On another note
As you may have realised, I am still about two weeks behind in my blogging. I am trying to get up to date, but writing a weekly blog is almost as hard to keep up with as a cross between the roadrunner cartoon and Usain Bolt.
I'll leave you with that image...
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Barbecues, beer, football and robbery at gun point....just another average week in Brazil
On saturday 14th of august i awoke in a cold sweat with a very uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. Lying in my bed, I began to run through the possible reasons in my head as to why i was feeling so dodgy; was it just a hangover from the disgusting but very cheap cachaca 51? Was it something dodgy that i ate? (i had long suspected that the university's worryingly cheap chicken pasties had less chicken and more pigeon inside). Was it some Tropical disease i had managed to pick up from one of the friendly mosquitos who seem to treat my arms as an open buffet? Had i reached the stage of mental cultural isolation that the Bristol international office's graph of homesickness had warned me about?
Upon logging onto my computer however, i found that there was an entirely different reason behind my predicament. The Premier League season 2010/2011 was about to get underway and i had completely forgotten. I quickly got dressed and having met up with some mates from the Uni we began a search for somewhere to watch chelsea in the day's late kick off (about midday our time). At best I was expecting to find some bar claiming to have something to do with Ireland down a side alley, showing the game on a tiny black and white telly with commentary in some indistinguishable eastern european language, and with a fat brazilian man swearing and hitting the aerial every 5 minutes to stop the picture going fuzzy. Instead we found the 'Black Swan', an english pub in the middle of Lagoa serving european larger and traditional pub fair, with firm favourites such as ye olde club sandwich in plentiful supply. We were also able to watch the game, albeit on a confusingly large number of different screens, giving the less than pleasant impression of being in a room with 20 Didier Drogbas. Needless to say i'm still having nightmares.
Whilst our morning was about as traditionally brazilian as a bottle of HP sauce, the afternoon was a different story. We had been invited to a house party in the near by area, and the lure of our first 'churrasco' made it all the more exciting. Brazil is famous for these churrascos, a type of barbecue built into a wall with long metal skewers balancing meat and fish (and vegetables if my friend Beth has anything to do with it) above hot coals. We were greeted at the door by some deceptively brazilian looking guys (I found out subsequently that they were spanish, but they still fitted into the category of 'not english') and paid our £6 contribution towards food and drink. We spent the next 10 hours speaking portuguese with a variety of brazilian and international students, eating the entire cast of Dr Doolittle (thankfully minus eddie murphy), drinking caipirinhas, beer, sangria and some anonymous orange cocktail they pulled out when they thought no one was looking and generally loving being in Brazil (at least until the sun went down and it got stupidly cold).
I woke up the following day feeling as happy and relaxed as I had since arriving here. We had arranged the previous night to go to a friend's house for lunch and so I set off around midday in blazing sunshine with two of my housemates Sophie and Nuno. We had been waiting about 20 mins at our nearest bus stop (i'll save my rant about the wonderfully impractical Floripa bus system for another time) when a slightly dirty and dishevelled man came and stood next to us.
We had been warned about the ways to avoid potential muggers; not flashing phones or cameras around, not talking in english and generally trying to pass ourselves off as Brazilian. However at midday on a sunday I will admit our guard was down. Between Sophie's bright blonde hair, my arsenal shirt and Nuno's 'metrosexual' scarf, i think its fair to say that we did not blend into our surroundings as succesfully as we might have. It also didn't help that our bus stop was opposite a renowned Favela and crack-den. (we were only told this subsequently and it certainly wasn't mentioned on our map of the local area)
However we were still unaware of any danger as the man began to talk with Nuno in a low voice, a conversation me and Sophie assumed was friendly banter. A few alarm bells started going off when Nuno handed over his mobile phone and some cash to the man, but a small part of me hoped he was some kind of travelling mobile repair man. The man then turned his attention to me and Sophie asking for our phones and threatening to shoot us if we didn't comply. I did what any self-respecting englishman would do when threatend by some foreign lout...i shrugged my shoulders and pretended i couldn't understand what he was saying. Unfortunately for Sophie her bright pink blackberry was resting in her lap. The guy saw it, and clearly unfazed by the prospect of being called a girl by his fellow favella dwellers, he demanded it, again threatening to shoot her. So she handed it over. Probably sensible.
