One of the best things about South America is it's football. Here's a brief account of three games I've attended in the last month here.
Last month I took a short trip to Buenos Aires and Montevideo, and in the latter city I attended a game. Paying 120 Uruguayan pesos (just under £4) to watch Peñarol, the best team in the country, didn't seem like a bad idea, coupled with the fact that there wasn't much else to do on that late autumn Sunday back in April. The whole experience was very South American. The Centenario, in which the game was held, was built to commemorate both a hundred years of Uruguayan independence from Spanish rule and for the purpose of hosting the majority of the first ever World Cup's games. This was back in 1930, and not a lot has changed since. Not a single steward was visible inside the ground - the menacing police on the outside was the only presence of authority around. The fans, therefore, were left to their own devices, which consisted of flare lighting, exuberant singing and dancing, drug smoking, and general self-controlled anarchy. In other words, light years away from 21st century English football (but not dissimilar to what the game was like in the UK pre-Premiership, or some European leagues today). The game itself was an entertaining spectacle - Peñarol opened the scoring with an awesome bit of skill by their Argentine no. 10, but the opposition Liverpool managed to take the lead before half time. Cue frustration among the gathered masses, but following an equalizer after 70 minutes, Peñarol scored two in the dying minutes to provoke unbridled joy. The quality of football on display was of a good standard - but I don't see any of either teams players being the target of transfer speculation from Europe's big boys. Having said that, the price to entertainment value was excellent - when it's 10x cheaper to watch this than Man Utd or Chelsea you can't complain.
A week later I was in the Engenhão in Rio de Janeiro, watching a classico between Flamengo and Fluminense. The Engenhão is a 40,000 capacity stadium located in the north zone of the city, and is acting as a stop-gap for Rio's major teams now that the Maracana is closed for repairs. Only four years old, the stadium reeks of Ikea-Cardboard-Cutoutness - it could be put in any city in Europe and not look out of place, such is it's lack of any discernable character. This makes it look highly incongruous in relation to it's surroundings of drab lower class neighborhoods. About the only thing in common between the two experiences was the passion of the supporters - again, unremitting chanting and singing for 90 minutes. Curiously, unlike any other stadium I've been in, the hardcore fans were based at the side of the pitch, not behind the goal, but it didn't hamper the excellent atmosphere. As for the on-the-pitch occurrences, the torrential rain greatly hindered the free flowing football we were supposed to be seeing, and the fact that the highlight of the game was the penalty shootout says it all. Interestingly, halfway through each half the game stopped for a few minutes for tempo técnico - a short break for the players to gather instructions from their manager (instead of having them yelled at him from 30 yards away), and for the team to take stock of their performance so far. It baffled me at the time, but I've since been told that it's a recent innovation in Brazilian football which may well be popularised in the rest of the world
Last night I saw Vasco da Gama vs Avai in the semi finals of the Copa do Brasil. Alluded to in it's name, Vasco was formed by the Portuguese, which is shown in not only the architecture of the stadium itself (the São Januário) but also the surrounding area. You could convince yourself you were in Lisbon at times, albeit a rather rundown area. Although lacking in capacity, the stadium more than makes up for it's lack of numbers with a terrific, very Brazilian atmosphere. Living in the south zone of Rio I often forget what real Brazil feels like - a trip to the decidedly un-gringo suburb of São Cristóvão, which surrounds Vasco's ground, is a great reminder. Yet despite the packed ground and the fever pitch atmosphere, the game was let down by lack of quality - a far cry from the Vasco side, who with Romario and Edmundo beat Man Utd eleven years ago.
I hope to catch some of the national championship games (a chance to see Neymar and Ganso of Santos in Rio) before I head home in a month.
Jack
Friday, 22 April 2011
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Rio Happenings
Obama's recent visit provided some entertainment. The president visited Brazil as part of his Latin American "tour" (tour in inverted commas as the only other countries he visited were Chile and El Salvador), starting in the capital, Brasilia, before spending sunday 21st March in Rio, staying only five or so blocks from where I live. After the scenes a few days previously in the centre of the city, where large anti-US protests took place and the odd molotov cocktail thrown, I was keen to see what the reception would be like as Obama left his Copacabana hotel at 2:30pm to deliver a speech at a theatre in the centre of the city. The police presence was predictably huge, riot police, federal police, choque police (arguably the meanest police around) , the army, it was quite a sight. After much standing around in anticipation I finally got a glimpse of the man before he entered his bullet and missile proof vehicle. He was then escorted along the beachfront to the sounds of hundreds of people cheering. A note of the subsequent speech he made - the only negative reaction was from Obama joking about a Brazilian football match from the previous day, whilst the rest of his words about democracy and all that was lapped up by the 400 people given access to the theatre.
