Peteca

I tried to play a traditional Brazilian sport called peteca a few days ago. The sport is similar to badminton, but played with the hands instead of using a racket. It can be thought of as a crossover between volleyball and badminton. The size of the court is somewhere between a badminton and a volleyball court, with a net very similar to that in volleyball (~2.5m high). The ball/shuttle is similar to the one used in badminton, but bigger and heavier, see the picture below. It is played in singles or doubles, but you are not allowed to pass the shuttle/ball/peteca within the team before hitting it over the net, as is custom in volleyball but not allowed in badminton. It is rather difficult to even hit the peteca, but it is very fun to play. However, it is not as fun the day after; my whole body was aching from using new muscles and my hands were sore from hitting the peteca. I still definitely recommend it, even though it is not as fun as football (obviously!).

House numbers

Some things are more stupid and complicated here in Brazil than what they need to be (e.g. after being here about a month I still don't have access to my bank account with my salary). But there are other things that are very smart. The numbering of houses is a good example. The houses are numbered in a slightly different way compared to all other places I've ever been. The difference between two adjacent houses is sometimes 4, sometimes 10 and sometimes something much higher. At first this might seem confusing, but it is actually extremely logical; the increment is the amount of metres between the entrances. Consequently, if you are on number 100 and want to go to number 200, you know that it is 100 metres away. Such a simple solution can sometimes be very helpful.

In contrast to some places I've been, they don't change the name of the street every few metres either. The house in the picture below, for example, is on a fairly long road...

The image on the right is zoomed in from the image on the left.

Portuguese class

I missed two Portuguese classes when I was away for the conference. I expected it to be a little bit difficult to catch up what the others learnt whilst I was away. What I did not expect, was to have an exam. But we did… The other students found out about it when I was away, but I had absolutely no idea. It didn’t go very well at all. It would have been difficult if I’d know about it and studied for it, but now it was even worse. I didn’t even understand all the questions… On the other hand, I did understand most of the questions and I could answer at least some of them. So I have learned some Portuguese! 

Look around

Basically everything here is in Portuguese, so I always look twice when I see something in English. I saw this poster in the streets in Porto Alegre. It took me a few seconds before I realised what the artist of this poster meant. At least some Brazilians are apparently concerned about our future, but why did the creator of this write in English??? He or she is obviously not a native English speaker and it is safe to assume that more of the locals would understand the poster if it was in Portuguese… 

Porto Alegre

Porto Alegre is a bigger city than Santa Maria (~1.5 million) located in the south of Brazil. The centre is packed with big boring buildings, see below. There are also nice things to see here and there. The pictures below are taken from both sides of a bridge over the larger road below. The thing that makes this place different is the bridges on the sides. These are pedestrian streets that go down to the bigger row at a very small angle. It can’t be very useful with these slopes if you want to go down to a shop directly beneath you, but it looks kind of nice. I should probably also point out that these walkways form the ceiling to many homeless people.

An old bank in the city centre has been turned into some kind of art exhibition. I can’t say that I understood or enjoyed too much of the exhibition itself, but it was a pretty cool idea to turn the vault into a café and bar.

Here, just as in every city in the world, I’ve seen Irish bars. But I have to say that I was a bit surprised when I saw this shop:

If you have a lot of old plastic bottles, but don’t have the energy to recycle them, here is an idea what you can do instead (it might take more energy than to recycle them though):

There are a lot of palm trees all over all cities I’ve been to in Brazil. They do have such a warm feeling to them.

All these poles have several hooks attached at the top, as you can see on the closest pole. They are there so that you can bring your own hammock, hang it up and rest for a while. These are located in a big park just next to a few football pitches so that you can watch some of the matches from your hammock or just take a rest from playing yourself. Below are more pictures from a few different parks:

In the last picture, it looks like the sky is blue around the palm trees, but it also looks like there are clouds in the reflection in the water. This is because there are so much algae in the water that it makes it look like clouds in the reflection.

T(urtle) in the park

View from my hotel room in Porto Alegre. These ruins were squeezed in among the 20 (or so) storey buildings around.

These flats are located right on the beach of Porto Alegre. I mean the tubes in the middle of the pictures and not the taller buildings in the background…

Then finally to something that is very popular in the south of Brazil. You can easily buy this in a lot of places, and it’s not very expensive.