As he was leaving he said, 'i'm sorry, this isn't the sort of thing i do normally'. Whilst i am a firm believer in the phrase 'don't judge a book by its cover,' in this case his general appearance and manner suggested that this was exactly the sort of thing he did normally. Prick.
We spent the rest of the day in a case of mild shock. We went to our friends for lunch as brazilian police don't work on a sunday, but with classes beginning in earnest the following day (at 8.20 in the morning i might add) we got an early night.
Compared to the chaos of signing up for classes, attending the first week of lectures was fairly straightforward. Having said that we still managed to get lost on the first day in typical exchange student style. We arrived at what we thought was our brazilian history class in good time and sat fairly near the front ready to be keen and enthusiastic. It was only after about half an hour that my view of the class changed from 'an unusual but interesting approach to studying brazilian history' to 'this has nothing whatsoever to do with brazilian history'. I poked the friendly brazilian guy next to me and he confirmed that we were actually in property law. Given the combined embarassment of making this mistake and then having to leave the class by squeezing between desks knocking books off tables as we went, we will not be making this mistake again in a hurry.
There was another surprise of a totally different nature in my football class. The session was not in a classroom studying muscle groups as I had feared, but instead a 6 aside tournament in the uni gymnasium. In the sort of cultural exchange that only happens on the football pitch, the brazilians taught me a variety of portuguese swearwords, and in return I taught them some of the unbeleivable tekkers I have picked up over the years. Apparently slide tackles aren't alowed.......woops.
We spent our nights during the week attending more on campus 'festas,' and frequenting a bar named 'Pida' which made up for its strange location in the middle of a children's playround by offering very cheap drinks and a good atmosphere. (it helped that half the university also went there before the 'festas' got going). However, at this stage I am slightly worried about the ramifications for my teeth of drinking large amounts of caipirinhas, as the local recipe seems to be something like;
ingredients;
1 packet of sugar (preferrably large)
1 lime
1/2 a bottle of vodka/cachaca
2 cubes of ice
Preparation;
Pour the packet of sugar into the glass
Cut the lime in to quarters and place decoratively in the glass
Add 2 ice cubes but no more or people might actually enjoy the drink
Fill up with vodka or cachaca.
Stir well although there is no possible way to dissolve all that sugar
Come to think of it i might brush them now....
Upon logging onto my computer however, i found that there was an entirely different reason behind my predicament. The Premier League season 2010/2011 was about to get underway and i had completely forgotten. I quickly got dressed and having met up with some mates from the Uni we began a search for somewhere to watch chelsea in the day's late kick off (about midday our time). At best I was expecting to find some bar claiming to have something to do with Ireland down a side alley, showing the game on a tiny black and white telly with commentary in some indistinguishable eastern european language, and with a fat brazilian man swearing and hitting the aerial every 5 minutes to stop the picture going fuzzy. Instead we found the 'Black Swan', an english pub in the middle of Lagoa serving european larger and traditional pub fair, with firm favourites such as ye olde club sandwich in plentiful supply. We were also able to watch the game, albeit on a confusingly large number of different screens, giving the less than pleasant impression of being in a room with 20 Didier Drogbas. Needless to say i'm still having nightmares.
Whilst our morning was about as traditionally brazilian as a bottle of HP sauce, the afternoon was a different story. We had been invited to a house party in the near by area, and the lure of our first 'churrasco' made it all the more exciting. Brazil is famous for these churrascos, a type of barbecue built into a wall with long metal skewers balancing meat and fish (and vegetables if my friend Beth has anything to do with it) above hot coals. We were greeted at the door by some deceptively brazilian looking guys (I found out subsequently that they were spanish, but they still fitted into the category of 'not english') and paid our £6 contribution towards food and drink. We spent the next 10 hours speaking portuguese with a variety of brazilian and international students, eating the entire cast of Dr Doolittle (thankfully minus eddie murphy), drinking caipirinhas, beer, sangria and some anonymous orange cocktail they pulled out when they thought no one was looking and generally loving being in Brazil (at least until the sun went down and it got stupidly cold).