The rest of my time has been filled struggling with my dissertation and attending four hours of class a week. Given the amount of free time I have, I've been able to check out more of this vast city. Rio's favelas (slums) are a misinterpreted part of Rio, and Brazil in general. Most middle class Brazilians gaze up in revulsion at these hillside settlements, regarding them as a tropical version of Sodom, filled with gun-toting drug dealers and general Grand Theft Auto-esque activities, yet the same people base their judgements on the conservative, crime obsessed media rather than actual experience. Most people who abhorr these settlements that I've spoken to haven't actually visited one. This coupled with the fact that the most successful well-know Brazilian films of recent times have all been about favela-related violence (Tropa de Elite, Cidade de Deus, Onibus 174). It appears, somewhat bizarrely, that the paranoia of the middle and upper class here is equal to that of people back home. Vidigal, where my friend is living, is a large favela located near the rich suburb of Leblon, and based on my experience is as safe as anywhere else in Rio. There's far more of a community feel to in than a lot of the rich areas of Rio - places such as Copacabana have a noticiable, but not particularly damaging divide between the wealthy tourists/residents and the people who work in the cafés, bars and restaurants, all of whom invariably live in favelas.
I recently visited Barra da Tijuca, where I attended an Iron Maiden concert : see here for details:
http://manehead.blogspot.com/2011/03/iron-maiden-live-at-hsbc-arena-rio-de.html
Barra is one of the newest parts of the city (most of it's development has happened in the last 60 years), and one of my least favourites. I thought many parts of Zona Sul in Rio, such as Copacabana where I live, were the product of stunted tacky development, but Barra takes the mick. The place stinks of awful U.S. rip offs - gigantic shopping malls with ostentatious designs (such as Rio's very own Statue of Liberty), dire tower blocks and nothing pleasent or idiosyncratic. On a positive note, it has the highest quality of life in Rio, and is one of the safest places, but I'd rather live in Copacabana than sterile Barra.
The weather is still as intense as ever, and almost constantly sweating is grating on me a little. Any extreme of weather is the same - we all love to sledge and have snowball fights but road closures and delayed flights are a pain. Similarly here, the hot weather is great if you want to chill at the beach but if you want to get along with your daily life it is a bit of an inconvenience. The lack of seasons here isn't too healthy. In the U.K, the seasons give the year more definition - we suffer through bleak winter nights to (occasionally) be rewarded with glorious summer days. In Rio there is no suffering, no sense of being rewarded for punishingly bad weather - you can have a cloudless blazing hot day any day of the year (although less frequent in June-July).
Jack
The rest of my time has been filled struggling with my dissertation and attending four hours of class a week. Given the amount of free time I have, I've been able to check out more of this vast city. Rio's favelas (slums) are a misinterpreted part of Rio, and Brazil in general. Most middle class Brazilians gaze up in revulsion at these hillside settlements, regarding them as a tropical version of Sodom, filled with gun-toting drug dealers and general Grand Theft Auto-esque activities, yet the same people base their judgements on the conservative, crime obsessed media rather than actual experience. Most people who abhorr these settlements that I've spoken to haven't actually visited one. This coupled with the fact that the most successful well-know Brazilian films of recent times have all been about favela-related violence (Tropa de Elite, Cidade de Deus, Onibus 174). It appears, somewhat bizarrely, that the paranoia of the middle and upper class here is equal to that of people back home. Vidigal, where my friend is living, is a large favela located near the rich suburb of Leblon, and based on my experience is as safe as anywhere else in Rio. There's far more of a community feel to in than a lot of the rich areas of Rio - places such as Copacabana have a noticiable, but not particularly damaging divide between the wealthy tourists/residents and the people who work in the cafés, bars and restaurants, all of whom invariably live in favelas.
I recently visited Barra da Tijuca, where I attended an Iron Maiden concert : see here for details:
http://manehead.blogspot.com/2011/03/iron-maiden-live-at-hsbc-arena-rio-de.html
Barra is one of the newest parts of the city (most of it's development has happened in the last 60 years), and one of my least favourites. I thought many parts of Zona Sul in Rio, such as Copacabana where I live, were the product of stunted tacky development, but Barra takes the mick. The place stinks of awful U.S. rip offs - gigantic shopping malls with ostentatious designs (such as Rio's very own Statue of Liberty), dire tower blocks and nothing pleasent or idiosyncratic. On a positive note, it has the highest quality of life in Rio, and is one of the safest places, but I'd rather live in Copacabana than sterile Barra.
