Posts from — January 2008

In today’s post i’m just gonna let the images speak for themselves. I love these tropical rainstorms that go as fast as they come and give the city a good cleansing. Below you can see a collage I made of the view from my apartment. I love how you can see the whole city disappearing in the rain!

Besides preparing for carnaval my every day life has started again. I could move in earlier than expected into my new temporary home. My brand new roommate Wilmar’s mother (No ruud, his mother is not my new roommate, Wilmar is ) was staying there because his father was in the hospital here in BH and they live far away in the north of Minas Gerais. Luckily for them, his father got released from teh hospital early, and lucky for me I could move in before starting to work.

Because there was no internet in the apartment yet, Leo (my host at the time)  offered me a place to work in the lab of his university (he’s an architecture professor. So last monday I started working there. I must say that it doesn’t feel very good. Here’s why:

I love programming again and I am happy to be working with my coworkers again. The problem is in my peace of mind. Back in Riga, Latvia I met this guy called Ash who just returned from a long trip in Asia. He told me that he started out working for a company giving him western payment, while all the people around him were making local salaries. It makes you feel a kind of elite that you don’t wanna be. Back then I thought he was crazy and figured making more money would just be quite nice. Now I know exactly what he was talking about (and it’s hard to explain).

On top of that I am completely not integrating in local life this way. I am now working from the apartment and today I have been outside for half an hour grabbing lunch. Although many of you will probably think I am whining, this is how it feels to me for now. I am just gonna hold on for a couple of weeks and see if these feelings change.

On the flipside the project I am working on is quite interesting. I can’t say too much, but I can say that I have never been so intrigued by a bunch of opening hours

My new roommate Wilmar is on a holiday with his friend Leo, my former host. They are in Rio for the next 10 days, so I have the apartment all to myself.

I have been preparing for carnaval for a few weeks now. It is something I am really lookin forward to. We also celebrate carnaval in the region of Holland where I grew up (see: http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=carnaval+(sittard+OR+maastricht)&search=Search ). Carnaval in Brasil is considered the holy grail of carnaval in that area, so you can imagine how excited I am.

First part of the preparations was finding a city to celebrate it. Major attractions here in Brasil are Rio, Salvador and Olinda/Recife. The choice was quite easy: Rio is too touristy, Recife and Olinda are supposedly very nice but would be 36 hours by bus from Belo Horizonte, which really is too far. So I knew reasonably fast that it was gonna be Salvador.

Problem with Salvador is that it is ridiculously expensive. The main way of celebrations there is something called bloco’s: big trucks full of sound systems with live acts performing on top. The area around the truck is marked by some guys holding a rope, and you can only be inside that area if you are wearing a shirt from that Bloco (it’s like a highly visible entrance ticket). These bloco’s can go from free to over 500€ per night. The problem with the free ones is that they are far less safe than the more expensive ones.

Then there was also the problem of accomodation. Luiz’s airforce friend Protasio had offered me a couch when I was in Salvador before, so I sent him an email. He replied saying he offered his place to 6 girls and I was too late. I can’t say I blame him, I would have picked 6 girls over a fat dutch guy

Next, I didn’t feel like paying high prices for a hostel (prices are sometimes 10x the normal prices, even more than during NYE) and figured couches would be next to impossible. Stil, I sent out some couch requests. Lo and behold, one of the first requests was bulls eye!. I could stay at this family’s place but they were not celebrating. I was happy to have found a place but it didn’t feel quite right. One of the main pillars of couch surfing is to behave appropriately. I dont feel that I would be comfortable surfing someone’s couch going out every night and getting drunk and coming home late with the knowledge that they have a small child that is sleeping.

Then there was my friend Luiz again, my previous host in Salvador. When I was talking to him just to get some random information about the carnaval (I was very happy to have a local experienced person to help me!) he told me about this apartment that some of his friends are renting. It is located right on the main boulevard that all the bloco’s are on (see here: http://maps.google.com/maps?t=h&hl=en&ie=UTF8&ll=-13.007981,-38.516924&spn=0.002875,0.005879&z=18&om=0). The price was rather steep (600 reais or 225€) but actually a good deal when you think about it: I would be with trustworthy people in a completely safe environment, I would get to see all the bloco’s for free, I would have a place to stay and come back to for 6 nights and in the morning I would be able to take a swim in the ocean.