I woke up the following day feeling as happy and relaxed as I had since arriving here. We had arranged the previous night to go to a friend's house for lunch and so I set off around midday in blazing sunshine with two of my housemates Sophie and Nuno. We had been waiting about 20 mins at our nearest bus stop (i'll save my rant about the wonderfully impractical Floripa bus system for another time) when a slightly dirty and dishevelled man came and stood next to us.
We had been warned about the ways to avoid potential muggers; not flashing phones or cameras around, not talking in english and generally trying to pass ourselves off as Brazilian. However at midday on a sunday I will admit our guard was down. Between Sophie's bright blonde hair, my arsenal shirt and Nuno's 'metrosexual' scarf, i think its fair to say that we did not blend into our surroundings as succesfully as we might have. It also didn't help that our bus stop was opposite a renowned Favela and crack-den. (we were only told this subsequently and it certainly wasn't mentioned on our map of the local area)
However we were still unaware of any danger as the man began to talk with Nuno in a low voice, a conversation me and Sophie assumed was friendly banter. A few alarm bells started going off when Nuno handed over his mobile phone and some cash to the man, but a small part of me hoped he was some kind of travelling mobile repair man. The man then turned his attention to me and Sophie asking for our phones and threatening to shoot us if we didn't comply. I did what any self-respecting englishman would do when threatend by some foreign lout...i shrugged my shoulders and pretended i couldn't understand what he was saying. Unfortunately for Sophie her bright pink blackberry was resting in her lap. The guy saw it, and clearly unfazed by the prospect of being called a girl by his fellow favella dwellers, he demanded it, again threatening to shoot her. So she handed it over. Probably sensible.
As he was leaving he said, 'i'm sorry, this isn't the sort of thing i do normally'. Whilst i am a firm believer in the phrase 'don't judge a book by its cover,' in this case his general appearance and manner suggested that this was exactly the sort of thing he did normally. Prick.
We spent the rest of the day in a case of mild shock. We went to our friends for lunch as brazilian police don't work on a sunday, but with classes beginning in earnest the following day (at 8.20 in the morning i might add) we got an early night.
Compared to the chaos of signing up for classes, attending the first week of lectures was fairly straightforward. Having said that we still managed to get lost on the first day in typical exchange student style. We arrived at what we thought was our brazilian history class in good time and sat fairly near the front ready to be keen and enthusiastic. It was only after about half an hour that my view of the class changed from 'an unusual but interesting approach to studying brazilian history' to 'this has nothing whatsoever to do with brazilian history'. I poked the friendly brazilian guy next to me and he confirmed that we were actually in property law. Given the combined embarassment of making this mistake and then having to leave the class by squeezing between desks knocking books off tables as we went, we will not be making this mistake again in a hurry.
There was another surprise of a totally different nature in my football class. The session was not in a classroom studying muscle groups as I had feared, but instead a 6 aside tournament in the uni gymnasium. In the sort of cultural exchange that only happens on the football pitch, the brazilians taught me a variety of portuguese swearwords, and in return I taught them some of the unbeleivable tekkers I have picked up over the years. Apparently slide tackles aren't alowed.......woops.
We spent our nights during the week attending more on campus 'festas,' and frequenting a bar named 'Pida' which made up for its strange location in the middle of a children's playround by offering very cheap drinks and a good atmosphere. (it helped that half the university also went there before the 'festas' got going). However, at this stage I am slightly worried about the ramifications for my teeth of drinking large amounts of caipirinhas, as the local recipe seems to be something like;
ingredients;
1 packet of sugar (preferrably large)
1 lime
1/2 a bottle of vodka/cachaca
2 cubes of ice
Preparation;
Pour the packet of sugar into the glass
Cut the lime in to quarters and place decoratively in the glass
Add 2 ice cubes but no more or people might actually enjoy the drink
Fill up with vodka or cachaca.
Stir well although there is no possible way to dissolve all that sugar
Come to think of it i might brush them now....
Monday, August 30, 2010
Uni begins...or does it?