The weather is still as intense as ever, and almost constantly sweating is grating on me a little. Any extreme of weather is the same - we all love to sledge and have snowball fights but road closures and delayed flights are a pain. Similarly here, the hot weather is great if you want to chill at the beach but if you want to get along with your daily life it is a bit of an inconvenience. The lack of seasons here isn't too healthy. In the U.K, the seasons give the year more definition - we suffer through bleak winter nights to (occasionally) be rewarded with glorious summer days. In Rio there is no suffering, no sense of being rewarded for punishingly bad weather - you can have a cloudless blazing hot day any day of the year (although less frequent in June-July).
Jack
Thursday, 20 January 2011
Three weeks on the Iberian Peninsula
I had been meaning to do an update whilst on the road but I ended up having less down time that I thought I would. Instead I've made the most of my empty hours in rural South Wales to document the events of January.
Since I had copious amounts of time with little to do I decided to head to Spain and Portugal for three weeks in January. Although I`ve already seen a large portion of Spain there are still quite a few places I`d yet to venture, and with friends in Barcelona, Valencia and Lisbon I had an opportunity to see them again before I headed back to South America, as well as having their knowledge of the respective cities.
I left the UK on the 10th January just as I`d re-entered it upon my return from Brazil in December - shrouded in darkness and shivering in the bitter cold. I was greeted with perfect weather in Barcelona - not shorts and t-shirt by any means but anything in the 20`s in January is a bonus. Having not spoke Spanish properly for 6 months I struggled at first, coupled with the fact that Catalan is so prominent. It surprised me that Barça felt more touristy than Rio, even in low season. A notable feature of Barcelona is the influence of architect Antoni Gaudi - his work at Parc Guell is impressive and some of the buildings he designed give the city a character which sets it apart from other Spanish cities.
In addition to the normal touristy stuff I was lucky to catch a football game on my last day there - Barcelona vs Malaga, in La Liga, along with 79,999 other fans. By my reckoning it's an unprecedented event that the top three players in the world (as voted in the FIFA World Player Of The Year award) play for the same team, so it was a joy to watch Leo Messi, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta showing off and playing some of the best football imaginable, taking apart a weak Malaga side and winning 4-1. Much has been made of the passion of the Barça fans but to me it felt a lot more sedate than what I was expecting. Having said that, the result was fairly predictable, so it felt more like watching a show at the theatre than a real us-against-them football match. Bizarrely, a ticket to watch the best team in the world cost less than 30 euros - only two years previously I watched Leeds United struggle past Millwall on a wet Tuesday evening for the same price.
Valencia immediately felt a lot smaller and less touristy, even if it the third largest city in the country behind Barcelona. I spent three nights there and saw the impressive beach, the fairly new City of Arts and Sciences museum and the old part of town, climbing the 215 step tower of the Cathedral in the process.
I had been meaning to try out couchsurfing for years, and this trip was the perfect opportunity. If you search for 'couchsurfing' on google, the second most popular search term related to the subject is 'couchsurfing horror stories', however my experience of it in Cartagena was very positive. After staring out of the train window for several hours admiring the landscape I arrived in Cartagena in the late evening, and I managed to find the street on which my hosts lived. Or so it seemed, but my inability to read my own scrawny handwriting came back to bite me, as I was on a similarly named street and not the road I was supposed to be on. This resulted in lots of confusing, expensive phone calls, waiting around cluelessly, and my phone battery dying. About to give up and find some other form of accommodation I tried the next street along, where two guys approached me and led me back to their apartment. It turns out that the entire family is obsessed with heavy metal, and I spend a good few hours on youtube with one of the guys, Ryan, who introduced me to some good bands, and vice versa. Their generosity and kindness was staggering - I ate and slept better than anywhere else in Spain, and was given a bike tour of the city by the mum. Cartagena seemed pretty quiet, a far cry from what you'd imagine a city on the south coast of Spain to be like. It's a city with a lot of history - much evidence of the Romans as well as the naval base which housed a number of submarines during World War Two.
