Notas do Cárcere

The philosophy of the bridge: quantum and God's dice

2012-01-12T19:01:00.000-08:00

I was checking the blogs I follow and I was so amazed when I read a friend's and he was mentioning me and my blog in his post. I was honored and felt like I needed to expand more on what he called my theory of connections. It is not so common to find essay-type texts here, but I couldn't help it. One day I may be able to answer him why we have connected.
Let me start with some name-giving and I will get some Wikipedia help for that:

“	My greatest concern was what to call it. I thought of calling it ‘information’, but the word was overly used, so I decided to call it ‘uncertainty’. When I discussed it with John von Neumann, he had a better idea. Von Neumann told me, ‘You should call it entropy, for two reasons. In the first place your uncertainty function has been used in statistical mechanics under that name, so it already has a name. In the second place, and more important, nobody knows what entropy really is, so in a debate you will always have the advantage.	”
—Conversation between Claude Shannon and John von Neumann regarding what name to give to the “measure of uncertainty” or attenuation in phone-line signals

There is the physical attraction that can be involved in some or most of human connections, but how can we deal with some feelings when we are not at all physically attracted to someone but s/he just puts us in contact with some mysterious part of the universe, of ourselves. We just think that the person is interesting for what s/he believes, how s/he acts or doesn't. We just can't help considering them intriguing, mindblowing.

There is awareness involved in whatever move we make towards certain people. Connections are deliberate and they are not interest-free. But sometimes, we are just faced with some examples which makes us wonder.

Let's take one example of a situation that happened in my life and think how chance can perform small "miracles" or "tricks" (still not sure how to call them). Uncertain situations leading to successful connections. Entropy? Quite some time ago I was teaching a morning group of students because their teacher had gotten pregnant (it was a surprise because she was over 40 and her husband had already undergone a vasectomy). I was not supposed to be there in the morning because I had a class at lunchtime on the other side of town. The schools were distant and I live in a city whose traffic ranges from terrible to worse. And the Pope was visiting, so they were deviating traffic, changing routes and I was afraid I would never make it. There was a student in the morning class who would always arrive late and leave just before the class finished. She was quiet and I knew little about her. That day I told the students I would finish the class some minutes before the time and would compensate later, because I had to get across the city. Fine, they said and this girl asked me if I wanted a ride. She was driving to the same region I had to go. We could use her radio to check on the best routes. Could I refuse such an offer? I didn't and we went together. We talked about life and I told her something quite personal, I was sick of living where I was living and I wanted to move. She just nodded. The next class, she told me she had a coworker and he was looking for someone to share an apartment. I got his contacts and went there to meet him. I got a mixed impression, but I was not sure I wanted to live with someone like him: older than me, not my type and strong personality. Threre was no physical attaction there. And I just said I needed to think. That same week, the guy with whom I was living set me up. He locked me outside and left me there on purpose for almost one hour. So, I called that older guy and asked if the offer was still on. There were other people I had talked to, so had him, some other closer friends, even one potential romantic partner. But no, I chose that stranger and was willing to take the risks.
The first months were difficult, he had been living alone for quite some time but we hit off from the start. We used to spend hours talking, from sunset to sunrise sometimes. He taught me so much about life. We never had any romantic involvement and we had like three major fights in over five years. The girl, she left the school and we never met again. She never worked in a project with him again either. She just disappeared, after a considerable change in our lives (mine and my roommie's). Wasn't she something like a bridge who served a certain purpose of putting us together?
I am not saying that there is something like a destiny or written rules but out of 18 million people who live in Sao Paulo, why the heck did I end up with this guy? It's statitics, it's chance but it is also something that had everything to go bad and has been wonderful.
Why out of the thousand books, films and plays people produce all over the world I have contact with these ones I read or I am reading and which form my character and my personality, touch me and make me think? I know people in other continents, their dreams and secrets, but I wouldn't know the name of 5 of my neighbors, if you asked me. So why some people and not others? And being these ones, why not celebrate them? Love them or care for them as well as one can?
You see, Dale, a lot of questions, this is (definitely) not the end.

The present

2012-01-12T17:31:00.000-08:00

(On Christmas, I got a present from a dear friend from Finland. It was a notebook in which he put a lot of questions and sections and I am supposed to write there, poems, thoughts, about me, etc. As soon as I finish it, I'll send it back to him. He will have access to a lot of things no one else will, but he let me publish the eventual "good" poems I write there so that the world can also know it. This is the first one)

The boy is crying
but it's not due to teargas
He sees the hope in their eyes
The fear in the cops' eyes
He sees blood oozing on
foreheads
Mother screaming, yelling, not my son
not my
son
He sees it on tv and he
is not sure. They are carrying
a black guy, is he dead?
Then it would just be anywhere
dans les rues, they yell. It's
68 for sure, France.
We have a dream, and it's
the States now and Mr. King Jr.
The boy has been shot before. The
bullets never reached him. But
what about minefields? Radars?
Now we don't have wars, you were not
drafted, were you, boy?
He wants to throw flowers
and open books
but they shut him up with bombs and
laws and shields and laser guns.
You have to run boy!
The shock troop is merciless
they have always been
Paris, Seattle, University of Sao Paulo, Beijing
name a place in this earth and
there you'll find repression.
Let's fight for freedom?
they have been doing it since the
French revolution, and way before, and ever since.
Let's not get philosophical, boy,
and ask ourselves in the fashion of a good old
post-strucutralist
what freedom is. The question
should be
where. Where is it?
And it, here, means freedom but
you can also think of hope.

Travel log - Europe - Day 30 (the last day)

2011-12-29T09:10:00.000-08:00

Day 30
I woke up and sat. My body was aching and I tried to stretch while I was rubbing my eyes and looking for my glasses.
Some of the people that had slept there were also waking up. Others kept on sleeping though the airport started buzzing with life and activity.
It had been very uncomfortable, but anyway I had gone through all night without waking up.
I knew I still had two hours more or less before boarding time and I decided to walk a little bit and see the stores, the people. I then realized I could see a lot more of beautiful people going around and I thought my system of attraction was changing quite a bit. I was admiring a kind of beauty I never had before.
There was an exhibition of maps and I spent some time reading the texts about the map maker of the 15th century whose name I can’t remember. I don’t know why I took no pictures.
**
In the airplane, I tried sleeping but I just couldn’t. I watched about 6 movies and some series. No one was sitting next to me. I wrote some impressions and even a text I published here. I wrote the references to my friends in Couchsurfing and I would just have to type them as I arrived in Brazil. All the movies I watched made me cry, the sad ones for they were sad and the happy ones for they were happy. I was confused, tired, but quite happy I would sleep in my bed again, would unpack and send the bag to my mother’s house so that I didn’t have to see it for quite some time.
**
My family was waiting for me at the airport. At least part of it. My sister was kind enough to bring me home and there I was, back to Brazil, ready to be myself again, and at the same time another me. Ready to start 2011, which, now, as it finishes, I had no idea would be the year when everything started to change.

(to celebrate the next year, soon I will write a text about 2011, the experience of writing the travel log and what I want for 2012)

Travel log - Europe - Day 29

2011-12-29T09:05:00.000-08:00

Day 29

This day was fragmented so it will be more or less a list of random things I did.
***
In the early morning I was woken up by the noise the children were doing. Chit-chat, no one was even bothering to whisper or to respect what time it was. They were just laughing and shouting at each other. I tried going back to sleep as soon as all that fuss was over, but I reconsidered and went to the toilet to get ready for my last day in Paris.
No big plans, I had breakfast in the hostel by myself and left. I had a mission, which was to buy all the presents I hadn’t till then.
This would include family and some friends. So I headed to a place where I could find some clothes. As I hadn’t found the game to my mother, I would have to buy her something else. The positive thing was that, as it was the beginning of the year, the stores were on sale everywhere. Everything had to be sold and it was not very difficult to find beautiful and cheaper things. My nephew had asked me to take a ball to him and I went to a sport store and people were very friendly there. The attendant helped me choose the ball and emptied it. As I was leaving one of the stores, the clothes one, the alarms went off. I had been tired of being wrongly mistaken by a shoplifter, and this time was not the jacket. The cashier had been stupid enough to forget one of the security device (and the worst is that I had been paying attention to see she had gone through them).
***
With almost all presents bought, I headed to the Seine and walked along it. I was thinking about life and soon this nightmarish dream trip would be over. I visited some bridges I had never been to and one called my attention because it was all decorated with locks. I remembered the confusion we had when my friend Louis and I were texting each other and I told him he should have a lock for the locker if the gym and he asked me what a lock was, as I used the word in Portuguese. I answered him in French because I guessed I knew the word: cadeau. However, cadeau in French means present, not lock. He got even more confused and explained me afterwards lock in French was cadenas. I had seen a similar word before, I believe in Portugal Portuguese meaning chains.
Anyway, I sat there and observed people passing by, read some of the inscriptions in the locks and carried on.

My next point of interest was the Champs-Elysées avenue. I didn’t go near the arch again, the avenue was so crowded, I just walked a bit along the avenue, looking for a subway station where I could take the subway. I hadn’t visited the Bastille square this time and I considered doing it, but I saw the time and I was worried I might lose the train. So I headed back to the hostel.

Back to the hostel, I checked out, thanked the people for the nice stay and asked if I could leave my bag there during lunch. I would get it afterward and go to the airport.
I went to the supermarket because I wanted to buy a present to myself. What would I take from Paris? I went to the dairy section and bought seven different types of cheese. It was almost 2 kilos by less then 20 euros. It was quite a present since I do love cheese. I should have taken a picture of the way I put them in a lot of bags and placed them in my suitcase. If the authorities decided to open it to check, I would be in trouble since they have strict laws about carrying food.
***
So in possession of my dear dear cheeses and all my stuff, it was time to go to the airport. I don’t know how, but I got the wrong ticket, and I had some trouble at the turnstile. I had to go to the machine and buy the correct one. There was a nice lady nearby who helped me then.
***
Something different happened in the security check in Charles de Gaulle. I had never seen anything like that before, and haven’t ever since: everyone had to take their shoes off before going through the metal detector. No problem then, but they gave people some disposable nonwoven fabric bags the person would put on. It was so weird, but thoughtful of them to do that. In the States, they had everyone taking off the shoes, but, for them, who cares about dirty socks?
***
So, airports are not the best places to have adventures. Normally, it is more like running to arrive at the gate or something like that. Well, I have a friend who met a guy in one airport once and... never mind. Anyway, I was there, sitting and waiting before boarding and there was a guy who came and sat near me. I normally try to sit next to people who I would feel some sort of connection, but in this case, he was the one who sat near me. I was reading and kept reading, looking up from time to time. He then asked me the time. His accent was perfect, his English was very good. It turned out that he was a Turkish guy going back home. His name was Omer. His English was so nice because he was living in the States, studying. We talked about our lives and he told me he had learned English because he fell in love with a Russian girl who had visited his village when he was 15. So romantic.

We boarded the plane and kept talking. He was such a nice guy. I changed seats to sit near him. On the seats just in front of ours was a family, they were Asian but I cold not make out where exactly they were from. Omer was tired and ended up falling asleep but before he had done so, there was a girl, about 2 or 3 years old and she was standing on the seat and Omer played with her. I have to admit I don’t have the knack of dealing with kids. I never know what to do. After he had started sleeping, she still wanted to play, but I started asking her to be quiet and I played with her.
The funny thing happened because she liked playing with me, and I tried to establish some communication. I tried Portuguese, English, French and Spanish. To all those languages she would respond with a face like I don’t understand you. So I started trying to imitate the sounds she was producing, and started inventing some other sounds. It was a completely made up and meaningless language I was using, but to my amazement, she started responding and for about 10 minutes, we talked in a completely meaningless language. She was cute and I tried taking pictures and she even posed for me. It was such a cute experience. I even considered being a father, but that went quick.

**
As we arrived in Istambul, Omer waited for me to go through Immigration and said he would not stay there but would go straight to his village. Anyway, he gave me a friend’s cellphone number and asked me to call him in case I was in trouble. I felt a bit afraid because I would have to spend the night at the airport. It started funny when a blond guy, without any uniform showed me his police badge and asked me to put my bags through an X-ray machine in the middle of the terminal. He found nothing and told me I could go. I really thought it was a scam to deceive inattentive tourists. I went upstairs and found a place where some people were reading newspapers, some were even already asleep. There were some families too. I felt no one would come near and say that part of the airport was closing. I lay down and tried to get some sleep, not even trying to read to relax before

Travel log - Europe - Day 28

2011-12-21T04:36:00.001-08:00

Day 28

The following day was another strange day. I had never imagined I would have the impression Paris was also a city of strangeness, not only a city of sophistication. I could not help feeling there was a kind of energy on the streets, something like a tickling on my skin, a soft whisper, telling me I was in a very special place. I tried being more observant and tried to imagine people running, wars happening there, I was trying to walk forward but into the past. I saw the stonemasons laying bricks at the churches, paving the streets. I was looking for their blood, their sweat there, but they seemed to have evaporated by then. But there was something, unexplainable, that was affecting my senses somehow.
Before having breakfast I was willing to try the shower. I was really in need of one. Jeremy went there and I told him the showers only had cold water. Some minutes after he came back, perfumed and wet and I wondered how brave he had been of taking a cold shower. I went to the bathroom and it was damp and warm. So he had managed to get hot water. I went back there and tried again. Cold and cold. I felt stupid. Then something clicked inside me and I pushed the lever while I was turning it and voilà, hot water. So we had it all along and I was just stupid enough not to realize I had to give it a (really) hard push and turn.
So, I had breakfast early and went straight to the Cité des Science et de l’Industrie. I imagined it would not be very far from my hostel, which was called Cité des Sciences. It was not next to it, but only some subway stations away.

As I arrived there, it was quite a surprise. The place was huge and there were many parts I could visit with my ticket. There were exhibitions about natural phenomena, one about technology, one about pregnancy and I finally got to the floor where the science fiction one was.
I wrote my impressions of the visit for a friend’s science fiction column in Portuguese. But to summarize, any geek would feel in heaven there. I am not that geek, I just study sci-fi as a social expression of contemporary society and never collected toys or went to conventions. I am not a hardcore fan, but I had to take my hat off to the exhibition: they had material in French, English and Spanish. The girls at the counter even let me keep the booklet I was supposed to return after the exhibition. It was quite complete, with mannequins of robots and characters from many movies and books. The sections covered a wide range of images of the genre: one room about trips to the moon, Mars

space travel

my favorite TV series ever, Star Trek

time travels and even to a book world (it resembled so much the feeling I had when I was organizing the piles back home)

and even robots and cyberspace (how would you feel being inside the Matrix?)

After that, I still went to the Géode, one huge silver shining ball which happens to be a movie theater, those you almost lie down and all the ceiling is the screen. There was a movie about the Hubble Telescope, so more about space. It was so real, I left there willing to go to the Moon.
It was very fun and for one afternoon I forgot all the hardships of the trip so far and enjoyed being on my own. I didn’t know if it was possible to take pictures, there was no sign I couldn’t and no one approached me asking to stop taking them. I went to the food court because I was already getting hungry. I bought a sandwich and some soft drink. I just loved two things there: the mustard, Dijon, I guess. So delicious. And the desert was a kind of yoghurt. It did not surpass the Czech apple pie, but it was close to it.
When I was leaving the building, I saw that, across the street, there was a very large toy store. I thought, well, my luck is coming back. They must have the game I am so eager to find.
Of course. No hive there either.
So, I got back to the hostel and it was about time I made dinner. I stopped by the supermarket and got some more cheese and made a sandwich and used the rest of the ingredients I had bought for the salad to make another salad, not as big as the one I had prepared the day before.
**
I went to the room and Jeremy was not there. I guess he was avoiding me. Anyway, I heard a noise and went downstairs with my computer to talk to Brazil and feel less lonely. I had tried to call Martin, one of the French guys I had met in Vienna, but he was busy and couldn’t come and meet me the following day. He was a nice guy but I thought we would not meet anyway. I was without a cellphone there and he had no way to tell me what time or when he could meet me.
I got down and again it was so calm until this calm was broken by an excursion arriving, but of a very different nature of the one I seen the day before. It was about 50 kids and their instructors and although it was really late, they were making so much noise they must have awakened all the people in the hostel. I called them the infantry - both because they were children and because they seemed to be setting up an army camp. (And I would be sure they were as devastating when I entered the restroom the following morning. I felt I had seen the effects of a hurricane!)
I decided I should not stay there that night in all that confusion. I changed and went for a bar. I had no idea where to go or how, so I took the subway and started looking for a bar where I would feel comfortable. I headed to the Place de la Republique, and from there I started walking. It was almost midninght and I had no idea if the subway would close and I would have to walk back to the hostel or get a taxi. I felt free, wandering the streets of Paris, but I could not know for sure how safe it was to do that. Would I be mugged? Maybe murdered? Why did I have to feel so much like I was in São Paulo, so insecure?
I found a bar. Some people in. I entered, some people momentarily noticed me, most of them ignored my presence. I felt like an invisible man. I asked a drink similar to what the other man was drinking. I wanted monaco, as I had learned, but the attendant told me there wasn’t. I tried to sip and observe. One guy started taking interest in me, or so I thought. He would cast curious glances at me and keep talking to his friends. In the end, the group just left and no one approached me. I felt foreign, but I get this feeling every time I go to a bar, even in Brazil. I imagine this happens due to my lack of practice.
I paid, left the bar and walked back to the subway station. A lot of strange people were walking by. Back to the hostel, my roommate had already arrived and was sleeping. Again I had no chance of talking to him and saying everything was OK

Cameleon

2011-12-11T18:51:00.000-08:00

"At the end of the day all we have is who we are"

Hide all the mirrors,

they serve me to nothing

All pieces of souls

Scattered in a stained glass structure.

I try to see what part of myself is there

And there is only

What I am not.

I change colors again

I am afraid so I try new rues

I try to become the world around me.

It makes me dizzy.

Yet I am not myself anymore.

I am sure I am not sure.

And you see I am

I was and am not.

No longer, then I am green again.

Will I be it again?

So my colors change and adapt (to what?)

Inside, it seems black and white.

A rainbow, in shades of grey.

Travel log - Europe - Day 27

2011-12-11T12:03:00.001-08:00

Day 27 - Paris, je t’aime

The next day I would finally have breakfast at the hotel. I was curious to do that because of what had happened the other time I had been there. If you don’t read Portuguese, to summarize, I was staying at HI Hostel Jules Ferry and there was a lady serving us during breakfast. However, she was not there only to serve. If you wanted to get another slice of bread, fine. One more? You can’t. You could take only one of everything, but if you didn’t like milk and wanted two glasses of juice, so sorry, you couldn’t. And she was so fierce-looking, barking-like talking. Here, at Cité des Sciences, there was no one to control what you wanted. There was just a lady to clean what you dirtied. After eating nicely in Finland, and even staying at hostels like the ones in Amsterdam (the other trip) and Berlin, the breakfast here could be considered weak. One type of cheese, butter and no ham or other things to make a nice sandwich. No cereal. I had to go to the supermarket and buy some other types of cheese to complement the breakfast. But knowing I could get some more of everything made it better than the other. Even though there are the other two HI hostels in Paris, I came to imagine it is a tradition not to have good breakfasts in those hostels.
So, I had few plans for Paris. In fact, I had almost none. Paris was Carol’s dream. I would have déja-vus and miss the summer which was not there. Well, I was there, sad, but it was Paris so I had to do something to enjoy those few days I had left there, in the city of light.
I had some missions and although they were small tasks, I would put all my efforts into trying to find what people had asked me. My friend Sinead wanted some books. My friend Manoel some cosmetic products. Also, I had to buy the game I hadn’t found in Salzburg to take to my mother. So, I understood I was going to spend at least one day walking around visiting many types of stores and taking advantage of whatever I could find on the way.
My number one activity was to walk along the Seine and find a Fnac store. There, I would be able to find the imported books Sinead had asked and also buy the tickets to a museum where, as I had seen in an ad, they were having a science fiction exhibition.

As I was walking there, I decided to look for other bookstores. I ended up getting to the Louvre. I wanted to see the pyramids and the fountains again so I entered the arches. I was curious because my last memories of them were a beautiful sunny place where we (Edgard and I) were able to get some rest after hours of walking and even put our feet in the water. But what I found in that cold and grey day was a deserted fountain.

People were not even sitting on its edges. When I was getting there, there were some Black men approaching people and asking for something. One of them came to talk to me and told me they were raising funds to help some people in Angola. I told them I was Brazilian and he called the others and told them I was a Brazilian brother. I should sign the petition they were holding. I thought, well, only signing a petition? Why not? So I signed and he told me if I signed I should contribute with 10 euros. Was it a scam? I had no way of telling. He was being nice but a little pushy. So I got a 5-euro bill and told him it was all I got, or if they took credit card.
After this I went to one of my favorite spots in the universe: the gardens of Louvre. It was funny to notice how the green I had known there was not that green anymore. People were all in coats walking, few families and almost no one having picnics. This made me feel much more nostalgic toward being in Europe in the summer and not in the winter. Every detail would ensure me I was a person of the sun.
I was getting hungry and I decided to have lunch in the park. I sat on a bench and got my lunch: cheese, dried nuts and juice. Very healthy (sarcastic mode ON). I would look at the people walking and I tried to cheer up, after all, it was Paris. However, from time to time I could not help feeling a bit like this guy who was there with me on the gardens:

Anyway, I resumed my journey to find all the things I wanted to find. I walked in several small bookstores and there was no one I could ask about the books. So I had to look for them myself and I wanted to buy several books I saw, but I thought I would have no time to read them, so why bother? This kind of feeling is always present when I have too many books to read at home and the perspective of increasing the pile is so gloomy that it discourages me of buying any book.
What I got from these bookstores was that in some I activated the alarm on the door. I was not shoplifting, so I had no idea why that was happening.
I saw a supermarket and I decided to enter to get something to eat at dinner time. No restaurant was appealing, I would therefore buy some ingredients and cook myself some dish at the hostel. At that supermarket I saw something quite different from any other supermarket I had been in Europe. The vegetable section was organized according to what I was used to, but in every stall there was the name of the fruit or vegetable, plus the price and the country of origin. It was so funny because almost nothing was from France and showing the origin was so against the logic of the commodity which tries to naturalize itself while erasing its origin. (I know I sound like Vanessa Redgrave in the wonderful movie The Fever)
When I got to the FNAC store, I still couldn’t find someone to help with the books and the moment I did, no way, they didn’t have the books. So I gave up and tried buying the ticket to the museum and getting some information about it. When I was leaving the store, the door alarms went off and a security guy came to me and asked to see my things. He tried my bag, but it didn’t set off the alarm, asked me to go again and the alarms. He asked me to open my jacket and there was nothing there but he saw there was a label and he squeezed the label with his fingers. It was a sensor. They had not taken it in Brazil when Carol bought it (and God knows how she didn’t make the alarm go off there). I would not be Mr Beep Beep anymore.
***
Then, my next destination would be a drugstore in Paris which was recommended by my friend Manoel. He had asked me to buy some products for him there and it was easy because he had given me the address. I took the subway to go to a part of Paris which I hadn’t been to before. The streets were narrow and the houses seemed very fancy. As I got to the corner of the street, looking for the address, I was shocked. It was almost impossible to enter the drugstore, it was crowded. A lot of women and some men, baskets in hand getting everything for very attractive prices indeed. I started trying to move there but the aisles were so narrow and it was very difficult to get by. I started looking for the products and spent a long time looking for one which I thought was a soap bar, but was a liquid one. I figured it out only when I was almost leaving the place without getting it half an hour later. But I thought I would hate not being able to get what I had gone there for. Leaving that place was a relief, people pushing, saying Excusez-moi, all that.
It was getting dark but I still had more things to find. Do you remember the game I had played in Salzburg? The one with insects and all? I wanted to take one as a gift to my mother. I should have looked for it in Finland, but I was sure Paris would have dozens of toy stores and in one of them I would find that. Well, I discovered there was kind of gallery in Paris only with toy stores, a kind of paradise to kids. How could I not find what I was looking for at that place? They even had a Hello Kitty Store.

Well, there I went, asked for, in one, two, five stores and nothing. I had no idea how to say Hive in French, no one knew what Hive was and even the names of the animals. I just remembered butterfly but there was no butterfly in the game. I learned how to say bee, ants and all, but they never had the game. I tried other stores, outside the gallery, but no luck there either. So, the score of the day had been the products on the drugstore and that was that. Nothing else. So I should go back to the hostel and prepare a salad. I had bought all the ingredients and I was sure it would be a great dinner.
**
I was tired from walking all day long so the first thing I wanted to do was to take a shower. I got all my stuff and went to the bathroom. There were two stalls with showers and none of them were in use. I tried the first, only cold water. Well, wait a minute and it will warm up. Nothing. Try turning the lever to the other side. Nothing. Cold and even colder. There must be a secret. I put one the clothes again and ask downstairs. Well, they said, the guy was here to fix and everything is fine, you should try the other stall. I went back, tried the second stall and the same, no way. I thought I deserved better, talked to the woman on the reception, she said they would call the guy again but he would only come in the morning. No problem, let’s pretend I took a shower and be happy.
**
I went downstairs to try some contact with people in Brazil and to prepare dinner. I prepared a salad which, by the quantity, three people could eat. I was alone. No one else was having dinner and I offered the nice lady who worked there some, but she politely said she had already had dinner. Then, I got to the common room, some tables away from the kitchen, and while I was there an excursion of people, around 30, all speaking Spanish and in their early middle-age arrived. It was an alavanche of laughter, people babbling, shouting orders to each other. Nothing resembling the peace and quiet I had been immersed in 20 minutes before, during dinner.
One of the ladies in the party came to talk to me because there were no plugs available and she wanted to charge her camera in my USB door. We started talking in Spanish, and I was also talking to my sister in Portuguese and there was some background music in French. I stopped talking to my sister because I was already mixing up every language. The woman was a French teacher and she said my Spanish was good. We became friends, though I gave her my facebook contact but she never added me. They were from Costa Rica, and she even invited me to visit the country and stay at her house, but as we never developed this friendship of ours, I guess I will depend on Couchsurfing if I ever go there.
**
So, after such a frustrating day, I imagined nothing worse could happen. I went to the room and my “roommate” was there. I was in my friendly mood and tried establishing a conversation. he told me he had to do a work for the next day so he could not give me a lot of attention. He was sleeping down on the bunker so was I, but soon after I arrived he went to the upper one next to the one I was (there were two bunkers in the room). Our linguistic barriers were not as serious as they had been on the first night, I guess my French was improving after some time and he was more open to talking in English as well. I let him be but I heard he was not typing anything. In fact, I was only listening to the mouse clicks. As I looked at him because the light was on his left, projecting his shadow on the wall, I realized he was not really doing his journalist job for the next day but was in fact in the middle of a hand job. I started paying attention to the noises and I was sure he was. I didn’t know what to do. I asked him if he was okay. I guess then he realized. So I just turned to the side, trying to pretend nothing was going on and slept.

Travel log - Europe - Day 26

2011-11-24T15:38:00.001-08:00

Day 26 - Finland and Paris again

I forgot to tell you that I had the problem of clothes. I had some in my hand luggage, and the boys lent me a few as well. I wanted to call the hostel in order to check if the airline had delivered my suitcase there but at the same time I was afraid they would answer, no, nothing had been delivered there. And if it had been, what could I do? The best would be to wait and see when I arrived back there. I managed to do it till the last night in Finland.On Sunday night I called the hostel via skype and they informed me the bag was there. What a relief!
**
Jarkko came to Sheela’s house for breakfast and to pick me up. The other time I had been to Finland, I had spent more time with him than with Sheela. The reason for that was simple: although I had known her for over a decade, she hadn’t been very present while I was preparing the trip. He always answered my emails, giving ideas and helping plan. I guess she could not really believe I was going there, and she would only really believe it when I was there. Skeptic girl, I thought. Well, that’s what I assumed. When I got there, she was eager to make plans, but the plans had already been made. We would go to Estonia, we would visit Jarkko’s parents in East Finland. She surely felt disappointed. But how could I know? Anyway, this time she told me I would have to spend more time with her and that’s what happened. After almost three nights and two days together, I had the afternoon with Jarkko.
We had no plans. It was winter, I was not really thinking about going to any museums, most of the sights in the capital I had already seen in the summer. We headed to his house and stayed there, talking and playing. We watched a movie, in fact we tried to watch, because he went to the kitchen to prepare lunch and I dozed off several times. I insisted I should help him cook, but he did not let me. By the way, the movie was Robert Altman’s Prarie Home Companion. After lunch, we took a picture, the only one of us together and we went downtown as I had some gifts to buy.