Oficially speaking, monday 9th august was the first day of the second semester at the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina (or oofski as the locals confusingly refer to it). By this stage i had acheived the following;
-found a place to live
-found the Uni
-registered at the Uni
-sorted out bus pass/meal card etc
-met a load of nice (if mainly international) people
-learnt some portuguese
However my to do list was still extensive;
-work out my timetable (this involved deciphering the university list which was helpfully written in morse code)
-learn capoeira (or other traditional Brazilian art form combining martial arts and with dance)
-go to the beach
-learn to kite-surf
-learn more portuguese
As far as i see it, the last item on my to-do list could be acheived in one of three ways
option a) Find a beautiful brazilian girl who truly loves me and embark upon a deep and meaningful relationship, culminating in our wedding in Rio de Janeiro around the time of the 2014 world cup in Brazil.
option b) Find a beautiful brazilian girl who is only interested in me in order to get a British passport, but who will be able to teach me some portuguese in the short term
option c) Buy a better book
With this in mind, I arrived at the University at 10am on the monday morning. Sadly my first port of call was a foreign students meeting containing neither hot young brazilian girls nor books. I assume the point of this meeting was to offer words of support and advice, whilst providing the crucial information for our 5 month stay. Without being overly critical, the fact that neither me nor any of my mates understood a single word, may have gone some way to undermining these aims.
There was however one brilliant moment in the meeting. A friendly little middle-aged woman, had just started speaking when a man who is clearly a 'big dog' in the Uni (judging by the size of his moustache) strolled into the room, took the microphone andd pushed the little woman off the stage. Apparently still drunk from the night before, he proceeded to give a slurred and completely unintelligable 2 minute speech and then left. His colleagues, who obviously understood what he was going on about, or who were worried about keeping their jobs applauded loudly.
We were then told the rest of the week was for choosing and signing up for courses. Having effectively done this before my arrival, i thought that all that was left was the formality of going to the department and saying 'ola'. I had of course forgotten that this is Brazil. On getting to the relevant offices i was told that all my courses were either cancelled or that the lecture responsible 'foi embora'. This is a very brazilian expression but here it can be taken to mean 'pissed off without telling anybody.'
In spite of this setback i was able to sign up for three different units; Brazilian History, History of cinema and Futsal (indoor football). I was warned that departments didn't really like international students, but apart from one grumpy sports coach who tried to hit me when i asked where the sports hall was for the 4th time in 3 days, people were generally very friendly.
Special mention must however go to the man in the cinema office who sent our group into hysterics by taking out a magnifying glass to study our enrollment forms in great detail. Given that his passion is film it seems unfortunate to say the least that he has such bad eyesight (he was also wearing glasses). There is no doubt we'll be keeping an eye out for Inspector Gadget (as my mate Giovanni aptly named him) and his vision enhancing equipment around the campus. It would make my year to see him whip out the mangnifier to study the menu in the uni restaurant.
This week also saw the start of a series of nightly 'festas' on the university campus. I intend to keep to the promise i made in my first post about cringe alcohol related stories. Lets just say the combination of 3 beers for 2 quid and numerous caipirinhas sorted us out. I only tried to board a 3am coach to Rio once. In very american college style, people gathered in huge groups from 10pm in front of live music or a dj and go on drinking until 3 or 4am when the music stops until some kid pumps out that 'yolanda be cool' song at full blast from his car. I don't mean to sound critical...its a massive tune.
On a rare night without one of the aforementioned festas, we managed to find our way down to Lagoa, a Floripa nightlife hotspot, and without doubt the most beautiful place i have visited so far (i'll try and upload a photo at somepoint but if you google lagoa de conceicao floripa you'll get some idea).
Our destination was a sushi restaurant, a choice i couldnt help but feel was like going to India and ordering snails. In spite of this the sushi was great and the cocktails better. We hit another bar before heading home.
Estimated time until next visit to lagoa: 48 hours max
zero classes, many festas and some legend with a magnifying glass.
Not bad for the first week of term....