Continuing the trend of travelling to progressively smaller settlements, I decided to check out Aguilas, a small town a few hours west of Cartagena. The landscape seemed to get more and more arid the further down the coast I went, but amongst the parched hills lay huge greenhouses which exclusively contained tomatoes, apparently the only thing grown in this area. In Aguilas I spent the whole of Sunday wandering the barren empty coast, listening to progressive rock and reading Into The Wild, one of the best books I've had the pleasure of reading in quite a while. It was bitterly cold and empty and I was quite glad to leave for Murcia the following day.
Murcia was no warmer sadly, except for the almost tropical micro climate of El Corte Ingles. Murcia is the 7th largest city in Spain but doesn't have a lot to show for it - the only noticeable idiosyncrasy was the abundance of tramps in the city. There was a nice medieval quarter and cathedral, but you can say that about a myriad of Spanish settlements.
The nature of spontaneous travelling is that by compromising organisation you have to pay for lack of it on some occasions. I had run out of time to see any more of Spain as I had a flight back from Lisbon on the 1st February. So I scurried across Andalucia by bus, leaving Murcia at 10pm and arriving in a dreary Seville at 6:30am. I had no idea how I was to get to Lisbon from here but conveniently a bus there left soon after I arrived, via Huelva and Faro, that got into Lisbon by 2:15. This entire trip cost me 75 euros and left me pretty shattered.
Crossing the border into what became the 19th country I have visited in my life was fairly uneventful - I vaguely remember been awoken by a immigration officer and shoved my passport at him. Due to the time difference I had an hour to kill in the pleasant town of Faro, which looked especially nice in the first blue sky I'd seen in quite a while.
Lisbon was an interesting city, full of history. It was pretty cool to think that it was once the epicentre of the world, when the Portuguese empire was at it's pinnacle. It was interesting to see the Brazilian influence on Portuguese culture - for example, the consumption of the caipirinha, the quintessential Brazilian drink. I found it funny how the cheapest and most disgusting cachaça (spirit used in the cocktail) available in Brazil was on sale in the supermarkets of Lisbon for eight euros - four times the price as in Brazil. A note on the gastronomy was the quality of Portuguese pastries - in particular, the pastel de nata, essentially a custard tart, but better in flavour and texture than anything you'd find in Greggs.
I found the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and the Portuguese spoken in Portugal interesting. The language seems a lot purer than what I'm used to hearing in Rio, with a slight Slavic tone, and less Americanisations (e.g. the Portuguese say portatil for laptop, whereas Brazilians say...laptop). As I only stayed in Lisbon for five nights I was unable to really get back into the swing of Portuguese after speaking Spanish for over two weeks.
I now have just over two weeks before I fly back to South America, for the start my second semester in Rio, and Carnaval. The media hyperbole surrounding the event has meant that anything less than four days of pure hedonistic joy will be a disappointment, so I'm setting my expectations low and taking what comes. I find normal everyday life in Rio exciting enough as it is, especially after being deprived of it for over two months.
Jack
Since I had copious amounts of time with little to do I decided to head to Spain and Portugal for three weeks in January. Although I`ve already seen a large portion of Spain there are still quite a few places I`d yet to venture, and with friends in Barcelona, Valencia and Lisbon I had an opportunity to see them again before I headed back to South America, as well as having their knowledge of the respective cities.
I left the UK on the 10th January just as I`d re-entered it upon my return from Brazil in December - shrouded in darkness and shivering in the bitter cold. I was greeted with perfect weather in Barcelona - not shorts and t-shirt by any means but anything in the 20`s in January is a bonus. Having not spoke Spanish properly for 6 months I struggled at first, coupled with the fact that Catalan is so prominent. It surprised me that Barça felt more touristy than Rio, even in low season. A notable feature of Barcelona is the influence of architect Antoni Gaudi - his work at Parc Guell is impressive and some of the buildings he designed give the city a character which sets it apart from other Spanish cities.
In addition to the normal touristy stuff I was lucky to catch a football game on my last day there - Barcelona vs Malaga, in La Liga, along with 79,999 other fans. By my reckoning it's an unprecedented event that the top three players in the world (as voted in the FIFA World Player Of The Year award) play for the same team, so it was a joy to watch Leo Messi, Xavi and Andrés Iniesta showing off and playing some of the best football imaginable, taking apart a weak Malaga side and winning 4-1. Much has been made of the passion of the Barça fans but to me it felt a lot more sedate than what I was expecting. Having said that, the result was fairly predictable, so it felt more like watching a show at the theatre than a real us-against-them football match. Bizarrely, a ticket to watch the best team in the world cost less than 30 euros - only two years previously I watched Leeds United struggle past Millwall on a wet Tuesday evening for the same price.