I had a magnet I had bought the other time and a very special friend wanted one, so I would take the chance of being in Finland again and buy. I also needed some hood or cap and some clothes to go back. It would not be nice to borrow clothes and take them with me to Paris.
***
Lunch was delicious, I just don’t remember what it was, why I didn’t take a picture, as I normally did with food. I guess I was still sleepy.
***
The funny thing about the part of the trip I was in Finland is that my notes, my pictures and my memories of what happened there were somewhat fragmentary. I guess I was trying to take a break of the big trip and feel at home again. Also, by thinking I was not in a tourist trip, I felt more comforted. I guess this is what they call a selective memory.
Anyway, in the afternoon Jake and I went to a supermarket in order to meet Sheela and her friend Jufelius for some coffee. It was funny because he was one of her best friends there and she had already talked a bunch about him on our letters and he had already heard a lot about me. At least that’s what she told me and then he wanted to meet me. It was a nice talk over coffee although Sheela was not so happy with him because he had been a bit misbehaved the day before. She told him off a little bit, but she did it as a friend, one who is willing to see the best from the others, not their worst.
So, we went to Sheela’s house, I said goodbye to Jarkko, unable to guess where we would meet again and when but sure we would. He didn’t want to or couldn’t go to the airport with us. I just wrote in my notes that before I went to the airport I gave someone a feet massage, but I don’t remember who had it, so if they can help me with this, it would be nice...
Sheela and Sampo drove me to the airport and said goodbye. I had been so happy those days and now I would be on the road again. I went straight to Paris and had no time or desire to make any new friend.
***
As soon as I landed in Paris I went to the station to get the train. If I remember well, it was almost midnight and I had no idea what time the trains stopped. The thing was, there was no train and the station was dark. A taxi to the center would probably cost a fortune, so another night at the airport? No. They were announcing the trains were being repaired so if one wanted to go to the center, we should go to another terminal and take a bus. I went there, got the bus, without paying, I was a bit confused and trying to get back to French. The bus would take us half the way and we had to take the train and go to Gare du Nord anyway, so that I could take the subway and get to the hostel. Lucky me I knew the way, since I would feel a bit uncomfortable with the idea of getting lost in Paris at 1 am. However, I also reminded myself that the neighborhood I was going to was full of immigrants, what could make the violence increase, but I tried to cast aside any xenophobic or racist prejudice I might have carried. So, I got to the hostel and they informed me I was in a new room. When I got there there were fewer beds, 4, and there was a guy reading. I introduced myself, his name was Jeremy. He was from a city called Toulousse, in the South of France. He was a journalist and was attending a course in Paris. We tried establishing a conversation, we tried English, his English was shitty, it took some time for him to build a sentence, then we shifted to French, but I guess he thought my French was just as shitty. Then we tried some Spanish, but I guess I was tired. It didn’t work. The following day, after some time getting back to a mind pattern in French, we would be more successful in establishing a conversation.

No olho do furacão

2011-11-18T11:41:00.000-08:00

Hoje, tinha um furacão.

O profeta do hoje e o raio de sol

Acabaram comigo.

Mas do outro lado do mundo,

Veio o contraponto.

O furacão não passou todo, nuvens negras no céu.

Me equilibro precariamente.

Logo vem a bonança.

Travel log - Europe - Day 25

2011-11-18T11:25:00.001-08:00

Day 25 - Finland

Another day started and no big plans ahead. I was feeling I had been taken back to Brazil, since I didn’t have to worry about anything like airports and which restaurant I should have my meals. The weather was surprisingly not cold. OK, -1oC is not that hot, but I was expecting -25oC, -30oC and I couldn’t believe the forecast was telling us we would even have positive temperatures in the next days. It had been colder in Prague! Anyway, we had some things to do that day. First we would visit Sheela’s parents. They were traveling the other time I was there and this time I would have the opportunity of meeting them. Next, we would visit some kids she was looking after.
**
We drove for about 40 minutes to get to where her parents were living. The first person we met was her mother and we started talking right away. She was a very nice lady and we had no problems breaking the ice. I gave her one of the gifts I had taken from Brazil.

Her father was walking the dog and we had to wait for him to come home. The lunch was very tasty and I remember we had lemon pie as dessert and it was delicious. One of my top desserts.

We talked about Brazil and Finland and many other things. We left as the day was getting darker, which was about 3pm. I still couldn’t believe we had so much of the day ahead and it was already dark.
We drove some more and went to a house where we would visit some kids Sheela had a connection with. Let me try to explain what I understood of it: Sheela works as a school counselor or something like that, she is responsible for following a group of students’ academic performance and she has meetings with them to talk about school and family and everything else. One of her protégés (in lack of a better term to define it), in fact two kids, a boy and his sister, had gone through a bad time at home. They were taken from their home to a shelter and Sheela was trying to take them to her house so that they wouldn’t suffer so much in a strange place and all. She was doing whatever she could but paperwork was getting on the way. She told me all the case and I felt a bit disappointed because I somehow expected Finland to be less buroucratic and more humane than Brazil, since it has the best education level of the world. However, paperwork and abuse seem to be something universal, and why should we make things easier if we can complicate them? These stories put me in contact with sorrow and hopelessness, something I had never associated with Finland. Naivité of mine? Maybe. But I had hoped people would be happier there than here, since they would have more means to emotionally cope with the problems (despite the fact they are one of the top 10 countries with more suicides in the world). I opened my eyes and understood a little bit that being educated and having intelligence don’t mean people are emotionally prepared to deal with the contradictions and craziness of our modern existence. And I remembered what I had read in Herbert Marcuse when he said that: “the revolutionizing of the instinctual structure is a prerequisite for a change in the systems of needs” (in his The Aesthetic Dimension). Plainly speaking, we have to change the way we feel to be able to live in a different society where suffering would be minimized and we would work for the common good and in the development of a just society.
So, we visited the kids and I talked to the boy. We went for a walk in a half-lit road, you could see the lights of a house or two in the distance. He was a bit suspicious of my presence but Sheela’s warmth succeeded in breaking any barrier he might be putting up. We ended up playing together, trying to hit a snowball on Sampo’s head with other snowballs.
After that, we headed home and while Sampo stayed there, Sheela and I visited a house of two very strange people who had bought some of the products Sheela was selling and she needed to collect. Finally, we arrived home but before we bought some pizzas in a pizzaria near the apartment. The pizza was very different from the ones we have here, but I took no picture of it.
Again, Jussi came and the boys went to the football while Sheela and I went to her bedroom to talk and she showed me the cosmetic products she was representing. She gave me a facial treatment. I bought some products, to bring as a gift. We spent hours talking about the kids, about how unfair life could be and how people were sad, wherever they lived.
I hoped then I didn’t have any dreams for fear of imagining a world so bare, so illogical, so cruel, and so much as ours. In a certain way, I was sad by that but I was also happy. Hadn’t I had the chance of traveling, of being foreign, totally stranger? However, I was supported in every way by people who loved me and made everything to make my short stay a comforting experience. With these mixed feelings of gratitude and sorrow (for those whose lives seemed to be falling apart) I closed my eyes and dove into the darkness.

Travel log - Europe - Day 24

2011-11-14T10:20:00.001-08:00

Day 24 - or the shortest post I have written about the trip

The funny thing about waking up in Finland was that it was so unlikely I would be in Finland at that moment. It seemed I was still dreaming, it was not a real waking up. It was not part of the plan. I had already seen everything I wanted during my first time there. So, why I was not in another Scadinavian country, doing some sightseeing, why I was there? Well, I had pushed myself into going there, besides the logic idea that I could visit some people I really loved, my dear distant friends, I would feel more or less at home. I was a bit tired of having to decide about everything with nobody for me to ask anything like “where should we eat?” “Where should we go and what to do there?” Finland would be a chance to avoid all such questions, as I would put myself, very conveniently for me, in their hands. I would again go with the flow, without having to row.
The morning was easy, breakfast ready, delicious and a visitor was coming. As I was at Sheela’s, Jarkko came to visit us and have breakfast together. He was so different, yet he was just the same. It seemed time had done little to change him, but his eyes, they were more responsible, more mature.
After breakfast we visited a park which was just across the street from her apartment. The four of us had fun playing with the snow, spoiling nordic ski tracks, having fun. Sampo even built a snowman and Jarkko a snow-woman, or so we assumed by her “hairstyle”.

Then we had lunch together, again the four of us and Jarkko left. We decided I would spend one day with him, which would be my last day there. Then we did something in the afternoon I can’t remember what as there are no notes or pictures of it, and at night we received a visitor, Jussi, Sampo’s cousin and Sheela’s ex-boyfriend. Because we had been friends so many years, I had followed all the story from the time she started going out with Jussi (in her early teens) and they engaged in a relationship which at a certain point started going wrong. They broke up. Later, she would meet Sampo who would become her husband.

So, another character from that epistolary novel revealed himself. It was nice, he was friendly and all, but we didn’t talk much. The boys started watching American football in the living room and the “girls” (Sheela and I) went to the bedroom to gossip, talk about life, and talk like two people who had only that night to do all the talking they had left in their lives. =)
(Yawn) Good night.

Travel log - Europe - Day 23

2011-11-11T10:25:00.001-08:00

Day 23 - Paris and Helsinki

I had some junk food just after I landed in Germany. I hadn’t eaten anything in Salzburg, and they gave nothing on the flight. I wondered again where this sudden love for junk food had come from. It was funny how eating those burgers and fries would make my dear friend Carol so close to me. I could almost feel her presence. So eating that kind of food was soothing and I just hoped that when I came back to Brazil this habit would vanish.
I loved the comfy chairs that there was in that diner. I opened my book and ate very slowly as I would have all night long ahead of me. It would be wonderful to sleep there. Anyway, some time later they closed the restaurant. It was fine for me because the chairs were in the middle of the terminal, so I could just stay there until the gates opened. Well, the guy of the cleaning didn’t think so. He told me the restaurant had closed and I had to leave the place. I thought it strange and he told me I had to walk ten steps and sit on the airport bench, which was way too uncomfortable if compared to the other. I made a face at him, but as an obedient person I agreed and moved across the hall to the benches. I resumed my reading when about half an hour later a guy, some sort of security man came to me and told me something in German. I don’t know what kind of face I must have made, but I hated him coming to me and addressing me in German. After weeks listening to that language, I had grown accustomed to that but it would be a relief to arrive in Paris and hear French. He told me in English I had to leave the terminal because it was closing. My flight was at six, it was not even 1 and I looked at him puzzled: an airport closes at night? How come? The he told me if I wanted to stay at the airport I had to go to terminal A. I was at terminal D, so no problem there, right? Well, I couldn’t get there through the airport because terminal C and B had also closed so I had to go outside and get to the terminal. I didn’t like the idea of getting outside, in the snow and all, but I was happy I hadn’t kept my suitcase. I walked and I don’t know if it was my sense of loneliness but it was much colder than I expected. Also, there were some parts of the airport under repair, so I had to go zigzagging instead of walking straight. When I finally got there, what a surprise: terminal A was 3 times smaller than D, and I guess everybody else who, like me, preferred the airport to a hotel, were there. No seats available, all of them taken by people lying or sitting. Some families, people chatting. I felt it couldn’t get worse. I sat near a wall and tried to read. When it was about 2am I couldn’t read anything at all, so I used my bag as (hard) pillow and just lay down, on the floor, I had no sleeping bag or sheet to put there to protect me from the cold, but luckily I was wearing my best coat. I kept dozing and waking with the white ceiling light on my face or someone laughing or talking loud. Well, weren’t you the adventurer? Where was your sense of adventure then? Who had bought that flight, with a stop instead of one direct? Only because of 20 or even 40 euros? Living and learning. I got up at 5, a bit before the alarm I had set and went to terminal D, now through the airport. I got there, went to the gates but before I had breakfast in an expensive stall. I felt so tired. In about 1 hour I would be landing in Paris. It was so strange because I had landed at Orly and it was the first time I had been there. But the subway, everything seemed a bit familiar.
But of course, before leaving the airport, remember I said nothing could get worse than sleeping on the ground? My suitcase would never come: it was either stolen or it was probably going to China. I wanted to cry, to scream. I thought about the presents I had bought, my clothes, everything else. I had the insurance, but when would I be able to buy new clothes, a new bag and where? I went to the service of baggage claim and tried talking to a very rude guy. I filled in a form and he told me they would look for my bag, as it would probably have stayed in Berlin. Where was I staying? Good question? Remember I hadn’t wanted to stay one week alone in Paris when I was in Prague and bought a ticket to Finland? So I had a flight that same night, without my clothes or anything. If they sent my suitcase, in case they found it, to the hostel, would they receive it? Well, let’s hope so. It was a rainy day in Paris. Of course I had taken an umbrella, which I hadn’t used till that point of the trip and it was in my suitcase. So, to the hostel under the rain. I just couldn’t get lost. It was not difficult to find the hostel, but guess what? I was tired and wanted to sleep and relax, but I could only use the rooms, closed to cleaning and all after 2. It was about 10am, and I would have to wait four hours to sleep only one hour because my flight to Finland was at 5pm and I would have to be back to the airport 2 hours in advance (with my luck, missing the flight was just the topping of the cake).
The attendant of the hostel (I will talk more about it, putting link and description when I continue the adventures in Paris) was kind enough to let me take my things to the room. As I hadn’t cancelled my days there, she charged me the first day and told me she could cancel the others I would be in Finland. I checked and saw I should not go back to Orly. My flight was departing from Charles de Gaulle Airport. Lucky me I checked because knowing myself I would have gone back to Orly. I was so pissed that only when I got to the airport again I felt hungry. So I had lunch there, can’t remember what and there were lots of lines to check in. Would I be late? No, after some exercise of patience, there I was, by the gate, waiting for the flight.
When I entered the plane, I decided to sit near someone I would feel like approaching. I was feeling lonely and I thought trying to make a friend would do me just fine. I sat by a guy who had already called my attention at the waiting room. He was reading some material in Russian, and that was the hook I used to start a conversation. He was Paul from France, but we talked in English. He was an International Relations student in St Petersburg and was visiting family on the holidays. We had a nice time talking during the flight, he was very kind and I felt happy for the first time since I had left my hosts’ house in Salzburg.

As I arrived in Helsinki, my friend Sheela was supposed to be there waiting for me, to pick me up. But she wasn’t. I waited and waited and nothing. Maybe she had sent me a text message, but of course I would only be able to see it as I arrived back in Brazil. I had my other friend Jarkko’s phone written somewhere and with some euros I could find a pay phone and cry for help.
As I was just managing to make the call, I saw Sheela’s husband, Sampo, walking into the terminal looking around and I made myself visible. He apologized and said Sheela had had to go somewhere to solve a problem and he had to come pick me by taxi. So we got another one to go to their house. Soon after we had arrived, Sheela came and we had some dinner she had prepared (or was it Sampo who did?) I summarized to them the whole story of the trip, the accident, the highlights and the missing suitcase. He told me he could lend me some clothes in case I needed some and I had no other idea but to sleep in a soft and warm bed.

Travel log - Europe - Day 22

2011-11-07T17:45:00.001-08:00

Day 22 - Salzburg

The next morning, I had breakfast with the family again. It was pretty nice as Olivia’s sister was there. We talked a bit and Ansuela asked me what plans I had. I wanted to buy Hive to take it to my mother, but she told me it would be difficult to find stores open as it was January 6, that is, an important holiday there. So it was not only the kids would dress up as the wise men, their day was a holiday too.
As we finished breakfast, we started getting ready for the first activity of the day: Ansuela would take me to practice nordic skiing. It is not as exciting as slope skiing, but to a person who had never skied it was the right way to start. If you don’t know what nordic skiing is, just imagine you have the skis and the sticks, but you walk in a park or any plain track. You don’t go down the hill (some short ones, maybe, as I would discover). You use the sticks to give you some impulse and inertia does a little helping. I remember how anxious I was as I was putting on the boots and attaching them to the skis. Would it be very different from ice-skating? I hadn’t fallen then, would I fall now? All these questions were going through my mind. So we started. It was a park and it took some minutes but I was getting the way to move. Ansuela had more practice so she was always ahead and would stop and wait for me. In some small hills, she told me I should bend forward and it was a bit of an excitement. But the worst was to climb the hill. You had to bend your feet in a way you would not slide back to the base. Of course it took me about 5 minutes to get on the top of the small hill, about 8 steps, and I really sweated. But my friend was very patient and tried to teach me how I should move and all. Some people were not as patient and they complained in German that I was slowing them down, but I didn’t understand the offenses, whatever they were and I was having so much fun.

After we did all the circuit, we took off the skis and went for a walk on the park. Ansuela told me the yellow building was a monastery and we visited a castle in which some scenes of The Sound of Music were shot. It was very nice. But I was a bit disappointed to have all that snow covering the greeneries. Then, we were getting a bit tired and the clock was ticking fast.

We went back home and Ansuela told me about some ice sculptures she had done and needed some help fixing them. I was so surprised to see how she could think of something so simple to do and at the same time, so beautiful and it was a pleasure to help her hang them on the portal over the gate of the house.

Then, I spent some time checking emails and looking for some places to go after lunch. It would be my last lunch in Austria, because that same night I would be flying to Paris. I talked to Carol and wondered how different things would be if she was there. Would we have gone skiing? I was sure Ansuela would like her as much as she enjoyed my company. But what can we do but wonder?

As soon as I had helped cleaning the table, I set foot to another journey downtown and again the bus didn’t appeal to me and I took the silent and calm path along the river. They had recommend I should take a different way back so that I go could through a beautiful neighborhood with old houses in the middle of a park. I can’t remember the name of the place, but it was a nice way to say goodbye to that city which had been so welcoming to me, represented by that friendly and easygoing family. I walked again about 20 kilometers in the day. I was feeling so nice because although I was eating a lot and not running every two days, the amount of walking was just more than I imagined I could handle. Three days and more than 50 kilometers? No pain in the knees or blisters? A miracle. No toy store open, I headed home to finish packing and get ready to go to the airport.

The family was waiting for me with a hot mug of tea and some delicious cookies. We had a snack and I gave them some of the presents we had brought from Brazil. They seemed very simple in face of all they had provided me, but when we bought them, we had no idea what kind people we would eventually find. It was a blind guess, but I relied they would understand the symbolic value implicit in the gift. A piece of Brazil, small, but full of gratitude.

So, Verena’s boyfriend gave a me a ride to the bus stop and I got the bus which was heading to the airport. I was afraid I would not be able to see where I should get off as it was dark, but after half an hour, I saw the airport and its peculiar lights.

Soon I was boarding. However, as I was checking-in something happened. The flight was not direct to Paris, my next destination. I would have to spend some hours in Berlin to get the flight only the next morning. If Charles de Gaulle had improved its conditions for sleeping, I imagined Berlin would have even more comfort as Germany is known by its organization. The agent told me I would have to get my suitcase in Berlin and check it in again. I didn’t feel very happy about walking around the airport with that big suitcase, a burden indeed and asked her if she could dispatch the baggage straight to Paris and I saw her print the tags and put them on the bag. It was going to Paris. And the night would be very peaceful. I wish I hadn’t thought so to be in the least prepared for what was to come...

Enxurro

2011-11-06T15:29:00.001-08:00

Abro os olhos e começo a escrever um ensaio sobre a minha cegueira. Andando pelas ruas desta cidade, domingo de noite, um vazio e o concreto, vidas nos bares de esquina, pessoas rindo e pessoas ali, vivendo, num mundo sujo e feio (pra mim) e meu mundo também. (por que eu deixo meu mundo ser sujo e feio?) caminho em direção ao teatro e sinto a minha pele meio que reagir com o ar poluído e fétido e o cheiro de cimento e mijo. Sou parte desta bagunça. Eu ando por ruas que nunca havia andado antes, e parece que eu estou num outro planeta, numa outra dimensão. Para onde vão todos os seres humanos num domingo ao cair do sol? Vejo poucos num cenário de muitos, já ouço os mil passos que caminharão por aqui em algumas horas. Sinto medo, mas eu sou fã de ficção científica, por isso a aventura me excita a continuar. Rumo ao teatro, sozinho. Ali, encontro outras almas sedentas de alguma coisa. Provavelmente a mesma coisa que eu. O que eu estou fazendo ali mesmo sozinho, em vez de estar em casa, em comunhão virtual, em companhias conhecidas? Não tem nada ali para eu conhecer. Vou ter que me bastar a mim mesmo. Olhos nos olhos é o que eles cantam. Posso te encarar então? Posso te enxergar? Pensar em você como um personagem em meio a esse cenário desolado? Vou vendo a progressão da peça que parece não levar a lugar algum. Eu não entendo nada. Entendo fragmentos. Olho em volta. Parece que eles foram longe demais desta vez. Por que eu me sinto tão burro? Seria só eu, ali no meio daqueles corpos que compartiam o mesmo espaço que meu corpo? Quantas mentes havia ali de verdade? As palavras e os sons e as luzes, eu quero devorar tudo aquilo. Eu entendo o futuro e o passado e vejo a mensagem anunciada do jeito que eu esperava. Não não do jeito que eu esperava, mas a mensagem é aquela. Essa sim, clara. Quando eu percebia que eu não entendia nada, daí eu percebi o que era pra entender. Eu ficava lembrando do livro, que eu já deveria ter lido, que eu deveria ter escrito. As vinhas da minha ira não são tão amargas quanto eu pensava. Eu me envergonho de mim mesmo. Vejo aqueles rostos conhecidos, quase amigos, que não me reconhecem, posto que sou só mais um, lembro das suas frases, dos seus movimentos. Quero agarrar aqueles corpos em movimento e cantar com eles as suas canções. Vejo o apelo em seus olhos. Eles acham que estamos entendendo. Estamos entendendo? Quem somos nós. Eu olho em volta e só tem eu, no meio de uma selva de pessoas que não existem, só ali. O espetáculo, por assim dizer, acaba. Eles abrem a porta e eu não consigo ficar mais nenhum minuto ali. Eu preciso sair do sonho, dessa realidade alternativa e voltar para a minha realidade brilhante, onde eu posso viver de verdade, onde eu posso ter em mãos a ferramenta que me une aos outros, que me traz conforto, que vibra sobre meus dedos finos e delicados, dedos de artista. Não quero ouvir nenhum comentário, porque não quero que roubem de mim a minha compreensão do que eu tinha acabado de ver. Eu entendi tudo, quando não entendia nada. Fui o primeiro a sair, meio fugido, pensando nas coisas que tinha sido ditas e cantadas, que força! Desci a rua, voltando por um caminho que não tinha sido o caminho da vinda. Tive medo de me encontrar vindo, e mandar que eu voltasse, antes mesmo de chegar. Olho na esquina e me vejo ali agachado, fuçando o lixo que se espalha sobre a calçada. Quanto lixo. Eu deixo que minha cidade seja assim suja, eu sou aquele lixo, eu não o recolho, então sou parte do que o espalha. Mais adiante, tentando esquecer o lixo, eu me fixo nos corpos que se oferecem, nos corpos que sentem fome e precisam ser comidos para poderem comer. Eu tento esboçar um boa-noite, mas talvez eles não entendam a minha língua. Eu tenho medo. Medo da sereia, e eu aperto o passo. Ouço risos mas não sinto a alegria. Outro que passa por mim em olha com desejo e eu sinto o cheiro da decrepitude. Eu peguei a rua diferente para fugir do meu passado e encontro o meu futuro. Ele olha com desejo e seu olhar grita: me ame, e eu tento responder que eu o amo, mas só consigo embaraçar num soluço e começar a chorar. Eu não quero ser assim. Mas ele me diz, eu não olho pra trás, ele me grita o nome e diz, assim será, assim será. Continuo andando e quase tropeço em uns farrapos que me pedem dez centavos. Eu agarro a minha nota de dez reais, que é tudo que tenho no bolso, ela me faz cócegas na mão e me conta em dez segundos uma longa história de um filme com um sul africano que me fez perder um pouco a esperança no mundo. Ele me mostrou que confiar significar perder, mas de novo, ele me mostrou que se há no mundo pessoas como eu, ele não se está de total perdido. Não que eu tenha agido com o melhor dos propósitos, nem que eu tenha sido o mais sensato dos intelectuais, muito pelo contrário. Mas eu vi. Tateando de novo os dez reais, lembrei de toda minha fortuna, do meu império, da minha espoliação. Sou um vendido. Mas quem não é? Justifico minhas fraquezas pela carne e pelo vinho, escuso minha casa própria, ou não tão propriamente assim, e respondo meio baixinho, não tenho dez centavos aqui comigo. A tristeza vai se tornando maior que eu e já não sinto medo nem nada. Ela já passa da altura dos olhos. Me afoga. Tento focar no chão e no céu, mas um tem muito lixo, o outro poucas estrelas. Tudo me aborrece e eu tento formular na minha cabeça uma música bonita, uma forma de entender tudo o que eu tou sentindo e vou tentando matar cada frase que se forma, um tanto quanto poesia, diriam, pra tentar entender o que está acontecendo. O passeio prossegue, mas eu já não tenho forças pra manter o passo forte, pra correr pra minha tenda, meu eldorado no sétimo andar, quente e macio, regado a creme de leite e memórias européias. Me lembro que em menos de um mês estarei desempregado. Ou semi. Que estarei livre, mas ao mesmo tempo, mais preso do que nunca às preocupações mundanas. Não consigo sentir medo, mas vejo rotas de fuga. Será que vou ter que perguntar pra alguém se ela tem dez centavos? Provavelmente não. Será que eu deveria agora, nesse momento abismado, pular no abismo e não voltar? Uma semana talvez, sumir e ficar aqui, fuçando o lixo e passando fome? Me senti com fome, mas percebi que comida nenhuma vai aplacar esse vazio. Tentei pensar no meu amor e ele servia como uma base, na qual eu sentia uma segurança, mas eu também usava essa base para me erguer acima da altura das cabeças da multidão e via lá longe um profeta nu, segurando o pinto entre as mãos e gritando: é tudo ilusão, é tudo ilusão. E essa pareceu a maior verdade, e ao ver que ela era assim, toda verdade, percebi que toda ilusão é toda a verdade, e vice-versa. Fui andando e ao chegar perto de casa a segurança foi se instalando, eu comecei a dizer boa-noite, porque as pessoas pareciam estar tendo uma noite melhor do que aquelas daquele deserto que eu tinha atravessado. Apertei o botãozinho e o clác das grades me assustou e eu pensei duas vezes se eu deveria mesmo entrar. Como um sinal daqueles e um olhar poderia me permiti ir a lugares que poucos poderiam ir? Você aí na sua cabine fumê não vê que eu sou outra pessoa? Quem era eu pra poder estar ali? Pura sorte. E oportunismo. Passei pelo porteiro e senti sua irritação que emanava como brasas de um vulcão ativo. Quase pedi desculpas a ele de tê-lo colocado ali. Não que eu tenha mesmo, mas pra ele deveria ser tudo igual. Eu lembrava agora do sonho do teatro, da linguagem que era a minha, mas não era. Das palavras inteligíveis cuja organização eu não entendia, dos movimentos dos corpos, chutando cadeiras e derrubando areia. Eu pensei em rezar, mas minha religiosidade tem sido meramente retórica. Queria abraçar um livro agora, mas minhas mãos estão nuas. Chego ao elevador e tento esboçar um sorriso, todo de plástico, e digo boa noite, quando na verdade vejo que é só mais gente que não sabe quem eu sou e não quer ver. São todos cegos, e ao vê-los assim, me sinto menos como eles, mas a cada andar que subo, me vejo menos no espelho. Giro rápido a chave e entro na casa de bonecas e eu já sou plástico e já sou rico e já estou de novo no meu mundo de verdade, na minha realidade que agora parece postiça como a peruca que querem que um dia eu use e que eu nunca jamais ousarei usar. Aperto o botão e sinto a luz invadindo meu olho e meus dedos nervosos querendo regurgitar estas palavras, eu me sinto morrendo e vejo que a morte é verdade, mas só ilusão. Vejo que me perdi pelo caminho, pelas ruas sujas e feias desta minha cidade, num domingo a noite, uma semana que morre, uma outra que começa. Morre a semana do dia dos mortos e eu aqui, meio vivo meio morto, tentando viver uma vida de plástico, pensando que amanhã toda a realidade será sonho e meu sonho será realidade. (Apesar de parecer, não, isso não é o fim).

