Brasília

… and I’m missing Rio already. I got here on Tuesday night around 10 and checked into my hotel. And immediately resolved to leave it as soon as possible. So I checked out the next morning, and took a taxi to another hotel… which turned out to be, literally, right next door. Ahem. The taxi driver was nice, and he politely refrained from charging me for the 50 meters he drove and the back-breaking work of lifting my suitcase into and out of the trunk. He almost managed not to laugh, too. Good man.

I’m not crazy about the hotel I’m in now, either, but since it’s definitely not worth switching again, especially with all the luggage I’m toting, I figure I can deal. And it’s really only for another night or two — I’m leaving on Saturday night for São Paulo anyway. I’ve been telling myself that my lodging issues are affecting my perceptions of the city, which is undoubtedly true. However, even the Ritz wouldn’t change the fact that this city is really, really weird. For those of you who don’t know, Brasília was designed and built from the ground up in the 60s by people who were just a little too avant-garde for their own (or anyone else’s) good. And other people who just plain hated pedestrians. In Copacabana I could take care of pretty much all of my day-to-day business without leaving the block. Here I think the closest grocery store is a long, freeway-crossing hike away. All of the commercial parts of the city are divided into sectors. Naturally, I’m in the hotel sector, which means that it’s hotels, and more hotels, and more… well, you get the point. And one fairly large shopping mall, which is where I spend most of my time, because it has a food court, Internet access, and people that aren’t here on business.

Luckily I was warned before I came not to walk anywhere. It’s so flat and empty here that things look a lot closer than they really are. I tested this theory out accidentally trying to find a restaurant that, at least from the map in my guidebook, looked like it might be a manageable distance away. Close to another shopping. I started walking down the highway, toward a couple of distant buildings, and walked, and walked… and finally figured out that the buildings weren’t getting any closer, and that it would be a better idea to just grab a taxi back to the mall.

On the bright side, I’ve actually gotten way more done here than I was expecting to. The guy I needed to talk to at the MINC is on vacation, but the people at Planejamento were surprisingly accessible. Very few people I’ve talked to speak good English, so my pathetic, broken phone-Portuguese is getting a lot of use. I did another interview in Portuguese today as well — I definitely prefer talking in person, but it’s still kind of hard. Names are the worst — I’m not familiar enough with how things are pronounced in Portuguese to be able to understand even normal-looking names or titles. If asking the person to repeat and/or spell the name fails, my fallback tactic is to nod and pretend that I understand, then hope that I’ll be able to piece it together later. I was reminded today that this is not a good way to deal with the problem: I had written down an address and name from an earlier phone call, but when I went back to look at the stuff, it made absolutely no sense. For about 10 panicky minutes I was sure I was going to have to go from building to building in the Ministry and tell the doormen, Hi, I think I might have an appointment with someone here, but I didn’t understand his name and I’m not quite sure what office he’s in. I was fortunately able to figure it out, and at least show up at the right place, and the name didn’t really matter because they were expecting me anyway. So don’t worry, I have officially learned my lesson.

In fact, I was getting so many contacts that I was worried I’d have to stay here all weekend to finish things up on Monday. But I was able to schedule everything really efficiently for tomorrow, and in a token of divine mercy, two or three of the people I called were out of town. One of them was even in São Paulo! So I get to leave as soon as I want to, which will probably be on Saturday. I’d like to take a tour of the city to get the story on the architecture and see if anyone can come up with a way to make me appreciate all these wide-open spaces, so I’ll do that Saturday morning and then leave in the afternoon.

I tried to speak Spanish today and nothing came out. At this rate, Argentina will be very interesting.