a bigggg city, sao paulo
what am I doing here?
17.12.2011
29 °C
I bought my ticket to brasil 3 months ago. for 3 months, I carried the printed version of my e-ticket in my wallet. never once have I had any doubts about where I was flying to in brazil: rio de janeiro.. obviously! All my travel plans were made with rio as the leaving point. I arranged accommodation and studied what to do once in rio. A few days before I left istanbul, a friend of mine questioned me about my first destination because she knew as a fact that turkish airlines did not fly to rio but to sao paulo. Nooo.. I said. I'm sure I am flying to rio. I have a ticket. here it is. and we both looked... To my surprise, it stated very clearly that it was to sao paulo! where on earth is sao paulo? It was a relief to find out that it was in brasil and not in venezuela or colombia! It is 430 km away from rio which is a negligable distance (!) considering the size of the country. I wasn't that far off!
Well I am at that city now. A city with 20 million people, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and let me tell you: it is crowded! I haven't seen traffic jams like this city has anywhere else including bangkok. Today I decided to get off the bus and walk the rest of the way back to the hostel, about 3km away.
Talking of my hostel: GOL Backpackers. I thought GOL stood for something like Guru of Love or Game Over Loser! but no. The moment I walked in and saw the lounge with a green "fake grass" carpet and beanbags that resemble footballs, I knew what it really meant. For the un-observative, seeing the dorms would be sufficient. Each sheet carries a football team's colors and emblem, not to mention framed uniforms on the walls and all the other football accessories.
After 13 hours of flying and a very expensive ride from the airport to the hostel, I was in no position to be picky about the decoration. It was 4 o'clock in the morning, istanbul time, when I finally got to bed. For the record, it is a legend that turkish airlines flight stops at dakar to get fuel. The flight is direct and non-stop.
I spent all the day walking around in this big city. I can not say it is attractive or cute. It is quite difficult for such a humongous thing to be cute anyway. I learned how to use the buses and the metro. I went to the asian neighborhood following the advice of the lonely planet. Compared to its counterparts in london or in new york, it was pathetic, but I happened to be hungry and my first meal in brasil was untasty chinese food and I regretted it the whole day. The italian neighbourhood was not so interesting either. The only interesting place I saw today was the big park with two lakes and an auditorium with eye- catching architecture. The lakes were home to lots of ducks, geese, and black swans, and the odd white heron. I must admit the herons looked a bit lost (like I did the whole day).
Coming back to people, I can not yet describe the features of a brasilian although I saw A LOT of them today. they can be white, black, in-between, chinese, japanese you name it. In north america, you can at least identify the white american: big people (tall and wide) eating big portions of meals driving big cars on large avenues that are gridlocked in most part of the country. Here, there is no single trait that can be attributed to these people who somehow (it feels coincidentally) got together to make a nation. The city is not flat and not gridlocked. It is dominated by tall apartment buildings with lines of extremely small two-storey buildings that look squashed in between. At some point today, there were so many people on the streets today that they could not fit on the pavements and took over the roads. That's when the car traffic came to a halt and I had to get off the bus and walk.
Well I am at that city now. A city with 20 million people, the largest city in the southern hemisphere and let me tell you: it is crowded! I haven't seen traffic jams like this city has anywhere else including bangkok. Today I decided to get off the bus and walk the rest of the way back to the hostel, about 3km away.
Talking of my hostel: GOL Backpackers. I thought GOL stood for something like Guru of Love or Game Over Loser! but no. The moment I walked in and saw the lounge with a green "fake grass" carpet and beanbags that resemble footballs, I knew what it really meant. For the un-observative, seeing the dorms would be sufficient. Each sheet carries a football team's colors and emblem, not to mention framed uniforms on the walls and all the other football accessories.
After 13 hours of flying and a very expensive ride from the airport to the hostel, I was in no position to be picky about the decoration. It was 4 o'clock in the morning, istanbul time, when I finally got to bed. For the record, it is a legend that turkish airlines flight stops at dakar to get fuel. The flight is direct and non-stop.
I spent all the day walking around in this big city. I can not say it is attractive or cute. It is quite difficult for such a humongous thing to be cute anyway. I learned how to use the buses and the metro. I went to the asian neighborhood following the advice of the lonely planet. Compared to its counterparts in london or in new york, it was pathetic, but I happened to be hungry and my first meal in brasil was untasty chinese food and I regretted it the whole day. The italian neighbourhood was not so interesting either. The only interesting place I saw today was the big park with two lakes and an auditorium with eye- catching architecture. The lakes were home to lots of ducks, geese, and black swans, and the odd white heron. I must admit the herons looked a bit lost (like I did the whole day).
Coming back to people, I can not yet describe the features of a brasilian although I saw A LOT of them today. they can be white, black, in-between, chinese, japanese you name it. In north america, you can at least identify the white american: big people (tall and wide) eating big portions of meals driving big cars on large avenues that are gridlocked in most part of the country. Here, there is no single trait that can be attributed to these people who somehow (it feels coincidentally) got together to make a nation. The city is not flat and not gridlocked. It is dominated by tall apartment buildings with lines of extremely small two-storey buildings that look squashed in between. At some point today, there were so many people on the streets today that they could not fit on the pavements and took over the roads. That's when the car traffic came to a halt and I had to get off the bus and walk.
