A Different Brasília

When I came back to Brasília yesterday after my two weeks of travelling, it was a different Brasília that I met. During the two weeks I have been away it had been raining a lot and after months of drought you could really tell the difference. The earth had just soaked the water and the ground was freshly green, the red-brown dust was washed away from the trees and bushes and there was a completely different smell in the air. It might be a little more like the Brasília I first came to in April, it was still green then, but yet different.

I think I am also a somewhat different person now,when I am leaving Brazil. I have learned a lot and every experience you have change you a little. I have also met a lot of nice and interesting people, that changes you too. It has been a good time and I am feeling a little sad to leave. I am really not good at good byes...

Thoughts from my hotelroom

It is funny how fast one can get used to things. After having travelled on my own for a while and being very happy with that and having a good time, I was quite sceptic about getting company by a friend from Brasilia that came to Buenos Aires to meet me. It took about a day and a half getting to terms with having company, but now, when my friend have left, it feels very empty all of a sudden. It feels boring to be on my own and I don't feel like going out and do anything. Ok, part of the explanation for that can be that it is very cold and windy tonight and I send all my warm clothes with my friend to Brasilia so therefore I really don't feel like going out. Normally, going out in the evenings alone was always the most boring part of travelling alone, but now it feels even worse, but if the sun is shining tomorrow I am sure it will feel better.

Another thing that is strange, ironic and typical is this thing about not being able to shop when one really wants to shop. If I am not supposed to buy anything and especially if I don't really have the money to shop, then I always find a lot of things that I want, but if I really plan to buy something I won't find anything. Like in Cusco. The first day I passed through the markets and saw a lot of things that I liked, but the last day when I still had too many soles that I wanted to get rid of I didn't find a thing that I liked. Yesterday when many shops were closed due to holiday I saw a lot of nice things in the shop windows here in Buenos Aires, but this afternoon when I went out for shopping I found nothing. I did however bought a red leather jacket in the morning. Happy! And I have the whole day tomorrow.

One of the reasons it is difficult to shop here is that it is so completely wrong season for me. All the shops are full of light spring and summer clothes, which feels very strange for me going back to the Swedish autumn and winter in a week. Actually it feels strange even if I consider how it feels here right now. Having spent the last six months in constant sunshine and over 30 degrees, it feels strange to think it is spring, going to summer, when it is 15 degrees, cloudy or even rainy.

I really hope the weather will be better when I come to Rio on Thursday. I so look forward to a couple of days on the beach. If it will be cold and rainy I don't know what I will do, maybe I then go back to Brasilia one day earlier to get all things ready and have more time to say goodbye to people...

A Weekend at the Cerrado

This weekend I went with a friend to the national park of Chapada dos Veadeiros some hours north of Brasilia. It could have started better as the car we thought we should be driving there was not quite fit we had to rent a car, then my friend was chaught up in something which made us leave 3-4 hours later than planned which in turn we had to drive most of the way and all the part of the unpaved road in the dark. On top of that I had a very stressful week so it took a while before I could relax and stop being irritable. But what can be better for relaxing and getting out of stress than a weekend of hiking and swimming in beautiful nature with nice company?


Immediately on arrival at the pousada in the small village of São Jorge I realised this will be fine. A very laid back loungy atmosphere and beautifully decorated place under a lovely starry sky.

On Saturday we went for a hike in the park. The cerrado is a fascinating place. It is not in any way ingratiating, on first sight it might even look rather ugly and unfriendly in all its dry vastness, but if you scratch ever so little on the rough surface you find a wealth of beauty and fascination. There is a richnes in flora and eventhough animals and birds are difficult to spot in the hottes day hours the landscape and vegetation makes up for it.



And the water! Because amidst all dryeness there are plenty of rivers and creeks everywhere. Eventhough it is all a plateu there are big differents in hights and a lot of canyons and valleys that make room for a lot of waterfalls. Waterfalls with clear cool water that you can drink right from the creek and swim in. Lovely!!

A quite fascinating feature is that the ground here to quite a big extent is made of pure crystal and quarts. Therefore you will walk on paths all covered in white and pink quarts stone and in some places you can see completely clear crystals, sometimes leftovers from miners of old days.



