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elmerinolatino-blog · 6 years ago

Text

The last blog

Aka caipirinha-flavoured tears, aka saudade de brasil

And there we go, before you know it 6 months have passed and you’re back in a country where summer means ‘take a jacket and a vest if you plan to spend the day outside’. What a time it has been. But before a little reflection and nostalgia, let me inform you about my last 3 weeks in South America, the country that wanted me to leave with a bang (or a few). On to Brazil, or: a masochistic journey of hell

Last time I wrote I had just climbed a mountain in the middle of the night with -15 degrees en a freezing cold icy wind. Traumatised as I was, I decided to make a run for Brazil as my time was running out. First stop: Rio de Janeiro. I had not really planned a trip and in my mind it wasn’t thaaaat far away and could be done by bus, because much cheaper. God was I wrong. I put myself on a 17h overnight bus that would get me to the lowlands of Bolivia where I could connect to a train (again, 17h) to the border. Bolivia style, we left and made an instant break to onload more baggage. And then another one, because the bus boys were convinced there weren’t enough passengers on the bus already. And then another. And then another. By that time I had calculated that we had 4h max to be delayed or I would miss the train. So I got a little mad and made sure we kept going. We made 3 stops again in the morning, of course, and made it just in time for the train. On the train I was exceptionally bored because they played some shitty concert on the screens in the wagons, so I decided to make most of my time and hang out with the train restaurant ladies. At first I tried teaching them a card game I know as ‘stressing’ where you have to pick up and play cards fastfastfast. Well, that didn’t work… I don’t think the ladies understood stress as a concept. So I tried a card game I know as ‘lying’, where one lady was an instant star and where the other lady got so nervous at the idea of lying that she quit the game (oh sweet soul). Sadly that meant that I had to retreat to my seat and quit the game too. The travel went on… (remember at this time I’m still travelling smartphoneless). In the morning we reached the border, where I had read that it takes hours to stand in line and that sometimes they’ll tell you that you have to wait until the next day. Luckily it was not that bad, I waited an hour with a British guy who overstayed his visa but worked his blue eyes and got away with it. On the Brazilian side (yes!) I could have taken a bus straight to Rio, but this gringo decided that the bus was quite expensive and that I would just break up the journey and get cheaper buses. Sadly in Brazil it doesn’t work like that, so I ended up paying more and getting a 6h minivan, a 20h bus to Sao Paulo, a metro to the other bus station and finally, another 6h bus to Rio de Janeiro. Once I got there I had bendered my way through buses and trains for 3,5 days and I was ready to die. Luckily there was caipirinha, and I decided to get drunk instead. Rio, meu amor...

Oh Rio. Finally there I was, the cidade maravilhosa, the city so famous you kind of know it without even having been there. What an icon, and what a deception when I made my first walk through Copacabana, because the buildings were not that pretty or iconic. Honestly that first morning in Rio I did not understand what all the fuss was about. Ok there’s a beach but it’s filled with bodybuilding airheads so what? Only when the sun set and I found a viewpoint I understood what Rio’s magic is about. You have a large city to give you the excitement you need, there’s the hills for your portion of nature and activity, and the beach for relaxing and sunset. That night Rio went full charm-attack on me when met up with a guy I met on the bus, and was kidnapped to a party by his friend to a very artsyfartsyparty in a beautiful old colonial villa slash cultural center. The music was great, and there was a huge tree, very nicely lit, from which hung a shower of tree-roots (what the hell is the english word for this). Adding to all of this, it was full of artyfarty queery boys making out with eachother, plus it was “winter” and we were in shirts outside. Man, I had officially reached paradise.

The next days Rio kept living up to its promise. I went to a really good drag show, had a tour through the center, a beautiful mix of modernist and colonial buildings, and went to a boat party. The boat party in particular was great as everybody was completely drunk, and combined with the boat’s sways from left to right it was like being in a rollercoaster in which you were able to shake your booty (and there was a lot of that happening). Before I knew it, Rio had thrown me into a caipirinha-fuelled bender which was great fun but resulted in me with an almost-constant hangover. Luckily I also found some time to hike up to a hilltop and do a favela tour. The last thing was a bit weird because it felt like disaster tourism, but ok, I am also a little urbanist and I want to see every sort of urban landscape possible. Seeing as favelas are a very interesting sort of urbanism (all the alleys, verticalism, the street life) I could rationalise myself to do it. Apart from those things I went to walk the city a bit with a Colombian guy (mistake) after my center tour. This guy decided I was his new personal photographer and made me photograph him in 3 of the same poses on every fucking streetcorner, including “please can you do another one”-s. So now if you want to hire me for your wedding please do, I am broke and consider myself qualified.