-found a place to live
-found the Uni
-registered at the Uni
-sorted out bus pass/meal card etc
-met a load of nice (if mainly international) people
-learnt some portuguese
However my to do list was still extensive;
-work out my timetable (this involved deciphering the university list which was helpfully written in morse code)
-learn capoeira (or other traditional Brazilian art form combining martial arts and with dance)
-go to the beach
-learn to kite-surf
-learn more portuguese
As far as i see it, the last item on my to-do list could be acheived in one of three ways
option a) Find a beautiful brazilian girl who truly loves me and embark upon a deep and meaningful relationship, culminating in our wedding in Rio de Janeiro around the time of the 2014 world cup in Brazil.
option b) Find a beautiful brazilian girl who is only interested in me in order to get a British passport, but who will be able to teach me some portuguese in the short term
option c) Buy a better book
With this in mind, I arrived at the University at 10am on the monday morning. Sadly my first port of call was a foreign students meeting containing neither hot young brazilian girls nor books. I assume the point of this meeting was to offer words of support and advice, whilst providing the crucial information for our 5 month stay. Without being overly critical, the fact that neither me nor any of my mates understood a single word, may have gone some way to undermining these aims.
There was however one brilliant moment in the meeting. A friendly little middle-aged woman, had just started speaking when a man who is clearly a 'big dog' in the Uni (judging by the size of his moustache) strolled into the room, took the microphone andd pushed the little woman off the stage. Apparently still drunk from the night before, he proceeded to give a slurred and completely unintelligable 2 minute speech and then left. His colleagues, who obviously understood what he was going on about, or who were worried about keeping their jobs applauded loudly.
We were then told the rest of the week was for choosing and signing up for courses. Having effectively done this before my arrival, i thought that all that was left was the formality of going to the department and saying 'ola'. I had of course forgotten that this is Brazil. On getting to the relevant offices i was told that all my courses were either cancelled or that the lecture responsible 'foi embora'. This is a very brazilian expression but here it can be taken to mean 'pissed off without telling anybody.'
In spite of this setback i was able to sign up for three different units; Brazilian History, History of cinema and Futsal (indoor football). I was warned that departments didn't really like international students, but apart from one grumpy sports coach who tried to hit me when i asked where the sports hall was for the 4th time in 3 days, people were generally very friendly.
Special mention must however go to the man in the cinema office who sent our group into hysterics by taking out a magnifying glass to study our enrollment forms in great detail. Given that his passion is film it seems unfortunate to say the least that he has such bad eyesight (he was also wearing glasses). There is no doubt we'll be keeping an eye out for Inspector Gadget (as my mate Giovanni aptly named him) and his vision enhancing equipment around the campus. It would make my year to see him whip out the mangnifier to study the menu in the uni restaurant.
This week also saw the start of a series of nightly 'festas' on the university campus. I intend to keep to the promise i made in my first post about cringe alcohol related stories. Lets just say the combination of 3 beers for 2 quid and numerous caipirinhas sorted us out. I only tried to board a 3am coach to Rio once. In very american college style, people gathered in huge groups from 10pm in front of live music or a dj and go on drinking until 3 or 4am when the music stops until some kid pumps out that 'yolanda be cool' song at full blast from his car. I don't mean to sound critical...its a massive tune.
On a rare night without one of the aforementioned festas, we managed to find our way down to Lagoa, a Floripa nightlife hotspot, and without doubt the most beautiful place i have visited so far (i'll try and upload a photo at somepoint but if you google lagoa de conceicao floripa you'll get some idea).
Our destination was a sushi restaurant, a choice i couldnt help but feel was like going to India and ordering snails. In spite of this the sushi was great and the cocktails better. We hit another bar before heading home.
Estimated time until next visit to lagoa: 48 hours max
zero classes, many festas and some legend with a magnifying glass.
Not bad for the first week of term....
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The good, the bad and the stuff in between
My first few days on the beautiful (if unbelievably cold and rainy) island of Florianopolis were marked by several important discoveries.
Discovery 1: People in Brazil can't speak English.
This threw a spanner the size of Africa into the works, as my usual policy is to attempt a few words in the local tongue, and then revert to English whilst smiling ruefully as if to say 'at least i tried.' Given that my armoury of vocab consisted of two phrases, namely 'bom dia!' and 'sou ingles, nao falo portugues' I was forced to put my complete trust in a small book claiming to be an essential guide to learning brazilian portuguese. Because i bought the book from Waterstones (a company i have come to trust and admire in equal measure) I threw it straight in my case and didn't open it until my arrival. In retrospect this was a fairly moronic course of action as the book turned out to be utterly useless, as the author himself would have discovered had he actually been to Brazil before publishing.