This crystal has gatherd a lot of new age people, hippies and spritualists to the area and apparently it has certain energies, I was told you sometimes can see flashes shooting up from the ground, like flashes from thunder, but coming from the ground. I didn't see it and it sounds weird, but... That should also be one of the reasons for some of the many fires in the cerrado this time of the year, we saw several during the weekend, but those are also caused by self-igniting plants. We were told about the Candombá plant that has a self combustible oil that makes it ignite, but at the same time have features that protects itself from the fire. Very smart plant, setting everything on fire, but self be safe! As I said; the cerrado is a fascinating place.

Brazilian Stress

One thing that totally freaks us out here, and by "us" I mean internationals, non Brazilians and maybe specifically Scandinavians, is the queues at the counter in the supermarket. I have never in my life seen anything so unneccessarily ineffecient and frustrating. First of all, the area around the counter is really small and crowded and even if there is just two persons in front of you in the line, it takes for ever and you feel squeezed from all sides. The band where you are supposed to put your things is very short, and even if it is movable they never move it until they have finished with one customer. Instead they keep stretching and bending to reach all the stuff and you have to wait until you can unload your cart. And they will proabably all have their necks and sholders destroyed way before retirement age. (The Swedish unions would never have accepted these working conditions!)
Not even considering that all the moves are very very slow, there are so many moments that the poor cashiers have to do, so I can in a away understand they don't hurry to get the next customer. Enven before they start reading the bar codes of the goods there are at least three questions they have to ask every EVERY customer: "Cliente mais?", "CPF na nota?" "Nota fiscal?" In my case the answer is no to all three of them, but in case the customer before you says yes then it will take even longer time. Then the cashier has to register a lot of numbers before starting to registre the purchases and sometimes the customer has difficulties remembering their CPF or the cashier, doesn't hear or enters the wrong number it can take for ever.

Then, finally efter ages, the things are registerd, the sum is calculated and the payment done, which of course also takes for ever, as the customer needs to dubble check the bill and always need to discuss some matter, but then the cashier doesn't start with the next customer. No, instead he or she starts packing the purshases into one million minuscular plastic bags, which of course the client didn't start doing while waiting for the registration to be finished.

And often the clients just leave their shopping cart in the small gate betweein the counters for the one after to remove before you can even get close to the counter.
This is such a frustrating stress moment that I just can not get used to. Every time I need to remind myself to relax, breathe deeply and not start shouting or hitting at anyone. But this is definetly one of the moments I feel the cultural difference the most. No Brazilians seem to get stressed about this at all!!

To make a small comparison I sometimes think that if they would speed up processes in lines in supermarkets, banks, bakeries etc etc, they would have so much more time and would not have to stress so in traffic. Cause there all patience seems to have vanished completely all of a sudden...

And somehow, I still believe casualties are still higher in traffic than in the supermarket, so slowing down in traffic and speeding up in the supermarket would for sure have a double positive effect.

Burn Baby Burn

This time of year it is really dry in the central parts of Brazil, around Brasilia. That means wildfires are rather common. It is a natural part of the cerrado ecosystem and hence no one seems to care that much about it. It often seems they start spontanously and as it seems most of the time they also die by themselves after a while. From Brasilia you often see smoke rising towards the sky in the distance and flying back from João Pessoa to Brasilia on Sunday evening I saw quite a few fires on the cerrado, one quite big one and many smaller, some even very close to the city or even in the city. This is something that is very unusual to me; that you can have fires going on within the city and no one cares! No fire brigade is there to put the fire out! Sometimes there is a normal car from the Bombeiros, not a fire truck looking at the fire, but not putting it out.

Birds of Brazil

Brazil has one of the richest bird diversities in the world. The avifauna of Brazil includes a total of 1832 species, of which 234 are endemic. This is enough for someone like me, who normally maintains that there are only three kinds of birds; big bird, small bird and duck, to admit that this might not be a sufficient classification anymore. And a little reluctantly I have started to find some interest in watching the birds and trying to learn the names of the different kinds. And here the birds are interesting, they come in all colours, forms and shapes, some rather funny-looking.