Valencia immediately felt a lot smaller and less touristy, even if it the third largest city in the country behind Barcelona. I spent three nights there and saw the impressive beach, the fairly new City of Arts and Sciences museum and the old part of town, climbing the 215 step tower of the Cathedral in the process.
I had been meaning to try out couchsurfing for years, and this trip was the perfect opportunity. If you search for 'couchsurfing' on google, the second most popular search term related to the subject is 'couchsurfing horror stories', however my experience of it in Cartagena was very positive. After staring out of the train window for several hours admiring the landscape I arrived in Cartagena in the late evening, and I managed to find the street on which my hosts lived. Or so it seemed, but my inability to read my own scrawny handwriting came back to bite me, as I was on a similarly named street and not the road I was supposed to be on. This resulted in lots of confusing, expensive phone calls, waiting around cluelessly, and my phone battery dying. About to give up and find some other form of accommodation I tried the next street along, where two guys approached me and led me back to their apartment. It turns out that the entire family is obsessed with heavy metal, and I spend a good few hours on youtube with one of the guys, Ryan, who introduced me to some good bands, and vice versa. Their generosity and kindness was staggering - I ate and slept better than anywhere else in Spain, and was given a bike tour of the city by the mum. Cartagena seemed pretty quiet, a far cry from what you'd imagine a city on the south coast of Spain to be like. It's a city with a lot of history - much evidence of the Romans as well as the naval base which housed a number of submarines during World War Two.
Continuing the trend of travelling to progressively smaller settlements, I decided to check out Aguilas, a small town a few hours west of Cartagena. The landscape seemed to get more and more arid the further down the coast I went, but amongst the parched hills lay huge greenhouses which exclusively contained tomatoes, apparently the only thing grown in this area. In Aguilas I spent the whole of Sunday wandering the barren empty coast, listening to progressive rock and reading Into The Wild, one of the best books I've had the pleasure of reading in quite a while. It was bitterly cold and empty and I was quite glad to leave for Murcia the following day.
Murcia was no warmer sadly, except for the almost tropical micro climate of El Corte Ingles. Murcia is the 7th largest city in Spain but doesn't have a lot to show for it - the only noticeable idiosyncrasy was the abundance of tramps in the city. There was a nice medieval quarter and cathedral, but you can say that about a myriad of Spanish settlements.
The nature of spontaneous travelling is that by compromising organisation you have to pay for lack of it on some occasions. I had run out of time to see any more of Spain as I had a flight back from Lisbon on the 1st February. So I scurried across Andalucia by bus, leaving Murcia at 10pm and arriving in a dreary Seville at 6:30am. I had no idea how I was to get to Lisbon from here but conveniently a bus there left soon after I arrived, via Huelva and Faro, that got into Lisbon by 2:15. This entire trip cost me 75 euros and left me pretty shattered.
Crossing the border into what became the 19th country I have visited in my life was fairly uneventful - I vaguely remember been awoken by a immigration officer and shoved my passport at him. Due to the time difference I had an hour to kill in the pleasant town of Faro, which looked especially nice in the first blue sky I'd seen in quite a while.
Lisbon was an interesting city, full of history. It was pretty cool to think that it was once the epicentre of the world, when the Portuguese empire was at it's pinnacle. It was interesting to see the Brazilian influence on Portuguese culture - for example, the consumption of the caipirinha, the quintessential Brazilian drink. I found it funny how the cheapest and most disgusting cachaça (spirit used in the cocktail) available in Brazil was on sale in the supermarkets of Lisbon for eight euros - four times the price as in Brazil. A note on the gastronomy was the quality of Portuguese pastries - in particular, the pastel de nata, essentially a custard tart, but better in flavour and texture than anything you'd find in Greggs.
I found the differences between Brazilian Portuguese and the Portuguese spoken in Portugal interesting. The language seems a lot purer than what I'm used to hearing in Rio, with a slight Slavic tone, and less Americanisations (e.g. the Portuguese say portatil for laptop, whereas Brazilians say...laptop). As I only stayed in Lisbon for five nights I was unable to really get back into the swing of Portuguese after speaking Spanish for over two weeks.
I now have just over two weeks before I fly back to South America, for the start my second semester in Rio, and Carnaval. The media hyperbole surrounding the event has meant that anything less than four days of pure hedonistic joy will be a disappointment, so I'm setting my expectations low and taking what comes. I find normal everyday life in Rio exciting enough as it is, especially after being deprived of it for over two months.
Jack
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