Travel log - Europe - Day 21

2011-11-05T20:42:00.001-07:00

Day 21 Salzburg

So, another day would start in Salzburg and I had many places to go. The night had been full of dreams, I remembered them vividly and wrote some parts. Maybe I was affected by the visit to the Freud Museum and I wanted to interpret the elements and know the answers to life mysteries. Well, at least my own mysterious ways. As I got ready for the day, the family was already gathered around the table having breakfast. It was a delicious breakfast and they asked me about what I would do during the day. I told them I was going to some places. They lent me a map and gave some suggestions. I could take the bus or just walk along the river to get downtown. They told me it would be something like 5 kilometers away. A bit discouraging, we could think, but, I had time and maybe walking would give me ideas to understand those dreams of mine. I would be in movement, going along a beautiful river. As I finished breakfast, Ansuela asked for my help to improve a snow tower she was building on the balcony. It was a one-meter tower made of snow with some holes in it. I am not very good at this and we had made no snow-man in Belgium, but I was eager to learn. We got one bucket and a small cup and I should fill the bucket with ice and put the cup with its border touching the side of the bucket and after I should put some water. It made the snow melt a bit and soon turn to ice . We would then remove it from the bucket and remove the cup, leaving a hole on one of the sides. I had no idea why the holes existed, but we doubled the size of the tower. So, I took the trail through the woods and got to river, turned right and there we go.

The peace and quiet of the walk made me feel lonely and at the same time, it soothed my spirit. I could almost hear the sound of silence (in the city I should be listening to the sound of music). There were some people going by, vagrant like me or exercising. I followed my shadow and I could see from a distance the fortress which would be my first stop.

As I arrived at the center, I was welcomed by very beautiful short buildings. The avenues were large and there was some morning buzz of cars going by. The day was sunny but most of the roofs had snow. I was afraid of walking on the sidewalks because I had heard somewhere (maybe Prague) that when an amount of snow got loose and fell from the edges of roofs, people could get killed. I visited a square and a church, which was closed. I tried following my direction instincts, although I no longer trusted them after the failure in Vienna (and in the previous day at the station). But the fortress was on top of the hill, then I had to find a way to go up, so all the steep streets were very likely to lead me there. Finally, I found a place where I could take a funicular (I didn’t remember that was the name). But I thought it was expensive to do it so I tried the other alternative which was the beautiful set of stairs you can see below:

There were few tourists there when I arrived. Officially, the place is called Hohensalzburg Castle and it was not expensive to enter (maybe 7 euros).
The place was very nice. As it was a bit early, few people were visiting and it was getting more crowded as I was leaving. It was a fortress/castle where the religious leaders who had controlled the city lived and protected themselves. There were museums inside and some balconies where one could have a wonderful view of the city, the surrounding mountains and the beautiful sky.

I spent some hours there and after the visit I headed for the center of the city. I was getting hungry so I started to look for a place to eat. As it would be my first lunch in Salzburg, I should try some traditional Austrian food, something I hadn’t eaten in Vienna. However, I ended up going to a restaurant which had an Indian name and an elephant on the sign.
This experience was not as cool as one may think. As soon as I entered the place I realized the restaurant was a small room, with about 6 or 7 tables. There were almost all taken by couples and some friends having lunch. There was no one to serve, and I even felt like I had entered someone’s house and should leave as soon as possible. After some minutes thinking, I sat at the empty table, I guess it was the only one available, and waited. Suddenly, by the same door I had entered, a guy entered and I realized he was the waiter just because he was carrying the tray. No apron, no special uniform. I stayed there sitting and looking around, and the guys from the nearby table kept staring at me. I felt awkward and wanted to leave so badly. And although I was there, feeling naked, the waiter guy did not approach me. He did some other things and then he seemed to have paid attention to me. At that point, I had managed to calm myself down and started observing people near there, talking and all. He handed me a menu and I chose the food I wanted. Then he left again, by the door and didn’t come back for about minutes. Imagine if someone would leave, because they could have. Anyway, he came back and started serving me and, at the same time, he was cleaning some of the tables. Some of the people, specially the staring neighbors left and by the time I was finishing my meal, there were only a couple and I left. I had some rice and chicken, plus some naan bread as entrée.
After that, I resumed my walk around the narrow , now alley-like streets. The city was not so crowded although it was one day before a holiday. The 06 of January is a very important day, as the children were dressed in the 3 wise men clothes and they go from house to house asking for donations to a certain world cause. I had thought it strange that some houses had some numbers and symbols on their doors, written with chalk and afterwards Ansuela told me what that meant: the children would write that that house had already contributed. I could witness this cultural event that same night while were were having dinner, but I’ll get to this later.
I saw some interesting stores, and one that really called my attention was a movie theater called Kino, where one could watch cult movies and all. The building was very interesting and I felt like watching a movie, but I still had some parts of the city to see.
My next stop was Schloss Mirabel or Mirabell Gardens.
I don’t know if I have already told you that there is a museum of Mozart in Salzburg because he was born there. Although he spent most of his life in Vienna and we visited his museum there, he is a kind of attraction to Salzburg. All the gift shops you go you have something related to his music and his photos. One of the most striking symbols of Salzburg are the Mirabell chocolates, which have Mozart pictures and are called “Mozart’s balls” (pun intended, I guess). I brought some to my friends and almost lost them, but this story should also come in the future.
The gardens were beautiful, but there was a kind of sense it would be way better in the summer. Most parts were locked and under snow. But the statues served as an example of the kind of spectacle we could have had, provided it was summer.
**
After the gardens, I decided to go home. It was a bit after four and soon the sun would be setting. I headed home but I was freezing already, I knew I would have to walk about 7 or something kilometers and I started, already freezing and willing to go to the toilet. As I walked I started not feeling my hands anymore, and instead of entering any place in order to get warmer, I felt it would be wiser to keep going, to arrive soon. I got there with half my arms purple from the cold. Ansuela saw it and prepared me some hot tea and we talked about what I had done that day. She informed me a friend of hers wanted us to go to a dinner at her house. So we did.
The house was not very far. It was about a 5 minute walk. Her husband went by bicycle and we went walking. The dinner was very nice and I had the opportunity to witness one of the kids dressed as the wise men, coming and asking for some donations, and he wrote the numbers with chalk on their door. After they told me everything about that tradition. The dinner with Cristina was very nice and after drinking a bit of wine and getting some chocolate as gift, we decided to go home. Again, Herman went first with his bike and we stayed behind, but that was so nice, us walking home remembering songs and singing, our way, forgetting parts of the lyrics and just inventing some.
As we got home, I calculated I had walked about 20 km that day. One thing I was sure: I could eat junk food and all, but I was definitely doing quite a lot of exercise. I wrote the postcards I had bought that day and the following day I had to post them. There was a post box in front of the hostel in Berlin and I had just kept the postcards to hand in to my friends, I didn’t want to do that again with the other cities. And to bed I went, that nice and comfy bed. And the night came, enveloping me in its stillness.

Travel log - Europe - Day 20

2011-11-04T19:58:00.000-07:00

Day 20 - Salzburg

A new step of the trip starts. Leaving Joy and Lorenzo to their dreams, a city like Vienna behind, I went to the station trying to calculate if I would make it on time. I could not afford missing another train. The subway was fast and as I had seen the day before, I had to carry my luggage stairs up. I got to the platform 5 minutes before the departing time and I felt so proud I was early and not late.
The train was a bit different from the others I had taken till then. It was not so expensive but it seemed fancier. In all wagons you had a screen, showing you where you were in the map, the speed of the train, and some other details. I followed it as much as I could but as soon as the train started moving, the cradling movement lulled me into a dozing state. After all, I had slept 4 hours or something. I had planned a train trip so that I could cross Austria and see the fields, see whatever I could. So I did that every 5 seconds I could keep my eyes open. I had impressions like the following ones, but for sure I was partly unconscious when I took them.

Finally, the morning was advancing, the day was cold and the snow was abundant again. Vienna had been a kind of break since it didn’t snow so much and there was no snow on the streets like all the other places I had already been to. I arrived at Salzburg central station and I felt a bit daunted. I bought a ticket to go to the South Station where I was supposed to get off to go to my Couchsurfing base in the area. Buying the ticket was not difficult. But I asked for direction to where I should take the train and the attendant didn’t give me very precise information. I headed for the platforms, but there was no number of platform in the ticket and there was no escalators, only regular stairs and one had to go down a staircase and up another one to arrive at the platforms. Accessibility zero. There was no voice announcing the trains, not even in German. The trains came and they had no indication that it was the one I should take. There was nobody on the platform for me to ask for information. I tried a couple and they barely spoke English.
I went back to the ticket counter in order to understand better how I should proceed. It took 15 minutes dragging my suitcase to go and come back and I learned I could take any of the red trains (but why she had not told me that before I don’t know). I have to admit part of this confusion at the station was because it was under repair, but anyway, I was a bit sleepy and the loneliness (I had just made so special friends who I had to leave behind again), so I could not have a good first impression of the city.
I was also a bit anxious because the direction to get to my hosts’ house were not so clear. And because, differently from all my other CS experiences I would not be at a young person’s house. I would be staying with a family, two daughters and the parents. As I had it in my mind, the girls would be couchsurfers and the parents kind of accepted this lifestyle and had agreed to host people.
But I will come back to that later. I got off at the right station and looked around. No street names in signs, I had to look for a public phone. Finally I could reach them home and told I had arrived. As she was explaining to me which way to take, my one euro expired and I had to call again. Guess what? I couldn’t make the call. The phone had just decided not to work anymore. Probably it went on strike. So I made up my mind to walk towards the direction my sense was telling me (after the fiasco in Vienna I still insisted in relying on my inner GPS - silly me) to go. I walked and walked past some bus stops, no taxis around. Suddenly, from another direction a girl comes. There was nobody around for me to ask for direction so I stopped and to my surprise she asked: “are you Elton?”. She was Olivia, one of the daughters, one angel who had come to save me at the station. She told me we should walk the opposite way and so we did, across the meadows, which was a kind of shortcut.
The house was near a forest and the river. It was a two storey house, very well decorated and full of windows. The mother, Ansuela, was waiting for me. She took me to a room where I would be staying, and commented how big my suitcase was. All of them thought so, just like Joy and Lorenzo had already made fun of me because of its size. Well, never go to a backpack trip, like an adventure, with a big suitcase. (To defend myself: it was winter, I had never experience such cold so I had no idea how many things of each to take).
***
They took me for a tour in the house and asked questions about my trip till then. Of course I told them with details the sad story of Carol and we had lunch.
After lunch, one friend of the family actually came to catch us, plus some equipment - that is, some sledges - and headed towards one of the nearby mountains. She parked the car and we started going uphill. It took us more than half an hour to get to a good point. We had to stop at the middle to catch some breath, I remember looking at all that snow and freezing at the same time I was sweating from the exercise.
When we got to a certain point, no at the top, but high enough, Ansuela and her friend took their wood sledges and Olivia and I got the plastic ones. It would be the first time I would go tobogganing down the hill. This were some of the views we had going up.

I had to say it was quite an experience. It took some time for me to realize I had to control my body swing because I would go to the opposite side I had put my weight, so I had to swing left if I wanted to go right. Also, there was no space for the feet, so I had to keep them up and be careful not to let them change the delicate balance. So I would zigzag down the mountain, and once I even thought I would fall outside the path, because I could not stop. It would be very funny (and tragic) to see me rolling down the very steep hill. Adventure, you might say. Close to the bottom of the mountain, Olivia took a shortcut through one steeper hill beside the path, and this was a time I was afraid, for you had to be careful with the rocks not to get hurt or damage the sledge. It was my luck the way up took so long, because I was not so sure I would have liked to go up and down (like a drunk person). But I can’t deny it was a lot of fun.
We were a bit wet from the snow, so we headed home to warm up. As we got there, I met Herman, the father and we had a substantial five o’clock tea. The table was set at a part of the house full of windows in all sides so you could eat while observing the sunset and the mountains around.
After that, Ansuela invited me to go to the river bank and then we would be able to better watch the sunset. We had to get to the river by the middle of some trees, the woods. Not so distant, she told me, and it was less than 100 meters. As we got there the sun had already hidden behind the houses on the other side of the river.

There was a walkway along the river, and some people were passing by on their sweatsuits. There were some benches and I can’t remember if we sat there or if we just stood, but we started talking about life and about what we had in common. It was so nice, we discovered we loved singing. I told her about the story on the karaoke in Vienna and the time I sang on the karaoke going to Estonia, on the ship. Then, we got to Abba and we just started trying to remember the most we could of the lyrics. No song was completely sung, since we would always forget a line or two, so humming we went back home and she promised to show me some things on youtbube.
She introduced me to a couple who plays the acoustic guitar as percursion along with its string functions and she showed me a video of a singer who would from then on be part of my life: Katie Melua.
***
After that I took a shower and Ansuela told me they were waiting for a guy from Syria to come. he was from Couchsurfing and I was not sure whether he was going to sleep over as well or not. In the end, it turned out he was already living in the city, so he just wanted to make some new friends. He was a little slow in getting things and although he was not a strictly religious person, he had some behaviors very foreign to me. But we got some music sheets, he got an acoustic guitar, we found some other instruments and we sat at the table, Ansuela, Olivia, me and the guy, whose name I don’t remember, to have a good time singing and playing. I took a picture of the guy’s performance.
After having some fun, we had dinner. It was a delicious pumpkin soup or cream with some pumpkin oil. We talked a bit more and I ate heartily.
After dinner the guy left. I had wondered if he was going to stay there, but he lived downtown and was only getting to know some people from the city, other couchsurfers. Then, after taking everything to the kitchen, Ansuela suggested we should have some game time. She and I engaged in many activities: there was a board game with animals, which I loved called Hive. There was another, with some dark and light beads and we should create a sequence, preventing our opponent from creating one first. Finally, we had some billiard and table tennis in the basement. I felt so happy as it had been ages I hadn’t play anything. She had so much energy, she was overflowing with it and it was kind of contagious. She had told me she suffered from Parkinson disease. So she could not fully be what she had always loved being, an artisan, an artist. Even the guitar she could no longer play without some pain. Nevertheless, she was so active, she had so many nice ideas of what we could do to spend our time that all you had to do was to go with the flow, it was laughter and fun guaranteed. So, after playing and talking about life and all, we headed to bed. I knew I would be able to cover most of the tourist attractions in the two days I would be there, but I planned to wake up early.

Travel log - Europe - Day 19

2011-11-02T11:16:00.001-07:00

Vienna farewell

So, it was our last day in Vienna. I wanted to take advantage of every minute I still had there and I decided we should wake up early in order to see more places. We left the house, went to the bakery to buy some cookies and some milk with chocolate that we had while we walked towards the center.
Joy wanted to see the famous watch. I had already seen one in Prague, so I was happy about watches. As I knew it was not a Big Ben, I just went for it because she had been so nice to go to the places I had suggested the day before. We got a little lost and ended up walking by an avenue with a lot of fancy stores. We asked for some information and managed to get to the cathedral. The clock, however, was never there. We did follow the directions but never reached it. We decided to walk to a museum, and Joy saw on a guide we were close to the Mozart House. On our way, we saw a stall and as I was a bit hungry, we stopped to have a snack. Lorenzo had mentioned the day before that there were some sausages with cheese inside and they were a kind of food symbol of Vienna. So, I had to eat one before leaving.

We got to the Mozart House. We were not allowed to take pictures inside, but the audioguide was included in the ticket. After so many museums, it was the first time I was going to use one. Let me tell you it was very nice to go from picture to picture with that cellphone and listening to the stories of people who were part of Mozart’s life and how the decor of that house had been reconstituted. The funny thing is, with the guide, you spend much more time than you would in the museum, and you interact much less than you should, talking about the works and the details. When we left there, it was more than one o’clock, all the morning had gone by and we had visited only the cathedral and one museum. Another thing which had been decided was that at night we were going to watch a concert or an opera. I had had the chance to go to classical music concerts in Prague and in Vienna but I had not felt so interested (maybe it was because I hadn’t felt like going on my own).

So we headed for the place to buy some tickets for the opera at night. I told her there was a station called Volkstheater and that this should be the place where we could buy the tickets. So we went there and it was a beautiful building near the center of the city. Nevertheless, as soon as we tried to buy some tickets for the opera, we learned from the attendant that we should go to Volksopera, on the other side of town, because we wanted to watch an OPERA. It made some sense and I had seen in small print there was an Opera House near a subway station. So we got the subway again and there we went to the opera house.
With the tickets in hand, we decided we should split and Joy would meet a guy from Couchsurfing who would give her a ride from Vienna to Budapest, her next destination. I had no plans or places to go, so I decided I would try to visit Katrin, the girl who would have been my host there and could not receive me. I took the subway and went to a neighborhood I had not been, Pilgramgrasse. I walked around and tried to call her. Again, problems with public phones. Would I leave Europe without being able to use a public phone properly? No way I could talk to her. Having her address, I decided to do something very impolite and unlike me: I would just drop by and say hello. I went to her building, rang the bell and nothing. Again, nothing. So I gave up. (Afterwards I wrote her an email telling her of my visit and she would tell me she was there, having a nap and it would be lovely to have me visiting) She lost the gift I had taken her and I lost the chance of meeting a nice person (she had helped me with the preparations of the trip).
With no other place to go, the cold afternoon made me want to go home and I went to Lorenzo’s and it would be a guess, for he could be there or not, I was not sure. With my luck of the afternoon, I took the subway and I tried. He was out. Again, nowhere to go and I would still have 2 hours before the meeting time for us to watch the opera. So I decided to go to the train station, just to see where it was and simulate what I would have to do the next morning, very very early.
Before going there, I decided to take the subway, get off in any strange station and walk around. I entered streets, shops, walked without a destination. A flâneur. It was interesting. I had a lot to think about and then that was the chance to look back on what had been happening in this crazy trip of mine. Far from friends, from home, from everything I cared about. Except from myself. When I could not handle it anymore, I went to the station. It was no secret getting there. However, I noticed the escalators were not working as they were making some repairs there and I would have to calculate some minutes more to carry the heavy suitcase all the way up. I bought some postcards and magnets in a shop. They were cheaper than at the stalls downtown.
***
It was already dark as we met at the station. Joy was pissed because the guy she had gone to meet was a dork. He had tried to hit on her and even open minded people like us felt a bit embarrassed by what he had said. I told her about how my afternoon had been boring and we went for the show. By the way, when we had got there in order to buy the tickets, the woman had informed us we would have different pricing according to where we chose to sit. There were some seats for 50 euros and there was a ticket, I guess it was about 2 euros and the person would have to keep standing behind the seat rows. We bought this one because Joy was one of my kind: let’s grab all the discounts we can. At the end, we stood there till 5 minutes before the show started and the lady who was organizing the seats told us we could sit on the chairs of the last row, as they would remain empty. If we had paid 19 euros, instead of 2, for the seats in the last row I would have been very angry. But thanks to our wit we paid almost nothing and we had all the comfort. The opera was in German, but the story was known, Hansel and Gretel.
We had a nice time, there was a break and we could check out the people in the audience. It was fun.

As we left the opera, we went straight to Lorenzo’s because we were cold and tired. Guess what? He was not there. But Joy sent him a text message and he told us he would arive home, in what, 40 minutes or so? It was time to go to Magistrat again and have some more food and drinks while we waited for him. I guess then we were already considered part of the club as we had been there the day before. The mafia atmosphere had disappeared or we had already got used to it. As we were finishing our snacks Lorenzo arrived and we went upstairs for the warmth of his place and to some deserved rest. I would be leaving pretty early in the morning, as my train was to depart at 7h30 or something. Joy would leave after lunch and she was taking the train as the ride with the freak was no longer an option. So we sat on the bed I was sleeping on and Lorenzo asked us about what we would take of Vienna, as impressions and all. We kept talking and although we had not drunk anything, I remember only some fragments of what we talked about. I remember we talked about so many things like threesomes, and gayness and I gave them a gift I had brought from Brazil. The sad thing is that when we bought the gifts before going, we had no idea who we were meeting. Joy for example was a total surprise and one of the best ones of the trip. We talked for hours, until about 2 am. We had some fun at the computer, as Lorenzo showed us a funny website called Chatroullette. It consists of a webcam chat in which the site connects you to random users in the world. Mostly there are people (men) in few clothes and low lights, but I remember we three laughed out loud as we tried to have a chat and people would disconnect on us and then we had to start again (or we would do that).
It was a bit before 3am when we turned off the lights and I knew very soon the alarm would go off and Vienna would be gone, but the memories... oh sweet memories would linger

Interlude 2 - the trip project

2011-11-02T10:58:00.000-07:00

Again there was an interruption on posting about my trip. A long one, as there was no posts in October.

Soon, it will be exactly a year after we were leaving Brazil to go to the big and cold Europe. I had promised myself I would finish reporting the adventures I had on the trip, from preparation to return, no matter how long it would take me to. I had hoped things would flow, but this year was kind of crazy and I depended on some people to help me out with the revision of the text.

Anyway, I am closer to the end now than to the beginning and I made a deal with myself I shoudl be able to finish the whole story before the one year anniversary on December 16.

So far, I told you about the arrival in Europe, the week Carol and I spent in Belgium, followed by our experiences in Berlin and the terrible accident Carol suffered on Christmas Eve. Then, I reported what happened after she went back to Brazil and I kept on follwing the plans and headed to Prague. After the lovely days in Prague, I arrived in Vienna, where I spent the New Year. Many things happened in Vienna and my story here ended one day before leaving Vienna. Thus, soon I will be posting the continuation: the last day in Vienna, the trip to Salzburg, Finland and Paris, the final destination. All these posts can be found if you click on the tag TRIPS , to the right.

I hope you enjoy the rest of the posts. Happy journey with me in my memories.

Elton "John" sings...

2011-10-29T19:39:00.000-07:00

To my friend Sinead

“Blue jean baby, L.A. lady, seamstress for the band
Pretty eyed, pirate smile, you'll marry a music man”

Then I remember the way you were nice as I told you I sucked in snooker. We were a team and you tried to save us from being humiliated by our opponents. Your smile had something about it. Something mysterious and at the same time, transparent.

“Ballerina, you must have seen her dancing in the sand
And now she's in me, always with me, tiny dancer in my hand”

I guess a picture speaks more than a thousand words.

"Jesus freaks out in the street
Handing tickets out for God
Turning back she just laughs
The boulevard is not that bad"

And there you are, telling me about Lybia and Dublin, and the States, and all around the world where you had been. And it was then you told me you liked talking to me in English, because it reminded you of home.

"Piano man he makes his stand
In the auditorium"

You life was like an opera, then a rock concert, fire flying, fireworks, you were moving faster than a ray of light, you were alive like I had seen only few people being. You were authentic and you were free.

“Looking on she sings the songs
The words she knows the tune she hums“

You sing the world in your eyes, in your jests and in your way to look at the world as a warrior princess, as a girl who has seen so much and still gets amazed by what people can do or say. An eternal child yet as wise as a sphinx. Will you let me guess, or will you devour me?

“But oh how it feels so real
Lying here with no one near”

And sometimes, you who cast a fighter shadow, you are all alone, again trying to figure out why he was not the one. Blaming yourself for having misread the signs. Watching the traps and laughing at their faces, but a bit afraid, one can see by the way you walk.

“Only you and you can hear me
When I say softly slowly”

We had so much fun together, walking and exploring and talking till our eyes could not remain open and our tongues had been softened by sleep. We connected in a way we had met only two months ago and it seemed like we had always been friends. You rocked my world then and the distance now makes little difference in the brightness of the remembrance of days past, and of our good times.

“Hold me closer tiny dancer
Count the headlights on the highway
Lay me down in sheets of linen
you had a busy day today”

I have no idea what the future holds for both of us. We have a big big wild world ahead of us, and we want to fly, we want to break the boundaries, and some rules, but never the bonds that links us in this web of dreams, hopes and fears. You are far, yet you are close, you left but you remain in my heart, a hidden precious treasure that I am sure will come up when I least expect.

Espera

2011-10-16T14:41:00.000-07:00

A menina olha pras mãozinhas geladas, pousadas sobre seu colo e fica assim meio sem jeito.

Ela se envergonha das mãozinhas, e tenta escondê-las sob o tecido.

Uma a uma, ela vai tentando cobrir a sua vergonha tremulante, ela vai tentando se esquivar dos sintomas e dos sinais de sua fraqueza.

Ela tenta forçar um choro, quer ouvir seus soluços entremeando o silêncio do seu quarto.

A mala meio pronta, aberta, esperando, faminta de qualquer coisa que possa fazê-la completa.

A menina quer levantar e fechar a mala e falar pronto, mas a mala teima em ficar ali, boquiaberta, exalando um hálito com cheiro de orgulho.

A menina se sente meio jetlag. Ela sente que está no hemisfério errado, no lugar errado, pois que neste momento mesmo deveria se estar em outro lugar, com outros pensamentos, mas ela é só a menina mesmo e ela pode voar milhas e milhas por minuto, será que o barulho ali fora é o mesmo que o barulho aqui dentro?

A menina vai buscando encontrar alguma paz e tenta encontrar alguma energia para sair correndo, para dançar a noite toda, mas sua pele se enflacidece, seus membros se tornam um tanto quanto pesados, ela procura as palavras para falar, mas ela só consegue dizer escuridão e o barulho ali fora e a vontade morrendo como uma planta que murcha na velocidade da luz.

Mas amanhã ela não vai mais estar aqui. O gozo era hoje, mas mandaram dizer que adiou. Coito interrompido, pobrezinha. Ela que viva mais um pouco, rindo ou chorando, se escondendo ou fazendo seu show. Amanhã ela vai sacudir os tamancos, ela vai se deslumbrar com outras paragens, ela vai perceber que o mundo é um pouco maior e mais sensível e mais cru... el a inda não sabe como vai voltar, mas sabe, que agora ela... só precisa esperar.

Espiral

2011-10-09T14:35:00.000-07:00

O menino anda pelas ruas vazias e silenciosas da cidade do morango em uma manhã qualquer. Ele segue seu caminho, subindo avenidas e ouvindo seus pensamentos, alto e claro. Uma gota segue a outra e avisa o menino que ele terá problema. E uma a uma cada gota vai caindo e vai destruindo a beleza do seu caminhar, que se apressa, temendo molhar mais que seu corpo e seus pertences. Novamente a chuva inesperada, sem aviso, sem anúncio.

A chuva vai molhando os cabelos recém-cortados do menino, e vão colando sua roupa ao seu corpo, um tremor o faz quase parar de caminhar, mas ele não sabe se é do vento frio que sopra do norte ou se é de dentro.

O menino sente vontade de matar. Sente vontade de gritar e destruir o silêncio que só é quebrado pelo som dos cachorros, sinfonia canina e cândida. Mas ele se acalma e pensa, ah seu eu fosse um catchorro.

Ele caminha e tenta não tropeçar nas próprias metáforas. Planeja e arquiteta acordos, movimentos, alianças. Ele se vê confuso, de tal forma que nem mesmo a conversa que tem com a anciã, aquela que sabe tudo, ou quase tudo, ele sai de lá do mesmo jeito que entrou, mas mais ímpio.

