Rio seems a million miles away, but here are my collected memories from the trip. I just ate half a block of Velveeta and drank a glass of white wine, so I’m ready to write this thing before it flies out of my brain. Here’s hoping I’ve only retained the best ones, and only lost the worst!
I arrived in Rio early in the morning on Wednesday. I learned very quickly that nobody in Rio speaks a word of English. I even had trouble asking the airport Tourist Information people a question. After an all night (very turbulent) flight, during which I slept very little, I was not feeling up to navigating a totally foreign and uncommunicative world. I had buyer’s remorse – I can remember finally making it to my hotel, which was cash only and lacked AC, toilet paper, hot water, and various other amenities ($100 US a night!). I sat in my room and looked at the days in my planner, all of the blank pages that represented the hours and hours and hours before I could fly home again to see my boys, and I wept and wept. I wrote the Professor a very piteous email, and then met up with two other U.S. friends who were also there, and we poured out into the fast running current of the streets of Rio de Janeiro and tried to make our way through a day there.
We walked around Copacabana and Ipanema, avoiding the buses that blew past at breakneck speed. (The traffic in Rio produced a low-level stress that I could never shake – I could never stop looking over my shoulder for death to come hurtling at me over a curb.) We ate a meal at a kind of foul Amazonian restaurant, and then tried to catch a bus to a kitschy fun area of town.
The bus was not to be. We got on the bus but ended up getting off after some sort of something kept us sitting for half an hour without moving. We went back to the hotel and went to bed. I had an early morning staring me down.
The next three days were solid work. Work work work – Thursday all day, Friday all day, Saturday all day. My “boss” (the professor from my law school who was also there) made sure to insert some good stuff in there, though! Thursday I had lunch at a typical Brazilian place – I collected piles of delicious food onto a plate and paid for it by the kilo.
On Friday, we went to a samba club called Rio Scenario. It was a large dark place that is a samba club by night and an antiques auction by day – so we danced amid tons of old stuff pushed to the sides and hung up on the walls. A guy with white pants and a shirt opened down to his navel danced like Michael Flatley on uppers – he cleared a pretty wide circle around his flailing legs. We met a few English-speakers: a journalist from Chile, a Carioca woman named Natalie who left after an hour, worried that her friends had never shown up. “This is Rio, after all” she said. I hope she found her friends.
On Saturday we had lunch at a traditional Portuguese restaurant, which actually wasn’t my favorite. Everything had cod and hard boiled eggs in it, and many dishes had potato chips on top. We walked down the beach after lunch, and said good-bye to half our group, who were flying out early the next morning.
That night the official moot court party was held at a club called Zero Zero. It was ok, though if I hadn’t had to go as my school’s representative I probably wouldn’t have. It was not air conditioned (blech), and played American club music. Great place to pick up dudes, but as I wasn’t on the market, I wasn’t really feeling it. Nevertheless, I had to go.
The party started at 11pm (!), so beforehand I went to dinner with my fellow U.S. students. We went to a little place in Lapa to order feijoada, a typical Brazilian meal. At first, the waiter told us that feijoada was “over,” and we couldn’t get it. We made other selections, and a few minutes later he came over and took our full order of other selections. After he was done, he ripped off the page from his little notebook, then looked us all in the eye and told us they could do feijoada after all. So . . . we said ok, do the feijoada. I don’t really know what happened there. Ten minutes later, our table was piled high with a family style meal – platters of the steaming meat and bean stew, white rice, white rice with broccoli, shredded kale, and manioc flour (a yellow crunchy sort of flour that you sprinkle on top).
After gorging ourselves on this typical Brazilian meal, we went out to a bar called Tio Sam’s (translates to Uncle Sam’s), and sat down to order a round of Chopp, the draft beer. We heard the tinny sounds of “My Heart Will Go On” playing down the street, and turned our heads to see an enormous horde of young Brazilians, all wearing matching t-shirts with Xs all over them, marching down the street behind a man holding a huge megaphone that played the Titanic theme song. We had stumbled upon a “Barathon” (bar + marathon) – or rather, it had stumbled upon us. The shirts said “Barathon” on the front, and on the back had a chart with the names of bars and rooms for Xs as each bar was completed. The guy turned on his megaphone and began shouting at us in English – I guess it was obvious we were not from Rio. He asked us where we were from, if we liked Rio, etc. etc. . . . and then he challenged us to come along. So we did! We followed the Brazilians all flinging their arms wide like Jack and Rose on the boat, their hearts going on and on. It was all very silly and fun, and we walked to a couple of bars with them, chatting away to the English-speakers, before it was time to go to Zero Zero.
We took a cab to Zero Zero, where we had to be frisked and ID-checked by a humorless security guard (Carioca are weird about security – they had them at the university, too). It was a typical night of drinking and dancing. The caprinhas were very strong – I managed to stay up until 4:45 am somehow, but made it into my own bed safe and sound that night, where I slept about two hours before popping up out of bed for some reason. (I would be hungover for the entirety of the day – not too pleasant!)
Next day we went to a place called Santa Teresa – this place was what I imagined Rio would be in my head before I came. More on that tomorrow!