Oh yeah, Rio is also an artistic city.

Sampasampa, a blitz trip to the metropolis

After Rio I had planned a visit to São Paulo, Sampa, the biggest city of South America and… the biggest gay pride in the world! In the bus I crafted myself a little necklace of paper flowers, added some extra flower necklaces (more is more, remember kids), some coloured feathers and some glitter (for which the same concept applies my dears, learn from this, it will make your weekends sparkly and amazing. MORE IS MORE). So expecting a big celebration of gayness, I found that my hostel was full of gay guys who ignored me, and the next day, I found that there was not a grain of solidarity in these boy’s minds. During a political speech by a drag queen during the parade there was really zero interest in what she said, which made me outraged. Especially with the homophobia and transphobia in Brazil that people told me really is an issue, how can you set your mind solely on getting drunk and scoring guys? Ignoring this annoyance, I decided to then just go with the flow and set my mind on getting drunk and making out with half the parade. I got by with a little help from my new friend caipirinha, and accomplished both goals.

Having a Marylin Monroe moment on a metro raster.

The next morning I woke up in a state of terror, disgust, disappointedness and hungover chaos, my body was figuratively loop-screaming FUCK YOU in my ear and I decided I had to take myself away from a place with a party. I remembered how drunk I had come back to the hostel, had tried to practice my yoga headstand thinking I wasn’t thaaat drunk and of course had fallen over. Messy times. I decided to get a bus for Brasilia and spend some days honouring my degree in urban planning. I had a walk through a rainy, 18 degree São Paulo, went up a skyscraper, had a bibimbap in the asian hood and then dashed on to my new destination. Being a good student: urban planning monument Brasilia

Brasilia is Brazil’s 1960s new capital, a city built from scratch with modernist principles. Brasilia was interesting, like a museum, but nothing more than that. It is a prime example of megalomaniac building from a totalitarian view of society, of the idea that the built environment can reduce the complexity of the human to a network of highways and pre-planned public spaces. A rigidity that shows in many ways how it doesn’t work. First of all, Brasilia was planned to accommodate 500,000 government workers and supporting workers. The idea that the city could grow was not planned for, so nowadays, there are numerous satellite cities, some of which are connected to the city only with highways (which makes the city hell for pedestrians). This boy took a bike out one day and had to cross 4-lane highways to even get through the city, on paths that were formed in the grass by people who also had chosen to ride a bicycle but had not found a path to do so. But even in the central city, if you are a pedestrian, you are the last priority. Want to cross the 6-lane highway from the central strip of grassy fields (really they:re not much more than that) to a ministry? Take the pedestrian crossing 500m further, cross, and walk 500m back. So basically it’s like walking in a museum with deathtraps.Second of all, public transport is ooovercrowded. The bus station is full and needs to be expanded. So there goes your perfectly planned futuristic city where you thought there’s no need for any other infrastructure but for the car, because everyone would have a car. Nuh-uh. They built a metro too but it only takes half the planned city. Why?! And then third of all, informal economies. The bus station is full of people with blankets selling random stuff. And of course. It’s Brazil, so this was bound to happen. Anyway, getting way too elaborate about this. Conclusion: Brasilia is interesting but we do not need the city planning from the 60s again.

However we do need recycled dinosaurs and planet-like buildings in our cities.

