Immediately I felt on edge on arrival. I'd heard many things about Brazil, both good and not-so-good: the culture, people, music and natural beauty were fabulous with the crime and class and racial divide being the unattractive aspects of life here. I've experienced much of it in just my first 48 hours in Brazil.
I'd used my debit card to take money out of my account at HSBC and Citibank ATMs, being mindful to use machines at well-established banks. Soon enough, I received a text message from my bank asking if I'd withdrawn a substantial amount from my account. I quickly tried to find a wireless signal - checking every ten minutes to see if I could go online and place a Skype call to my bank. This was an ordeal - every signal I'd found was secured, even at cafes and restaurants where I'd offered to sit and order something - a coffee.... or a steak. I didn't care: I just wanted a wifi signal I could hook up to.
Finally, I found one at a pizza place in a mall on Avenida Paulista, the city's business/banking artery. I couldn't properly express the seriousness of my predicament in Portuguese but they let me hang out and place a 45 minute call to my bank, while I shuffled around their still-closed restaurant and whined and wailed not-so-quietly over the phone. The staff clearly understood something was amiss. An investigation is currently ongoing and hopefully everything will be rectified soon.
Adding insult to injury, someone had unsuccessfully tried to pick my pocket at a restaurant in the city center (a man with nothing at his table), by attempting to wipe something off my back that he'd obviously put on while pretending to help me. I quickly moved away and the attempt was foiled.
This obviously put a damper on my first day in the country, so I headed back to my room and naturally downed a bottle of wine.
The next day, I felt reborn, with a new-found determination not to let this drag me down.
Positivity!
Went to the Pinacoteca (National Gallery) and was stunned by a world-class Giacometti show, impeccably presented and curated. Amazing architecture incorporating the museum's original brick structure. Then moved on to the Museu Arte de Sao Paulo, an impressive cantilevered concrete Brutalist building housing Van Goghs, Manets, a unique Gaugin, and a unique Bellini of a not-so-childlike Jesus almost choking an uncomfortable-looking Madonna, etc. However, it was a bit of a letdown there being only one big gallery displaying these masterpieces. It now seems now to me that presentation and context are very important in appreciating whatever it is that I'm supposed to do so at hand. But it was interesting to see such masterpieces in South America and not in the expected world capitals/cities. Obviously, there are a lot of very wealthy individuals bequeathing a lot of important art to the State. I can only imagine what else is in local private collections, in very highly-secured cushy Brazilian homes.
Also happened to find myself in the very wealthy Pinheiros neighborhood where I ducked into a mall after hours of getting lost on foot. The mall was everything I'd heard Sao Paulo to be and worlds away from what I'd seen so far: full of the fair-haired perfumed beautiful, dressed head-to-toe in (insert imagined extravagant brand/s), many with children minded by darker-skinned nannies dressed in white. This was Shopping Igautemi, the pot-of-gold at the end of the Brazilian economic and social rainbow.
There I saw a happy little girl of about ten trying on a pair of prescription frames at Bottega Veneta while her Chanel-clad supermodel mom lovingly told her they looked good on her. I assumed the thing cost $500 and the mom just as happily paid for them with her Super Duper Triple Platinum Centurion American Express card.
All this while helicopters buzzed above at rush hour, ferrying their CEO husbands-fathers home from work. It was a little after five-o'clock.
Brazil has indeed arrived.
I had never felt so out of place in my life. I headed for the food court and indulged in a relatively humble dinner of steak and salad. Cost: $12.
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