O menino decide coisas, que ele sabe que vai desdecidir depois. Ele vive e percebe que a vida é corda bamba. Tão fácil perder a concentração e balançar. Tão fácil errar o pé e se ver sem chão, ou cordão. Tão fácil fingir e tingir tudo com as cores da França – vide a trilogia do Kieslowski. Se a liberdade é azul e a igualdade é branca, de que cor é o amor?

O menino mastiga mentiras e tenta transformá-las em verdade e isso faz um bolo no estômago dele, ele pensa em vomitar, mas tem medo de encarar o que virá das entranhas. Antigamente, ele se lembra, algumas oraculentes liam a sorte e o futuro nas vísceras de animais. Mas como ele mesmo dizia àquele que Já Passou, o futuro é incerto. Ele sorri e, pluc, liga a chavinha do... ah, foda-se.

Carta à dona Marlene

2011-09-25T17:38:00.000-07:00

Prezada Senhora,

Esse que nem vos conhece decidiu, com humildade, mas coragem, escrever uma cartinha pra agradecer o que me foi possibilitado pela senhora.

(Posso vos tratar por você? Eu sou assim, já vou logo tuteando a pessoa, mudo do formal pro informal... vai vendo só).

Há alguns meses, apareceu um anjo na minha vida. Desses assim, coisa de filme. Ah se a senho... você soubesse como a minha vida virou de cabeça pra baixo e de perna pro ar, de um jeito que só quem tá precisando virar na areia pra queimar do outro lado sabe. Enfim, esse anjo caiu assim, meio que por convite, meio que por acidente, e foi ficando e foi ficando e ficou mais do que deveria e me fez desistir de viajar e foi angelizando tudo em volta.

Daí, eu não acreditei de cara nessa coisa de anjo porque ele não parecia o Nicholas Cage, mas ele falava várias línguas e cantava, dizia coisas em russo e em lituano, até em uma língua dele, que eu suspeito ser uma variação do aramaico, porém não sei direito e isso nem importa.

Ele me disse muitas coisas e ele falou em línguas que eu não falava faz um tempão. Ele despertou o dragão, me falou da serpente e riu da cara da Eva. Ele riu de mim e pra mim e se propôs a chorar também. Ele quase me fez chorar de emoção e me fez rir como se a gente estivesse na capital da Moldávia. Ele me levantou nos braços e não me deixou cair.

Só que um dia ele sumiu. Não voltou no dia seguinte, nem no outro, nem no outro. E sumido assim, a vida seguiu mais cinza, foi andando devagar, meio com gosto de ressaca e cabo de guarda-chuva na garganta. Eu sofri, eu já havia me acostumado ao cheiro dele, ao jeito meio moleque de andar, de falar, igual quiança, sabe? Eu me maravilhava com os olhos dele brilhando quando eu apresentava alguma coisa desse mundo dos mortais que ele não conhecia. Ele conseguia abrir meu sorriso como um leque, e eu brilhava como uma fogueira, explodindo faísca pra todo lado, bota lenha, bota.

Daí, ele voltou. Quando eu já tinha voltado a ver minha vida sem ele. Ele voltou como fênix e eu já estava pronto a abraçar o luto, daquela morte de mentirinha, mas tão inevitável como qualquer outra morte. Ele voltou, mas era ele e era outro. Pelo menos na minha cabeça.

E de repente, ele se colou em mim, ele era uma parte do meu corpo. Ele invadia meus pensamentos, a qualquer hora, em qualquer situação. Ele me pegava na mão e me mordia os lábios, achando que eram de maria-mole. E meu rosto era cocada, arranhava e queimado. Minha cintura virava um brinquedo, uma aventura, um regaço convidativo ao descanso, e um prenúncio a luxúria.

E a gente foi se fazendo feliz, enquanto ia se fazendo humano. A gente aprendia a dançar rápido ou devagar e eu aprendi a não ter medo. A gente falou de casamento, mesmo que de mentirinha, e até discutimos os detalhes. A gente fantasiou junto e se arriscou junto e se salvou aqui ou ali. Ele me deu a leveza dos querubins e eu dei a ele um senso de que as regras têm que ser seguidas, e que os rótulos são só besteiras.

A gente ficava horas juntos, e de repente, em pouco tempo, a gente já tava ali com saudades. Ficamos presos nesse jogo de aproximar-se e afastar-se, sentindo uma força misteriosa e tão antiga quanto o universo, querendo nos explodir de dentro pra fora, igual uma pipoca.

Bom, como diria a sua xará, a Dietrich, a gente teve “such trying times”, mas a gente encontrou formas e reformas de se encontrar e sintonizar a mesma frequência. E a gente se marcou, tal qual gado, ferro em brasa na pele, mas deixando uma imagem não que nos desfigura, mas daquelas que nos melhora. Uma marca que a gente se orgulha e mostra como uma tatuagem, uma joia.

Neste ponto, você deve estar se perguntando o que tem a ver com essa história toda. Confusa com anjos e pecados, tais coisas que fogem do seu repertório. Bom, o negócio é que ele me disse que foi feito por você. Fiquei imaginando que feitiços e poções e orações e mandingas foram necessárias. O quanto da alegria de vida dele, da leveza foram obras do seu sopro divino, da sua paciência incansável, da sua forma de lidar com o mundo. Por isso, não pude deixar de escreve-lhe essas palavras singelas, cheias de amor, elogiando e agradecendo por ter me podido dar, mesmo a despeito de si e inconsciente de o fazer, aquilo que eu nem sabia que era exatamente tudo o que eu precisava pra ser um novo eu.

Atenciosamente,

Elton

Manda pro marcos, por favor?

2011-09-14T19:32:00.000-07:00

Hoje eu vi um menino na rua

que parecia você. Talvez até fosse,

eu já sabia que não era porque não podia ser

Mas foi a mesma coisa, eu agi como teria agido se tivesse certeza

da sua ontologia ali parada perto do meio fio.

Eu tou de dieta, sabe?

Não consigo mais ir devorar as suas palavras

não limpo mais os dedos manchados de óleo e sangue

de porra (às vezes)

na barra da camiseta, depois de ter colocado tudinho na boca.

Faz tempo que eu não sinto o gosto doce das suas rimas, das suas carícias vernaculares

Dos seus tapas com luva de pelica nos que leem suas entrelinhas.

Mas não consigo fazer você sumir quando olho pra chuva. O sorriso da chuva me persegue

Vai e volta e eu todo molhadinho ali,

à minha revelia, cheio de culpa e segurando um cartaz laranja.

Mesmo que estivesse aqui e não do outro lado do mundo

A gente estaria a um mundo de distância

Você sabe como é filhos, contas, ser arrimo de família não é fácil.

Não que você já tenha arrimado alguma coisa. Mas não te acuso não

Só sei das rimas, não dos arrimos.

mas tou divergindo. Isso era pra agradecer, não era?

(falta amor pela arte, chamar a própria obra de isso, tem gente que não aprende)

Já tinha falado que era pra agradecer, tipo oração?

Não que eu esteja te comparando a Deus, sabe? Não alimento ego alheios assim.

(mas que parece, ah, parece)

nem estou duvidando da sua inteligência

afinal, você já tá voltando com o bolo enquanto eu estou indo com a farinha

(cadê os ovos, me pergunto)

E termino assim sem terminar, porque a nossa história é meio sem fim.

(é meio sem começo também. já te disseram que a nossa história parece coisa de livros? desses romances assim, sem romance, mas com um que de noir)

Peur du noir...

Sorte que a gente fez tudo com a luz acesa.

Mas agora

tem de apagar.

Já falei das contas, da patroa interna com o pau de macarrão?

Vou pegar meu guarda chuva, vou sim, mas enquanto o abro vou deixar

a vida me molhar sorrindo um pouquinho.

Revelação

2011-09-10T17:46:00.000-07:00

Em fevereiro, escrevi um post sobre o que esperava de 2011. Ele terminava com as seguintes frases: "Tudo tem sim, seu tempo. Estou clichê. Vou perceber que ao final de 2011 tudo virá mais fácil e os pontos onde errei estarão mais claros, mais definidos. Superados? Talvez nem tanto, mas não tenho pressa.A perspectiva é de muito estudo, trabalho, mas acima de tudo, a vontade de amar profundamente, de uma forma que eu nunca me permiti antes, de uma forma diferente."

Diante disso, escrevo o seguinte:
O tempo passou.
Foi voando, sempre rápido e deixando um rastro de gosma
pela minha pele e pelo meu cabelo.
Uma lesma na velocidade da
luz.

Espiralmente, fui entrando em mim mesmo.
Ouvindo a Katie e quem quer que fosse
Dançando no ritmo das minhas vitórias
Camiseta escrito loser
Acendendo e apagando, vagalume em noite de verão.

Pesando a vida e vivendo leve.
Pesado leve pesado sorrindo
Contando um dois e parando no Seven
Contando histórias e fazendo mais dela
Dramatizando, investigando, ensolarando.

Daí, do nada, e de tudo, eu voltei a
rezar.
I didn't go back to black, não não não
Eu mergulhei de cabeça e disse sim
pra novas cores, novas paredes, novas formas de

me ver, agir.
E eu me vi amando, de um jeito assim,
igual,
mas diferente.
Amando o que (e quem) eu jamais havia imaginado

Mergulho no abismo, abre paraquedas, abre, abre
.Dor e fogo, dente e olho, tormenta e
bonança
Ainda há tanto pra se fazer, tanto pra terminar,
Natal se aproxima sorrateiro, cheio de

graça e surpresa.
Mas eu fiz
e faço (tem a ver com o tectonismo)
amei e amo
de uma forma tão profunda que chega a ser abissal.

Travel log - Europe - Day 18

2011-09-03T16:24:00.000-07:00

Day 18 - more of Vienna, or if you don't go to the Philippines...

The morning was sunny and we woke up ready to paint the town red. Well, at least we were eager to go to the places we hadn’t been able to enter the previous day. Joy was quick to get ready and so we left. We stopped by a grocery shop and bought some breakfast. Lorenzo had stayed home so we would have to keep some contact with him so that we knew he would be in when we had to go back.The first place we decided to go was the Freud Museum. We already knew how to get there and now, going there first thing we would not have any problems entering. As we arrived there, about 10 am (yeah, tourists should be up earlier, but I guess I was too tired to try catching the best worms - the average ones were just fine). We would not be able to get in. Why? It was too crowded. One would have to wait some people to leave to enter. The museum is not a huge building or anything. It is the house where he had lived part of his live in Vienna. I found out later there is also a Freud museum in London where he lived the last part of his life after fleeing from the Nazi regime.We left the museum without entering and this failing was a nice way to practically demonstrating what castration or repression was. I was never a big reader of Freud, some essays, one or two complete books, but Joy was very curious about him so I was teaching her about his ideas, I mean, up to the limits my memory helped and as far as I had then managed to know about him.We went to a square nearby and there was a church there. The church inside was nothing special. But on the outside there was something quite peculiar. They were repairing the façade of the church and they used some wood to cover it and the ongoing work. But there is nothing special about covering whatever. The wood would simulate what it was covering so it was a kind of poster reproducing the façade, probably as it would be after the repairs. But that was not everything. A poster as big as the façade of a church would not be a the perfect billboard? Wide, visible. And so it was. But what could be advertised there? Well, it was a church, after all. Why not some coke, which is something every Catholic should be thankful to (I would be ironic here but decided to leave it to you). Well, should the Coke ad be sufficiently unexpected on the eyes of God, there was some other smaller ads. Near the entrance there was one which made us laugh. One of an alcoholic drink (by the way, their website is has a wonderful design - it is more a show) . We laughed and commented the Alcoholic Anonymous was probably in a different parish.Here you can see what I am talking about:

Then, we decided to go back to the museum. Now we were admitted. There were some rooms with pictures, some manuscripts, some letters, some signs explained some biographical facts. We talked about projection, about dreams, about psychoses. It was a very interesting visit and it would have been half the fun it was with Joy and her thousand and one questions.After that, we looked for another museum we could visit. We headed for the Academy of Fine Arts or Akademie der Bildenden Künste where we could see and discuss some art. Here I got in contact with a part of myself I didn’t even know it was there: the fine art critic. I started quizzing Joy about what made one portrait different from the other and who had painted it. We talked about style, color and when we went to the other rooms, the historian in me made his appearance. I would tell her all the biblical stories and Greek mythological situations I could remember (and some details I had to invent to fill some gaps). What could be a boring stroll on the museum was a funny and challenging adventure through history and art. There was a reprimand from a huge security woman because she said Joy was touching the painting, but she wasn’t. It was only her impression, but let’s keep a distance. It was past 3pm and we were starving. Before leaving, one more thing happened. We started looking for a toilet and as I found one, I saw something I hadn’t seen anywhere else in my trips. Only in an art museum they could have made something like that: it was a urinol. But any any type. It was a glassy wall with some sprinkles on eye level. There was a movement sensor so as soon as you passed in front of it, even if it was to enter the booths across from it, the sprinkle would go off and some sprays of water would run down the wall. Tell me if it was not a water waste as I didn’t use it but as I entered and left the booth, the sprinkles went off.

So, we had to think about where to eat. We went to the subway station and it was quite different from others we had been. There were many messages written in German in mirrors, with some counting devices. There was a fame sidewalk, some stars and autographs, but we could not really make out if those famous people had been in Vienna or not (I, for instance, took a picture of one star with the autograph of Claude Debussy.Anyway, we found one McDonald’s in the station and although I am not a big fan of fast food (or I thought I wasn’t till this trip) and we had a combo each. The funny thing I noticed then was that according to the country we were, there would be something different so the homogenizing impulse of globalization permitted some local variations. The fries were different: they were in the format of springs or pigs’ tails. No pics here because I would feel like I was making free advertising. If you want to see it, leave a comment and I send it to you. =)Well, the day could have ended there. No more tourist places. In my notebook I wrote there was an intermezzo and there are no pictures of anything. So, if Joy does remember anything that happened at the end of the afternoon, she will be the one to tell you, my dear readers. I have no idea. The next thing I remember was that we were back to Lorenzo’s place and we were checking emails, writing postcards. Oh, that’s it, we spent some time buying some postcards and magnets of Vienna and I remember we went to a bakery where the walls were pink. Or had it been the day before? Well, it doesn’t matter. It was a nice day.The thing is, as we were checking emails, I remembered one guy who had said he could not host me but was kind to invite me to his party of New Year with his friends. It would be a Latin party, but I ended up doing what my host had planned. But I wrote him a message I was in Vienna and would love to have some coffee with him so that he could get to know me and regret not hosting me (or be sure I was a crazy person and he was safe lol).Lorenzo had left for some reason, we were there using the net and I got a reply from the boy. He was suggesting us to meet later and giving his phone number. It turned out he lived very close to where we were so I wouldn’t have to cross the city to see him. I called him using my Skype and I told him we could meet later at the station.I told Joy what I was going to do. She said she would stay home waiting for Lorenzo. So I got ready and left. I had no expectations. People from couchsurfing tend to be warm and friendly, full of adventures and stories so i was sure we would have a nice time. As I arrived, he was already waiting for me. It was cold indeed and I was eager to go to some place, not to be walking around. His name was Enrique. I asked him where we were going. I hoped he didn’t suggest Café Magistrat because I had been there and I was curious about other bars in the neighborhood. He told me if I minded going to his house. I said it was no problem. Of course, I was a bit suspicious, but the part of me who is curious how weird things can get (it seems never to get enough) won the battle. We were talking in Portuguese, in which he was not so fluent, so I had to be careful to speak quite slowly and avoid using idioms from Brazil. Sometimes, when the conversation got jammed, we would resort to English or some Spanish. But it was not that bad. We talked about life, trips, pictures and films. He was drinking water and I was having a beer. Then since we were talking about movies, we decided to watch one. He told about one he had already watched: Intimacy . It was about the type of link established by the internet. Very convenient as a kind of metacommentary of our meeting. After it was over, I called the guys to see if they had gone out. in fact, they were home and were waiting for me to watch a movie together. I thanked him for the lovely night, took some pictures with him and went very fast back home. We decided on watching Wall-e, both Joy and I had already watched it but the movie belongs to that kind one should always go back to from time to time.We were tired but it was so nice to be there, watching a movie with two strangers who I had learned to respect and admire. Sleeping came fast and all was dark again.

Travel log - Europe - Day 17

2011-08-29T04:14:00.001-07:00

Day 17 - Asian surprise

So we woke up and we had something to eat. Soon Lorenzo would go to the station to pick up the girl from Hong Kong. I have to admit I was not so happy about losing the post of only couchsurfer, but he had told me she would sleep in the mattress on the floor and I would still keep the bed to myself. When she arrived with him, we had the introduction time and she seemed to be a nice girl. Lorenzo had to go somewhere and he let us there, in that awkward situation of I don’t know you very well. Her name was Joyce. A short and very lively girl, I felt we would hit off right away. Lorenzo had to leave for some reason and we stayed there, so that she could settle and we could get to know each other better.She was very kind as to offer half of the sandwich she had stolen from the breakfast at the hostel. It was cheese, so I had no reason to deny it. have I mentioned I love cheese? Before Lorenzo was back, we decided to go for a walk around the city. We should have thought better, especially after my experience in Berlin on the 25th. It was January 01 and the museums would not likely be open then. But instead of checking the net, we just left. I discovered she studied tourism so she had a different eye to whatever referred to hotels and the like. We had a guide from Vienna, but we were not so sure of what we were going to. I realized I had very poorly planned this trip. I should have studied what there was in each city and shortlist to 4 or 5 places I had to see. But I did not do that so I would have to look for the places on the spot. She didn’t have many preferences either. We were just going places, not an exact destination, roaming the streets, trying to get downtown.
We went past squares, statues, closed museums. She did not feel like entering Albertina. It was open, but it was not so appealing to her. so we kept going and I don’t remember how many places we went to, I just remember the frustrating impression we got that most of them were closed.
I was eager to visit the Museum of Freud. Why? Well, I had always liked to read his writings, I thought his lessons about knowing oneself were very relevant. I had studied a lot about subjectivity at university and psychoanalysis only came to help in those studies.
Anyway, one thing that amazed me was that Joyce was a supercurious girl. She asked me so many things about completely everything she could. I had to think fast and try to give her very deep answers. Some of them I felt so unable to answer. We talked about mythology, concepts, Plato, Brazil and its customs, Austrian, French people... name it and we probably exchanged some words about how it was invented or created. It was the perfect opportunity for me to face how much I have no idea about and that sometimes we cannot have a formed opinion about everything.
So, she told me it would be very nice to go to the Freud museum, but she asked me who Freud was. Another taken for granted fact. She had never heard of him. So I had to tell her, with much pleasure, whatever few details I knew about him. And as we got there, how lucky, it was open. We talked to the girl at the reception and she told us they would close in 15 minutes so we wouldn’t be able to buy a ticket. We should come back the next day. So, we had left the only open museum as the last one of the list and even then we were not admitted. As Alanis would say “Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think?”
We had one glimpse of what was to come inside by taking a picture of wall of the staircase which led to the reception.

After leaving the museum, we felt it would be better to return home and relax a little of doing almost nothing but walking in the cold and trying to visit closed places.
As we arrived at our dear host apartment, he was not there. It was funny because he had an extra set of keys for couchsurfer, something I had not heard of till my stay in Prague. however, he had not found them and we had to leave keyless and he would open the door for us as soon as we got back from our journey. We rang the bell. No one answered. We tried again. Nothing. Joy had a cellphone which was working and we tried calling him. He was not so close, he would take some hours to come back. We were cold and tired of the walking. What could we do? Well, there was a café just around the corner. We could go there and have something to warm us up. And so we did. The place was very exotic. It looked like those diners or bars you enter in a small town and the music stops, everyone stares at you, they know you are foreigner and they hostilize you just because it seems they are supposed to do it. Nonetheless, we were not so much hostilized. In fact, we were ignored. We asked for some menus and saw we had options of sandwiches and other appetizers. We ordered some drinks, Joy some beer and I tried a drink with wine and soda. It was a ridiculous drink and I hated it because it tasted like sprite and artificial strawberry juice. It was a drink for kids. The name of the place was Café Magistrat. Powerful but quite exotic.

This did not refrain me from trying these exotic drinks and foods, which I had no idea what were till they got to my table. Then, we talked and paid attention: every once in a while a kind of bell would ring. A woman would go out with a man, which resembled a security guard in his garment and style. It kept happening for quite some time and we wondered if that place was a place of mafia meetings because the atmosphere looked like that.
Then Lorenzo arrived and got us there. When went home, took a shower and started thinking what we should do. He said he was sorry he could not have gone out with us, but maybe at night we could make up for that. We were a bit hungry so we decided to go to a restaurant. We walked to one, but it was too crowded so he said we should head for another one. There, we were in doubt about what to choose and he suggested some traditional Viennese dishes (or were they Austrian? I don’t remember.) I know each of us asked for something different and I was the only one to ask for a soup as a starter. It was funny to see how he soup started to be a kind of travel companion. It marked how different it was from here. We posed a little bit and took some pictures with or without the food. We had a lot of fun together and as usual I offered to eat Joy’s leftovers, which she could not eat anymore. I hate wasting food, so I am known among my friends among that person who finished the unfinished dishes. I wouldn’t do that there, I had no idea whether it would sound rude or anything, but I was brave, so why not?

After dinner, we strolled near the river and we saw a beautiful building. According to our host, it was a fancy restaurant and the ceiling was a piece of art. It was a beautiful view. He said we could go there next day by sunset to see it and to drink some very expensive coffee because it was a pricey and fancy place.
I suggested we went to a karaoke, because I like to take any chance I have to sing and he took us to a bar, and this time I blessed couchsurfing because it was in a kind of alley, I would never find it there, and we sang some songs. We stayed in a different room and all the people were by the bar, but at a certain moment of the night we interacted with the guys from another table. The highlight of the night was me dancing with Joy and Lorenzo singing like a pro Sinatra “I did it my way”. He was singing and I was looking at him, dazzled by his talent and voice and he would smile at me and sing on and I wished I could freeze time and stop there, at that moment, his singing and his beauty pouring on him like breeze and drizzle. The lights were low and the video I made could barely show him and make justice to the way he was singing, with his heart. Another moment for my collection of magical ones.
We walked through an alley and Lorenzo told us the story of “Der liebe Augustin”. There was a bar with this name, resembling those medieval inns, but we just saw it from the outside. We were not so into entering. We were quite tired and preferred to go home in order to save some energy for the next day.

The Gap

2011-08-29T03:59:00.000-07:00

So, it's such a been long time I don't post anything here. I am sure people have already lost hope I would ever finish my trip stories and I gave up about half way through. In fact, I thought it would be so, as life got me in such a context I felt things would never be under control again. Every week a couple of new problems to be solved, of things to be done for yesterday, and time went by flying on wings of a boeing. I didn't want to be away. I was put away, and that's all.

But here I am. As the phoenix, I keep coming back from the ashes, somewhat better, somewhat stronger.

And the project must go on. The promise must be kept. I shall get to the end of it, even if it takes me on year to report one month. I was having fun doing it, so I don't care people think it was so long ago and all. The memories are here, the experiences are patches in the quilt which is my soul, and I shall get to the end of it. Even if it takes years. Even if I have to go against the grain. Come and see.

O silêncio do furacão

2011-08-20T15:52:00.001-07:00

Aqui, um se coloca em cima do outro,
Urgenciando e
Brotando como erva daninha,
Me confundindo e tirando meu
sono.

Meias verdades, meias vontades, meias bocas.
Um desejo me consumindo,
de criar, de completar projetos
inconclusos.
Sinto-me cada vez mais morrendo na praia.
O tempo me trai a cada segundo, tic, minuto, hora, tac.

Respiro um segundo e vejo a grama verdejante
Na minha cabeça pelo menos.
As pilhas crescem e ousam me desafiar que
cobrirão o sol!
Eu paro e penso.

Reajo, da forma que puder.
Ainda sei alçar voos.
Ainda estou aqui
E continuo sabendo que
a vida vinga, vela ao vento.

RESPOSTA: Serás feliz

2011-07-11T20:56:00.000-07:00

O poema anterior tinha um objetivo específico. Dele surgiu um de resposta, que ganhei do LVA. Muito promissor e uma excelente resposta (mudei dois versos que indico, pra ter a rima que ele queria).

***
Quando eu chego
Sorriso aberto
Quando eu saio
Rosto incerto

Seu universo entra em pânico
Quando não apareço
Apenas um desengano
E seu coração já do avesso

Logo logo dou notícias
Eu estava bem
Lembrado de tuas carícias
E do teu amor também

Por isso, te amo

Pra você tudo faço
Arrepias meu corpo cada pedaço

Amo te lembrar
Que vivemos a simplicidade que sempre quis
E te faço acreditar
Que comigo serás feliz

Te esperando

2011-07-05T21:08:00.001-07:00

O silêncio grita a minha volta
Eu só precisando de uma
palavra.
Mas insistentemente, só a certeza
de que você não está lá.

Um navio vai tomando meu peito e
naufraga pelos membros.
Uma apreensão
Um pesado pilar vai se desfazendo,
Pintura nova riscada.

Cada janela que se abre, um suspiro
Aqui dentro faz frio
mas falta
você. Falta mais do que o normal.
Não tem muito pra onde correr.

Então eu fico aqui, agonizando,
colecionando geografias
desenhando
mapas que divisam o desespero
da bonança.

E você está voando,
elsewhere.
Inatingível,
E meu corpo, minha mente,
em vão, tentam entoar uma canção feliz.

Anti-post

2011-06-21T18:45:00.000-07:00

Não.
Isso não é um post
definitivamente.

Afinal, aquilo, aquilo não mereceu ser
post.
Aquilo merece ser devaneio.

Mas a luz apagou rápido
demais.
Mas ficou meio fora de foco.

Teve a forma, a cor, a textura
Tava tudo tão ali
Me deixando tão

deslavado? deslevado? desligado? deslocado? deslumbrado?
despachado? desperdiçado? despirocado? desponderado? despudorado?
desassossegado, brigado, seu Fernando.

E de repente, o jogo inverte.
O que era pra ver, passou a
ser visto.

E pensar que era a primeira
feita.
Quiça a última.

Mas ah se não me deixou
com vontade
de quero mais.

Travel log - Europe - Day 16 (second part)

2011-06-18T17:40:00.000-07:00

Day 16-7 from hero to villain in just a wart

My host wanted to establish a conversation on the subway, and I noticed his French was perfect. I felt it would be impolite not to enter the game. As soon as we arrived, a bunch of seven or eight French people were waiting for us. I thought they would be talking French but they greeted me in English when they knew I was Brazilian. As we started walking, Lorenzo kept talking to his friend, Selim. And one of the guys started talking to me. His name was Louis. And he was an engineer. Any similarities? And yes, he was just as good-looking as the other Louis. He started asking me many questions and when I told him I was an English teacher I thought he would feel uncomfortable. He told all the other guys and they all reacted enthusiastically and I felt surprised. He told me I should correct him when he made a mistake and that it would be so nice to practice. I felt at home. And the conversation went on till we were in the apartment. There I could talk more to the other people from the group and we had drinks, some cake and a lot of laughter. I did not interact much with people from Austria there. There was a girl taking pictures and we exchanged some sentences.

We went to the roof since the party was in a penthouse. And it was almost midnight so we saw the fireworks almost in the middle of the fireworks. It was a beautiful scene, the cold, the fireworks almost hitting us and all the people saying happy New year in many languages. They asked how they could say that in Portuguese.