Discovery 2: Brazilian hotels don't beleive in heating
Given the frosty conditions we encountered on our arrival, Sophie and I were hoping to warm up and relax in the hotel room. Therefore on entering the room and finding icicles forming on the inside of the window, i went down to reception to ask how we could switch the heating on. The friendly man behind the desk gave me a quizzical look and told me he couldn't help. At first i thought it may have been a language issue (see discovery 1) but after a fifteen minute conversation involving several hand gestures and a large amount of Spanish, I established that there was no heating in the room. I was however invited to make use of the air conditioning unit, i guess in case i found the 4 degree temperature unbearably hot.
Discovery 3: In Brazil you have to pay a fine for being foreign.
At airport security in Sao Paulo i was informed that i would have to visit the Federal Police in Florianopolis within 30 days of my arrival. This immediately conjured up certain images in my mind; handcuffs, interregations in empty warehouses, that chair Daniel Craig gets strapped to in Casino Royale...you get the picture. The reality however was entirely different. A friendly young woman took my details and figerprints whilst giving me tips about the best clubs on the island. The only negative aspect of the experience was having to pay $R200 (about £100) to the police as a fine for being foreign. Take note David Cameron, I think i've found a way out of the recession and its in Birmingham.
Discovery 4: Doing thorough research into housing pre-arrival is a very good idea.
Conversely, turning up and hoping for the best is not. In the four days we spent house hunting we saw a series of pretty bad places. It didn't help that in Brazil 'close to the university' actually means 'fucking far from the university' and that 'room ideal for students' actually means 'tiny, windowless room with no bed, desk, cupboard.....'or anything else.
Having read the paragraphs above dear reader, you could be forgiven for getting a fairly negative impression from my first few days, and i will admit at this stage it did not feel like i had just stepped into paradise
However as a wise man once said 'women are like buses' (with women representing good fortune in this case). On saturday the sun came out. We got into contact with a lady named Sonia, who picked us up from our hotel and took us to her amazing house 5 mins walk from the uni. Having seen the bedrooms (with tv, bathroom et al) the monkey-inhabited garden, the outhouse with kitchen and barbecue and the huge rear balcony, it took us about 30 seconds to decide to live there, and another ten minutes to try and explain so in portuguese.
We then headed to the mainland to see my newly acquired Brazilian team Figuerense complete a crushing 5-0 victory, putting them in a great position for top spot in the league. What the quality of football lacked, the atmosphere in the stadium and the skol beer more than made up for.
The day was rounded off with a trip to the centre, where me and some fellow 'gringos' found an authentic little pizzeria (the head waiter had a moustache) in an unusually quiet part of town. We found out subsequently that this may have been in part down to its notoriety for drug addicts and transvestites. The pizzas and obligatory caipirinhas went down like a treat and we even tried a local speciality of white chocolate and passion fruit pizza. Delicious and disgustingly sickly in equal measure. I think we managed 2 slices between 5 people.
Things were looking up
Discovery 1: People in Brazil can't speak English.
This threw a spanner the size of Africa into the works, as my usual policy is to attempt a few words in the local tongue, and then revert to English whilst smiling ruefully as if to say 'at least i tried.' Given that my armoury of vocab consisted of two phrases, namely 'bom dia!' and 'sou ingles, nao falo portugues' I was forced to put my complete trust in a small book claiming to be an essential guide to learning brazilian portuguese. Because i bought the book from Waterstones (a company i have come to trust and admire in equal measure) I threw it straight in my case and didn't open it until my arrival. In retrospect this was a fairly moronic course of action as the book turned out to be utterly useless, as the author himself would have discovered had he actually been to Brazil before publishing.
Discovery 2: Brazilian hotels don't beleive in heating
Given the frosty conditions we encountered on our arrival, Sophie and I were hoping to warm up and relax in the hotel room. Therefore on entering the room and finding icicles forming on the inside of the window, i went down to reception to ask how we could switch the heating on. The friendly man behind the desk gave me a quizzical look and told me he couldn't help. At first i thought it may have been a language issue (see discovery 1) but after a fifteen minute conversation involving several hand gestures and a large amount of Spanish, I established that there was no heating in the room. I was however invited to make use of the air conditioning unit, i guess in case i found the 4 degree temperature unbearably hot.