No, it’s not marijuana or anything similar. This is a typical kind of tea (mate or chimarrão). It is extremely popular and you see people walking around with their cups (cuias) and vacuum flasks filled with hot water. It looks rather peculiar to see so many people walking around with their tea cups in the middle of the street, especially since you don’t really need any tea to warm up.

Santa Maria

I’m just back from a trip to the south of Brazil. First there was a conference in Santa Maria and then I stayed in Porto Alegre over the weekend. Before the conference everyone told me that Santa Maria is a tiny tiny place that barely exists on the map. I didn’t really believe this since I have realised that many people here have completely different references. Once I said that I think Belo Horizonte is a big city (~2.5 million in the city with over 5 million in the metropolitan area). One of the people I was talking with couldn’t help herself but started laughing. Then she said that she was from Mexico City with over 20 million people in the metropolitan area… In the end it turned out that about 270 000 people live in Santa Maria, so it is very small…

The conference was relatively small and nice, but there was especially one big problem; all the talks were in Portuguese! After having studied Portuguese for one week my Portuguese has improved, but I’m still far from being able to understand technical presentations. Some of the presentations had ppt-slides in English, which made it better, but it was still really difficult. It was still really nice to meet and get to know a lot of nice people, as always on conferences.

They really enjoy barbecues in the south of Brazil. In many restaurants there is a big buffet table in the dining room. This is filled with a lot of fruits, vegetables, rise and so on, but no meat. Instead they have waiters running around with big pieces of meat on enormous skewers. They walk around the tables asking if you want a slice of what they are carrying. If it looks delicious (which it does) you just make a sign and they cut a tasty piece for you. 

The conference organised one of these barbecues one evening. There was a stage in the big dining room, but for most of the evening it was empty. Well, instead of hiring a band for the whole night, they put a projector and a screen showing a recording of a band from some other place. They played traditional music from the south of Brazil, which sounded awfully similar to German traditional music. Later in the evening, there was a live band and dancers showing traditional dances as well.

Apparently, the south of Brazil has a lot of influences from Germany. I saw the drawing below painted on a sports hall. It might show who the (southern) Brazilians see as their main rivals in football…

View from my hotel room in Santa Maria. Perhaps not the best view ever, but still not bad at all…

A country of large contrasts

Most people know that there are many very poor people here and also many who are very rich. There are other contrasts as well. Here most homes literally are castles. Basically all houses have a big wall surrounding it, often with barbed wire at the top. You can see an example in the picture below. The door in the lower left corner looks more or less like a door for dogs or cats, but is a full size garage door. I particularly like the little hut for the guard above the garage door… I should probably add that this house is not the average size of a home here. The wall might be a little bit bigger than most, but all houses do have their own wall (like a castle wall and not like a fence).

Even if people hide in their castles, they are extremely friendly when they come out. I think one good example is how it works on the buses. There is no subway or big train system here, which means that a lot of people travel by bus. The buses are therefore often packed with people, with a lot of people standing. The interesting thing here is that people who are sitting down always offer to hold the bags for people who are standing. This is completely normal and no one tries to steal anything. So everyone has a castle wall around their home, but they also happily give away their bags to a complete stranger on the bus.

 I also went to a fair or market today. They mainly sold a lot of different kinds of food and clothes. There was also a band on a stage in front of a few hundred people. Let’s say that most of the songs they played were (unintentionally) Brazilian versions of old famous songs. Sometimes they did manage to sing in something that resembled English. At least most of the audience seemed to enjoy it. 

Fruit!

I realised that I have been a bit negative about most things here so far. This is definitely not how I feel, so I thought that I would write a bit about some good things today. Below you can see a picture of something that I really enjoy here; fruit! (Potential British readers might not enjoy fruit too much, but I do!)

In this picture you can see a papaya, pears, oranges, a passion fruit, bananas and two different kinds of mango. I didn’t even know that there were different kinds of mango… There is the bigger, partly red one in the middle of the picture (which is the more normal one). Then there is a smaller green kind as well, top right in the picture. I don’t know if it is the typical way, but they can be eaten in a funny way. Instead of peeling off the peel to eat the fruit, you leave the peel and squeeze the whole fruit for a little while. It becomes softer and softer as you’re squeezing out the juices. Then you cut a small whole through the peel, and drink the juice. It’s a bit different (and therefore more fun!) and also really tasty!

Here they also have at least five different kinds of bananas! I had no idea there were that many different kinds. They are:

Banana ouro (golden) – the smallest (about 4 cm) and very sweet.