Back to the inner part of the apartment, I stepped on one of the French girl’s foot. I apologized but Martin, one of the guys, told me I should bow and give her a massage. It was obvious he was making a joke but I put myself in my knees and as we were barefoot I excused myself and took her foot and started rubbing it. She really liked the massage. I knew she would because I have some experience with that. It was so nice to see their faces as she said it was good and the other girls and Martin said they wanted it too. So I took everyone’s feet and spent some time rubbing them. The funny thing was that martin wanted to embarrass me all along and every time he tried, I gave him such answers he started to feel embarrassed instead of the other way around. Never challenge me to see who can be nastier. I am quite respect but when challenged...
It was funny anyway. I went to the other room where people were dancing and I danced a lot. First, I danced alone and after, one of the girls, the most beautiful one (in my opinion) accepted to dance with me. I had so much fun as we spun around the room and made some steps I was inventing but did so as she thought I was an acceptable dancer. Then, I went back to the dining room and it was when thing began to go downhill.
First there was the story of the pepper. One Austrian guy gave Martin a chilli and asked if he was brave to bite it. He bit first and then when I arrived the poor French boy was almost crying. He said it was too strong. He was drinking water, wine, anything, he started eating the cake, he was going crazy. He wanted to punch the guy and I had to use of a lot of patience to calm him down. He said I told him to calm down because it was not me who was burning so I took the rest of the chilli and ate so that he could see I was brave and he could hold it. It was the strongest I had ever had. I held strong and he started to calm down. And I learned one should never bite a chilli in a different country.
By this time my friendship with Louis had withered. As soon as we arrived there I discovered one of the girls was his girlfriend. I was very skeptical that his approach had second intentions but up to that moment they had not displayed any kind of public affection. But on the party she got a bit cross, and he just left to stick with her till the end. I was being very detached and respectful, what was surprising, but true. Anyway, he went away and never came back to the groups I was in. Pity because the talks were amazing. After that, I managed to hit on the two other guys, Martin and Selim. Maybe it was the drinks, though I was not drunk. Maybe it was the loneliness and the fact I was far from home. I had some courage to, during our nice talks, make sure they noticed my interest in them. But they politely declined and I felt very happy, because the trying was much more meaningful than the achieving.
Finally, the tragedy came. I was massaging Sabine’s (the dancer) back and she was loving it. Then Selim wanted to learn how to do it, but he was not impressing as much strength as he should to make it effectively. I asked him to try on “my girl” while another would volunteer to serve as a model. One of them did so, the one I had had less contact with. And while I rubbed her neck, I would give him some advice on how to move the fingers and all, Then I pressed one wart she had on her back. It started bleeding. Game was over. She got completely upset. An awkward atmosphere took over as the girls aided her and everyone was commenting. She deeply resented having volunteered and she looked at me with contempt. The boys were understanding and saw it had been an accident, but the girls openly hostilized me. So there I was, turned into a monster after making the princess bleed. She left without saying goodbye to anyone. I had already apologized, but I guess she never forgave me.
It was almost 3am, I was tired and so was Lorenzo, so as the guys left we took the chance to do the same. We took a cab, which seemed as miraculous as riding Santa’s sledge at that moment and went home telling each other stories and our impressions of the night. We were both very happy with everything. But tomorrow a new person would arrive? Who would that girl be?

The Promise

2011-06-15T20:01:00.000-07:00

Ah, o menino pensou. Ele não entendia o que significava um ato performático, ele não entendia o que estava errado. Foi fuçando na memória, sua história pessoal, prescrutada. Interrogada.
Ele deu um passo na direção de Gê e sentiu o calor de sempre. A barba mal feita, faz o quê, um mês, e ela pinica. Os óculos escuros escudam olhares azulados, assim, no meio da fumaça e ele não diz não. Só diz que amanhã, amanhã talvez. Ele ri embaraçado, e ainda comenta dos cogumelos. Ele é cruel? Não sabe como articular não. Por que demora tanto? A promessa erguida há tempos que já se amarelam, mantém-se firme, ainda que castelo de cartas. Seria super bonder? Quem colou as cartinhas? Bate vento e nada. A casa não cai. Mas ela também não protege das intempéries do tempo.

O menino força mais um pouquinho e o Érre aparece como uma tela azul. Aqui não foi a promessa, mas as mil e umas pequenas esperanças, pequenas frases que se perdem no torvelinho e saem no banho com umas duas esfregadas de bucha. Tão fácil, descem pelo ralo e deixam um gosto amargo na boca e uma sensação gordurosa, daquelas que nem deter gente tira. Mas essas são ilusões, são borboletas que pousam na flor e morrem.

Daí, o menino se depara com a promessa mais recente, indecente. De um certo Dábliu, nas ondas da www. Mesmo em possibilidades remotas, em chances pequenas, a proposta feita, aceita, acertada. Porém, sempre os obstáculos e adia-se, um dia e dois e muitos. Ausência vira algo como uma confirmação da desistência. Ganhei por WO. Ou melhor, perdi. Mas não, eis que das cinzas retorna, e acende a chama. Pandora volta e ri, gargalha um pouquinho, botando a mão na caixa do menino e prometendo. Prometendo.

Não fica cego. Eu vou abrir. Mas hoje não, amanhã.

centro de são paulo

2011-06-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

Hoje acabei indo andar
no centro.

Tanta gente, assim. Dando passo
depois de passo.

Tudo assim, dois a dois,
sabe?

Tudo indo pro mesmo lado mas sem caminhar
na mesma direção.

Vários sonhos, eu vi.
Desejos e pensamentos e tanta canseira.

Vitrines, eu vi.
Tanta energia, expectativas e dor.

Tinha os terno e gravata.
E tinha os farrapos. Tudo assim, andando dois a dois.

daí, eu voltei pra minha casa,
pra ficar no computador.

porque a realidade é só sonho
e aqui eu existo.

Travel log - Europe - Day 16

2011-06-15T08:52:00.000-07:00

Day 16 - “What a swell party this is”

So, I look around the apartment and feel a mixture of pain and excitement as I listen to the click of the lock. I am leaving again. Alone. The pseudo-morning (as it is still dark) blows some wind and I remember it is as cold as hell. I drag the suitcase by the sidewalks and it makes a loud noise as if I was walking with a small stone crusher. I was even curious how someone would not open the window and throw a vase, some egg or whatever on me. I went faster so that the noise would bother less, but it got stronger. And there was nobody on the streets. I arrived at the bus station and the bus was already there. I checked if I could sit with someone who was alone, but as I had two tickets with me, I had the two seats to lie down and sleep. In the end, I barely took a picture on the way and sleep more than stayed awake. But the sun was shining and it was almost lunchtime when I got off the bus in Vienna soil. It seemed to be less cold there. I went to the subway, crossing the streets and thanked heaven for those elevators.
Soon I would get to the station near where my new host lived and I would be getting to know him.
By the way, a parenthesis. When I was in Prague, something funny happened. I was supposed to stay at a girl’s apartment. She had been so nice and welcoming. It would be the first time I would be hosted by a girl. Two days before leaving Prague, she sent a message in CS and told me she was sick and would not be able to host me. Despair. What could I do? Last minute couch? Probably. I felt helpless and I would have to find a solution fast. Some emails later, about ten minutes of despair, there was an email from a guy I had also requested a couch. He was telling me he would stay in Vienna and I could go there if I wanted. So convenient. As I said before, “God takes, God gives” was a sentence I would keep saying like a mantra when I had this unexpected experiences. So, he would be my host, not her.
I had already told my host I would arrive by lunchtime. So I expected he would go there to the station to pick me up, as he said he would. So I waited. And this was the beginning...
After waiting for half an hour or so, I decided to go upstairs, outside the station and call my host. I had the number. Then, I found a phone booth but it was a fight to enter there with my suitcase. When I managed to do it, I had to put some coins and call him. But no way it would work. After several failed attempts, I decided to look for another booth, checking if he was not there by the exit of the station. Another payphone and nothing. I decided to look for the place as I had the address and I set off. According to him, he lived very close to the station. I went along the big avenue and looked for the street name. Nothing. 20 minutes walking, I was far from the center. Maybe it was the other side. My internal GPS was defective. More 20 minutes to go back to the station and 10 more to the other side and no sign of the street. I panicked. Let’s ask for information? No one knew. A guy with a GPS in his cellphone told me I should go back and I did and still nothing. I was sweating, there was no snow on the sidewalks but a lot of small rocks they throw to prevent people from falling. But when there is no snow and only rocks, they just destroyed one of the wheels of my suitcase. I found one internet place and asked if they had skype. This would not fail. But it did. The call would not be completed. I wanted to go to the toilet, I needed to eat something but I had no food and I could not think of an alternative when I looked for the street in google maps. I drew it in my notebook and I finally found it. It was 4 minutes walking from the station, but the street had two different names each side of the avenue and I was on the other side so I hadn’t seen it. But I made it. Or not. He had given me the name of the street and the number, but it was a building. I felt lost again. What was his apartment? I sat on the curb and was ready to start crying. I wanted to go back to Brazil. Very adventurous guy, right? One who knows just how to solve problems.
I felt some courage coming from another dimension and I stood up and started ringing all the apartments bells and in one I would be lucky to find him. Or else, I would for him to leave or enter till nightfall. I would be camping there on the sidewalk. One, two, three, nothing. Some apartments were empty. No answer. Four, five, six, seven. I guess my idea was not so good. When I got to number 10, there was a man’s voice and he unlocked the door, but I tried pushing it and nothing happened. I gave up. A couple arrived and the newly acquired courage made me ask if they knew my host. I was in the process of describing him and they told me, there is someone coming. It was him, without the long hair and a bit annoyed I hadn’t called him. So I explained what had just happened and he was a bit suspicious. He tried calling himself in his skype and couldn’t. So he realized I was not inventing all that.
We sat and talked. Lorenzo was a nice guy, a real gentleman and very funny. His English was very good and his apartment very cozy. He told me there was a mattress for surfers but as his flatmate was not there, I could take his bed.
I had something to eat, I was starving as it was about 3pm. We talked a bit more about our lives, stories and I felt he was another person I would very likely miss a lot after leaving. He told me he had big plans for that night. First he would visit his father and brother, then we would go together to a dinner at a friend’s house and finally we would go to an international Silvester Party. It was the name they give to the New Year Party. That’s why we have St Silvester race! And nobody had ever told me that.
Then, I was ready for some rest and he got ready to leave. I would wait for him at the apartment while his visited his family.
***
We were ready to go. And it was the first chance I had of taking a picture of him.

At the first party, there were about 8 people. The hostess was a very friendly girl. She had a frank and wide smile. She seemed one person I would easily get on with soon. The menu started with a seafood soup and after that there were some vegetables and meat for us to put in a kind of grill and we would have them with some and dipping sauces.
But it was not only eating and having fun. The apartment was beautiful and the people seemed to nice but something happened. At a certain point, not long before we had arrived and he had introduced me to people, they started talking in German. I understand a little bit, cannot speak it at all, but they wouldn’t care about introducing me to the talk. They laughed and commented, spoke for one hour or more and I was there, trying to figure out what to do. Even Lorenzo and the other girl who had been cool to me were focused in the conversations and sometimes he would let me know what they were talking. Then I decided to focus on the food and I could not help thinking about my friends, who had arranged to spend New Year together. They would be there speaking Portuguese and laughing, but I decided to relax and enjoy the way I could.
Soon we left and headed for the station to go to the other party. Lorenzo explained to me that he had a friend who spoke French and he was with a group of friends there. Then I started imagining they would be speaking French and I just wanted to speak English to feel at home. And many things happened at this party. But this will be released in the following post.

Travel log - Europe - Day 15

2011-06-10T14:29:00.001-07:00

Day 15 - or trying to reach the top

As usual I bravely fought the cold and the laziness which were constantly there to haunt me and got up and bought some supplies in the bakery near the apartment.
I got the subway and instead of getting off before the river, I got off just after the bridge, right into the Jewish district. The streets were very similar to the ones downtown, but there was a difference by the number of synagogues one could see. I entered one of them, as it said it was also a museum, but to have access to the inside of the place or the the museum, one had to pay an entrance fee which was more than what I had paid for lunch in a fancy restaurant the day before. As I was not so into religious stuff and I remembered a lot of jokes about Jews and money (no antisemitism intended), I decided to go to other parts of town. I walked and walked a bit, till I arrived at a bridge. Crossing it I could see a hill and there was something up there but I had no idea what. Could it be the castle? I got the feeling it was the castle.

But the only way I could get there was to go up a set of stairs which were a bit full of snow. I remembered Louis in Belgium telling us how dangerousit was to mix snow and stairs, that we should be double careful because a lot of people died climbing or going down stairs in the winter. I was afraid, I could see some people on the other side, they looked locals but they were having a hard time trying to go down the stairs to arrive where I was. But there was no one around to tell me it was not a good idea, so I started the journey upstairs.

The boots I was wearing were not the most appropriate ones. They were slippery, which made it more difficult for me to keep on. By the picture, you can see that the left side was a bit less full of snow, so it was the side I decided to try. I would constantly stop, look down to see if I should go back but the idea of going back seemed even worse than continuing. I was sweating despite the cold wind. I started grabbing the tree branches and the wall. Each step, a new possibility. Slips. I had less than 50 to go now. How long had I been doing that? Half an hour? Why was I being so suicidal? Whatever the answer was, I got up there and it was really worth it.
There was a belvedere from which I could see the whole city. And there was a park, empty at that time and maybe because it was so difficult to get up there. After some time I would discover it would have been easy if I had taken the tram, but not as exciting. I walked around the park and sat on a bench where I could see the city and take some of the most beautiful pictures, in regard to landscapes.

I started crossing the park to see where I would end up and I discovered that was the park just beside the Royal Garden. If that was the RG, the castle wold not be very far from me. So I was correct. By the way, that golden tower I had seen, similar to a lighthouse was a restaurant in the park. Following my directional instincts, there it was, I had finally made it. The castle.

After the peace and quiet of the park with almost no living soul, me and the landscape, the castle was swarming with tourists. The ticket was not so cheap again but it included the visit in more than 5 attractions. In fact, you could choose a more economic version, depending on your interest. The attractions I mean here are: the castle itself, the St. Vitus cathedral, the museum of history, the convent, St. George Basilica. There are all the attractions here. I spent a long time going through the castle and the museum of history. My luck I had read a lot about Prague history in my new guide, so I knew about the settlement of Prague, the wars and kings. So the museum served as an illustration of my studies. I didn’t want to purchase a headphone guide, but there were explanatory texts and all. It was possible to take pictures and I put two here as illustration.

In the cathedral

The convent

Because it took me so long to visit all the attractions, as I had paid for the combo with 5 (one would be open only after 3 pm, so I decided not to wait. I was hungry and I decided to go down trying to find a nice and cheap restaurant. I ended up eating a big sandwich at Subway. Eating Subway would always remind me of Carol, so it was a kind of homage to her. Then I decided to look for a store to buy some gifts and it was quite difficult to find one in the part of town I was. It was very cold, I believe that was the coldest day I got in Europe. I believe it was -10 or -12. My nose was so cold I was afraid it was going to break in my hand when I put both hands to heat it. I didn’t feel like walking so I went “home” by tram. I had not taken any and I took 3. I had no idea where I was going but I remembered number 12 would drop me near. Or was it number 19? Anyway, it was already dark when I got there.

Something bad that happened this day was that there was no friend of the day. Considering my host the first day and his flatmate and Marek in the second, it was the first day I met no one new. Well, it would not be the only day, but the mission was going well till then.

I started packing since my bus to Vienna the next day would be very early. My luck was that the international bus station was in Florenc, so I would be able to get there walking and it was 10 minutes away (so I didn’t have to wake up much ealier). We still had some time to talk, as it was not so late at night. There were the rituals of saying goodbye for Jiri: he keeps a guestbook, in which his guests can write any impressions they had. Also, a drawing book, but I didn’t have time for drawing. I wrote him a poem. A list of how to say toilet in my language. And a traditional picture.
We sat on the kitchen, talking, drinking tea, and a lot of drinks - specially a tasty rum made of sugar beet known as tuzemák - and we talked about the capitals of the world and Brazil and many other things. It was a lovely way to say goodbye.

Travel log - Europe - Day 14

2011-06-09T20:20:00.001-07:00

Day 14 - My Brazilian face and no castle

Waking up. Ah, so delicious to see you are in a different place and you feel so eager to discover all the secrets of the place, but it can wait. They will be there at 9 in the morning, but also at noon. So, more half an hour of blankets and sleep.
Jiři had already left for work. So it took me almost an hour to get ready and go. I went to the subway station because I had already walked to the city before.
As I arrived close to the center, I got off in a different station and I would be able to see different streets. I had not established any plan of where I might be going. I was just going, after all, it was Prague and wherever you went there was something (or someone) interesting to see.
As I walked toward the main square direction, I started recognizing all the streets I had been the day before. It was a good impression, having been there before, a kind of deja vu feeling. Suddenly, what do I see? The restaurant I had spent hours looking for the previous afternoon. There they were, the windows, with the writing on them. So, I decided to check for the prices and be sure now I knew where it was. When I found the door, dear me, it was the restaurant I had entered the afternoon before! As I had come from the other side of the street, I hadn’t seen the windows, ten steps away from the door. In the end, I ate where I had wanted to, unaware. So I giggled and moved on.
Wandering, as any good flaneur would, through the tourist-filled streets I saw many places. There were many small museums, like the one about torture and terror, which called my attention, I wanted to go back there (but never found it again). So in one of the narrow streets I saw a sign of a museum about Kepler. I had heard about this scientist but I had no idea he had been Czech. One more to the list I could have used in the bar. As I didn’t want to miss this one, I headed for it, entering a kind of gallery. I found the museum, which turned out to be a large room, with some posters about the life and works of Kepler. Also, some models to illustrate his theories. However, the funniest part was when I entered the place. There was a woman, a middle-aged lady. I said “Hello”. She looked at me astonished and asked me: “Brazilian?”
It was my turn to be puzzled. How the hell did she guess? There was nothing in my clothes that could tell it, nothing in my voice since I had only said hello. She continued: “From São Paulo?” And I started nodding in accordance. She started talking to me in a mixture of Czech, Italian and English. And we established a short conversation, thank to my linguistic ability to understand whatever people are talking in an unknown language. I paid the 0,30 cents of Czech crown and started reading the posters.

She was so happy to have a Brazilian there. For what I could understand, she had a cousin or a nephew who had married a Brazilian girl and moved to São Paulo. So, I felt no one had the right to think me Mexican (like the guy on the train). Me and my Brazilian from São Paulo face. =)
After that, I found a big building and discovered it was the National Museum, the new building. It was not so cheap to enter, and I hoped the posters and all were bilingual as in the Kepler museum. There were about three exhibitions: one about inventions, one about the history of a certain region of the Czech Republic and one about insects. The latter was only in Czech so I did not spend much time there. And I felt sorry for the people who visited museums in São Paulo because I had seen none prepared for foreigners. When my Finnish friend had visited some years before, I had to be there with him, to explain. Maybe it will change with the upcoming international events which will be held here, who knows. Anyway, I am digressing here. I took some pictures when the guards were not looking because I bought the cheapest ticket and if one wanted to take pictures, s/he would have to purchase the other type, the more expensive ticket.
As a kind of divine vengeance for being a nasty boy, almost all the pictures were blurred.

As I went to the old building of the museum, across the street, I learned I would have to buy another ticket and it was crowded. So I looked at the clock, it was past one and I hadn’t had a big breakfast. It was time to decide where to have lunch. i hated having to decide by myself and have no one to give a second opinion. Then I remembered the suggestion the American couple had given in Berlin. I had already found the restaurant in my way to the Kafka museum. So, it was not so near but walking was all one had to do. On the way, as I was walking a wide avenue with a lot of stores in both sides, I decided to enter a bookstore and buy another guide. My guide was not complete and I wanted to study Czech history. You can call me a defeated or pseudo nerd, but I was still feeling the weight of my stupidity, the night before. I took the opportunity for also buying some postcards and getting hungrier.
As I arrived at the restaurant Tri Stoleti I realized what I hadn’t the day before. It seemed to be quite an expensive place. The atmosphere was very cozy, the lights, the background music. As I sat a beautiful waitress came to serve me and she was very friendly. I ordered the usual: soup to warm up, then some traditional food, which here meant pork and some bread dumplings. The traditional glass of wine, but I wanted it to be Czech and white, for a change. Then I was full, but she offered me dessert. I felt I couldn’t and asked her about some traditional Czech dessert. She mentioned the Apfel Strudel, which I thought to be traditional in all the countries around. But why not? And when it came it was a surprise for the eyes and a bliss for the taste. I almost cried as I ate it, so exquisite it was and I wanted to ask for another one, but it would make me explode. It was probably one of the most delicious things I have eaten during the trip. And the best: when the check came, I had spent only about 20 euros, a bargain for the type of service I had had.

After that, I started heading for the castle. Jiři had suggested that and asked me if I had gone there. So I tried to find it again. It was getting colder and dark and I could not find the castle, though I am pretty sure I got close to it. I did find a post office, or Posta, as they call it.
So I decided to go home because I would have a date.
A date?, you may ask. Not really. I was going out with a guy from the couchsurfing site who hadn’t been able to host me but had some time off to go out. I called him, I told him where he could pick me up and there we went for an adventure, with the blessings of my dear host.
His name was Marek and he told me we would be going to a new bar because he had got an ad on the net and he would get 5 free drinks.
The place was called Suzana. It was a very weird place, and this is from a guy who has been to reaaaally strange places. He was driving so he didn’t want to drink a lot so we asked 4 types of drinks and I drank most of it. We talked about life and culture and many other things but I saw no spark on his eyes. I was also not so interested as well, so we kind of agreed it would be just a tacit “we are just friends”.
We left the bar and he asked me if I wanted to go to a club. I agreed because this kind of invitation had been rare till then and it might not happen anytime soon. We went to a club named Friends. There was a Brazilian night (!) going on, whatever that was. The guy discovered only later I was Brazilian, by the way. So we danced a bit, talked a bit, drank (he was drinking soft drinks, remember?). I tried to hunt, not much success, he asked me if there was anyone interesting, I said yes, he told yes for him, but nothing happened. No approach and he told me he was tired and he wanted to go. There were some Italians there trying to get everyone (us not included) and I felt staying there might make me feel like “How soon is now”, so he told me I could stay, it would be easier to go back by tram or subway. I decided to go, I was a guest and did not want to arrive soooo late. We went and he took me home. The moment of goodbye could be an opportunity to try something, to move one base, but he was so dismissive, like “have a good night and a good life” that I felt it was better to admit defeat and withdraw (not that I was so wanting it anyway - and don’t read any rejection resentment here, I mean it, there was none).
Maybe tomorrow, my last day, I would find castle. What other surprises would I have in my final touring around?

Travel log - Europe - Day 13

2011-06-05T20:10:00.001-07:00

Day 13 - One should have studied it better

So, here I was. Ready to explore a whole new country, a different language, far from whatever I had studied or had contact before. Alright, the alphabet is Latin, but it was quite an experience.
I tried to wake up but I didn’t even manage to move the blanket. Maybe half an hour more? One hour later, I was leaving. I decided to take a picture of the name of the street and the building. Just in case I got lost when I wanted to return. I headed the same way back to the station. There was a church and a square next to where my host lived. There were some small stores and grocery stores around. As I got to the station, I decided not to get the subway. I wanted to go walking to the center of the city, there was no sign but anyway I felt like walking. And I kept walking and following my instincts to get farther and farther. I could not see anything like a big building or whatever, but I knew I was going to the right place. And in less than 20 minutes I got to the center.
The streets, the buildings started to change from the colorful low buildings to some bigger, ornamented buildings, the first tower was seen.

As soon as I arrived downtown, I saw a street fair with magnets, handicraft and many other things. I felt like buying some paintings but god knew how I would never be able to carry it (or them). I bought a Prague hood, and it would be a present for sure (which I kept to myself).
Then I decided to start visiting some places. There was some sunshine but the wind was cold. It was about time I entered somewhere to get warm. The Kubist Museum was the first place visited. I had learned to respect the avant-guards since the wonderful visits to Magritte and Dali. It was very pleasant and the museum was almost empty. I loved the Cubist furniture, and felt my furniture was so ordinary.

Very soon I arrived at the central square. The cathedral was sitting there, magnanimously. A lot of tourists around. I saw the astronomical clock, there was a bride and a groom, I think they are always there only for tourists to take pictures. There were other important and different buildings. I saw the river and the bridge but I decided to stay in one side of the river and crossing for some exploration only after lunch. By the way, it was almost 1pm and I was getting hungry. As I had to choose for myself where I was eating, I had been paying attention to that since I had arrived downtown. In fact, I had already chosen a restaurant to go. One which had its menu written on the window, with some special ink. I had liked the place and I wanted there to be the first restaurant I was in Prague. So I tried to walk back the same way I had come from. But there were so many small streets, almost alleys. What could I do to find it? I could not ask because I had not paid attention to the NAME of the place. But hey, not many have the menus written on windows, right? None. Let’s keep walking. For almost an hour! Hunger was taking over and I felt cold and tired. I decided to be a bit more flexible and give up looking for the restaurant. I entered the first one I saw and sat. There was no table for one. Only for two or four. There was a group of Americans near me, and some French friends. I kept staring at the chair across from the table and I could not believe there was nobody there. I ordered some pasta and pork steaks and while I waited I took off my coat. A suggestion is never to sit near the door, because keeping the coat on makes you feel too hot and taking it off makes you chill as people enter or leave. And while I was waiting the radio was playing some very nice songs like Michael Jackson’s “Your not alone” and Enya’s “Sail away”. Is it very impolite or disrespectful to etiquette to cry in restaurants?
Anyway, the food was tasty and I was ready to face the cold again,after some soup and wine.
I left the restaurant still a bit annoyed for it was not exactly what I wanted to have, where I wanted to be. But I headed for the bridge, the most famous of them all, Carlos bridge or Karluv most.

In this picture, I managed to get some details of the bridge, the people and part of the city. As I was crossing the bridge I saw a banner of the Kafka museum. I was not a big fan of him, having read the Metamorphosis, Letter to father and some short stories, but as a student of literature, I felt compelled to go there and learn a bit more about him. So the matter now was to find out how I could get there.
The museum was very easy to find as there was a banner I could see from the bridge. When I found it, there were some statues of two men pissing. It was not as famous as the pissing boy we DIDN’T see in Brussels, but it was nice because I got a picture of a guy “helping” the statue. After that, at night Jiři told me these guys were made by an important and controversial Czech artist, David Cerný.

Then I entered the museum. It was a delicious surprise. It was quite different from other experiences in museums: the lights, the way the manuscripts, his biography were scattered around the rooms of a two-storey house was remarkable. There were sounds, some pictures in a small structure with water, resembling a river. It was not so cheap to enter, but definitely worth it. There was a room in which one wall was a mirror, whose meaning I could not grasp (there was a relation to a certain novel).