Discovery 3: In Brazil you have to pay a fine for being foreign.
At airport security in Sao Paulo i was informed that i would have to visit the Federal Police in Florianopolis within 30 days of my arrival. This immediately conjured up certain images in my mind; handcuffs, interregations in empty warehouses, that chair Daniel Craig gets strapped to in Casino Royale...you get the picture. The reality however was entirely different. A friendly young woman took my details and figerprints whilst giving me tips about the best clubs on the island. The only negative aspect of the experience was having to pay $R200 (about £100) to the police as a fine for being foreign. Take note David Cameron, I think i've found a way out of the recession and its in Birmingham.
Discovery 4: Doing thorough research into housing pre-arrival is a very good idea.
Conversely, turning up and hoping for the best is not. In the four days we spent house hunting we saw a series of pretty bad places. It didn't help that in Brazil 'close to the university' actually means 'fucking far from the university' and that 'room ideal for students' actually means 'tiny, windowless room with no bed, desk, cupboard.....'or anything else.
Having read the paragraphs above dear reader, you could be forgiven for getting a fairly negative impression from my first few days, and i will admit at this stage it did not feel like i had just stepped into paradise
However as a wise man once said 'women are like buses' (with women representing good fortune in this case). On saturday the sun came out. We got into contact with a lady named Sonia, who picked us up from our hotel and took us to her amazing house 5 mins walk from the uni. Having seen the bedrooms (with tv, bathroom et al) the monkey-inhabited garden, the outhouse with kitchen and barbecue and the huge rear balcony, it took us about 30 seconds to decide to live there, and another ten minutes to try and explain so in portuguese.
We then headed to the mainland to see my newly acquired Brazilian team Figuerense complete a crushing 5-0 victory, putting them in a great position for top spot in the league. What the quality of football lacked, the atmosphere in the stadium and the skol beer more than made up for.
The day was rounded off with a trip to the centre, where me and some fellow 'gringos' found an authentic little pizzeria (the head waiter had a moustache) in an unusually quiet part of town. We found out subsequently that this may have been in part down to its notoriety for drug addicts and transvestites. The pizzas and obligatory caipirinhas went down like a treat and we even tried a local speciality of white chocolate and passion fruit pizza. Delicious and disgustingly sickly in equal measure. I think we managed 2 slices between 5 people.
Things were looking up
Friday, August 20, 2010
A train and two planes....and a car 3/8/2010
My aim is to do a weekly update, but I have decided to allocate an entire post to the journey given its importance. I certainly wouldn't be where i am today without it.
I arrived at Heathrow by myself via the heathrow express as my family are still on holiday in Mallorca, and i met up with my travelling partner Sophie (also from bristol) whose parents had bothered to come back from holiday to wave her off.
As TAM, the fine purveyours of travel in and out of Brazil insist on check in 3 hours before take off, we had time to relax and get a pret a manger (probably not what i'd planned to have as my last meal in england for 5 months, but they do make a cracking chicken sarnie)
Our overnight flight was completely packed meaning i couldnt sit next to sophie (probably just as well cos she's a snorer) and i was instead sandwiched between a friendly Brazilian grandmother, with an apparent liking for graphically violent films, and a young Brazilian guy from Salvador with great chat, but a tragically small bladder given that he had to wake me up every time he needed to got to the loo.
Hours slept - 5
Portuguese words attempted - 12
Brazilian cuisine sampled - 0
We landed at 5.30am local time, and after finally getting through security (with a very dissapointing stamp for the passport) we got our connecing flight to Floripa.
This flight was much more relaxed, and after again succesfully escaping from sophie, i found myself between an English guy who assured me he was going to a poker tournament 'just to write about it' which i guess is similiar to assuring someone you're going to brothel 'just to watch' and a very friendly Floripan named Ronaldo. With a grin he informed me that i was coming to the island at completely the wrong time of year.
Cheers mate.
2hours later, having eaten 2 slices of crispy toast with a delicious condiment pretending to have something to do with guava, we landed in Floripa in beautiful sunshine and 35 degree heat. We headed straight for the beach where we frolicked in the sand and sipped ice cold caipirinhas
Well thats what should have happened. In fact we stepped off the plane into icy winds and driving rain .
