The last time I returned from such an adventure was my 3months in India after my PhD. That time, as I gradually unpacked my suitcase, every smell, every piece of music I had bought, each piece of food we had smuggled back and every glance at a new piece of rich fabric brought a sense of affection, a longing tempered with realism and a flood of memories. In Portuguese this is known as saudades. It was hearing this word from a Brazilian capoeirista friend whilst talking about his beloved Brazil in the midst of a particularly grey December that confirmed that Brazil would hold much sympathy for me. The Brazil that I knew and felt through bossa nova, talking to Brazilians and being part of a capoeira group in the UK gave me a sense of familiarity: brazen snobbery, a multitude of stories and backgrounds, indispensable propensity to story-telling, private sorrow, stoicism, gluttony, love and love and happiness. At a distance, it felt like Bengal. And then again, Bengali is to Hindi what Portuguese is to French--all rounded o's, shushed s's, rolled r's - and I knew that I need to add this language to my repertory not simply because it was so "beleza" or useful but because it added symmetry to my languages. This summer I was finally given a golden ticket to see some of Brazil from the inside--Julia received an invitation for an important family event and chose to ask me along.
This in itself was a momentous event, having never really gone on holiday with a girlfriend before, not in the way this was going to be: staying with relatives. As much as I have learnt that the Brazillian family is welcoming without being oppressive, expectant or judgemental, I still treat any such foray into family territory with caution. This is partly due to terrible though brief encounters with families of English girlfriends, but mainly due to the importance that we attach to introducing a girl into our families. It is a cultural difference that is hard to reconcile but I am sitting in a happy metastable state now, appreciating the warmth and interest her family has for me.
Much of the holiday was taken up with admiring and immersing myself in the beauty of the country and the cities. I arrived after a wonderful flight--the exhilaration of packing up and going away never leaves me--in Sao Paulo where I was picked up by Julia's uncle. There was no culture shock and I felt mildly surprised by this. Everything was clean marble; there was none of the breathless crush of people and smells that I had expected. Only, the coffee was far better and over the trip I took to drinking espresso twice a day without the immobilising stomach cramps I generally experience in the UK.
Imagine a city with a 16-lane highway ripping through the centre of it, where life seems to exist only in the vertical axis. Although there must be life and bustle occurring at street-level, the eye is continuously drawn to the clusters of buildings rising at least 15 storeys as far as the end of the horizon. Driving through this cityscape in a tiny flexifuel Chevrolet, I end up shooting up a lift to the 7th floor of one such apartment complex. On leaving the lift, it is a whole other world, a sanctuary and a place of quiet contemplation. The flat is homage to precision, order and method. It was a space in which creative ideas, solutions to problems, scores to films, representations of reality can come out uncluttered by noise. The plethora of books is organised in a way that it is not oppressive but instead like a richly nourishing trellis that guides the first germs of thought. And indeed representations of reality are the main product of this factory since both Julia's uncle and his partner are Brazilian artists. In fact, Tuneu as we all called him affectionately is very eminent and influential Brazilian artist and professor of art at the university of Sao Paulo. Indeed, the studio space is set up in the perfectly idiosyncratic manner suited to only the artist-in-residence but the library is there to be used by all; books are ordered but not rigorously. It is one of the richest collections of art books I have ever seen and rumour has it that no more books were allowed into the house in case the whole apartment collapsed under the weight. Interspersed between the books were original pieces of design - lamps - but mainly chairs. For me, the chair and the car are the apotheosis of great industrial design and I was treated to a tour of the key designers of the modernist era: I indulged by sitting in an Eames chair as much as possible. The precision in which tools were ordered, paint tubes layered, razors kept, brushes systematised gave me a sense of Zen that I wanted to bring back with me. That sense of Buddhist introspection was deliberate as I found out when I spoke to Tuneu about the extraordinary ceramics that he had all over the flat. I have never admired bowls and plates more for the ceramicist who created them had carried over her artistic ideas from her sculptural pieces. These too were dotted around the flat. They were perfectly and precisely formed, ideal geometries, tessellated finishes, calcined powders but there was always something--a gash, a change of colour or an asymmetry--that accentuated the perfectness of the form. The artist, Tuneu told me, was a Japanese Brazilian called Kimi and her ideas behind these works stemmed very much from that environment of Buddhist order and the disorder of the material world around us.
I had the best sushi in Sao Paulo. The city has the largest population of Japanese outside Japan and coupled with enormous Brazilian appetites, the sushi here was both expert and vast. The sea is on the doorstep and so fresh tuna, salmon and prawns came smelling still of the sea. The tempura plate was so large it merited an extra table all of its own. As I left the city after a couple of days of acclimatising, I was exposed to the great Brazilian suco's or juices. You can get a vitamina, which is made with fresh milk (con leche) or with orange juice or straight. I chose a vitamina made with acai (a fruit with as much protein and vitamins as a full meal) since I was about to board an overnight bus to Teresopolis. For those starved of various and unusual fruit, Brazil is wonderful. Over the time I was there, I ate fruits that I had never tried before (jabucicaba), fruits that are hard to get in the UK (maumau, frutas de conte, manga, carambola) and fruits that are cruelly reduced in the west (3 types of banana, none of which we get in the pit-stop supermarkets in London or Amsterdam).
Still in usual travel mode, I did my usual check of the bus as it rolled in. To everyone's amusement I went to look at the tires--and then I realised why Julia's family was laughing. The tires, far from being bald were brand new, had pressure sensors on them and were in the process of being swapped around. The bus was as luxurious as it was safe and I woke up at about six the next morning eagerly anticipating being in the mountains and forest ringing Rio and seeing Julia for the first time having landing in her country.