This morning however I felt like getting a gun and shoot some of them. Or at least one. At about five o'clock this morning I woke up by something that sounded like a very loud alarm. Several high, strong tones after each other at a regular interval, then silence only to be repeated again after some seconds, and then repeated and repeated and repeated and.... I thought first it was my alarm clock, but then rememberd it sounds completely different. Then I thougt "my godness, it must be the fire alarm", but then again no, it came from outside. Then I started to think about what kind of alarms we might have at the compound or what might actually be going on outside. It took me quite a while to realise the noise came from a bird!! And the bastard just wouldn't stop.

I had to get up and get some ear plugs to be able to go back to sleep. When you say you wake up to the sound of birds one would normally believe it to be a nice experience. This was very far from nice. This was actually the second time I was woken up by some bird, the first time it wasn't this one but some other very repetitive bird that just wouldn't stop. I hope this is not a new habit of our featherd friends.

Where Do You Come From?

I haven’t been writing for a while, partly because I was travelling and partly because I moved and it took a while before I got internet working in my new house. But now I will try to write more regularly again.

One thing I was asked several times when I was back in Europe was whether there is racism in Brazil. I found that question a little hard to answer, once because I have not been here long enough to know and twice because it is a question of how you define racism. My impression is that most Brazilians are actually proud of their ethnic mix in the country and this is really one part of being Brazilian. But there is no denying that there are more black people that are poor, that black people are less educated and overrepresented in crime, both as perpetrators and victims, overrepresented in jails and underrepresented in the government, parliament and business etc. To what extent this is because of “racism” or “social factors” I can not tell.

One thing that has struck me though and that is very different from where I come from, and that one could say is connected to the notion of “race” is the Brazilian obsession of heritage, ancestry and where “you come from”. And then I don’t mean where I as a foreigner come from, but from where in Brazil other Brazilians come from. I have noted that among the Brazilian friends that I have it is very common to immediately ask a person you meet for the first time where they come from, be it a friend of a friend, the waiter at the restaurant or the guy filling up your car at the gas station. Maybe this is because Brazil is such a huge country. Maybe it is because in Brasilia almost everyone comes from somewhere else or maybe it is because of this ethnical mix. It can be based on the accent the person has or the way the person looks or acts or or the name, but it seems to be some kind of sport to first guess where a person comes from and then ask. It is not only a matter of where the person comes from geographically, because the next question is often “what’s your ancestry? Italian, Polish, German?” For me these questions feel a little awkward and uncomfortable as this is not very politically correct to ask like that in Sweden. But here everyone seems completely ok with it and even proud to tell where they come from and where their forefathers came from.

The funny thing though is that since it in most cases was a long time ago since these forefathers came to Brazil and everyone now is Brazilian you could think it would be less important. Whereas in Sweden the most people with some other background than ethnically Swedish came during the last 50 years or even less. Maybe this is exactly the reason. In Sweden the integration in still ongoing, or actually it is exactly a matter of “integration” into something that you obviously do not automatically belong to, and therefore it is important to not be anything else than “Swedish”. Brazil on the other hand was formed by immigrants (one way or the other) and the “Brazilianess” hence never questioned. Or maybe we Swedish are just being arrogant, thinking people would be offended if you ask them where they come from if the answer will be something else than some other part of Sweden? Well, even if it would be another part of Sweden people could be offended. Many persons moving in to the City from the countryside work so hard to blend in, loosing their accent and doing there best to be at least seventh generation city-breed, that any question bringing this in doubt would be a severe offence.

Niemeyermania

Saturday I took the time to go down to Brasília's heart of power, the Praca Três Poderes, the Three Power's Square, with my camera. Until now I have only passed by car or visited the places on business meetings when taking pictures was not a good idea.
This is not only where the legislative, executive and judiciary powers meet, this is also the heart of Oscar Nimeyer land.

I am aware of that it might look very empty, strange and eerie on the pictures, but on site I must say it has a very special atmosphere and the builidings are actually quite beautiful.




The Congress. The sphere for the Senate and the bowl for the Chamber.









Ministry of Justice






The presidential palace









The Supreme Court






Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Good Friday

For not being a very religious person this Easter has started out rather religious after all. Yesterday I took my car to the streets for a rather random drive. I ended up at the Templo da Boa Vontade, Temple of Good Will.