As I left the museum, it was getting dark. I wanted to go places the other side of the bridge, but it was also colder. Colder than I had imagined. So I decided to walk back to the station I had seen and take the subway to return. Walking home in that cold didn’t seem the smartest thing to do. On my way to the station I entered a different street and there I was, in the middle of one Christmas fair. It was crowded and some guys were playing some medieval-like songs. I had some hot wine and it made me feel better for another 10 minutes. I saw the black house which had been Kafka’s house. It is so different to walk around a place after visiting a museum or reading more than I had about it.
In no time I returned “home”. My host was already there and he introduced me to one of his roommates, Vlastin. He was a friendly and intelligent guy, though he had the tendency or mania to intimidate the guests before showing how nice he was. I guess it was a kind of test. Or his charms, depending on from what perspective you look at it.
I had some tea, what later became a tradition. It was miraculous, it was really cold. (I learned later Prague had the coldest temperatures of all my trip).
Jiři let me use his computer and I could send messages to home and check on Carol. I looked around and I still could not believe she was not there, sitting on the other bed and rambling about how Kafka this or how that guy on the subway that.
But as she had told me, I was supposed to have a lot of fun, so I engaged in conversation with my Czech host and those evenings with him were so energizing, so peaceful. His way to look at life, or how he was learning Chinese because of his girlfriend. And the way he so promptly answered my questions. We talked about everything. And he taught me some Czech. I would be able to understand all the different symbols and pronounce any word correctly. Thanks to my lessons of linguistics and his patience, I could read well though I had no idea what I was reading.
Then, we went to a bar nearby. He told me it would be a noisy and cigarette-stinky experience. But I guess the cold had prevented people from leaving their houses. The bar was half-empty and not so noisy so we could talk a lot. I was there with the two boys and a girl who was a friend of Vlastin’s. The night would have been perfect, had we not started a game. It was a kind of quiz. Jiři asked his friends what they knew about Brazil. Of course the traditional Carnival and soccer came first, but they knew a lot of other things about Brazil. Paulo Coelho had just released a book there and Jiři had read him. So far, so good. Then, the game was inverted and they asked me (after having some Czech drinks to taste) what I knew about the Czech Republic. I started thinking and nothing came to my mind. Nervousness removed all the remaining ideas. Seeing my hesitation, they tried to help. “So, let’s start with the basics, what’s the capital?”, he asked. I started thinking. He added: “This one is difficult”. I was so nervous I did not read the irony in his tone of voice. I thought” “difficult?! like Australia or Canada maybe, everyone thinks the capital is one city and it is another”. And the first city which came to my mind was Cracow. And I said that. Total failure. They laughed a lot and told me it might be if Cracow was in the Czech Republic and not in Poland. I wanted to hide my head in the earth... After that, the big intellectual discovered he was IN the capital of the country. And a lot of things started coming to my mind: Milan Kundera, Prague Winter, Czech cinema. But I feeling so down because of my stupid mistake I wanted to make up somehow.
Another interesting thing that happened that night was that in the toilet, in the urinals they had put some slices of orange and lemon. I had never seen that even in Brazil, only ice or some kind of small balls for that purpose. And Jiři had noticed that and said we were pissing on orange that night but his grandfather had told him stories of how he was happy to get one orange as Christmas gift, when he was young. This made me wonder and hate Stalin (and what he represented) a bit more. After more talking, I couldn’t hate anyone because I was too busy snoring. =)

Travel log - Europe - Day 12

2011-05-29T19:38:00.001-07:00

Day 12 - fighting boredom and Morpheus

So the next morning (or some hours later since I went to bed at about 2) I had to be at the bus station at 7h20 at least. I would have to flee from the hostel, checking out, getting to the subway, then there, I was calculating 2 hours because dragging the suitcase would take me some time. So, before going to bed, I had already decided not to go for the bus station and I would figure out another way to get to Prague. It was a strange situation, the other trips or before that moment, everything had been bought beforehand. It was weird to have to go somewhere without any idea of how to get there. Should I go to the airport and try a flight? Too expensive, probably. Should I try the afternoon bus? Too uncertain. So, why not trying the train. I woke up at 9 and went downstairs to have the breakfast I would not have if I had left earlier. There I met Phil. He was about to leave. He was going to take a train to somewhere else and from there he would fly home, if I am not mistaken. So, I asked him if it was OK if I went to the station with him. I would take a train to Prague. We finished breakfast and got ready, went to the subway station and in less than half an hour we were there. I gave him a present, one of the small gifts we had taken to our friends there and we parted. I managed to buy a ticket in a train to Budapest which you go through Prague. 62 euros. It was more than I thought, but not that much. I wish I already had my student card. The train was half an hour late and as usual the platform was cold cold really cold. As I boarded, I tried to find a spot to sit because the seats were not marked. I wanted to keep the suitcase near me but there was no space. People told me I should leave it near the door, and I did. It was so strange to travel far from my suitcase, back to it, so I had to keep turning my head all the time to check on it, specially when the train made stops. It was not fixed to any place so I still don’t know how it didn’t fall with the train movement. There were some cute people in the train. They were rambling on and on in German and I was trying to pretend I understood everything, minding the right time to laugh some seconds after someone said something funny and everyone else was laughing. People seemed not to know each other but they looked very friendly.

Something I forgot telling you. In Prague, the plan was to start the surfing. We had no reservation in hostels, so we would stay at somebody’s house. I had already had some experiences, positive indeed, with the website Couchsurfing. Of course, I had to look for hosts in the places we imagined we would have more chances of getting some before leaving Brazil. In fact, I liked the idea of mixing both types of accomodation. So for some cities, couchsurfing (CS), while others, hostels. All the next three cities in the travel plan would be CS.
At the station in Berlin I tried calling my host-to-be from a payphone. I couldn’t reach him. I had no cellphone working and I regretted so much not buying one there. It would have saved me big time, but no use crying over spilt milk. I sent him a text message from that same payphone. And I hoped really hard he had got it.
So, still on the train toward Prague, in Dresden some people got off and a new bunch of people filled the wagon. Among them, a guy who sat across the aisle. Everytime I looked back in order to check on my suitcase, I exchanged glances with him. He was strangely familiar. Had I seen him before? Was he famous? He looked at me as well, not puzzled or angry, just as curious. At a certain station, it was maybe 1 hour away from Prague, but already in the Czech Republic, he asked me something. Maybe the time or what the name of the station was.

This got us started and soon I sat with him and we engaged in conversation. He asked me if I was Mexican, he was sure I was and for me he looked so Brazilian. He was a French teacher and he was heading to Prague for some tourism. I was not sure if we were flirting or not. So I kept on going. We talked about literature. He studied an author called Céline something. I didn’t hit on him, he didn’t make any move either but I was still wondering. As we arrived in Prague, he started telling me how gorgeous the woman who was sitting near was and he went on that for about 5 minutes. I needed to try to reach my host again. There was a payphone in the platform. It was colder than Berlin. No contact again. I started freaking out. I had no plan B. But it would not be so difficult to find a hostel. I had the address. This Mexican guy would be in a hostel, I could ask him. He finished his cigarette and told me he would go inside to try to find a map. I waited for him for some minutes but I was freezing so I decided to go in to look for him. We had not exchanged contacts, no facebook, no telephone. I thought I should have made and brought those cards with info about me. I looked around, he was gone. So, the mantra being said - god gives, god takes - I started strolling around the train station. It was about 2pm. I was not hungry because I was nervous, would the CS thing fail? The guy who said we could come seemed so nice. I had some expectations I didn’t want to see defied. So I tried once again the payphone. This time, an answer. “Hey, it’s me, from Brazil.” “Hey, where are you?” “At the station.” “Well, I am working now and I can only go there to pick you up at 9pm.”

No worries. I had a lot to do. I could read, write, even draw something. I had to eat anyway. So, let’s wait.
The thing is I was very tired and no reading or writing could save me from some nodding off. And I dozed. But I had to be careful. So many people going by. I had a sandwich at the only fast food chain without stairs (as I could not carry the bag and the tray).

And the afternoon passed by.

A little before the time set I was already standing there by the subway entrance. I was nervous, because I remembered his hair, but not his face so well. What if he was wearing a hood? I had already exchanged money and bought a guide to the city. As Jiři arrived, just by his looks I could tell it was him. He smiled and I was sure. “Hey”, “Hello”. And there we went. His apartment was some minutes from the station Florenc. It was dark as we got there, I had to be careful the next day, to find the place by myself. I was received with a present - a traditional Czech can of beer

and I could choose which bed I wanted: he had two for surfers. Surely I chose the one with the tiger sheet.

So cool. We talked and talked more. I told him some of the stories I had had till then in the trip, he gave me some instructions about the house. And we went to bed because he would have to work early the next day and I would have to discover everything Prague had in store for me.

Travel log - Europe - Day 11

2011-05-27T06:48:00.000-07:00

Day 11 - Berlin or God takes, God gives

I don’t know if you realized but as the writing of these memoirs progresses I keep on changing one thing or two, about the style, about the content. As for one thing, the last two posts were very big, I guess I am getting more wordy as I relive more details, as I use more adjectives and all this stuff. Also, they were pretty intense days, many things (not) happening. And I also started to put titles to the posts, in an old-fashioned way of commenting on what is going to come. Let’s see what else changes as the writing goes on. There is still so much I lived and I want to share. But let’s cut the crap and the self-commentaries and let’s get down to what you are really here for.
***
We had a breakfast similar to the one we had had the day before. It would be the first day we were there and they would serve dinner. Carol asked me to eat there as she was very curious to taste whatever they were serving. The menu was hung on the wall. Then, we went upstairs and finished packing. The plan was to get to the airport by lunch time. The guy for the reception was kind enough to call us a taxi. But we waited and waited and the taxi would never arrive. The sidewalks were full of snow, probably it had snowed a lot during the night. As the taxi arrived we put the bags in the trunk and we headed for the airport. The taxi driver was a Lebanese and he was very friendly. We talked about Brazil, about Germany and Lebanon. He told us he was considering coming to Brazil during World Cup.
At the airport, I put Carol near the place we thought they would be having the checking-in but I walked around the airport, first looking for a cheaper drink than the ones in the vending machines (there was some in the hot dog guy). We talked, we cried a bit more, we said goodbye. She was embarking and they told her she would have a special service for going from one gate to the other, so I felt a bit more released. We met a Brazilian family who was coming back with her, in the same flight. But nothing special.
So, Carol officially gone. What should I do? There was sunshine and by my surprise, it had been days and days I hadn’t seen any sunlight in those gray days of winter. I was leaving the airport and it was so funny to see the afternoon sun, unsuccessfully trying to warm my face, fighting the wind. I could not but remember some scenes in literature where nature would interact with one’s state of mind. It was as if the environment was trying to cheer me up.
But I couldn’t think about any museum, no tours. I just wanted to sit down, look inside and see what I was going to do. Rarely had I felt so lonely. But I was less scared I thought I would be.
As I got back from the airport, I wanted to take a shower, but the key to the locker we had inside the room was not working. I tried for about 15 minutes to open the locker and nothing seemed to work. Then I went downstairs, hoping one of the cute blond guys who worked there could give me a hand. None of them were there at that shift so one lady who I had never sen there followed me in order to check what was wrong. I guess she must have thought I was up to something or was just stupid because her key just opened it in 5 seconds. Murphy working its way to demoralize me.
Finally, it was dinnertime and I had a promise to fulfill. I got there, paid the 8 euros and checked out what the dishes looked like. It was a delicious self-service dinner, with about 6 dishes to choose from, plus the salad and juice. I sat there eating very slowly. A family was there as well and a guy, near the window. Suddenly, the guy who had greeted me the day before and who I had developed a kind of crush on appeared. He got his food and sat some tables far from mine. I kept looking at him, trying to establish some eye contact, maybe exchange smiles, but he wouldn’t look around. I started feeling I should go there and talk to him, but I was not so used to approaching people and there was no Carol there to encourage me. In fact, at this thought I imagined she would be very proud of me if I acted instead of drowning on self-pity. I stood and approached the guy, asking him if it was okay if I sat with him. He was a bit puzzled but consented. I told him my friend had got hurt and had gone back to Brazil. He had a book so I asked him if he liked to read. I was shaking and sweating, although he was making some effort not to hostilize me. His questions seemed sincere, and I would feel more confortable as we talked about many things. His name was Phil and he was from York, UK. He was a biologist and was in an adventure through some eastern Europe countries, to study some of their wildlife. We kept on talking till we realized people wanted to close the room. We went to the sofas at the reception and the talked more and more. Suddenly, he asked me if I wanted to go out and have a drink. My nastier readers will think he might have second intentions, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t think so then. We changed and started walking. As the invitation had come from him, I was expecting him to take me somewhere he knew. After walking some blocks, I got curious and asked him where we were going. He was surprised and told me he thought I was leading the way. He asked if we couldn’t go to the bar I had been the day before. I hadn’t mentioned till then it was a gay bar, so I thought it important to let him know. He said he didn’t mind. (ok, another hint I might be getting real lucky that night). The conversation was perfect, he was intelligent, a writer, had a lot of interesting adventures to talk about his trip, his life back in Scotland, where he lives and works. We had some drinks and more conversation. I had so much fun. I was very curious about my chances, but he was straight. Unfortunately. I even told him we were in a different city, a different context, didn’t he want to give it a chance and try something new? He didn’t. But he was so nice it didn’t care. While in the bar, something funny happened. The barman who had become my friend the night before recognized me but was less friendly than the night before. At a certain moment, we were using a system they have there that the customers choose the songs which will play in the background. We were trying to find something by The Smiths (?) (suggestion of Phil) but there was none. I told him to choose something by Shakira then. We chose “Estoy aqui” and we waited. Phil went to the toilet and the song started, I sang along and the guy in the bar was surprised: he asked me in Spanish where I was from. I told him Brazil. He went to the screen to choose one song and made some signal I should wait and see. some songs later a samba school song started and he asked me to go to the middle of the bar to dance the samba. He was shocked. “Are you sure you are Brazilian?”, he asked. But how could I tell him I was a Brazilian who sucked both in samba and soccer. He would never believe it. Anyway, a lot of people laughed and so did I. As I was leaving, he asked me when I was leaving and I told him, next morning. He felt disappointed but gave me his facebook and an unexepected peck. So funny.
And as we arrived at the hostel, full of snow, the chubby guy who worked there and was the most acid of them all said, “oooh you two look so romantic covered in snow”. If only he had known better.... =)

Travel log - Europe - Day 10

2011-05-24T14:42:00.000-07:00

Day 10 - Berlin or what was open

I have no memories of that night. Did I dream all that had been a nightmare and I would wake up to go to our waking tour? No, as soon as I put on my glasses, there they were: the two crutches. We got dressed and went downstairs, very slowly and then had some breakfast. It was funny because I served as a waiter. I checked what there was and Carol would tell me what she wanted. If she wanted more, I would go to the food counter to get more. And of course we made some jokes out of that. She would call me James.
One parenthesis: a guy went by me and wished me Happy Christmas. I thought it was strange for him to talk like that, I was expecting Merry Christmas, but I had no idea where he was from. Nothing of importance happened then, but this character will come back later.

Anyway, after breakfast we decided we would split. Carol would stay in the hostel and see how she would live there for a day, maybe going around, and I would go downtown for some sightseeing. I was totally upset because I was going alone and I thought at least the attractions in the museums would distract me from that acid train of thoughts. The first place I felt like visiting was the Museum of Natural History. Carol wanted to see the traditional dinosaur bones and the animals. She was supposed to take a bunch of pictures to show to their pupils. So, there I was in the street of the invalids and after walking some blocks, I arrive at the museum and - happy holidays - it is closed. I thought museums would close only on Mondays, not on holidays. I should have checked before leaving which museums would be open then.

But the one near the hostel, I guess it was open.
Nonetheless, it was those not so near that I really wanted to visit. After one failed journey to the closed museum, I decided to go to a part of the city near Nollendorfplatz. There was a museum there called Schwules Museum. It was a museum about the homossexual history and it was located quite near an important street, called Bulöwstraße. According to the research it was a street full of rainbow stores and pubs. It was the scene. And it was all closed. The museum and the street was completely empty.

The only action I could see was in this poster hanging in one window of one of the closed stores. I then gave up and started wandering about the neighborhood and ended up entering a red-brick church and stayed there for a while in order to warm up a little bit. Even the church was a bit empty and walking alone some empty streets could do nothing but increase my feeling of loneliness and abandonment. Instead of getting distracted, I was reminded at every second how much I was missing my wounded friend. And I started to wonder what else had kept in store for us just yet. So, after getting of walking around a deserted city, between one and two pm I decided to head for the hostel and maybe visit the museums we had nearby. When I arrived at the station of Potsdamer Platz I realized the movement of people on the streets had increased. So, now they decided to show their face, when the daylight was almost being no more? Whatever they were doing, I was naturally not in the best of my moods.

Back to the hostel, I decided to wash some of our clothes. They had the washing and drying machines, one just had to purchase a special token. Then there were the instructions on the wall, in German and in English. I got both our clothes, Carol’s and mine and set off to the laundry place. Just to enlighten the reader, here in Brazil, it is no common to have laundrymats, even more rare those you do everything with coins. normally you use your own machine at home or take to a place and the employees there make everything. So it came as no surprise that I only managed to turn on the machine secure of what I was doing almost half an hour later. And I still programmed the drying machine incorrectly, but it was not so serious.The worst was how to turn the machines on.

Because it was Christmas, there would be no dinner in the hostel. It is not common to have that, hostels offer only breakfast, but this one was different. My friend who had been there before had recommended the dinner, it was practical and considering her opinion and the quality of the breakfast, it was very good. But again they wouldn’t have it because of the holiday, so we had to buy some food. I asked Carol what she wanted and she said she didn’t want to decide on anything. I told her what restaurants I had seen around and we decided to go to The Subway store to get some sandwiches. She told me what I shouldn’t let them put in hers and there I went. To add up to my “happiness” the attendant mistook me and put some mayonnese in the sandwich which would go to Carol. All the rest was the ingredients she had asked me. OK, I will keep this one for myself and never mind what I wanted to ask.
As I came back we started eating in the room and she told me what her day had been like. Upstairs, pain, downstairs, internet for hours and boredom. So, we started talking: what should we do? I could see no much choice. In two days we would be leaving with those 20-kilo suitcases and I wouldn’t be able to carry both, our hand luggage (mine was a backpack with not less than 7 or 8 kilos). All that snow on the sidewalks. The odds of another fall were high. “maybe, we’d better go back home”. It sounded as a joke, as a lie, but I meant it. “No, I have already blown my trip up, you are staying”, she said. “What’s the use staying if you are not here. I was supposed to follow you in your trip, it was never meant to be mine alone.” But she was right. What a difficult conversation! We went downstairs so that she could use the payphone to call her parents, and we would look for a ticket for São Paulo. If she wanted to antecipate her flight with our tickets, she would have to go to Paris, then to our connection in Istambul and then São Paulo. Alone? Not very smart. So we found one flight from Berlin to São Paulo via Frankfurt.

One funny thing had happened that day; we had established some days before, I guess as soon as we left Belgium that we were supposed to meet one person a day, a new friend. The rule was we had to talk to the person for more than 10 minutes and we should know the person’s name, otherwise asking for information would count as making friends. As we were going upstairs in the hostel, the process would take Carol some minutes, a guy was coming down, as we were talking in Portuguese and she was concentrated in hopping to the next step, the guy stopped and waited and she said in Portuguese he could go first. I told her, hey, you are talking in Portuguese and he answered in Portuguese, no problem, I understand. He was from a city in the countryside of São Paulo - Piracicaba - and we talked for a while. He was the friend of that day.

So, the night crept in and I was still looking forward to something positive happening. Carol insisted I should go out, but what’s the fun of going to a bar or club alone in a strange city? But she was right, we had not been to any club in Belgium, and soon Berlin would be over. Then I changed and headed for two bars I had checked on the net. As I was going, I was looking around, not so overtly as to display my foreignness, but curious to see how the night light changed façades, sidewalks. Everything seems to be so different at night, even the atmosphere. So, walking like there was no tomorrow, I saw a guy coming by. Something about the way he was dressed called my attention and I stared. I wanted to see what it was. But mommy has always told not to stare, hadn’t I seen the short movie in Paris je t’aime? The guy stopped and started yelling at me... I had no German guide as in the movie, but I am sure he was yelling something of that sort - what are you looking at?. In German it sounded more frightening. So I kept going and praying he wouldn’t stab me in the back. I arrived at the first bar and I saw from the outside there were about 3 people in, counting the bartender. So I guessed it was just too intimate for me to handle. Imagine if I enter and they all stare at me and stop talking? I would die then and there, stroke caused by excessive embarrassment. So, the other one - Blond - seemed to be THE place. As I got there, I checked there were more than 5 people though the place was small as well. I sat by the counter, it had been ages I hadn’t been to a bar alone, even at home.

I didn’t know what to do or what to say, so, I asked for a beer and started taking off the heavy clothes. I was sweating. A lot of people were talking and some were drinking. I guess I would be approached but nobody did. Not even a smile. Most of them were alone, just drinking and enjoying the music. The two people who talked to me and made some jokes were the two waiters. One of them asked me if I was feeling alright. My face should be like those who have just seen a ghost. So I started relaxing and asked for some more beer and a mojito. I stayed there, enjoying the music and observing people as much as I could without being observed and before leaving I asked the waiter who had been so nice to me if he accepted to take a picture with me. We hadn’t talked to each other as long as ten minutes, and I didn’t ask for his name, but I felt a nice vibe.
And the way back to the hostel was like going home by Rua Augusta (a traditional street in São Paulo for “buying love”) as a lot of girls - at least they looked so - were asking me if i didn’t want to meet them.

Notícia de Jornal

2011-05-23T19:34:00.000-07:00

Hoje, o estudante e professor Elton F., 28, causou comoção no centro da cidade. O Vale do Anhangabaú e imediações foram abalados por sua figura andando a mais ou menos uns 50 cm do chão. Várias testemunhas estavam presentes e chocadas, paravam para olhar o espetáculo. Ele dava passos no ar e parecia ser impulsionado por um vento, mas não ventava na hora do ocorrido.
Segundo uma testemunha, um ambulante que não quis se identificar, o rapaz corria e planava, abrindo os braços mais ou menos no estilo de Julie Andrews na abertura de A Noviça Rebelde. Segundo nossa fonte, "ele estava até murmurando algo como 'the hills are alive'".
Uma outra testemunha, a estudante Mara, que passava pelo local, afirmou que ele ali na pequena altura que conseguiu cantava uma misteriosa nova versão de versos da música de Louis Armstrong, "What a wonderful lunch!". A gravadora informa que essa versão não é compatível com nenhuma gravada até hoje.
Finalmente, o aposentado Prudêncio, desafeito a sensacionalismos, bradava que não, Elton não havia voado, mas tinha mantido os pés no chão o tempo todo. O senhor não negou que podia se ver um sorriso de orelha a orelha, mas disse que qualquer outra manifestação foi puro exagero do "povo mexeriqueiro".
Procurado pela Redação, Elton não quis se pronunciar. Disse apenas que não confirmava as acusações nem as negava.
Insistindo, nosso repórter lançou-lhe a pergunta fatal: "o que motivou todo esse furdunço? O que é que te motiva? É de alegria? É de paixão?"
"Não, nada disso." ele disse de modo oblíquo, riu um riso de criança e completou: "É de mar."

Valentina

2011-05-22T20:06:00.001-07:00

Where are you my dear friend
who is present in all my
verses?
Who breathed poetry into my
prosaic being.
Have you been
busy, Valentina?

With your own sorrows
your won
destiny?
You should be here, my dear
speaking wise
things.
I need advice
don’t you see that?

Of you, Valentina
I expected.
I hoped indeed.
With all my
heart.

But it seems that
you
my dear
You, out of all of them
You, Valentina,
and no one else
couldn’t care
less.

Travel log - Europe - Day 9

2011-05-19T18:33:00.000-07:00

Day 9 - Berlin Christmas Eve or the The fall of the house of Ush.. Carol

(warning - longer post - rich in details)

This day was to be a special one. We woke up very early and commented on how excited we were about the day. It was cold as usual, we had breakfast and the place where they served the meals was a bit empty. So, without taking to long to prepare, we hit the road in order to get to the meeting point on time. We were hoping that despite being Christmas eve, the tourist places would be open and there would be walking tour.
As we arrived in front of the zoo station we met a guy, Jakob, who surprised us with a perfect English. Even native speakers (our friends from the US) asked him where in England he was from, and he told them: “I’m from a beautiful English city called Berlin”, so everybody laughed. When we arrived at the meeting point, we approached him, told him we would like to take the tour and paid him the price. With the Berlin card we had some discount, but I don’t remember how much it was. Anyway, nobody arrived and we went, just the three of us, to the second and last meeting point. We took the subway and talked all the way about our lives and everything. He was a very friendly and intelligent person, with a major in literature and history.
At the second meeting point, there were some people waiting, all of them couples: one from Sweden, one American and a nice lady and her husband directly from New Zealand. So, this small group set off to the main streets and building around the center of the city. We visited museums (but did not enter any, the objective was to identify the building, know a bit of its history and come back later if one wished). We walked for about 3 hours and the spotlights were the Reichtag and the Tor and the Monument to the Jews. (Pics below)

The funny thing about this tour was that Carol decided to let out the Japanese in her and she took more photos then than she had taken all the rest of the trip. OK, I might be overreacting a little but all the time I had to call her because people wanted to move on and she was left behind, looking for the proper angles and lighting. She felt a bit bad because she thought I was embarrassed she was holding people, but I was very amused for two reasons: it was too cold for me to want to take my hands out of my pockets and take pictures, if she did it, afterwards I would have a lot of photos with me in them. So I made a little scene, pretending to be annoyed but I was so having fun with my new friend photo freak.
So, we finished the tour by lunchtime and we were hungry. It finished in a square with a church and on the corner there as a chocolate store (http://www.fassbender-rausch.com/), huge and full of sculptures of chocolate. The most amazing one was a building with some hot chocolate fountain. We had a kind of pie, or sweet in a bakery. It was so funny because there were some sparrows inside the bakery which seemed to have been trained to be on the ground eating the crumbs.

Then, after eating something, we decided to go to the bus station to try to buy the tickets to Prague, our next destination. We arrived at the station and it was awful. The place was far from the center, but there was a subway station nearby. Few people spoke English and most of the ticket booths were closed. It was not so late, about 3pm, but no one could give us definite information about the buses. We met an American girl who said she could not find tickets and she would have to spend Christmas eve and Christmas there because she was trying to go to Prague to see her family but she was told no bus would leave in that holiday period. So we left, but with the information that there were two times we could take the bus to Prague: either 7:30am or 3pm. But the thing was we could not buy in advance, just at departure. Can you imagine what would happen if there was no place in the 7:30 one? With our big suitcases and all that snow we would not go very far. We would be stuck there to maybe get a bus in the afternoon. So, we decided to think about later.
Then, after all that walking we had to go back to the hostel, have a shower, relax a bit and get ready to our party. We were not going to the Russian one, but there was a bar which was offering a X-mas night. So we would go there.
As we left the subway, I was a bit tired and carol was rambling on something we had done or would do. Se was talking and talking and I was three steps ahead of her. Note that we had been walking in Europe for days and we saw many people falling. I played in Belgium that she was clumpsy so I would have my camera handy as to when she would fall. When a part of the sidewalk was slippery we would tell each other to be careful and I would have done so if it. But it wasn’t. Anyway, I heard her scream and when I turned in half a second, she was lying on the floor, bent over herself and saying it was hurting. My first movement was to try to raise her, but I was afraid of making things worse. There was a bar and I could more or less drag her to a chair. She asked for some ice while she tried to remove her sneaker and her sock. I got some snow and would give her so that she could put where it was swollen. She said the pain was incredible and I imagine it would be worse after the adrenaline of the moment went low. Some people saw that and asked if they could help, but there was nothing they could do. Again, the so-called cold German people were displaying a kindness to break with any stereotype.
Anyway, we needed a taxi because she felt she would not be able to walk the 5 minutes to get to the hostel. We knew the way, but no taxi appeared, it’s always like that when you need one. But soon a taxi stopped and I put her in the back seat and I sat in the front. The driver asked for the directions but of course I had no idea what the name of the street was. I had it written but the paper was... in the hostel. So I started describing the place to him and how to get there on foot so he got there very fast. In fact, I wanted to take her to a hospital, but there was a problem: before leaving Brazil, we had done an insurance covering health and baggage. I had done it the other time I travelled but it was not necessary so I thought it was worth what I had paid. I imagined I would give the person my location and she would tell me how to get to the nearest hospital of my area, which they had a partnership. So we arrived at the hostel, I sat Carol in the lounge sofa at the reception desk and went upstairs to get the insurance number. It was about 5pm. It seemed things could not get any worse.
After a contact with the company the girl asked me to tell her all the details of what had happened. So she said she would be in contact with their office in Germany which was in Munich. And she would call us back in at most 40 minutes to give the instructions.
Well, I waited and Carol was in great pain. We had brought several types of medicine but none for pain. Headache yes, stomachache for sure, but no pain killer. I tried to sing with her, talk, interview, write, do whatever I could to entertain her and take her mind off the pain. In vain. Almost one hour going by and no contact from the insurance. So I called them again in order to impress a more urgent tone. The woman said they were waiting for the contact with their office and she was going to try a direct connection. She didn’t do that, but said in 20 minutes they would be calling us. Another half an hour, almost 7pm and they called and told the reception guy they would be sending a doctor to the hostel. Excuse me? Sending a doctor here? We were sure she had broken something but how could he tell if he had no way to perform an X-ray at the hostel lounge. Maybe, as we were in the first world, they would have access to some technology of portable X-ray, so we tried to imagine what that meant. Some minutes later the guy from the reception tells us the doctor called and he said he was behind schedule so he would get there by 9pm. It was a quarter past seven. Carol got desperate, angry. She had no way to move and she started feeling like going to the toilet which was across the hall, but even the attempt of trying to stand was so painful she could do nothing but cry. I decided to ask for information on where I could find an open drugstore. The guy smiled at my naïvité there would be any open at that time of that day. But I could not stand being there just sitting and waiting and doing nothing. It was snowing heavily but anyway I started walking around looking for a place to buy a pain killer. There was a hospital near the hostel so I tried there but people thought I was crazy, they would never sell drugs without prescription and I headed back with my hand empty.
The doctor had arrived by then. He examined her and gave an injection to cut off the pain. Then, he told us in a poor English we would have to go to a hospital. No kidding. We knew that hours and hours before. Which hospital is covered by the insurance? He called them and he told us we could go to anyone, pay for it and then the insurance would refund us. Super again! So, there was a hospital but it was 200 meters from the hostel. The one I had tried to buy drugs from. So I went back there and tried to borrow a wheel chair. They were suspicious and did not want to lend me one, so I left my passport as a guarantee and then headed for the hostel in order to pick her. The pain had decreased a bit and she hopped till the toilet (she was in need, remember?) and after to the chair and there we went toward the hospital. The sidewalks were full of snow, it was still snowing and the wheels were not turning, they were sliding. I had to make some extra effort to pull her and hold the chair so that it would not turn over. I had to use my arms to pull and to keep it steady. It took me 10 minutes to go the same way I had gone in 2 minutes with the empty chair. We got to the hospital and I was sweaty and breathless. The hospital was pretty empty. The doctor was very kind to us and was doing his best so that we wouldn’t spend that much money. We kept chatting how cute he was and so was the X-ray guy. Something nice we had to have out of that situation. They confirmed there was nothing broken, but she had probably ruptured her ankle ligaments. No walking for one month at least. Hey. It was the rest of the trip. No hard activities in 3 months. Well, they made some immobilizing and she got some (very expensive) crutches.