The first dawn over Teresopolis is perhaps one of the strongest memories I have of the trip. It is easier to become blasé about the beauty of a city like Oxford or Amsterdam but the sheer majesty of verdant mountains crashing through the cloud cover every morning constantly takes the breath away. The whole of the area is a national park and nestled on one side of it, 1000m up, is the town of Teresopolis. Not far away, there is a town set up by Swiss refugees 100 years ago called Novo Fribourgo and on the other side of the national park (a trek of another 1000m up and tens of kilometres west) is Petropolis. Julia's mother lives in Teresopolis, an hour away from the Rio de Janeiro which can be seen on a good day, 95 km away on the coast. Coming from the lowlands of Sao Paulo and a glorious summer in Amsterdam, Teresopolis was freezing. We spent very cosy days and evenings making log fires, hatching business plans and reading indoors when the weather became unmanageable. But when the sun shone it was a tropical alpine landscape. Everything is on a bigger scale. The mountain formations--such as the finger of god (dedo de deus)-- are all the more imposing for being so close. We went walking in the national park and although we didn't do the trek all the way to the top (a 2 day hike and climb) we went through some of the most amazing forest. The variety and size of the trees is extraordinary as are the many different shades of green that provided the canopy. It was a shame that we didn't have a biologist to explain the reasons that so many species clearly want to live in such close proximity to each other but Julia's knowledge of flora is not inconsiderable and by the end of the trip I was breezily mentioning various flower and tree names to anyone that wanted to listen.
By the end of the week, I was itching to get to the beautiful city, the Cristo Redentor and the Pau d'Acucar and so we rolled down the mountains in yet another perfectly conditioned bus that left with Dutch punctuality. The entrance to Rio is seductive. It doesn't overwhelm you like Sao Paulo nor does it alienate you like Mumbai. It is slow and sensual, only gradually revealing all its beauty and even more reluctantly revealing the darker side. The sun never stopped shining whilst we were in Rio and we took full advantage by going to the fabled beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana every day. I love the sea and it helped that we were staying with family on Copacabana. To stay in such a prime location and in such a beautiful if archaic flat was cinematic. It felt as if I was going onto the beach in the uplifting and beautiful sixties when bossa nova was developing, Brazil was looking upwards and the whole world was looking at Brazil with a sense of longing. Things have of course changed, but the extraordinary seascape--art deco, post-war modernist skyscrapers and glass and metal constructions---that must have looked so glamorous in the sixties has been perfectly preserved. Whilst the Malecon in Havana has decayed, the ideal proportions of the 30's façade, chipped and dissolved in harmony with the erosion of the country, Brazil's troubles seem to have never reached this piece of land. Perhaps there is a magic to the sea, and the goddess Iemanja is protecting it. The Rio beach front is certainly the most effortlessly glamorous place I have been to. It's used as well--everyone exercises there, runs, swims and plays futebol. And on Ipanema, there are the infamous posts where different crowds hang out. We of course trekked to Posto novo, went for a swim and generally lounged around the spot that has always been the place for the most beautiful and the most cool. Whilst in Amsterdam, it's quite normal to potter around on bikes transporting anything from sofas to little canal boats. The done thing in Rio seemed to be carrying around your surf board. The sea and beach play an integral part in the life of the average carioca and the by-product is some of the most beautiful men in the world.
Julia's grandmother was an imperious personality and her flat suited the lady dowager image perfectly. I had some wonderful conversations with her, in the ornate art deco drawing room, which looked like it hadn't been used since the glory days of Copacabana. Inspirationally, she still goes dancing and dresses up wonderfully to receive guests or new boyfriends. Although she spoke imperial English and regaled me with stories of her round the world trip in the 50's--I can scarcely imagine the glamour of airtravel in those days---we generally and brokenly got on in Portuguese, cackles of laughter and various pointing signals.
My neurons, having been subjected to the brutality of the Dutch language, were not able to switch to Portuguese immediately, but as in Holland, having no choice but to listen to a roomful of people forces what little you know to expand rapidly. And it's a lot more appealing, listening to a room of people speaking Brazilian Portuguese than Dutch.
After swimming and running around the living room of the Marvellous City--the beaches of Ipanema and Copacabana --we would wander around the city. The Sugar loaf mountain is a beautiful guardian rising protectively over the south part of the city but it is only one in the chain of volcanic mountains that surround Rio both in the sea and in the land. On our return to Rio we saw the beauty of the city/wilderness interface from further out and it accentuated the closeness of nature to the country. We went to the amazing museum of Pontal that is the other side of Rio. The drive was as glorious as the museum, which traces the history of 20th century Brazil through the folk and outsider art of the time. The drive took us through the centre of the city, past the incredible Laguna in the middle, the area that was apparently cleared for high rises and gave rise to the cidade de deus and then the largest favela Rochina in brazil. At the top of this favela there is a white castle where an English gent puts on jazz and classical concerts, but that is something for next time. The favelas themselves are, at some level, low rent housing. They reminded me of much of the housing around in Calcutta. They fulfilled the basic functions: bricks and mortar, running water, and electricity. And like any real estate, legal or otherwise, there is always the landlord and the kings of these hills are making enough money to send their kids to private schools and American universities. Again, Mumbai reflects this with the sons and daughters of the main gangsters as well as the top prostitutes rubbing shoulders at the very least with the children of film stars, doctors, lawyers and businessmen.
The final part of the drive took us away from the city and up the volcanic mountains. Although only a 30minutes away from the centre, the city drops away suddenly to reveal tranquil bays, surfer's paradises and stunning views of the city. The chain of tropical islands, leads eventually to the megapolis rising out of the sea.
Sandwiched between the two sojourns in Rio, we went to the architectural haven across the water, Niteroi, for the big party....