It is an ecumenical temple that is one of the sights of Brasília and it is quite spectacular. I won’t go into detail here, anyone interested can google it, but it was indeed quite fascinating.



When you enter you are supposed to follow the black circular path on the floor to the middle of the pyramid.






Then you will find yourself standing on a brass plate under what is supposedly the largest crystal on earth. After that you leave following the white path going in the other direction, this is symbolizing mankind’s search for balance and enlightment. As I am not only not particularly religious I am also not very spiritual so I did not think much about this mumbo jumbo and would probably not have bothered to do it at all hadn’t it been for the very kind and serious man at the entrance who so kindly explained it to me. So I started toggling along the black path and feeling rather stupid. But after a while I was kind of moved by the spirit of the place and for a while I almost felt nauseous and dizzy, which went all away walking outwards again. Well I suppose it is not so strange that you get dizzy when walking in a circle, but anyway it was a smart thought to build it like that!





In the same area as the Boa Vontade I saw another interesting church that I maybe should find out more about. The Church of Perfect Liberty!! However I don’t feel quite sure that we have the same understanding of liberty.

Today I decided to make a trip outside of the city. It is not very much that you can see or do on a daytrip from Brasília, but I had read about the town Planaltina that is only about 40 km from Brasilia. There they have what is called the cornerstone of Brasília, that is a monument erected in 1922 to mark the place for the new capitol. I also read that the main happening of the year in Planaltina is a festival and a staging of Jesus way to the cross, which is taking place on Good Friday every year. As today is Good Friday I thought it might be a good idea to go there.
Once out of Brasília it was easy to find Planaltina and I almost stumbled on the Via Sacra area where the festival was. As I wanted to have a look at the town first I drove into what I believe was the centre, but it being holyday everything was closed and not much to see. I had no idea of where this monument was and did not see any signs for it (at least none I could understand) so I drove back to the festival area. It turned out I got there about one hour before it was supposed to start (but already many were there before me) but I decided to stay and wait.




I got a little bit worried when I saw the amount of police forces that came just before me. Both the military and civilian police were there as well as the rescue services and civilian defence. I can understand that you need a lot of security when many people gather and I knew the visitors use to counts in hundreds of thousand’s according to what I read, but still the number of security was impressive. I got a little worried that this thing could cause some kind of religious hysteria and decided not to stay very long.

This being in Brazil of course the waiting was long, but once it started it was actually quite impressing and fascinating. It was so many actors and they were really good and “realistic”. As I had made up my mind not to stay till the end and also wanted to come back to Brasília before it got dark I almost missed Jesus! I only met him briefly on his way up Via Dolorosa, but could not even get a good picture as a woman was almost killing me with her umbrella as he passed.










Visitors walking up the Via Sacra as I was leaving. There were many people coming still as I left and it had all started so I suppose it continues untill late.



Although you can not see him it is supposed to be Jesus led away by the two men in black

Garden Action

The most interesting thing (or actually the only interesting thing, or even the only thing at all) in my “garden” is a small tree of the kind that we in Sweden would call “julstjärna” and keep in flowerpots for Christmas (apparently aka Euphorbia pulcherrima). The interesting thing with it is that when I arrived here three weeks ago it was completely green, without any red leaves, so it actually took me some time to realise it was such a tree.



Since then the top leaves have started getting redder and redder. Maybe I should take pictures to follow the transformation. And maybe I should have taken a real “before-picture”. This is the level of excitement in my home!


But now at least I have received a table to go with the one chair I have had until now and hopefully I will also get the hammock that I bought last weekend, up before Easter. That would mean I can actually be out there, which will be an immense improvement to my quality of life at home.

Some Brasília pictures

Posting some city picuters from Brasília. From one of my walks to through the city.






The big open space between the driving lanes along Axio monumental. Close to the TV-tower where there is a quite nice market.








The two towers at the end of the street are part of the congress buildings. Next to it is the Ministry for foreign affairs. Both quite spectacular buildings. One day I will go there without any other business than having a good look and bring the camera.




A typical local commercial center.