Banana prata (silver) – the second smallest and less sweet than the golden

Banana caturra – the kind we get in Europe, but here they are bigger since they mature properly and are not collected while green.

Banana maca (apple) – similar to the caturra we eat in Europe

Banana terra (land) – not good to eat raw since it sticks to your teeth. It is absolutely delicious if slightly fried in butter. Sometimes this kind is added to rice.

The papayas are also absolutely delicious! They melt so nicely in the mouth.

As a summary; there are many different kinds of fruit here, and most are delicious! It doesn’t hurt that they are cheap as well…

The 1st Portuguese class

I can’t remember the last time I felt so stupid and ignorant as I did today…

Today I had my first class in Portuguese. I had emailed the responsible people to find out where the course was being held. They answered promptly, but of course their information was wrong. I also found a notice board with all classes listed, but why would that list be correct? However, in the end I managed to find some friendly people who showed me to the correct room.

I then started my first Portuguese class halfway through the session. If you’re in a big class, most teachers wouldn’t notice that (or even care), but that is different when there are only two other students in the class. It didn’t make it easier that the teacher then refused to speak in English. She has the idea that we will learn better and faster if we only speak Portuguese all the time. This might be a good idea if you know some of the language already, but it is quite a lot more difficult if you basically only know how to say thank you and cheers, which is about how much I know. Somehow I managed to survive anyway, and hopefully I will learn quickly now, but I did not feel very smart at all.

Even in my very limited vocabulary, I have noticed that the Portuguese (I give them the credit and not the Brazilians) have found an easy solution to an old problem. Most people don’t really want to work on the first day of the week. In Portuguese this is solved by calling Monday “segunda-feira”, which basically means the second day of the week. That way no one has to work on the first day of the week! You still have to work on Mondays though…

Brazilian bureaucracy

I have already mentioned some of my early experiences with the Brazilian organisation. I have already had a few other “funny” experiences:

It is compulsory to register with the police within the first 30 days of entering the country. The office is, obviously, located on the other side of the city. The queue was actually not too long so I didn’t have to wait too long. But then I, obviously, didn’t have all the documents so I had to go to some other place and print and fill in some boring document. I knew I needed some pictures, so I had brought some passport sized photos. But why would that be correct? They obviously wanted some other random size, so I had to get new ones. At least everything was fine in the end, but it did take most of the day.

I also bought a phone and a SIM card a few days ago. It is activated by calling a phone number, which didn’t work. I went to a shop of the network company and asked them if they could register it. They called the same number, followed the same steps and claimed that it should start working in a little while. Several days later my phone still doesn’t work…

You also have to have registered with the police before you can open a bank account. I had already received a paper describing everything I needed to open an account, so I foolishly thought that it would be easy. At the bank they told me that they needed copies of some of my documents and that I could get copies next doors, but that otherwise everything was fine. However, when I returned with the copies I talked with a different clerk, who wanted me to go back to the police to get a proof that I had been processed there. Even though I already had a document that is only possible to receive after registering with the police! I wasn’t too thrilled by the idea of going back there, so instead I went back to the bank the day after. Then with a paper from my boss saying that I should be allowed to open the account. Then everything was fine… 

Welcome! Bem vindos!

After "strong encouragement" I have decided to start writing a blog about my experiences in Brazil. So far I’ve really enjoyed my time here; it is quite nice to have a warm summer day every day. Perhaps I won’t enjoy the weather as much when the summer arrives with properly hot weather... but that’s a later issue. Everyone is very friendly, although it is difficult to communicate with many. In the university a lot of people speak English (with varying ability and confidence), but outside of the university no one speaks English at all.

I will start to learn Portuguese, but it has been very difficult so far. I signed up for a course in Portuguese for foreigners. I thought the first problem would be that I’m already more than a month behind, since the course started in the beginning of August. But I didn’t expect that there was an even bigger problem before that; finding the classroom! The information I received when signing up for the course listed the times of the classes and the building where they are being held, but not the actual room. The guy who gave me the information told me that I could ask anyone in the building and they would know. I asked several people (including some secretaries who checked the course in their system and called someone who was supposed to know) and was guided to a few different rooms. We found a course in German and two in English but none in Portuguese… Hopefully I will find it next week and then start learning a bit more of the language.

I will probably complain a bit in this blog, but I will also try to make you jealous. I hope you will enjoy it!