travel: January 2004 Archives
I was in Brazil in 1999 and found it a wonderful place and it has left a lasting impression on me. I was there for a few days training at a multimedia company. So I had two experiences, one the car from hotel to machine gun protected corporate enclave, very friendly people at the company, but intense security.
The other much more free experience in the evening, walking around the markets and into Japan Town. Getting offered sex on sunny streets with pimps and dogs in the background, feeling uncomfortable taking pictures, as my camera felt too intrusive. Evenings were fun, hanging out in bars drinking Caipirinha, made with local cachaça. There is a different ambience in the local bars, people get up and sing or play guitar. It is not karaoke, but a remembering of the older songs, kind of a tradition, if only forty or fifty years old. I suppose like the now famous Cuban music scene, but taking influences from all of the vast country that is Brazil.
There is also that South American feeling of "'even if it is broken, leave it alone". Roads and buildings are put up shiny and new, then gradually decay over the years to be ripped down and replaced. Much of São Paulo is like the pictures below, the new and the old, cheek by jowl.
Today I found these pictures via Anne Galloway. They depict street scenes and the busy seemingly disorganised life that is São Paulo. There is a random mix of poverty vs the money represented by glass steel and concrete. Noise, architecture and never quite knowing what each street will bring to you. Yet it feels a very real place, almost friendly, yet holding on to itself, as if neither of you trust one another.
If I can find my pictures of the city, I'll scan some of them and put them here.