A typical residential area, on the Southern wing, Asa Sul.

Fireworks

They really like fireworks here in Brasilia!
I have been here two weeks now and can't even count how many fireworks I have heard. I haven't seen any though. As my apartment doesn't really have any windows and now view at all, I don't see anything but I hear.
Here they also seem to like having fireworks accompanying their demonstrations. That means you hear fireworks also at daytime, which seems like a waste as you will hardly see anything of it.

I've got a Samba Problem

I realise I have a samba-problem! Not only because samba is difficult, which it is, but I also have a more general dancing problem. I love dancing! But I prefer to dance on my own, in my own style. I have never liked or even understood the point in this couple-dancing, where the woman is supposed to follow the man, whether he is a good dancer or not. Why is that?! That is so old-fashioned!!
Here I totally accept that everyone dances “better” than I do, and I also realise that people are only trying to be nice when they try to teach me how to dance and give me lessons. But that doesn’t mean that they all are great teachers. Most of the times they just make me feel very clumsy and useless as a dancer and that is really no fun, when you are out for a good time with your friends. As they realise I am a beginner and foreigner they slow down the speed and fall back to the “one-two-one-two” and “look at my feet” but to me that only means I get completely stiff and loose contact to the rhythm of the music and it all gets very much worse.
As long as I am allowed to dance on my own (or with a very good dancer) it is all just fine, but when things like these happen I rather don’t dance at all.

This is nothing new. I hate “ballroom-dancing” back home in Sweden too and at weddings or parties where that kind of dancing might be expected I always come up with excused for not dancing when someone asks me to dance. Here that seems very much ruder, especially as I don’t know the language so I can make myself understood. And here at least I like the music and like to dance to it, as long as I can decide for myself when and where to move my feet!

Capital Fashion Week

I made a visit to the Brasilia Capitol Fashion Week tonight. Not that I have been to any real fashion show before, but I must say I thought it would be more…. fashion. It was not very glamorous. There was not even a place where you could get a glass of wine in the break between the shows (let alone champagne).



I had tickets for three shows, but the first one started already at 17.30 and I didn’t finish work early enough to make it to that one. The second one started at 19.30. This being Brazil I never thought it would start at 19.30, but it got even later than I expected. I arrived about 19.40 and got into the hall at about ten minutes later but the show didn’t start until 20.10. For a while I thought this would mean the last show would get even more delayed, but then it turns out the whole show was over in ten minutes! I might have been able to remain seated as I had tickets also for the next show, but did not really wanted to sit there for so long so I went out to see what was going on in the lounge, which was not very much. Then there was a long queue to get in again so I gave up and decided to go home instead. It was actually more interesting to watch the visitors than the show. As the show I watched was displaying men’s wear, it was actually more interesting to watch the models then the clothes.

However I was really proud that this time I managed to call and order a taxi all by myself when it was time to get back. Not that I understood everything the operator said, but the taxi came! :-)

Where The Streets Have No Name

Well, I don’t think Brasília was the city that U2 had in mind when they wrote the song Where the streets have no name, but it could very well be a fitting description of Brasília. Ok, there are a few streets or roads that do have names, but addresses here are more likely to be something like SQS 403, SHLS Q 716, SHN Q 2 Bloco E or SES Q 807, Lt 29 which happens to be the address of the Swedish embassy. I will not go into details on how to read this, as I haven’t quite figured out all the details about it, although I have started getting the logic behind it. In fact it is probably absolutely über-logical. I will simply quote Lonely Planet again, this is how they describe it:

For example, the address for Pensão da Zenilda is SQS 704, Bloco Q, Casa 29. That means it’s in Super Quadra 704, bloco (building) Q, casa (house) 29. The first digit in the address (7) shows the position east or west of the Eixo Rodoviário (the main north-south arterial road) – odd numbers to the west and even to the east, increasing as they move away from the centre. The last two digits (04) show the distance north or south of the Eixo Monumental. So Pensão da Zenlida is four blocks to the south of the Eixo Monumental and four blocks east of the Eixo Rodoviário (1, 3, 5, 7)

That’s super logical isn’t it!? Adding to this are a number of acronyms used in addresses like SCLN/SLCS for Sector Comércio Local Norte/Sul, SBN/SBS Setor Bancário Norte/Sul and SEN/SES Setor de Embaxiadas Norte/Sul and so on. These acronyms are frequently used on road signs etc. That will be a challenge when I start to drive myself here, as if the traffic wasn’t already a challenge.

