I haven’t done much in the way of blogging previously, but Steve was kind enough to allow me to post some thoughts, musings, or whatever on his blog.

As to how this came about, I ran across Steve’s web site in some manner that I don’t recall. But I posted a comment on it and informed him that I also lived in Espirito Santo, in Vitoria itself. Steve responded and we exchanged several emails and agreed to a face-to-face meeting.

The meeting happened the morning of the day after I suffered my 4^th kidney stone, the previous one being about 20 years ago when in Spain. I had enough pain killer medication and anti inflammation medication that I actually felt up to going to the meeting that Friday morning.

Well, won’t bore you all with details of the meeting, just wanted to let you know that I am around and will personally bug Steve to update his blog!!! LOL When time permits, I may comment on subjects Steve writes (or has written) about and either reinforce his comments or provide an alternative viewpoint.

Até logo,

Fred

This time I will try to add to the blog at least once a week rather than twice. There will be some personal stuff but I will try to keep it all fairly general. The plan is to comment on anything in Brazil that strikes my fancy. The country’s affairs are not well reported in Europe and I hope to give a view from a European perspective. As this is my first week I will be more personal than usual while I find my feet in the Brazilian way of life.

Back together

The journey was about as good as you can hope for. I flew TAM because they had the best deal.  My previous journey with them was full of problems but this time everything worked perfectly.  My luggage was a few kilos over the limit but the checkin at Heathrow did not mention it. In São Paulo they tried to charge me R$72 extra which they finally waived.  It took 21 hours door to door which was very tiring.
It was very good to see Flavia again after three months apart. Skype is very good but but no substitute.

My first impression was the weather.  It is fairly humid which intensifies the feeling of heat. The actual temperature is around 28/32C which is much less than in Málaga in the summer. In short the heat is not a problem for me so far and it is going to get a bit cooler as the summer is now over.  Of course the rain is another thing. It has often been quite cloudy and most evenings there has been heavy rain, often accompanied by thunder and lightning.

Some of the guests

The Sunday after I arrived was Flavia’s birthday and she held a churrasco (barbecue) in the grounds of her apartment. There were twenty people most of whom I already knew and it was good to see old friends. It was very nice to have a maid and a cook to do the hard stuff on the day. We will be eating the left over food for the next month. Sadly we have finished all the beer.

My proxy server in the UK was running well but is suffering from some sort of glitch which needs sorting out.  It allows me to access BBC iPlayer which only admits people who connect via a UK computer. It can also access all sorts of other UK sites which have the same policy. This is another plus for Linux as it is very easy to do and is free.  Talking of computers (again) I have spent a couple of days re-installing Windows Vista Home Edition on Flavia’s computer. It is my first good look at Vista and it really is as bad as its reputation. I will also add Ubuntu Linux in the hope that she might be tempted to see how a proper operating system works.

Only three candles?

On Sunday we attend the wedding of Flavia’s cousin who is marrying an Englishman so there will be an unusual concentration of Brits in Vila Velha. It will be interesting to see how Brazilians celebrate weddings.  The first good thing is that the male guests are not required to dress like waiters.

To close here is a nice thing about life in Brazil. Since my last visit I had my 60th birthday; this gives me all sorts of concessions here. Post offices, banks, lottery shops, chemists etc must either allow me to go to the front of the queue or have a separate queue. Also people who are handicapped, pregnant or with very young children have the same rights.  Another bonus is that I receive half price entry to cinemas, museums and various other tickets. All I need is someone who gives half price hair transplants.

On a technical note I have been forced to make people log in if they want to add a comment.  This is because I was receiving over 20 spam comments every day all of which have to be manually deleted. If you want to add a comment please register a name and email address. You can fake both and remain 100% anonymous if you want.

On Sunday morning we drove around the area. Their house is on a secluded hill on a large estate similar to a Spanish  urbanisación. Eventually there will be around 120 houses. The neighbours seem to be exclusively bankers and senior judges.  Somehow the President of the Appeal Court loses some of his majesty when you meet him on a weekend morning wearing a pair of jeans and nothing else.  It is a very natural wooded area full of wildlife and plants. Lourdes is a keen gardener and has a magnificent collection including a black orchid.

We stopped for lunch in the shadow of the Pedra Azul which is a rock with a sheer face of 600 metres.  The whole area is a State Park and is well developed for tourism.  They promote all sorts of local food and agricultural products and handicrafts as well as the environment. We had an excellent lunch in an Italian restaurant.

After lunch we returned home for a week of penance, eating lettuce and painting the kitchen.