I decided after some thinking this would be my best option and asked Luiz to reserve a spot for me. As of now I have no idea who the people are that are going to stay there, except that there are gonna be 10 people, probably all brasilian and mostly girls.

I have bought my bus tickets for the 29th to Salvador and for the 6th to get back. So I haven’t celebrated a single day of carnaval yet and have already spent 950 reais (close to 400 EUR) on it. This better be the best carnaval of my life (I have a feeling it will be!)

http://www.youtube.com/v/0w_JiIfVNpA

More: Doerak goes YouTube

Hyves: http://doerakkie.hyves.nl

This will be a series of blog posts about different things that happen when you are in a country that is so different from your own. From mere observations to funny situations to crazy things happening. Hope you enjoy!

A couple of days ago we were walking around during the late evening here in Sta. Tereza neigbourhood in Belo Horizonte. Famous for it’s bars and quietness, this neighbourhood is very safe.

All of a sudden, a man comes running/limping down the street, screaming for the police. The street was quite full of people and in my country at least someone woudl walk over to him to ask what was wrong. Here, things work a little different. People started running in the opposite direction getting away from teh man as fast as possible. People were seekign shelter in their gardens, cars or whatever they could find. As someone told me later, you never know what is going on so it’s better to run away. The guy could be a robber, there could be a shooter running after him or he could have a weapon himself.

The guy kept running around and started talking to whomever would listen. In the end it turned out that he was in a fight with his wife and that she had beaten him. The man was crying in the street, talking to anyone who would even look at him. He was basiclly a big baby, very funny!

Nevertheless I was a bit shocked by the way people responded to him running down the street. Here, people’s first reaction is to take care of them selves, not too look out for a fellow human being. Something I can understand in a country that has so many safety issues, but still against my instinct.

So, coming back to Belo Horizonte meant that it is now time to get a bit more serious after 4 months of fun and traveling. I needed to find a place to stay, find some couchsurfing friends and seriously start learning some portuguese.

Now, since it took me so long to write the Rio story, I am already well on my way of accomplishing things. I found a place to live for 350 reais per month at the apartment of a friend of my host. It is a nice place close to the center and the subway (that is not really sub by the way ) that i will be alone in during the day to focus on working. I looked at another place which was also close, but it would cost me 500 and have less privacy. I can only move into this place after carnaval, so I will be surfing until then. That is no problem however since I have some people who offered me a place to stay in BH in the mean time. Nice detail is that my roommate to be is learning English but doesn’t speak a word so far, so we’re both gonna face some hardcore language learning

I also found a place to work out of until i get that apartment and we get soem internet access set up. My current host is an architect (lives in a very nice self designed house in a nice famous neighbourhood) and a professor at the university and he told me he would have a place for me to work there.

Then, I started meetings for couchsurfing here. The first one was very succesful and a lot of fun, although I ran into some European-Brasilian cultural differences. I set the meeting to start at 20.00, and so I as a punctual european was there at 19.45, telling the waitress that I was expecting between 5 and 10 friends. One hour later, I had been moved to another table, the waitress asked me if I was really sure my friends were comign and I was still alone. Luckily peopel started pooring in right after that and instead of teh 5 people i expected, about 17 showed up. A very good turnup for a first meeting of 2008. The next meeting is going to be a picnic this sunday in the park. I’m probably gonna be alone again during the first hour, but my european senses do not allow me to not be there at the time it is supposed to begin ;). I just feel restless when I am late for my own meeting

Then, last but definitely not least, I started learning Portuguese. I started my language audio books (Pimsleur, exists in 38 languages and highly recommendable!). I also started reading a book. I bought Harry Potter in Portuguese. Yes, I finally will read at least one of them (and probably miss half of what is happening ) since this is simple language and I know approximately what to expect. Furthermore I started reading articles in magazines (with the help of my soon to be roommate) and I am watching the news and movies and tv shows on cable (they are subtitled, so you can listen to the english and read teh Portuguese to enlarge your vocabulary.

The other day I had a very small conversation with a taxi driver when he was driving me somewhere. I was so proud of my self that I could communicate with the guy. It was a really stupid smalltalk conversation, but I was happy