Brazilian Teeth

Already in Rio in January I noted that there were a lot of adults wearing braces. The same thing goes for Brasília. I have seen so many wearing braces you could almost believe it is a fashion thing. I will have to keep an extra eye open for that at this week's fashion show.

Another thing that I have noted about teeht here are that many of the others, those who don't have braces, all have very white teeth. That also goes for the expats. I wonder if toth-bleaching might be cheap here. Maybe I should ask someone.

I have been thinking of bleaching my teeth before but never tried it. I am a bit worried wether it really is good for your teeth. If it is inexpensive here I might give it a try. But on the other hand it also trigger this thing inside of me that never wants to do what all the others do. So if a majority has white bleached teeth I all of a sudden feel an urge to keep my natural yellowish. Well, let's see.

A Trip to the Mall

Having finished my first, rather intense work week and considering that it is my birthday tomorrow, I decided to treat myself to some shopping. I was recommended a shopping mall a bit outside city and asked the guards at the gate to order me a taxi to get there. It was a quite nice mall and I found just about what I needed (two pair shoes, two tops and some practical things for the apartment). It was nevertheless very exciting to go shopping without being able to speak Portuguese. It is really striking how few people here speak English. Today I did not meet one single person. Most of the time its works quite ok though, although every time I wanted to pay with my credit card they asked something that I never understood. I thought it sounded like “cash or credit?” but it didn’t seem to make sense. Then I thought they asked whether I would sign or had a pin code, but no, it didn’t seem so either. I felt so stupid, but it worked. What made things a little more complicated was that I managed to sit on my credit card so the card got a knick that made it work less in the readers. In the ATM it did not work at all, so I am really happy I had cash enough for the taxi home. I have to contact my bank to have them send me a new card.

Well, talking about the taxi drive home. That was another exciting thing. I had a number for the taxi company, but kind of assumed they would not be able to talk English so I tried to ask for help from an information desk. I showed them the number, said “taxi” and offered them my mobile and pointed to the gate and used all English/French/Italian words that I thought would make sense. But no, it didn’t help. They just sent me to another exit. I thought maybe they meant that there was a taxi stand at that exit and went there, but no, there wasn’t. So then there was not much left for me to do but trying to call myself. First I thought it went quite well. I managed to explain that I wanted a taxi to the specific shopping mall and the specific gate and also gave my name. Then I had expected to get something like a time estimate or a number of the taxi or something like that, but I just could not understand what the operator said. Somehow it seems the harder I try to understand, the more tired I get and the less I understand. After a while she just said “boa tarde Susanne, boa tarde”. That left me wondering if that meant a confirmation, like “good evening Susanne, your taxi is coming any minute and soon you will be at home and have a nice evening” or if it meant “just piss off and have a nice evening whatever you like to do, I don’t give a damn”. Anyway I decided to trust it worked and sat down and waited for a taxi to come. But at the same time I felt I could not just sit and wait for something I didn’t know would come, so when I saw a taxi standing at the parking lot I just walked over and asked if it was free. It was. So to the taxi driver who was possibly sent to the shopping mall on my behalf; I am so sorry and hope you got another customer who gave you a really decent tip.

To be able to get home in any situation I have learned how to say the address in Portuguese. I thought I did a good job and the driver seemed to understand. I could also follow the drive and see that he was driving the right way. But then at a crossing in the embassy quarters I realise he wants to drive to the Swiss embassy. Ok, this is a rather common mistake so I will not blame that on my pronunciation. I am just very happy the Swiss embassy was rather close to the Swedish. Honestly I had no idea where the Swiss was and was just happy to see the sign for the Italian in the same crossing and knowing that the Italian is just next to the Swedish it was not so difficult to point the right direction. I really have to learn Portuguese. Although it will make my life here less exciting. 