Ronaldo, now firmly my first brazilian mate, kindly offered us a lift to our hotel on the other side of the island.
Having seen the film 'Taken' with Liam Neeson i was initially a bit cautious, but after weighing up certain cold and rain against potential kidnap, drugging and sale into the sex trade we climbed into the car.
We got to our Hotel, called 'Slaviero' at about 10am in time for our first brazilian 'cafe da amanha' or 'brekkie' which involved cereal, toast and coffee. I had been warned about culture shock before i left the UK but this was beyond anything i had imagined.
The year abroad had begun.
I arrived at Heathrow by myself via the heathrow express as my family are still on holiday in Mallorca, and i met up with my travelling partner Sophie (also from bristol) whose parents had bothered to come back from holiday to wave her off.
As TAM, the fine purveyours of travel in and out of Brazil insist on check in 3 hours before take off, we had time to relax and get a pret a manger (probably not what i'd planned to have as my last meal in england for 5 months, but they do make a cracking chicken sarnie)
Our overnight flight was completely packed meaning i couldnt sit next to sophie (probably just as well cos she's a snorer) and i was instead sandwiched between a friendly Brazilian grandmother, with an apparent liking for graphically violent films, and a young Brazilian guy from Salvador with great chat, but a tragically small bladder given that he had to wake me up every time he needed to got to the loo.
Hours slept - 5
Portuguese words attempted - 12
Brazilian cuisine sampled - 0
We landed at 5.30am local time, and after finally getting through security (with a very dissapointing stamp for the passport) we got our connecing flight to Floripa.
This flight was much more relaxed, and after again succesfully escaping from sophie, i found myself between an English guy who assured me he was going to a poker tournament 'just to write about it' which i guess is similiar to assuring someone you're going to brothel 'just to watch' and a very friendly Floripan named Ronaldo. With a grin he informed me that i was coming to the island at completely the wrong time of year.
Cheers mate.
2hours later, having eaten 2 slices of crispy toast with a delicious condiment pretending to have something to do with guava, we landed in Floripa in beautiful sunshine and 35 degree heat. We headed straight for the beach where we frolicked in the sand and sipped ice cold caipirinhas
Well thats what should have happened. In fact we stepped off the plane into icy winds and driving rain .
Ronaldo, now firmly my first brazilian mate, kindly offered us a lift to our hotel on the other side of the island.
Having seen the film 'Taken' with Liam Neeson i was initially a bit cautious, but after weighing up certain cold and rain against potential kidnap, drugging and sale into the sex trade we climbed into the car.
We got to our Hotel, called 'Slaviero' at about 10am in time for our first brazilian 'cafe da amanha' or 'brekkie' which involved cereal, toast and coffee. I had been warned about culture shock before i left the UK but this was beyond anything i had imagined.
The year abroad had begun.
A little explanation...
As the title of the blog suggests, i shall be spending the majority of the next year of my life in S. America or more specifically, at University in Florianopolis Brazil and working in Buenos Aires, Argentina. The blog is mainly for my own benefit (just as well because im guessing not many people are going to read it), as a way to remember the year but also to test out my writing tekkers, as i am still toying with the idea of journalism.
I shall try and keep the content as interesting as possible, and i promise to try and cut down on stories such as 'maaate, i drank a load of brazillian beer, and then i was sick all over myself, and then i drank some more beer' or 'then i met the local tribal chief, and after communicating with him through the medium of capoeira, i now have a completely different outlook on life.'
so with that in mind i hope you enjoy it and of course feel free to send any constructive criticism to
youtryandwriteabetteroneyousnob@hotmail.com
much love
simon
I shall try and keep the content as interesting as possible, and i promise to try and cut down on stories such as 'maaate, i drank a load of brazillian beer, and then i was sick all over myself, and then i drank some more beer' or 'then i met the local tribal chief, and after communicating with him through the medium of capoeira, i now have a completely different outlook on life.'
so with that in mind i hope you enjoy it and of course feel free to send any constructive criticism to
youtryandwriteabetteroneyousnob@hotmail.com
much love
simon
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