An idyllic ending

After Brasilia I took a bus ride to Recife. 2 days again. God, why do I do these things to myself? Anyway, when I asked about the north of Brazil people told me: “ahhhh, the north… it’s great, the people are so full of life there..” and it turned out to be true. The place breathes culture, a love for outdoor life, and life is so colourful. And Recife is a biiiiig city. But it is somehow so relaxed, set on the sea, with palms, with that humid warm wind that I recognised from the Carribean, with old mouldy factories with vaguened paint… and even better was my stay in Olinda (oh, linda…) where the town was full of beautiful little coloured colonial houses, carnaval puppets in the windows of the neighbours, and amazing views of the Miami-like skyline of Recife. I spent a few very relaxed and beautiful days there, and felt like I should have stayed to write a book about the richness of life. I mean, one evening we were in the hostel and a weird artist comes up to us to sell us some art pieces he made. Another day I was drinking a caipirinha on the street (yes I was quite the alcoholic again) and a woman starts having a massive drunk monologue to a random dude asking for money. One evening we’re outside watching over the skyline as two cats start fighting in the street below. A woman comes out with a broom, hits the cats with the broom, and walks back into the house in full attitude mode murmuring something like: “fucking cats…”

It was these little things that made life so rich and colourful the last few days and then before I knew it, it was time to say goodbye. In the queue of the airport it hit me and I had to shed a few caipirinha-flavoured tears. Fuck me, what an incredible ride. My last thoughts in that momennt were this: Latin America you have completely seduced me and bankrupted me, and when I can, I will be back. Adios meu amor... Back on the mother continent, a reverse culture shock

And then I got back. I had a stopover in Lisbon and it was terrible to see so many badly-dressed white people. I mean, who still wears those shirts from C&A with white and blue horizontal&vertical stripes and without arms? Unacceptable. It was really that terrible a sight that I thought I would have a hard time resettling and would tumble right into a post-travel depression. But now I’m back, spending a month in the Netherlands after a few days of visiting Berlin, and really, life is quite fine (now that it’s summer). I had a walk through Berlin the first day being back and it was as if Berlin was eager to have me back. Not even 5 minutes after I began my little flaneuring, I encountered a man on a bike making hawk sounds. 2 minutes later a girl asks me the way, laughing, because she lost her phone and is useless without Google Maps. I feed the swans, and ducks, in Kreuzberg’s canal. And I rediscover a drink I totally forgot existed, Club Mate! The joy I felt at that point was off the charts. And then I also got that pure Berlin experience of eating a falafel and having half the ingredients falling down my buttoned-open shirt. I could have missed the moody cashiers in the supermarket though. What a customer service to not greet the person right in front of you… and there were some other annoyances that made the first days back a little bit of a love/hate thing.

Having said all of that, after a few days of feeling weird and slightly reverse-culture-shocked, I learned to appreciate life in the Netherlands again too (but of course with the usual frustrations). One great thing, the bike paths are so perfectly manicured and it makes getting around on a longboard amazing. The other day I even saw a road with bike lanes on both sides, PLUS a two-way separated bike lane on the side. Only in the Netherlands. And it is so nice to be in a place where people say hi and bye to the bus driver. Apart from that, I’m now doing a minijob where I’m visiting many places in my childhood neighbourhood for surveys about recycling. It’s quite interesting and frankly quite mind-expanding to visit homes and find so many different people you didn’t know, and didn’t know had such diverse lives. And almost everyone, also the place where the ‘white trash’ (according to mom and dad) of the hood lives is nice, and recycles. So life is good at the moment. But, I have just one thing to say to white Europeans who are too inhibited to dance on the street during a party: MOVE YOUR ASS. Your mother didn’t give you your ass for nothing. And yes and there’s a reason I say this: I found a jazz festival in Rotterdam last weekend and was absolutely stupefied to find that all the people around me (who were enjoying the music quite obviously) were only awkwardly nodding their heads to the beat and moving extremely conservatively. After the 5th time of the singer trying to get people to dance, people would dance. A little bit. Beh! If I have learned one thing this journey it’s that political situations can be fucked up and so can be your national or personal history. But there is never, never, NEVER a reason not to shake your booty and make life colourful. Sweet readers, take this to heart. I hope you have enjoyed my stories as much as I have enjoyed living them, and writing about them. In fact, I have enjoyed it so much that I want to take some time for thought and think of how I can keep meaningfully writing. Mis amores, unos besos con sabor de flores.

Yours now slightly Latino,

The boy you know as Elmerino

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