Not so luxurious

Just to make one thing straight. This post is not a complaint. I only want to show that a posting like my present doesn’t automatically mean a life in comfort and luxury.

To answer some questions that were put to me before I came here; No, I do not live in a big villa, and no I do not have a full set of house maids and gardeners etc (until yesterday I didn’t even have a vacuum cleaner). Yes, there is a pool and a tennis court, but on the compound and not in my garden. My place is just off the parking lot and “my garden” is about 2X2 metres. I don’t know exactly how big my apartment is, but I think it is best compared to a student’s apartment for two students. That means there are two more or less identical bedrooms, a bathroom, a small kitchenette and a narrow living room, that is actually an extended terrace opening out to the 2x2 m garden. It is all ok, what is not so good however is that the whole apartment is basically lacking windows. The door out to the garden is a glass door, but that is basically the only source of natural light. It means the place is very dark and isolated as there is no way where you can look out of the apartment. My first impression when I saw it was that no Swedish architect can have constructed this, no Swede would ever build a place for human habitation without windows. Later I found out the architect of the whole complex is indeed Swedish, but I gather this extended terrace/living room was not part of the original plan. Or he just had a bad day.

In the kitchen I have exactly; four plates, three glasses, four mugs, four knives, four forks, tree tea-spoons, one cutting knife, one frying pan and one cooking pot, one jug and one plastic bowl. That is all. It might be all fine if you are just staying here for a couple of days or a week maybe, but for six months it might be just a little too meagre. It is not much you can or want to cook in that kitchen. I have now arranged for a vacuum cleaner, an iron and ironing board and also got a new TV (although I still haven’t managed to get the connection to the satellite dish working) which all are huge improvements to the place. However I have not managed to do something about the smell in the wardrobes so I can only hope that my clothes wont catch too much of that rather pungent smell.

So, as I begun, I don’t want to complain and I hope there will be a chance to change housing after a while, because this place is rather depressing. What I want is just to show that it is not all that luxurious.

City Planning and Planned City

While driving around Brasília I cannot help wondering how they were thinking when they planned this city. “Ok, we are going to build a completely new and modern capital. Hey! Let’s build it in the shape of an airplane!!” Some plans are obvious and somehow makes reasonably sense. Like I can understand that you put all the administrative and representative buildings in one area and the original plan of having commercial centres in every residential block makes sense, although it might not have worked out exactly as planned. But why putting all hotels in the same area?

Driving through the southern embassy sector you find some embassies that seem to be placed completely randomly and others according to some plan. For example I find it hard to see a plan behind having Lebanon, Mexico, Hungary, Indonesia and Slovakia next to each other, whereas it is easy to see the logic behind placing the Nordic countries (Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland) as neighbours as well as having Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, Uruguay and Argentina together (although I don’t see the logic in putting Serbia next to them!!). However, some locations are so surprising or unexpected it is hard to guess if it is by coincidence or if someone put them there by will, just to annoy or provoke them or maybe force them to cooperate. Hence you will find that Greece and Turkey are next door neighbours, as are Netherlands and South Africa as well as Russia and USA.

A First Glipmse of Brasília

From Lonely Planet Brazil: "With long distances and harrowing sixlane highways connected by spagetti junctions to negotiate, Brasíla is not really a city for walkers."


So what is the first thing I do on my first day in Brasília. I go for a jog in the morning and then for a walk in the city. And ok, I can agree on that this city was not built for walkers, but on the other hand, just because of the fact that there are no room for walkers (no side walks) you can walk everywhere. Between the above mentioned highways there are plenty of green spaces where you can walk and it beeing highways that you need to cross, means at least you only have to look out for cars coming from one direction at a time.

I don't really know what to say about my first impression this far. It is a very different city, it is fascinating and interesting and I think it might work, but I don't know if I will find anything charming and cosy about it. We will see. However some first impressions are at least that it is anything but crowded and there is lot of green. I knew that it would be nothing like Rio, but I must say I did not expect it to remind me more about Harare that Rio.


Here are a few glimpses from my first walk in the city.





View from the Embassy district (one of them) towards Lago do Paranóa.





Flowers on a tree





One of the junctions





The Catedral Metropolitana





Inside the cathedral








Museu Nacional