We went back to the hostel, and it was about 10 to midnight. We hugged and wished each other a merry Christmas. We surfed the net a bit and decided to go upstairs to try to get some sleep. The next day we would think about what to do.

Caladinho

2011-05-12T11:18:00.000-07:00

Eu queria participar, sabe?
Assim, dar a resposta.
baixa a cabeça
Assim, falar uma frase legal.
quanta bobagem
Assim, conversar até as duas da manhã.
quanta besteira

A boca não obedece o resto e os lábios não se movem
na garganta uma enxurrada fica presa, faz pressão
pigarreio

Tenta te convidar pra sair
Tenta dizer a coisa certa
Na hora certa
Tenta simplesmente falar o que vem na mente.
Sofre porque não consegue contar aquela história
sabe aquela?

(Interlúdio)

Você não acha que fala demais?
Você fala demais.
Fofoca, né? Você, queridinha, é perigosa.

(volta pra casa)
A voz sai rouca, sai meio coitadinha
mas ela se faz ouvir.
respondem
lindamente.
E pensar que era tão fácil.

Afinal, o universo fala através de mim.
Através
de todos
nós.

Travel log - Europe - Day 8

2011-05-05T20:23:00.000-07:00

Day 8 - Berlin

So, the breakfast in the hostel was remarkable. It was full of options and appealing to many tastes. It is really a place to recommend. The attendants were helpful, the place is clean and nicely decorated. Unlike the other posts, I will try to be more accurate in this one and I will create links to make it easier for however is reading this willing to go there and check out for themselves. So here it goes: Berlin international Hostel.
According to what we had planned, we would have a busy and long day. the first thing we were about to do was to try the guided walking tour around the city. It would give us more ideas on where to go. We just had to get to the meeting place on time. But of course we were late and got lost. On the subway, we started asking for information and we made a friend. A guy kept talking to us and asking us questions about where we came from and all. Very friendly. His name was Peter. We asked him if he had any suggestion of places to go as the next night it would be Christmas. He mentioned a Russian party. Can you imagine how exotic to be in a Russian party in Berlin? We felt compelled to try his idea as soon as we could find information about it on the net.
So, the clock was ticking and the station near the zoo would never come. We expected they would be there waiting for us, as we arrived 20 minutes later than we should have. But there was nobody there, nor any stall. It was just us, the cold and the passers-by. But the art of the tourist,at least of the late tourists, is improvising. We looked around and realized we were just near some places to visit, so all that journey to that part of the city had not been in vain.
The first place we visited was the Sex museum, or the Erotik Museum. As you enter, you see only a sex shop, but you go to the cashier and get a ticket. As I was reading some reviews, something people complained and we also thought that the fee was a bit higher than the other museums. I had been to the Sex Museum in Paris in my last visit. Although it was quite an interesting visit, I wrote nothing relevant about my impressions then. This makes me wonder how much I have been improving my reporting abilities as I write this new set of memories and experiences. Anyway, we had to pay, get into an elevator and work our way down the floors of exhibitions. The top floor (why does it seem I am full of innuendos here?) was very modern and interactive. You could try to find the G-spot in some statues which would start moaning out of pleasure. Carol had some problems, but I taught her just where to put the finger. Another very interesting and interactive spot was the humping statues. You should dry hump them and it would activate a scale. I didn’t try, although there were not many people around. I am a bit shy, you know?

The rest of the floors were full of paintings, drawings and objects (according to the reviews, all copies) related to the ars erotica, as the Romans would say. We had a lot of fun, taking pictures and just inventing some funny things about those pieces of art.
After leaving the museum, we decided to head for the zoo. It was just around the corner. It was not so cheap either, so we entered and started walking and walking around. But all the cages were empty. We guessed all the animals were inside, hibernating and maybe coming outside eventually to see those stupid tourists freezing to death. Then, the discovery came. There were big buildings, they were the places we should enter because most of the animals were, with the few exceptions of those which could endure the outdoor weather.
But the thing of entering a closed space, smaller then the cages and heated was that 1) the animals looked more imprisoned than usual, 2) the smell was just too strong for one to bear for a long time. Each building, each animal, a different stink. Imagine when we entered the one with those boars and wild pigs. All in all, the tour there was very nice. My friends agree:

What we did next was to visit the aquarium which was inside the zoo. It was not so small and we had to go here and there, and talking in Portuguese we soon ran into a Brazilian guy taking pictures, who talked to us. We had seen some girls talking in Portuguese but we kept quiet then. No contact. As we left the aquarium, we remembered we were human being, and as so, we needed to put something in, in order to continue. It was getting dark so it was about 4 pm. We saw a KFC and that just seemed to be the place for two starved people. We asked a combo each, and there was chicken there to feed 5 people. And we went from starved to roll me out of here, please. And with the greasy hands, eating like two ogres, one of the cutest guys in Berlin decide to sit in our table. He was quite busy eating and we just lost the appetite just till the moment he left. We must have spent one hour in our meal. I wanted to start shooting everything to have a picture of the guy, but my hands were too impregnated with grease for me to attempt anything with my camera.

After doing all these, half of what we had planned, as usual, we headed to the hostel. On the way, we found a Christmas fair with handicraft and candies. We had some hot wine, and bought one candy which was a ball of different colors and resembled a huge donut. But there was no hole in it, it was just a sphere. Carol was afraid of being so heterodox that she bought the chocolate one, the others had names in German we had no idea what they meant. Also, she bought some pistachio in a stall with many types of nuts. Well, can you believe after so much chicken we still had some space left for sweets? We didn’t, but there we were gobbling those treats.
**
As we returned to the base and took a shower, I went online in order to find a place we could go while Carol was taking a shower. I had already prepared to go for a bar or another place, dressed to kill. As I went upstairs to tell her the options, she was in her pyjamas and told me she was too tired to go out. I couldn’t believe it. It’s forbidden, if you check the good tourist manual, to feel tired. Feel tired at home, not here. But she went on unconvinced and I didn’t feel like going out by myself. (Had I known what was about to happen...). In no time I was in my pyjamas, turning off the lights.

Travel log - Europe - Day 7

2011-05-01T21:29:00.001-07:00

Day 7 - Berlin

Waking up very early we had no time to eat anything, we set off straight to the airport. In fact, we had time to grab some bananas. Louis took us to the airport, but he didn’t enter. It was so weird because all the goodbyes we had planned failed. He just hurriedly kissed us goodbye in the airport parking lot and as we were running late, we just parted there, as if we were meeting the next week, for our French classes.
The airport was not a welcoming place, like it never is. We had too much in our bags, more than the flight company of those low-cost flights accept. So we had to open the suitcases in the middle of the lounge and try to put some thing in the already full handbags. We considered abandoning something there, giving it to whoever wanted, but it was not necessary. We still had the security check to go through. And we were late. A guy approached us as we were almost finishing checking in. He said his aunt did not speak any French or English, and she needed some help to get to the gate. So, there we were with a new friend who could not speak any language we knew and anyway maintained some mimics conversation with Carol. We almost went to the wrong side once, lost a sheet, but we made it to the gate. When we got there, sweating under those jackets we saw that the flight was late. One hour. So we just sat there, pissed off, but happy that we had not missed the plane. Of course we didn’t see anything during the trip. We were so tired of the few hours’ sleep plus the running around the airport we dozed off as soon as we boarded.
As we arrived in Berlin, we got some information from the desk at the airport. It didn’t seem so difficult to get to the hostel. We also bought some tickets and info books. We preferred to buy those tickets for 3 days. But nothing is too easy when Murphy is at work. The sidewalks were full of snow, what made it difficult to pull our bags. The wheels would not turn, they were not snow wheels. We had some help to climb some stairs, which from the start showed us the Germans were a nice people. As we arrived at the bus stop, we asked a blond girl if she could confirm if that was the right place. She confirmed. We waited for the bus and it was really cold. The bus took some 15 minutes to come, and we hopped in. It was crowded and people were not so pleased to see us with those big suitcases. As we stopped, I wanted to confirm we were in the right direction. A guy with a baby told us we were going in the wrong direction. We cursed the blond girl, she had deceived us. We damned her 7 next generations. We got off the bus, crossed the street and still cursing her, we found the other bus. Still suspicious, we asked a couple that was passing by. The girl told us we were in the wrong direction, which meant the blond girl was right and the man with the baby was the one who got us wrong. So, we stopped hating the first girl and started thinking some hellish punishment for the man. Ten minutes or so later, we were half fronzen and our arms in pain for carrying all those kilos, we finally got off where we were supposed to. And we arrived at the hostel. The place was wonderful. People were friendly and helpful. The place was clean and cozy. And we had paid for dorms but they were not so full so they offered us the double rooms for the same price of the dorms (the double rooms are normally more expensive). So we had a room only for us and this view out of the window.

As we arrived there, I noticed I had lost the ticket of almost 30 euros and I would have to buy a new one to take buses and subways. I had one cheap ticket for the last day and the other for the first 3 and of course I would lose the most expensive one.
It was almost dark, not so late, but it would get dark soon. Anyway, we dropped our things and decided to go out for some food, a decent meal to make up for the breakfast, lunch and dinner we hadn’t had that day.
We found a Turkish cafeteria/bar. We ordered some falafels, because Carol had already had them here. I only knew kebabs. She said they were different from whatever she had eaten in Brazil and I asked it “hot”, but it was really hotter than I expected.

So, there we were, a new city full of possibilities and we were eager to unravel its mysteries. What did we do? Well, it had been a straining day. The best thing we could do was to lie down and take a nap in order to have energy to do anything else. I should call it the arriving nap. After having done that, we got our newly acquired booklets with info about the city of Berlin and we started checking if the plannings about where we were going on the following days should be stick or not.

Teoria da Ponte, ou hipótese da ponte

2011-04-27T06:46:00.000-07:00

Conversando com um novo possível amigo, ele falava que todas as relações - o foco da conversa eram os relacionamentos amorosos e de amizade - terminam de alguma forma frustrante. Ele pedia para que os presentes dessem exemplos de pessoas que eles conheciam desde a infância e que ainda estavam ali, ao lado da pessoa. Ou foi algo assim. Não vou lembrar das palavras exatas dele, mas o tom resignado dele me fez pensar sobre aquilo nos dias que se seguiram.

Eu sempre fui defensor da hipótese de que as coisas podem sempre dar certo, de que se você investe energia, tempo, arranja um tempo na agenda super cheia e tal, qualquer relação pode se manter, já que os dois lados obtêm algum tipo de satisfação ou realização.

O problema é que eu também sou adepto do mutatis mutandis. Acho que "tudo está na natureza e em movimento", como diria a Joana n'"A gota d'água". E esse movimento faz com que tudo vá mudando: nossos gostos já não são os mesmos, nossos padrões de julgamento, nossos sonhos. E com a velocidade com que as coisas estão acontecendo hoje em dia, mal a gente consegue acompanhar o passo das nossas mudanças. quantas vezes você não se olhou no espelho e não se reconheceu? Olhou pra dentro e falou, meio assustado, "Meu, quem é você?". Mas a gente tá ocupado e mal se pergunta isso, de forma verdadeira, querendo saber a resposta de fato. (Medo, né?)

Daí,lembrei da teoria da ponte. Já falei dela em outro post. Ali eu falei que alguém tinha me falado da teoria, mas na verdade acho que gostei tanto que prefiro dizer que é minha hoje. Como ele não vai se opor a mim nem aqui e nem em lugar nenhum, eu sinto que posso.

A tal da teoria se diferencia um pouco de outra com o mesmo nome. Talvez seja melhor eu chamar a minha de hipótese da ponte. Fica meio pseudo-científico, mas evita confusão pra quem for googlar a palavra.

Sem muito mais rodeio, explico o cerne da minha hipótese: todas as pessoas são mais pontes do que portos seguros. Como assim? A gente conhece alguém, ela mostra algo pra gente, algo sobre eles, sobre nós mesmos, nos leva a outros lugares, lugares nunca antes imaginados, nunca antes adentrados, ou nos levam a lugares onde sempre estivemos, mas olham pra eles com olhos diferentes. Até aqui, tudo lindo. Isso é a amizade, o amor, não? Pois bem, o que acontece é que uma ponte serve pra gente cruzar um certo espaço, água ou terra, por onde a gente não poderia passar sem ela. E de repente, a ponte acaba. A gente chegou ali do outro lado.

O que fazer? Abandonar a ponte? Ela foi tão importante pra fazer você chegar ali do outro lado, ela foi tão carinhosa, tão paciente. Ela já sabe de todos os seus problemas, de todos os seus defeitos e te aceitou mesmo assim.

Mas ela é ponte. A caminhada continua do outro lado. E assim deveriam ser as pessoas. Tem gente que é pinguela, tem gente que é a Ponte do lago Pontchartrain.Não dá pra saber logo de início. Afinal, a gente muda e a ponte muda.

Assim, quando uma pessoa passa, assim como a ponte termina, como eu posso ficar frustrado, aborrecido que ela passou? Vai deixar saudade? Certeza. Vai ser diferente das outras pontas todas, única? Sem dúvida. Mas olhando a sua volta, tantas outras pontes no horizonte.

Isso significa que se deve amar menos cada ponte, caminhar mais rápido de ponte em ponte? Não. Significa que a própria efemeridade de caminhar por sobre ela, sabendo que ela chega do outro lado, que ela tem um fim, é exatamente isso que faz com que você a ame mais (pelo menos em teoria).

Então, não, querido. As amizades e as relações amorosas nunca terminam de forma frustrante porque elas terminam. Afinal, você nunca está no mesmo lugar em que estava antes ao cruzar a ponte, nem ela é a mesma depois dos seus passos. E a caminhada em direção ao horizonte continua.

Travel log - Europe - Day 6

2011-04-17T18:01:00.000-07:00

Day 6 - Bruges

So this was our last of Belgium. Again, we would travel and Louis would stay home. But it was some practice for the rest of the trip, as we would then be on our own. We woke up early and had breakfast. He took us to the station and this time we bought the right (though not so cheap) ticket to Bruges.
We boarded and now we would not mistake the station. However, do you know when you think you are in the wrong place, but you cannot be really sure until someone comes and tells you that? So, we got on the train in the first class and, of course, our tickets were second. It was not deliberate, but the guy gently told us off and we headed for the place we belonged.
As soon as we arrived in the city, we bought a map and asked for some nice places to go. I guess after our experience in Antwerpen, Louis had decided not to do the planning with us (as we did only 3/11 of what he had planned). We started walking toward the city center and we fell in love with it just then. The weather was not so good, it was cold and wet, it snowed a bit, sometimes it looked like a drizzle. Later, when it was getting dark it also got foggy. It gave the city an atmosphere and we just loved it even more.
The streets were narrow and the buildings were short and made of apparent bricks. There were small bridges and canals. We visited one monastery and it was funny because there was a church there and it was empty. So even tough there was a sign of no pictures, Carol could take one. She told me, no one saw me anyway. I answered: God is watching. We laughed out loud. But she stopped with the pictures. And she is not even that religious.

After some walking more, we got hungry and we started the process of choosing a place to go. There were a bunch of small restaurants, and one nice thing we have there is the menu by the door so we could check the prices before entering. We selected one which was fancy but not expensive (most of them were like that). So we chose our dishes. I had some wine with mine but Carol didn’t because she thought some orange juice would come along with her dish. But in fact it was the dessert that was orange whatever... a kind of pudding. As the magnanimous person that I am, we shared my wine (OK, as Carol remembers it, she only had a drop of it). I ordered some chicken with a strange sauce. It had a lot of bones, which I don’t like so much. I thought it was fillet or a steak. Carol preferred beef, but the meat was hard and dry, in spite of the sauce. So the lunch was not a top one, but we had fun and it was a moment to get warm.

After that, we headed for some museums. The day was getting dark. We saw some stores, bought some chocolate and got to the museum of chocolate just 15 minutes before closing, so the guy didn’t let us in. We went to a museum which we knew would close later and although it was a bit expensive (10 euros), we had a lot of fun in the Museum of Salvador Dali.

Then we got to the main square and there was a street market there. Besides, there was a ice-skating place, and I told Carol I wanted to go. She told me she was not into it, but I childishly insisted, so I was going and she would stay outside taking pictures and all. I discovered it was very cheap to stay there for 1 hour. And that’s what I did. I put on the skates, and I didn’t bind them correctly. It was easy when they were a bit loose, but someone told me I could have an accident and I went for help in order to tighten the boots. After that, things got a bit rougher and they were removing the snow on the ice so I got more slippery. But the thing is it was my first time ice-skating (here in Sao Paulo you can find places to ice-skate indoors, but I had never had the opportunity of trying it) and I didn’t fall even once. I nearly did several times, but I managed to maintain my balance and avoid the fall. Meanwhile, Carol went for some shopping. She found a FNAC and she was paying 0,40 without complaining. But I guess she had what she wanted without having to pay (later, in the train station, the toilets were closed after 7pm, to our astonishment, and the restaurant inside there was charging double fee - that’s capitalism - but when we got out nobody was there to charge.) One interesting thing that happened is that I was wearing borrowed shoes and as soon as I left Belgium I would have to return them. So in Bruges, we found some shoe stores. I was going through some boots for snow and the saleswoman was very kind and gave me some options. When she discovered we were Brazilians, she got extra nice asking questions and the first one was ‘what are you doing here in such a cold weather if you have all the sun and hot back home?’ Well, my sweet lady, I wondered the same thing several times later. And she kept our shoes while we walked a bit more, so that we wouldn’t have to carry them around.
***
The way back was fine. A group of girls sittten across the aisle and who were probably American had to pay an extra charge of 50 euros each because they had the wrong tickets with them. Ours were correct so we just had to feel sorry for them.
When we got home we had dinner, and there were, among other things, reindeer meatballs. I had already tasted it, but Carol was not so comfortable tasting it, but she, as the real adventurer she is, did it without a frown.
We said goodbye to everyone as we would wake up at a not very humane hour to get to the airport (who had bought the tickets for so early a flight?). It was the time to give the gifts we had brought to everyone. We were not very sure on what to take and we took some simple things, we should have been more sophisticated, but we had no idea about anyone of them, so it was fair enough. The last memories we had there was Louis going upstairs with us and talking and talking like we used to do in Brazil, about the future, about the expectations of the rest of the trip. It was so nice. Packing and packing and of course I forgot my sneakers there.

Travel log - Europe - Day 5

2011-04-10T15:06:00.001-07:00

Day 5 Namur and Louvain

We woke up and I realized something curious during breakfast. The other days there was one thing I could not identify bothering me during this meal and when i saw what there was to eat I finally understood: the previous breakfasts had no salted ingredients. They normally have sweet breads and cookies with jams and chocolate. And for me if there is no rotisserie, there is no breakfast. Cheese, ham, salted butter are a must. I don’t know if this is something Brazilian, but I got so happy to have bread with ham and cheese.
So, we got in the car and set off for a different city which would be our destination: Namur. It is a city not so far from Brussels again, but different from the others, it was in the French-speaking part of Belgium. However, the city itself was not our final destination. We had to pick up our friend’s girlfriend, somewhere near the city and we would have lunch with his grandmother.
Besides his girlfriend, his brother was going with us. It was a sweet surprise to discover he was not what we imagined. By what Louis had told us in Brazil, we had an image of his brother as a too serious person, a kind of suit-and-tie yuppy, who would barely talk to us. But he was so nice and talked about everything. After that day, we felt sad we didn’t have more time to spend with him.
So the first place we went to was a fortress from where we could see the whole town. The snow was high and it gave us ideas and we started playing with it but Louis - with his 13-year-old spirit made poor Sara almost roll in the snow and she got really wet.

We got to grandma’s house and the house was very interesting - old architecture, a lot of pictures and small details, it seemed we had entered another century. She was a very sweet old lady, she even resembled a little Queen Elizabeth. And there were a lot of rituals we had to follow, she told us where each should sit when we got to the table and some people were lucky to eat watching the river just outside the window.

Carol and I were not the lucky ones, as we sat back to the windows. Something interesting was that whatever was served there was grown in their gardens and the meat had been hunted. It was the first time I tasted pheasant. During lunch there was a funny moment because they were talking about history and they asked me to tell them in French some details about D. Pedro II. I had no idea because it had been more than 10 years I had studied and read about Brazilian Imperial history. After lunch, we went to the living room and not even the coffee they served helped Carol not doze off while they were going on and on in French.
***
After leaving Namur, we set off to another city on the way back to Brussels. It was a special place beacuse it was the city where our friends study. It’s called Louvain la neuve.

It was built in the 70s after a kind of dissent that teh French speaking people wanted to have classes in French but the university is in a Dutch speaking place so these Franco-Belgians went for it and had their own university city. It was quite different from a university city, but it was just lovely. The buildings were low and the apartments seemed small but cozy. We tried to visit a museum that there is there - a comics museum - but it was closed. There were some stores, we spent some time in a comics store. We also got to know the library of Engineering and Math. It was getting colder and colder so we decided to go home. We were invited to a party by one of Sara’s friends and it would be in a bar. Carol was not in the mood of going and I wanted to stay and talk more to Felix, but we felt it would be very impolite of us not to go. we had some hours for showering and resting. And it was time for another movie. This time it was Corpse Bride - but again, it was never completely watched in the middle of it we had to stop because it was time to go. So we went. When we got there, it was a bar where there was a conveyor belt which would continuously keep bringing dishes. There was a big menu with color codes on the wall and you would check out the dish you want, just grab it out of the belt and remove the plastic transparent lid and have fun eating it. After some time we were told we should pay by each dish we had. I learned that the bad way. But, at the end, they had some kind of discount and we paid less than we were supposed to. There were some interesting people that night but most of them were not into talking to us, so we were having fun ourselves. One of the guys was really messy and did a lot of stupid things, we didn’t know if he was just a jerk or if he was trying to get the attention. Afterwards, we walked a bit and ended up in a bar with some of the people who were there with us. I had a chance to have a different type of beer which came in a quite exotic glass.

And I talked to Sara in French for about half an hour. Quite challenging. Carol had stuck to English and she made some new friends as we sat far from each other. She would only speak non-stop French as soon as we set foot in Berlin, but this is another story. We still would have our last day of Belgium. And what a day.

reflexões da segunda-feira

2011-03-28T06:04:00.000-07:00

Silenciosamente se move
Penetra as barreiras
Entra,entra entre as copas
das árvores.

Erva daninha
Sonho desnudado
Palavras são trocadas.

Um sinal.

A euforia aumenta, grau a grau
Ainda não sinto a mão tremer
Nem temo me perder.

Eu e você.

Segredos e trivialidades
Um bom começo.
E a esperança, meio de perto
meio de longe
Tenta estabelecer contato visual.
Mas antes disso eu ouço seu
Ha ha ha

Interlude

2011-03-20T19:43:00.000-07:00

The retelling of the trip I have recently taken made me wonder about an aspect of my life. As I was recreating the places, the situations, I became a character of my own story. I was narrator – selecting, cutting, flourishing. I was making past present. I let out a part of myself I normally do not encounter: me as a nostalgic person. Liar. I am the most nostalgic person I have ever met. Today I was cleaning my bookshelves. I would take all the books and dust them. So there were so many stories I had within reach but I have never read. So many other I have read long ago, when I was a child, and I would just love to reread and feel now I was really grasping what they meant for now I know better. I felt like a pervert, leafing through all those books, ones virgins who had never been open and others as old as my grandma, jackets torn and yellowish. They must be so wise, the way they have been sitting there, in other shelves before mine. How many pairs of hands have had them? Loose sentences, are they giving me a message now? A paragraph of page 7 there, page 245 here, some paragraphs of philosophy. I am a drifter then. The books back to where they belong, I went to the photos and by chance I was looking at delight and wonder in moments of bliss. There were also hugs and kisses that will never come back. What the fuck was that haircut? And that one? My god, how could I go outside with that nest in my head? And the places and people I tend to believe I will never see again? What are they doing now? Our memory is really selective. Why? I had done that? Is it really me covered by mud, feeding ducks, wearing earrings? I wish I could talk to some of these people, hey you in the picture, talk to me! We lived so much together. Now I just have to get rid of the willingness to be with all of you again. Past is past. What was untouched should remain so. What was their denial must go. Grudges eat you from the inside. I feel so ready, but sometimes I feel my shoes are too tight and I don’t remember how to dance anymore. Some alive are already dead. Some friends just don’t care anymore. Some dicks are never going to be seen. Why don’t you believe that? Why bother? Nostalgia, can you just vanish and let the future and its construction here be hegemonic? Set me free.

Travel log - Europe - Day 4

2011-03-13T08:39:00.000-07:00

Day 4 Brussels

Again, the plan was to wake up early. Some people say travelers should sleep at home, not in their trips. So we woke up early and did not have to do a lot of planning since the day was supposed to be spent walking around Brussels and Louis would be there with us. The first place we were going to was the Museum Magritte. I am not a very artistic person, who can interpret any painting as he sees it, but the experience in this museum was fantastic. There was a movie about the artist before starting the exhibition. The movie was in French with subtitles in Dutch and English. After that, we got access to the works of art and they were just amazing (you can have an idea by taking a look here. We spent more than 3 hours there, talking, laughing and after that buying some gifts in the shop. Totally recommended to anyone visiting Brussels. And it was nice to see that even people from the city hadn’t been there since the museum was opened some months ago. Even our host had never been there so it was quite a discovery to all of us. After that we went to another museum nearby, the museum of musical instruments. in a few words, it was another very interesting experience. The building is very beautiful from the outside. As you enter, you are given a set of headphones and every time you approached a certain set of instruments, you would listen to their sounds. It was not watching only. One had a chance to know the sound it produced. That was music, or music was in the air.

After this we left the museum and it was snowing a lot. It was good because, apart from the time we were running in gare du Nord to get on the train, we hadn’t seen that much snow coming down, in little flocks - it was a spectacle. It was the moment we felt children again, like in our snowball wars. So we headed for a Noël fair in order to eat something. Strangely, everything was very expensive. We had some durums and some huge waffles. We learned then there were several types of waffles and we chose the one which is soft.

