Sao Paolo

Tomorrow I am off to Sao Paolo. The six-hour bus ride should get me there around 3. I had felt a bit intimidated by the city before, but now I am excited to get there and see what it looks like (though I am glad I didn´t start my trip there...having a little more background with the language and culture before arriving I think will help).

I think some of my apprehensiveness toward visiting SP is residual from years of listen to the great Brazilian metal band, Sepultura. To give you an idea, Sepultura had songs and albums titled ¨Chaos AD¨, ¨Murder¨, ¨Dead Embryonic Cells¨, and ¨Beneath the Remains¨, so as you might imagine, some of the things they were talking about were a little morbid...and the city of Sao Paolo was mentioned in some of those songs. I remember one song in particular dealing with the Carandiru prison massacre of 1992. Carandiru has since been closed, but it was located in Sao Paolo. At any rate, the city is supposedly much safer now than it was in the 1990s when Sepultura was putting out their best stuff and I was listening.

It has been awhile since I have been to one of the world´s truly great cities for the first time (with the exception of Rio the other day), so I am pretty pumped about it. Being a business-oriented town, the nicer hotels have deals on the weekends, so I took advantage and booked a nice place. I have always known this about myself, but this trip has helped me verbalize it to myself...whether it´s a 4-star hotel (like where I spent 3 days in Rio) or a shared dormitory (like where I am now), what matters to me is value. I´m happy if I perceive myself to be getting a good deal, regardless of what the accommodation is actually like. The value is what matters.