Bossa Nova This year is the 50th anniversary of the Bossa Nova and the City of Vitória held a free four day festival in celebration.  On the final night we listened to Roberto Menescal and  his partner of 20 years Wanda Sá. Menescal, along with people such as Tom Jobim, Carlos Lyra, Herbie Mann, Charlie Byrd and Stan Getz did much to popularise João Gilberto’s new style of music in the 1960s.  We really enjoyed the concert in spite of the appalling acoustics in a converted warehouse theatre in the middle of the docks. There was a ship moored 20 metres away where the crew were also enjoying the music.

Rio de Janeiro

The next report will be from Rio where we will spend a long weekend with Flavia’s Uncle.  His suggestion for an exciting tourist activity is to fill an old camera case with rocks and hang it off your shoulder, then stuff a wallet with Monopoly money and put it in your back pocket. Now go for a stroll along the beachfront and then tell the world how you were mugged.

Delay in Posting new reports

It has been a bit erratic recently. I was trying to organise some more photos but they do take a lot of time to get right. I have published the last two or three reports without any photos but will soon add some so keep watching.

I have finally done some work with pictures and have added them to many of the previous articles.

For those interested in the technical side this site is hosted on a “virtual computer” supplied by Bitfolk All the software used is totally free in the financial sense but also in the context of liberty. There are many factions and anyone interested could start by looking at the Free Software Foundation and Open Source Initiative Those who know me will understand the pain I have been going through having to use Flavia’s computer with Windows Vista.  They will also be wondering why it took me so long to use the word Linux.This is why Linux is better

The Linux logo

The operating system bringing you this page is GNU/Linux and the distribution is CentOS version 5 The web server is Apache The blog software is is Wordpress using a theme by Txanny My thanks to all who help with those projects.

Once I have posted an article I will only change incidental things like mispellings or bad grammar.  I might occasionally annotate an article to correct an important fact which might mislead someone who reads the article but not the comments. Any normal clarifications and corrections will be posted by me as a comment.

The idea of a blog is to have a dialogue. So if any Brazilians do not like what I say, want to correct wrong information or have something to add please join in. Use a false name and a fake email address if you like. I will not censor or edit any comments as long as they are not abusive.  And if any foreigners want to add something or ask a question please join in the fun.

This will be a very boring blog if it is just me telling you what I think. If anyone wants to write an article please send it to me and I will add it to the blog. If you want I will correct any language errors.

The first thing that I noticed is that not much is different from what I am used to in Spain. It is modern, mostly people live in apartments, parking is difficult, the roads are pretty good except where they are very bad. There are lots of familiar names like Telefónica and Banco Santander. The cars tend to be the smaller European and oriental models although I have not seen any large expensive status symbol cars. It may be different inland but there is very little sign of the third world.

The people are not what expected. I imagined excitable, emotional, hand waving latins with a tendency to exaggerate and to start dancing a samba whenever they can. Flavia is the only one I have found (apart from the samba). Brazilians seem to be very polite, a bit formal, smile a lot, drive well, and wear shorts and t-shirts. There seem to be lots of rules and regulations, often just social customs, which mostly are observed.

There are fewer black people that I was expecting. They tend to look less prosperous than the white people. It is hard to work out the origins of many but a lot seem to have a little bit of everything in their blood. Flavia says I am wrong but I have not noticed much mixing apart from the children. People socialising seem to be with those of a similar ethnic background.

Praia da Costa is part of Vila Velha and is a very nice seaside area which has a lot in common with Fuengirola. The main difference is that the beach and seafront is used mostly by locals which means that there are not many hotels and restaurants. This does not mean that the beaches are empty – the Brazilians are fanatical about going to the beach. They have built high rise apartments blocks close to the beach which block the sun by mid-afternoon.

Vitória is 15 minutes away across a very large toll bridge. It is an island and the State Capital of Espírito Santo. The centre looks like a tired old lady. I could see that it was once an important city but it seems to be in the process of being abandoned. Residents and businesses have relocated and the city centre is decaying gracefully. I guess that it is more profitable to develop virgin land on the mainland than redevelop.

Other quick thoughts:
We rich Europeans cannot afford to have a maid, have your car washed by hand, have an attendant in an elevator, employ a petrol pump attendant, repair a TV etc. All these things are common here with Brazil’s much lower wages.

On the other hand so many things seem to be very expensive – far more than in Europe. Cars, computers, internet, any luxury item and anything imported. There seem to be plenty of shops with extremely expensive home furnishings, kitchen equipment and branded clothing. I think that those who are poor are very poor and those with money have a lot.

Supermarkets only sell food and cleaning stuff. I have become used to buying clothing, electrical goods, shoes, computer peripherals, DIY materials etc and find it a bit strange to visit a dozen shops to achieve what I can usually do in one.

Bikinis are very small indeed Topless is illegal

There is an unpleasant black dust everywhere. The export of iron ore is a major industry and there are seven pelletising plants in Vitória that pollute everything.

The weather is wonderful. Hot without being oppressive and not too humid. Of course it is winter here.

The University here is a privately owned business. To a European that seems very strange.