eatrio.net - What to do in Rio

On my way to work this morning I was sharing a bus with one of those people who play music through the speaker on their phone. Oh man, who doesn’t hate that?

Anyway, it turns out I was the winner because this guy’s selfish behaviour prompted me to play my own music (through headphones, claro) and I stumbled across a joyous piece of music by this man:

Paulinho da Viola. Doesn’t he just look like a really nice guy? I know they say it’s wrong to judge people by appearances, but it doesn’t seem so bad when you’re making a positive judgement, right?

From an early age, Paulinho was surrounded by legends of Brazilian music such as Pixinguinha and Jacob do Bandolim. In turn Paulinho went on to become a legend in his own right, famed for his sophisticated melodies and gentle singing voice. His career as a Sambista, composer and musician has spanned 50 years and during this time he has released 27 albums and toured worldwide. On top of all that, by all accounts he is a really good guy.

OK, so back to that song that cheered me on my way to work. It’s a simple, cheerful tune though, somewhat typically of Brazilian music, the lyrics tell a rather sad tale of a guy who has decided he won’t play his guitar anymore because someone has made him unhappy. Well, the words might be sad, but listening to this makes me happy! I hope you like it too – have a great weekend.

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May 23

Favela Spirit

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Sure local government should do these things, but when they don’t, we do it ourselves.

-Favela resident

Favelas are a touchy subject here in Brazil. I think I covered this subject in my previous post (What’s wrong with favelas?), so I’ll just add a minimal pre-emptive clarification: I don’t think favelas are fun or cool, but I do think they are legitimately interesting.

Back in Britain it is common to hear people lament the decline of “community spirit”. Of course there are plenty of great community projects and kind, helpful people, but as a general trend, people have become less sociable with their neighbours over the last 50 or so years.

Many people in London (and other large cities I’m sure) hardly speak to the people who live next door or across the hallway. It’s not uncommon to hear of people dying alone in their apartments and only being discovered days (or more) later when neighbours notice the smell.

I used to think that this phenomenon of people closing themselves off from their neighbours was caused by the population movement from small towns and villages into large cities and conurbations. It seems a logical reaction to a reduction in living space: people put up metaphorical walls to counter the fact that they are living in such close proximity to each other. But if that were true, how could you explain favelas?

Just a small section of Rocinha, Rio’s largest favela.

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May 20

Igor ‘SRC’ Nunes

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A couple of weeks ago, Mrs Eat Rio and I did our own little Comida di Buteco crawl (it’s like a pub crawl but with added stuffing your face). As we strolled out of Antigamente, a nice little bar on Rua do Ouvidor, I looked up and saw a view that looked photo-worthy.

Rua do Ouvidor is a narrow street running through Centro. Although the street itself is ancient, many of the buildings that now line it are quite ~~ugly~~ recent.

I don’t think it’s a masterpiece or anything, but I like the way the line of the street leads up to the space between the buildings. This was taken on my phone (hence the grainy appearance) so it wasn’t until I got it back to the computer that I noticed a cheeky little character looking back at me.

That little yellow bird is wearing a cap which says “SRC” on it. Great, I thought, I’ll Google that and find out who did this. Problem: On the internet, SRC is a very common abbreviation of “source” as well as an acronym for about a million different organisations.

The next day I was walking down a street in Tijuca and what did I see?

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May 17

Photo Post: Rain in Rio

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My first job interview in Rio went pretty well. We spent about 10 minutes talking about what the new role would be, then another 20 minutes talking about my skills and past work experience. Then, at the end, one of the two interviewers turned to me with a quizzical look on his face and asked: “Just one thing – why would you leave a job like that in London to come to Rio?“. The way he asked the question made it clear that he thought I was crazy!

Conversely, I know that many Brazilians who move to London are asked by incredulous locals “Why would you leave sunny Brazil to come to this miserable place?”. I guess next door’s chicken is always fatter, right?

Well you know what? You might not see it on the postcards, but it rains a lot in Rio. In fact it rains more in Rio than it does in London!

It has rained pretty much non-stop every single time I’ve left the city of Rio to explore other parts of Rio state. This was a nice bamboo sprout I saw in Petrópolis.

I imagine that Londoners will be reading this and thinking “Oh sure, you get more actual rain in Rio because of those crazy tropical storms, but I bet we (Londoners) have more rainy days than Rio”. Well that’s where you’re wrong:

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May 15

Futevôlei: Is this why Brazil is better than England at football?

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I’ll be honest from the start, I like football a lot – I used to play a bit and I think it’s a great game. I’m not obsessed with football though; I don’t love it. If anything, my interest in the game has faded a bit over the last 15 years. I certainly don’t think football is a matter of life or death (or even more important than that), so if you’re looking for insightful and up-to-date football analysis, you should probably check out some proper blogs.

Did anyone stick around for the second paragraph? OK, so now that we’ve established that I’m no expert on the subject, let’s talk football! I have a premise so deeply ingrained in my footballing psyche that I doubt I’ll ever be able to shake it: Brazil are better than England. For most of my life this had been an indisputable fact. The fact that this is now a matter for some debate (sadly due to a slump in Brazil’s form rather than a surge in England’s) is something I still struggle to get my head around.

But why are (were?) they so much better than us?

Brazilians play a lot of football. But then so do the English!