After that, we needed to go back home because it was time to get ready for the party. As Louis’s brother had arrived home after a year abroad, they had planned to have a special party to friends, before the one for the family and we would be lucky enough to be there by then. But Carol was worried since she had taken a dress to the occasion but no shoes and she wanted to find some boots. We went to a street of stores but most of them were closed. We managed to find one and she went on choosing one but we were late already and she felt very bad because she thought she was the reason why we would get there late. In the end, everything was fine. We arrived back home, took a shower, got ready and went downstairs.
***
The party was an amazing situation. There were about 40 people. Good food, different types of drinks. I felt we would profit more if we split and I left Carol to herself while I tried to approach some people. I made friends with a girl who was their neighbor and we talked for more than 30 minutes. I tried to keep the conversation in French with some English in the middle. It was funny because this girl was with her fiancé and I imagined he was a bit jealous I was monopolizing his girl. In the end, he was looking at me and laughing but it was not probably out of jealousy. I heard after the party everyone was commenting about us, Carol and her stunning dress and me and my (so-they-said) undisguisable gayness. This sounded so amusing because I had forgotten about it myself. I did not flirt, did not do any queer comment. Anyway, maybe it is the French. The lip thing might drop my (inexistent) mask. After most of people left we took one of the rooms, with some of Louis’s friends from college and we kept on talking (in English, thank goodness). One by one they started leaving and only a few remained. It was then we had a nice talk with a wonderful boy, Jonathan. He was so attentive and he was one of the most good-looking guys we met on the trip (some people would say in our lives =D )
Then we went to bed but kept on talking and talking till we fell asleep at 3 am.
(we were so nervous we didn't take any pictures in the party, we forgot our cameras upstairs, but the hosts were taking pictures of it and told me they are sending the ones we are on anytime soon).

Travel log - Europe - Day 3

2011-03-11T05:14:00.000-08:00

Day 3

Some overlooked details:
Day 1: my friend Márcio was also helping me pack. Not very helpful as he hadn’t had any experience in cold winters then, but the important is the intention.
Day 2: the name of the fancy square with the fancy chocolate place is Sablon. Also, the museum was the African museum in Tervuren and it was the palace of King Leopold II.
***
The following day we, as good adventurers, woke up quite early because we wanted to enjoy the day as much as we could. So, we got up at 8 and had breakfast. Louis would not travel with us because he had just discovered he would have an exam in the first days of January and he had some studying to do. But he was going to help any way he could. We decided to get a plan of the city we would visit that day and it took us 3 hours to decide and plan where we would go. We chose (in fact Louis mostly recommended) 11 places to see in Antwerpen (or Anvers). It was a city near Brussels. Louis took us to the station and our big adventure started.
We were a bit insecure about our French skills, but hadn’t we been preparing for months? We bought the tickets, quite expensive ones, but as i had no idea how long we would stay there, I decided to buy only one way tickets. I had the impression that choosing a time to be back would limit us and supposing we were having a lot of fun, we would have to run to the station and come back. First big mistake. We got to the platform but were unsure if it was the correct one. So Carol said she was going to ask for information and she chose the right person to do so. It was so much so that I started playing the tourist just to take a picture of whatever was moving and make a context to take a picture of the guy she talked to.

Then, there were few people with us in our wagon we got to a city which was not Antwerpen but almost everybody was getting off. We got worried and asked a lady who was getting on. She didn’t speak English, nor French, she asked if we spoke Dutch and the train started. Too late. So I told Carol we were going now wherever the train was going but the woman asked us in Portuguese ‘Oh, do you speak Portuguese?’ It turned out she was a Brazilian woman who had been living in Belgium for some years. I don’t remember her name, but we talked to her for half an hour. She would get off in Antwerpen just like us which made us comfortable we hadn’t lost the stop. And she was the one to tell us we should have bought the round trip ticket because it was a special day of the week and we would pay almost the same we had paid for one way. And she explained the trains would leave every 15 minutes and we could take anyone we wanted. There was a certain code, however, to the express ones and the slower ones. Have this in mind as you keep reading.
We finally arrived in Antwerpen, and the central station there does justice to what they say about it - it is one of the most beautiful in Europe.

We started walking around. It took us some time to get used to the map. Yes, we got a bit lost even with the map. It was colder than it had been since we arrived and Carol was afraid her hands would freeze and fall off.
The first place we went to us Rubenshuis, or the house of Rubens, a painter of the 17th century. It was the first contact with paintings and it was funny to discuss about still-life (yep Carol, it was not dead nature) and two funny things happened as we were leaving the museum. Near the exit two girls were on a table and asked us if we could help them in a research. They were studying how people reacted to the museum and there were some questions about what we had seen and learned from the booklet. So, after the museum, a test! But the nice thing is that we got a postcard to make up for the stress of a test. And in the garden, where we could take pictures there was a boy who resembled the guy who plays Harry Potter, and paparazzo Elton was there to very discreetly register the moment.

The day followed and we were getting hungry. We found one streetmarket and there were a lot of cheeses and candies and nuts and whatever and the hunger increased, but Carol wanted a warm place to eat. So we decided for a restaurant similar to a bakery in which people would choose the bread and the stuffing. A kind of local Subway. But when it was our turn, the attendants did not speak French, nor English, but one tried and was kind enough while we were making a certain confusion in the line. Food, drinks in hand, let me go to the toilet, but even inside the restaurants as it was in the museum, everywhere you had to pay 0,40 to be admitted. And it was how we got one of our catchphrases in the trip - I can easily pay 0,40. (At first, we thought it was an absurd to pay “so much” to use the toilets, but in retrospect, it was one of the cheapest places wherever one had to pay).
It was almost 3pm and we had visited ONE of the 11 places we had in our plan. So we decided to hurry up a bit and visited the cathedral and the main square.
We then found the Fashion Museum. And although none of us was a big fan of fashion, we were in one of the most elegant and fashion-oriented cities in Europe. So we asked for a very friendly guy and he told us there was a hat exhibition. Perfect. So let’s enter. 10 euros? Wow, we hope it is worth it. Well, crazy hats apart, in 10 minutes we had finished all the floor. Is there another one? No, that’s it. 10 euros for 10 minutes. We were so frustrated. That’s why in Portuguese we have a saying that when someone is deceived he or she is “taking the hat”... we tried to see one or other museum but they were all closing or closed. It was almost 6pm. Louis was worried what time we would be back, so we returned to the station. There was a fast train leaving. Let’s buy the tickets. 10 min, the train was gone and we were still in line. A big family buying, the cashier closed, one guy starting yelling at the cashier, the other came to intervene. And almost half an hour later and some trains lost we managed to buy the tickets (that we should in fact have bought in the morning). Running and running to the platform and we got on the slowest train out of all the options. And to make it more adventurous - or horrible for two exhausted journeypeople - it stopped somewhere in the middle of the way and we had to wait in the cold for another one which would finally take us to Brussels.
***
After this funny and adventurous day we had a cool night with dinner at Louis’s and he offered some wine. We were not very picky about it, but he wanted to be sure it was the correct wine. We had never heard there were correct wines and incorrect ones. We had already finished eating, so any would be the most suitable, proper, adequate but the word he used ‘correct’ was exotic and funny (the linguists would say it was not collocational). So we had some correct wine and went to bed.

Travel log - Europe - Day 2

2011-03-09T13:31:00.000-08:00

Day 2

During the first night nothing happened but it numbed a little bit our senses and we were slow as we decided to take the train to go to Gare du Nord, where we would take the Thalys train. We received a new Ticketless card, so we had no paper telling us what time our train would leave and then we had to try to recover from our subconscious what time we had to be there. Carol had no idea we had to take a train and would arrive in the station only half an hour later. First obstacle, which ticket to buy. There were some machines but were the more expensive ones the tickets to take us from the airport to downtown. 8 euros or 2? (a friend told us later we should have bought the cheapest one and if we were stopped we should say, well, we didn’t know.) Then we got the train and we saw it was snowing. The day was still dark and there were only some more people in the same wagon with us. The funny thing is that there was a blond guy and he was talking to an Asian girl and though they looked like a couple, he could not help staring at us (especially at Carol). Strange, dear, but true, dear.
As soon as we got to Gare du Nord, Carol kept saying it was too late and too late and I told her we still had time. But I could not be sure. So we gave our cards to the guy with the funny uniform and he read it with a machine and he told us what we most feared - our train was the previous one, so we had missed it. I felt devastated. And if we didn’t think fast, we would miss this second option. The guy was very nice to tell us we should enter a specific wagon and wait for him there. We were nervous and pissed we had missed our train. We boarded and waited for the guy and then I looked outside the window and realized it was snowing a lot. A lot of snow and we hadn’t even paid attention it was snowing at all.After some minutes the train left the platform and we felt good for going to where we should be but how much this lack of attention would cost us. In the end it would cost 88 euros each, the double of the smallest fare but the guy was sympathetic to our despair and he charged us 98 for both tickets. Not so bad, but we should not have missed anything.
Half sleeping and swimming in a mix of self-punishment, self-pity, we arrived in Belgium in no time. Off the train, we should try to call Louis for him to know we had arrived. This, however, was not necessary. As soon as we arrived at the hall of the station I could see him looking around, looking for us. Carol almost went past him because she did not recognize him, he had shaved and had his hair cut short.
The first thing we did was to have a glimpse of Brussels. It was all white with snow. And there was a not so serious traffic jam downtown. I guess it was for us not to feel homesick. The first place we went was a bakery. It was so interesting to see all those different types of biscuits and breads. The shapes and the colors (and very likely the tastes), everything reminded us we were definitely far from home. The streets to get to Louis’s house were surrounded by trees. And these trees were so full of snow on them that we could not help thinking we had just entered the kingdom of Narnia. Although we had seen it in pictures, the quantity of snow, the light of that time of the day, everything worked so as to give us a sensation of magic, of exoticism.

After this we headed to the place which would shelter us in the following days. Our friend’s house. As soon as we arrived, we were taken to have a tour around the house. It was a big but very cozy house. It seemed one house we see in movies. And it was the moment to get to know some members of his family. They turned out to be very nice and warm people, who made us feel totally at home. The funny thing was that, in a different place, we should have been more than eager and ready for adventure, but a night at the airport had made us tired. We had to take a quick nap and a shower. And we did so for half an hour. (Ok, it was more than that, but the new beds were so inviting). We woke up and it was still day. We had not forgotten we would have less hours of light so we should leave soon. So, Louis took us to a museum and a park and we had a lot of fun there: the first thing that happened was our first snow fight. We had a disadvantage over our host because we could not make a ball out of snow - it would collapse before hitting the target. So he taught us how to do it and the balls were better. After that, we were walking in a very white park and suddenly Louis started yelling at Carol because she was stepping on the “grass”. In fact it was covered with snow so he knew it was grass over there because he knew the place. And there really was grass under the snow, but with all that cold our steps would be the least of their problems. Finally, another funny thing that happened was that we had a lot of snow on the ground but it hadn’t snowed since we arrived there. So we tried to make it snow by shaking some trees. The effect was not exactly what we expected as it was difficult to control where it would fall, but we tried.

Then we got hungry and it was time for our first Belgian meal. We went to a stand and bought some fries with some other fried things. Some traditional sauces to go with all that fat. But it was just delicious. We had what Louis called a “poor Belgian meal”. Then we did more. We were taken to a walk downtown. It was a bit cold but we could see some interesting spots. We got to a street market and had some hot wine. But then we went to a fancy place, a type of restaurant to have some chocolat chaud. It was a top one, expensive indeed but worth every cent of it. Louis was eavesdropping the next table conversation: it was a couple arguing in a very polite way. We could not understand what they were saying but he was translating to us and we were commenting in Portuguese. The attendant realized we were speaking Portuguese, we felt embarrassed she might have understood so we decided to mind our own business. =) Afterwards, we saw a show of lights in a building and finally went to a bar - Delirium is its name - with about 200 types of beer. Of course, I chose a girlish one, with fruits and very sweet but this is just me, into sweet drinks. And we went home. We tried to watch a movie, one about the singer Claude François, but I guess none of us saw it more than 15 minutes. It was dark, it was warm. So let’s go to bed.

Travel log - Europe - Day 1

2011-03-02T20:04:00.000-08:00

Day 1

Well, as I had promised some people I know I would, here it goes the first log of my adventures in Europe in December 2010 and January 2011. If you search this blog you are going to see I have already tried to tell my friends and some strangers about my adventures there in 2009. Unfortunately (for some readers), the other entries are all in Portuguese. It comes easier to write in my own language and most of the people who had shared experiences with me there would understand. But this time is different. One thing that happened in the other series of texts is that I never managed to finish them. It took me about six months altogether to tell people about what had happened in those 18 days and I never managed to get past the day 15 or 14 I guess. Anyway, one should take advantage of a certain period of inspiration and written production and write as much as possible here. The task is harder now since I spent 27 days there instead of 18. However, I can use of some help in the first days because the trip is not mine in fact. It was a dream of someone, a very special friend so I went along with her, sharing her dream and she will definitely help me here in the first part of the trip because there was a puddle in the way. You will hear of it later on. Be patient, fasten your seat belts and read.
***
The first day was kind of busy. There were some documents to be taken if we had problems at immigration and my printer was not working properly. So I had to take the bus and go to the university in order to print all the papers. Well, no problem as to that, you would say, since the flight was at night. But I had to start and finish packing (yep, I am a last minute person - a procrastinator). I had no idea what to put in the suitcases so I asked the best PEOPLE: those who had NEVER traveled to Europe in the winter and for that long. My friend Marcio went to my house and I also started a videoconference on skype with this friend of mine, Carol, and we were packing simultaneously and one was helping the other with all the packing while Marcio was always reminding us of something or suggesting what could be taken out and all. Of course, hindsight we took a lot of stupid things we never worn and forgot some important things, but it served us well as a lesson for next time.
Then, with the bags ready I headed for the subway and Carol’s family would take us to the airport. She had to tell her father we would take off one hour before the real time so he agreed we should get going. He likes to cut it thin but we did not want to try our luck.
At the airport, the lines were a bit long, but my parents had called and told me I should wait for them as they wanted to give me hugs and farewells. Besides, my computer was with me (as I would leave it with mom), Carol’s family had left as they couldn’t wait for embarking. The clock was ticking and it seemed they would never make it in time. I would have to carry my heavy computer to Europe and would not hug anyone. They finally arrived a bit sad as they thought I wouldn’t be able to be there on time and luckily the gate line had reduced considerably.
So security check and all, first of many, there we were boarding the plane towards Istambul. It was quite strange to imagine we would go so East before coming back to Paris, but by then I had already stopped trying to understand the (illogical) logics involved in airline schemes.
The flight itself was quite an adventure. First of all, we hadn’t been able to get seats together so we had to keep waiting the boarding finish and try changing seats. We did so, and we sat on some very nice places, but a huge family boarded late when we thought no one else would and we had taken their places. So, back to our seats. I told Carol she could sit next to me because there was an empty seat. So she did. But the screen of that seat was defective and she would not be able to watch any movie and it pissed her a bit. She sat between me and a guy she later discovered was a member of a band of a very popular Brazilian singer. I slept a lot and would wake up sometimes only to gobble whatever they were serving to go back to sleep some seconds afterwards. At a certain point over the Atlantic the plane got into a very turbulent zone and it would shake and shake. She was awake and we, the guys beside her, weren’t, and not even a lady crying she was going to die nor the bumping made us wake up. She had to suffer the turbulence, the lady crying and a strong desire to go to the toilet all on her own (as she was kind enough not to wake any of us to go to the toilet). OK, one has to admit she did sleep as well, and her book tried to sneak out (making a lot of noise), but the guy took it from the middle of the aisle and she couldn’t believe the book had fallen from her lap onto the aisle making a lot of noise and she had not perceived it.
***
So after some hours, big meals (I ate mine and whatever Carol wouldn’t), TV series and a lot of drooling we were landing in Istambul. The point more to the east I had ever been to. Of course, we were so excited about getting out of there that we barely paid attention to what the pilot was saying. And of course this turned out against us. As we landed and went through immigration, I told her we had less than 20 minutes to go to the other gate to get our flight to Paris. So we started to almost run to the gate. When we got there, what a surprise. It was empty. Too late? A very impolite attendant informed us: It will open only in half an hour. So we realized we were 1h10 earlier. We had run for nothing. During the flight we had remembered that with all the fuss about having the documents ready we had forgotten to write down the addresses of the people we would be with when we were not in hostels. We had everything on emails but nothing on paper, no telephones, zero. The solution to this would be to use her cellphone or my netbook to access our emails to write down the addresses and phones. We found out that a café would give us wi-fi access so I had a Turkish coffee in Turkey while Carol tried opening her email on her cellphone. After almost half an hour we had managed to write down all the data on napkins. It was precarious indeed, but we had time to write on better sheets of paper in the flight. By the way, I guess it was there I realized I had lost the baggage claim ticket somewhere in Guarulhos. Problems looming?
***
Well, at least no problems flying to Paris, the next curious thing happened when we were going through immigration. The previous trip, the guy in Amsterdam had asked our documents and asked some questions, but he released us quite briefly. Carol was freaking out because of this. She was afraid they would send us back to Brazil or would say the documents were not reliable. It turned out that they barely looked at us, kept talking, stamped the passports and told us to go on. It took less than 2 minutes. And I told Carol that was that. She was in shock. After all those butterflies in our stomachs, the possibility of being extradicted or held at the airport, he had barely talked to us. We walked about the airport and I felt very sad because we had planned spending the night at Charles de Gaulle Airport and I had done that before and it had been awful. But things changed this time. We found a place with some armchairs, really cosier than the benches of the last time. And it was not only us. A bunch of people were there, sleeping or reading, and waiting for the other day. We were not so tired so we took turns sleeping and staying awake. At a certain moment of the night someone even turned off the lights of the part we were. An old lady kept reading in the half-dark but we were glad we had no problems through the night. Well, this was so until we decided to head for the station to get our train to Belgium.

Jocosa proposição cinco

2011-02-24T18:31:00.000-08:00

o ensaio que se coloca a seguir tem como objetivo geral a especificação da subjetividade perdida daquele que vos fala. como objetivos específicos é possível identificarmos quatro pontos centrais de argumentação, a dizer, i)a defesa do caráter teórico e filosófico do seu discurso, ii)a justificativa para o processo quase inevitável de psicologização das experiências vividas, iii) a apologia irrestrita à imaginação sem fronteiras - a pseudoanarquia da mente que se traveste de certa loucura - e afinal, iv)a compreensão da inescapabilidade da forma de dizer o que se necessita dizer como foi dito.
primeiro, faz-se mister especificar as fontes de pesquisa acessados. segundo freud, marcuse, lacan (et alli), a mente humana se forma e deforma e se reflete e se esconde. transcende-se o limite a cada passo dado com as pernas mais abertas. uma vez que se atira uma pedra, o lago já não é mesmo. as ondas podem se acalmar e a superfície pode voltar a ficar plácida, mas no fundo, ali no fundo o chão possui uma nova pedra, que faz parte do lago. o fora vira dentro.
segundo, a riqueza da sabedoria possui unicamente um valor verdadeiro a partir do momento em que se compartilha. destarte, aquilo que se afirma ser terapêutica, ou uma forma paliativa de se lidar com os fatos da existência, nada mais são do que camadas de conhecimento empírico ou teórico que saem como formas de auxílio ou como formas de solucionar problemas de qualquer sorte.
além desses pontos, vale fazermos um pequeno desvio mental para a mente em si, que se abre como um leque e que permite enxergar novos prismas e novas perspectivas. de weltenschauung em weltenschauung todo o nosso Dasein vira um Hingehen. o silêncio se torna um fardo, uma punição (para qual dos interlocutores só o destino dirá).
por fim, é importante concluir toda ilação certificando o leitor que este texto, como qualquer outro, permitindo sua transliteração se mostrará nada mais que a imagem essencial da afirmação de que realmente, não, não ia dar certo mesmo.

Jogos Passageiros quatro

2011-02-20T16:51:00.000-08:00

e o tempo vai apagando as marcas
ele se torna mais um
na multidão

dá uma vontade de chorar
de se esconder
meio vivo
meio morto

fogo apagado
luz apagada
cortina
fechada

o show acabou
semama que vem tem mais
tem mais?

vão-se os biólogos
e as tesouras
ficam os dedos
as folhas
e a vontade
e o carinho

marchinha

2011-02-17T16:56:00.000-08:00

Andando na rua, já não acontecia fazia um tempinho
As pessoas olham olham
com aqueles olhares que devoram
e até viram o pescocinho.

Eu fico abismado
Retribuo meio tenso.
Um sorriso, olhar sacana
Imagino pelado
Penso
Levava pra cama?

Pois é carnaval, venha junto!
quem não sabe fazer, assista!
tempo de alegria e brincadeira
Antes que se vá eu te pergunto
será que é ele Passista
ou será que porta-bandeira?

Bem-vindo 2011 (atrasado)

2011-02-13T20:04:00.000-08:00

Olá aos leitores.

Mais um ano começou e o blog estava meio abandonado. Sei que não costumo fazer posts informativos, tendo mais aos posts artísticos, com personagem, com poesia. Mas acho que preciso dar uma justificativa por ter ficado ausente tanto tempo. Além disso, quero poder anunciar os planos pra o que seguirá esse ano (pelo menos na intenção)e quero poder aproveitar a onda e escrever um pouco, quebrando as travas e o que quer que havia me colocado em uma fase cheia de ideias mas sem a menor motivação para colocar tudo na página, seja aqui, seja em qualquer outra. Um silêncio dolorido, mas inescapável. Uma inércia preguiçosa e (sendo auto-complacente) necessário.

Por um lado, eu viajei. Antes de viajar, tem aquela fase de preparação da viagem, procurar lugares, pesquisar, transportes.

Depois veio a viagem em si. Logo começo a colocar (provavelmente em inglês) as aventuras aqui no blog, pro povo de lá poder acompanhar. Todo mundo que segue por aqui sabe inglês, não?

Além disso, outra coisa que me impediu de vir aqui colocar a boca no trombone era que eu estava muito ocupado, lendo as atualizações nos blogs que sigo e os quais estão se tornando um corpo de inspiração. Me surpreendo com as coisas lindas que pessoas que conheço escrevo, me divirto, me comovo. E tou praticando pra participar mais fazendo comentários. Vamos ver.
Que blogs são esses? Bom, tem os mais politizados e divertidos como o Escreva Lola escreva e o Mas que língua solta.

No quesito poesia deliciosa de ler, que a gente devora e se delicia tem o Fodido não tem vez e o Atlas Atrás. Ah, o Egomorto também sempre me leva pra longe.

Tem ainda os blogs que são mais um comentário sobre a vida, com insights e num tom meio crônica. Entre os meus favoritos estão o Vida down under, o Minha vida antes dos 30 e o blog do Wendell.

Tem um com contos eróticos ou de conteúdo forte. Acho bem legais também, o falo com meu falo.

Esses são os que mais tem postado e os que eu mais gosto mesmo.

Bom, pra começar o ano (meio tarde, eu sei, mas dizem que o Brasil só funciona depois do carnaval) eu já botei alguns textos no meu estilo, textos que revelam um pouco do que passa na minha subjetividade nesse momento. Mas o texto que deveria inaugurar o blog é um que escrevi no avião, voltando pro Brasil. Foi um momento emotivo e meio piegas, mas que deve servir como um plano de metas, um mapa de para onde devo ir. Segue. Se tiverem paciência, divirtam-se:

"Voltando pra casa eu me vi pensando. Pensando no que eu fui antes dessa jornada, no ano que passou. Foram tantas pessoas que passaram pela minha vida e deixaram uma marca. Algumas vão ficar. A maioria, como sempre, passa.
Foi uma época tensa. Eu vivi de tudo um pouco: excitação, euforia, medo, incertezas. Tive de tomar decisões e sustentá-las. Entender um pouco melhor sobre quem eu sou, de como posso sim ir além. De como eu posso fazer um gesto que, inesperado, transcende o que eu penso em fazer. Que eu posso chorar na frente de todo mundo, dançar feito uma bailarina bêbada.
Quando eu simplesmente queria dar uma pausa de mim mesmo e entender o que o ano de 2010 foi, então eu descobri: eu vi do que sou feito e do que tenho motivos pra me orgulhar.
se por fora pareço o mesmo, por dentro há toda uma nova configuração. Uma semente germinando, uma fagulha antiga que se acende e brilha. me sinto cheio de vida e de amor.
Sinto que a distância me aproximou, dos meus amigos, da minha família. Quero saber mais sobre a minha cidade, sobre o meu país. Tantas perguntas que me fizeram e eu não sabia como responder. Vi tantas pessoas tentando levar uma vida decente em condições tão melhores, mas sendo tão pobres de visão global. Miséria de vidas enfiadas em bebida e auto-comiseração. Parem. Olhem de fora. Só não posso negar que eles tentavam ser felizes. Levar alegria pra outras pessoas.
Tudo tem sim, seu tempo. Estou clichê. Vou perceber que ao final de 2011 tudo virá mais fácil e os pontos onde errei estarão mais claros, mais definidos. Superados? Talvez nem tanto, mas não tenho pressa.
A perspectiva é de muito estudo, trabalho, mas acima de tudo, a vontade de amar profundamente, de uma forma que eu nunca me permiti antes, de uma forma diferente."

Juntos Poderíamos três

2011-02-11T09:34:00.000-08:00

querido pequeno príncipe,

começo essa carta sentindo o alívio dos justos. ou dos covardes.
afinal, a voz que se enroscava na garganta
e não saía
eis a voz
voando, viajando nos bits e bytes.
ela vem do mundo das ideias. platão manda lembranças,
até nietzsche.
mas eles não sabem nada de você.
talvez nem eu.
porém a voz vai saindo e ela sai meio rouca e cheia de...
pesar?
deixar estar.
talvez pelo que o último dia poderia ter sido e não foi
pelo vergonha de um atraso de horas
pelo fato de que o bar e os amigos eram mais importantes que a companhia

não fique pensando não, coração,
que nesta carta eu te mando frases de efeito
cujo efeito são o contrário do que eles intencionam
o futuro pode ser incerto, mas pra que ele deve estragar o gozo do presente?
eu não precisava estar ali, mas se não dei passos na outra direção
a frase era só capricho, constatação
frases de efeito
cheias de defeito
cheias de mim.

no doubt, você me falou: don't speak
assim, perdeu o que eu tinha de melhor e de pior. azar o seu. e sorte.
sou sim chato e bobo e feio,
nem vou conseguir me encaixar perfeitamente no seu mundo.
pra ser sincero
não me encaixo
per fei ta men te
nem no meu.
Quiça mal e porcamente?
nem sei se quero.
vou confessar que às vezes, não raro, não sabia se falava com você ou com a rosa.
tão doce e macio.
tão aberto.
minhas mãos como de jardineiro percorriam seu corpo, não, não tinha espinhos.
Mas depois da bonança, trovoada, tempestade.

tinha tanto pra viver com você.
te ensinar e te aprender.
talvez um dia, um dia talvez
a paixão afine nossos espíritos
a gente entenda do que se fazem as nuvens
e o que queremos nem sempre é o que podemos.

num futuro logo ali
talvez a gente tenha mudado por demais
(ainda que seu fundamentalismo rejeite a mudança
como as estações, ela vem)
a gente nem se reconheça
com nossos defeitos
desfeitos
enquanto o melhor de nós
feito caniço na tormenta
se dobre, mas volte sempre a apontar pras estrelas
pra que o outro possa se sentir em casa.

Com amor, mas sem frescura
Mr. Wrong

Joga Pedra dois

2011-02-11T09:27:00.000-08:00

tua violência visceral
me confundia e me consumia
eu era o que eu era
mas era o que pensava que queria que eu fosse.
teu sorriso maroto encantava
seus olhos ainda habitam meus pensamentos
os vincos na sua testa
caretinhas
tudo faz parte de mim e cresce
me inebria

cada um dos bons momentos,
tesourinhos.
mas o anel que tu me destes era vidro e se quebrou
mas o amor, ah, não era pouco, nem se acabou.

Já Passou um

2011-02-11T06:11:00.000-08:00

e assim você ia entrar no ônibus
e eu esperava um último olhar, um sorriso de adeus
passos em direção à porta
manda um beijo.
nada disso é migalha
é só carinho.
mais um passo.
entrou.