Brasilia

I managed to get a nice deal on a great hotel on Sunday in Brasilia...Brasilia being much busier during the week than on the weekends. Cheap accommodation is really not to be found though...you are only going to get a ¨deal¨ if you are willing to spend a fair amount and stay somewhere nice. When I decided to stay Monday night I was told the price would be double, so I promptly moved out into a place that was not nearly as nice, but cost the same price R$130 (about $75).

As for Brasilia itself...the area of tourist interest (the Esplanada where the government ministries, cathedral, theater, etc. are located) is made up of very wide boulevards separated by vast open spaces with few trees to provide respite from the sun which shone every day I was there. Walking around the area during the day, on sidewalks devoid of shade, which were placed immediately next to the road full of cars screaming by, is not the most peaceful place to enjoy the ¨modern¨ architecture of the buildings and scultures about. As for the design of the buildings themselves and the layout of the city, I suppose it is all interesting as a study of what someone (namely, the designer of all this, Oscar Niemeyer) 60 years ago thought the future would look like, but it is not a lot of fun to actually be there and be on foot. The Esplanada itself has the many different government ministry buildings, which are all identical looking towers of non-descript design. Nearby are the more interesting buildings like the theater, cathedral, and branches of government. Some of those buildings do have a space-age look to them...but only if you think of the 60´s as the space age.

The city was designed for cars...or you might say it was designed for its 50th anniversary party, because the huge open spaces between the boulevards on the Esplanada proved to be the perfect place to put thousands of young people celebrating the anniversary. The 50 anniversary was celebrated by seemingly every young person anywhere near Brasilia, as walking around the area in the early evening during the fiesta I saw hordes of young people, but very few older folks, with the exception of the omnipresent security and medical forces on hand. Being around that many potential, well, assailants, did not make me overly comfortable since my physical appearance limits my ability to blend in, but staying amongst the crowds and close the the police posts worked out well for me. Several different concers were being put on at different stages around the area, and the shows were pretty entertaining, though it was a little hard to enjoy myself when I was spending most of my attention on watching my back and getting out of the way when a group of young people would come running toward me (which I was told later was because they had likely ripped a bag away from someone). I cannot say I saw another person out there that I could clearly identify as being not from S. America.

At any rate, the cleanup must have been fun, as the day-long party had already left enough garbage by early evening in some areas to nearly completely cover the ground...it was almost as if a landfill had had a volcanic eruption nearby. In the end, Brasilia was notable mostly for the strangeness of it and its unfriendliness to people on foot, though I do not regret going there at all, as it was enjoyable simply for the uniqueness of it.

Dom Bosco encounter

"You came in with the breeze
On Sunday Morning" No Doubt "Sunday Morning"

I had only planned to stay an afternoon in Brasilia before heading out on the night but to Belo Horizante...but it did not end up working out that way...

I basically wanted to do Brasilia the same way I did Managua a few years ago...spend an afternoon there, maybe hire a cab to drive me around for awhile, and then get out of town right away since neither city has many tourist attractions...much of Managua´s tourist attractions, if there ever were any, being destroyed by the 1972 earthquake, and Brasilia, well, I suppose it has never really had any...the city being artificially designed and ´opened for business´ exactly 50 years ago yesterday. I just wanted to see Brasilia to see it I guess you might say.

Anyway, I arrived on a Sunday and the town was completely dead. Well, let me explain a bit about the city. Brasilia was designed primarily by a single individual, Oscar Niemeyer, to be the capital of Brazil. The design was done in the 1950`s and construction completed in 1960. The idea was to put the capital in Brazil`s vast interior as a way of hopefully opening up the heartland of this country, since most people live near the coast. Rio had been the previous capital. The city is not the first in history to have been designed to be the capital of a large nation (DC and Canberra come to mind), but it is unique in how it was layed out. From overhead the city looks like an airplane, or so they say. The body or axis of the plane is the `Esplanada` where the governments buildings, bus stations, and things of interest to tourists are located. The `wings` of the plane are the residential sections, north and south. The city is divided up into sectors...banks are in one place, hotels in others (near the banks), residential in other zones, government buildings in another area, etc. I will also mention now that the city is very difficult to get around in on foot. Not only are things spread out, but the city is divided up by lots of little highway-type roads, with on and off ramps, and the city generally lacks sidewalks.

So at any rate, it was Sunday and not surprisingly, the town center where I found myself after getting off the $1 bus ride from the airport was deserted except for the obligatory rough-looking inviduals. When it comes to safety, less means less. Less people, less safety...though I have generally found Brazil to have quite a lot of security around. At any rate, I lugged by bag around for a little while, stopping at the Santuario Dom Bosco, a church whose interior is bathed in blue light streaming through the large stained glass windows along the walls.

While I was at the Sanctuary a woman walked in...the same woman I had sat next to at the airport bus stop a couple of hours before and spoken to briefly in a confused broken conversation with many hand gestures. She looked as surprised to see me as I was to see her, but getting over my initial shock (and doubts...I can be a little paranoid about my personal security, but I ended up quickly deciding this was a legitimate coincidence...and it had been me that approached and talked to her at the airport, not the other way around) I waved her on over and we sat and chatted for awhile. She had come to the Sanctuary to pray for her mother who was having surgery the next day at the hospital across the way.

The young woman told me about Brasilia´s 50th anniversary party coming up in a couple of days, and so...well, whatever my motivations were for staying, the fact is I decided I would go ahead and stay around in Brasilia. And besides, I took the trouble to fly to Brasilia, may as well spend some time there...it is not like I will ever come back most likely. And the idea of traveling on an overnight bus to see Belo Horizante (a town I had no real reason to go to anyway) was not all that appealing to begin with so it was an easy decision. Being in Brasilia a couple of days might give me a better chance at finding a cheap flight straight to Rio, taking the bus completely out of the equation (better).