On my first trip to the beach in Rio I saw something that made me go “Ah! So that’s why they’re so good!”:

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May 10

Photo Post: Vhils in Rio

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A couple of weeks ago I was getting off the Metro station in Copacabana. I was in a big hurry because I was running late, but just happened to look up for a moment and saw something pretty amazing.

This is the work of Portuguese artist Alexadre Farto, AKA Vhils. Apparently his process involves first painting an image onto a wall, then using drills, chisels and other tools to chip away at the painting to leave the final image.

Here’s a close-up:

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May 09

Milho Verde – Brazilian Sweetcorn

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Food and drink

Some time ago I was browsing the Brazil section of Reddit when I saw someone asking for advice: “I’m moving from the US to Rio in a few months – is there anything I should bring with me that is hard to get over there?”.

This caught my interest, so I had a look at the responses – most of them seemed pretty sensible, but then I saw one reply which struck me as odd. It said something like “You should bring can openers – they don’t have them here. Also bring good ballpoint pens, gem clips, file folders and sweetcorn”.

Items apparently not found in Brazil…

The whole list just made me go “Urgh?”. First off, there was the can opener thing. I bought a can opener here in Rio when we moved into our apartment so I couldn’t understand what the guy was talking about (did he think Brazilians opened cans with their teeth?). I was also perplexed by the items of stationery – I had picked up all those things and more at a stationers in Botafogo.

But what really got me was the sweetcorn. Sweetcorn?! Sweetcorn accounts for a whole category of street vendor here and what’s more, it’s delicious! I couldn’t let that go – I replied, saying that sweetcorn is common in Brazil and also very tasty.

At this point someone else got involved and asked if I had “ever lived in North USA – the corn there is delicious. The corn in Brazil is so bad that they wouldn’t feed it to the cattle”. Woah! [deep breath, count to 10] Now I haven’t lived in any part of the US, so I can’t compare, but if you think the corn in Brazil is bad, you need to change the place you’re buying your corn!

18 comments

May 07

Nhac Nhac!

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Language

Some time ago I installed a Portuguese-English dictionary on my phone. It’s really useful as it doesn’t need an internet connection and it has the handy feature of keeping a list of all the words you look up – a ready-made revision list for when you’re feeling studious. It’s not 100% perfect though – there are rare occasions when it doesn’t list a word I’m looking for. This happened last weekend when we were in Cachoeira Paulista.

The word I was looking for begins with “Nh” which still strikes me as a strange combination of letters to start a word with. As far as I can tell (disclaimer: I know even less about Spanish than I do about Portuguese) “Nh” in Portuguese is the equivalent of the Spanish “Ñ” – it makes that “nya” sound that you hear in words like “new” and “lasagna” (jeez, now I’m straying into Italian! Turn back!).

When I checked my phone dictionary for words beginning with “Nh”, I found just 2 entries:

Nhoque

This is how Portuguese speakers spell Gnocchi, those little dumplings you find at the cheap end of the menu in Italian restaurants. It’s actually a great word to illustrate how the Portuguese language takes a word from abroad and adapts the spelling to fit the rules of Portuguese. As far as I know (disclaimer number 2), a word beginning with “Gn” would be pronounced “Ge-ne” (with a hard g), so they replaced that with the “Nh”. To make a hard “Ke” sound they needed to use “que”, so you end up with an identical sounding word that is spelt completely differently!

Gnocchi, Nhoque, Ñoqui (Italian, Portuguese, Spanish). Source

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May 06

Invasion of the Mermaids by PXE

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I’ve been spending a lot of time in Copacabana recently. A few months back they closed the Metro station in Ipanema, so nowadays the bus drops me on the beach in Copacabana each night and I wander the streets looking for either Siqueira Campos or Cardeal Arcoverde stations to complete my journey home. At first it was a real pain – I got lost quite a bit – but after a while I found that I was getting to know my around the neighbourhood.

As I walked the streets of Copa, I noticed one set of letters appearing over and over: PXE. I’ve seen these letter on walls, shop fronts and especially on those nondescript, grey boxes that contain, erm, telephone wiring? Electricity stuff? Clearly I have no idea what these boxes are for, but I do know that they look better when they’ve received the PXE treatment!

Image source

PXE

PXE, or Marcio PXE to his friends, has a pretty cool blog - he even actively encourages people to download examples of his work. I have noticed several themes running through his work and these themes have meant I’ve had to learn some new vocabulary!

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May 03

Gol incentivises pilots to save fuel

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I was gazing out of my window a few days ago when I saw a rather nice wisp of cloud floating around the top of Pão de Açúcar. I grabbed my camera and was taking a few snaps when a plane came flying through the shot – bonus!

A Gol flight passing Pão de Açúcar. If you look carefully you can just make out the contrails coming out the back.

Later on, when I transferred the images to my computer, I took a closer look at the plane and made out the airline: Gol.

Gol is a low-cost airline and Brazil’s second biggest carrier by market share. Times are tough for many airlines right now, with rising fuel prices really squeezing profit margins. Gol has been suffering more than most – according to Bloomberg, they lost 11 cents for every dollar of sales in 2012 (R$1.5 billion net loss for the year).

While some budget airlines have devised novel pricing ~~scams~~ schemes, Gol have come up with their own approach: use less fuel. Gol management have introduced a new scheme of bonuses for pilots and flight crews to incentivise fuel economy. Hmm, how does a pilot use less fuel?