So here I am, back to Brazil one year after last trip.  This time I flew TAP and had a short connection in Lisbon, just 75 minutes.  Of course the flight from Italy took off 45 minutes late and things went wrong.  When we landed I had already given up any hope to make it but, surprise, while descending the staircase to get out of the plane I noticed there was a little man waiting with a “Rio de Janeiro transfer” banner in his hands.

He took me and a few more people on a small bus and drove us through the runways straight to a desert, apparently not yet in use terminal.  There, a lone lady official stumbled at my boarding pass: “Sir, you have to go to terminal one, you can’t cross the border here”. Thanks God, the little man convinced the lady that we badly needed a shortcut.  I felt like I was in a sort of “mission impossible” action movie and I was the President or something.  The man eventually took us again on a bus and drove straight to the plane where they where ready to close the doors.  Pheeew!

Despite the adventurous connection I have to say TAP is not bad.  Their planes are modern and well equipped and the onboard service is OK.  And they did the impossible to make me catch the plane to Rio.  Unfortunately my luggage didn’t make it.  I have a very strange stastistic: each and every connection flight in my life, the luggage didn’t arrive at destination, except when flying through Paris.  London, Milan, Bruxelles, Amsterdam, Lisbon: all failed.  Such an high failure rate is remarkable and says it all about the status of the air trasportation system.  Anyhow, now I’m in Rio de Janeiro and therefore – luggage or not – I’m going to relax.

Boa viagem!

Few days ago I’ve been at the Madison Square Garden, arguably the world’s most famous arena. New yorkers simply call it The Garden, as if it were the only garden out there, or worse, as if it were a garden at all! Well, actually it’s not even on Madison Square. Thanks to wikipedia I discovered the current name is just a legacy from the original arena, that one century ago used to be located in a garden at Madison Square.  Anyhow entering the arena is impressive: you feel like getting into a temple, a place where people go to worship their idols. Oh wait, that’s exactly what they do there!

The show on stage was a basketball match in the College Hoops league, between St. John’s and Pittsburgh. I went with Carla, a friend from New York. She likes college basketball and taught me all I had to know and something more, e.g. that college teams usually have the name of an animal (Pittsburgh Panthers) but St. John’s is an exception (they call themselves the Red Storm). We took the obligatory beer (that they served us with a built-in pretzel) and brought it in.

Before the match started an actual singer sung the national anthem, everybody standing, hats off. Pitts were much stronger and they easily blew out St. John’s 81-57, but it’s been fun anyway. The home team had cheerleaders, dancers and a fanfare band and shot t-shirts to the public during time-outs. Much fun!

Too bad I’m already back to Italy.

parking lots are stackable and cars take elevators to save space, or when walking down the street you frequently see nail salons with (mostly) women lined up just behind the the storefront, their nails being taken care of. So here I am, back in this crazy place again. First thing I did after hitting the hotel was entering the nearest Starbucks and have a chocolate chip cookie and a “solo”. I felt like a junkie.

This time I’m staying in West Chelsea, just two subway stops from the office and none the less a totally different place. The hotel has been derived from a 19th century building, part of the General Theological Seminary. In fact breakfast is served in the refectory. Believe me, I can see the Empire State building from the window and still I feel far from that in space-time. It’s not a mainstream place and you need to walk three blocks and two avenues to get to the subway (blue line) but rooms have just been renovated and have all comforts for a very reasonable price. I discovered I’m close to the gay district (which is bad), but I’m also close to cool areas like Meatpacking and at least I have a decent room (last time I stayed at the crappy Pennsylvania hotel).

This season New York is freezing cold. Wind can make you cry if you walk against it.

There are countries where it is customary to kiss on cheek while greeting or saying goodbye, as a display of friendship and affection. There are countries where it’s not. The problem is, when you travel you never know where it’s OK and how many kisses are required. As this article points out, the number of kisses can range from one to four, also depending on the gender of the person you’re greeting. Same as in France, Italy has a different behavior depending on the region, with more kisses in the South. To make it more interesting, I’ve found that in Europe you kiss the right cheek first, while in Brazil it’s the other way around. In my trips to Rio I’ve made cheek kissing mistakes several times.

Last time I’ve been in New York, one night Ale brought us to Ludlow Street. Ale is a fan of Lower East Side, and I definitely approve his taste. That area is filled with strange and interesting places, for both dining and having fun. That night Ale brought us first to the Back Room (which I already knew, maybe I’ll talk about this in a different post) and then to Mehanata, a Bulgarian bar and dance floor.

You have to know it in advance, cause there’s no hint from outside. No name on the street, just a small door no different to an normal entrance to apartments. When you’re in, you find yourself in a bar room, brick-and-stone raw walls, amazing psychedelic lights, high-tech but retro at the same time. Do you remember those mirror spheres that were so common in the 70s? Same concept but made with LEDs, or maybe Lasers. Strange bottles are aligned behind the barman and people left Cyrillic messages on the restroom walls.

Downstairs, a crowded improvised dance floor with a DJ playing Balkan-punk-folk-gipsy-rock-ish stuff and people dancing like crazy, not the least afraid to show everybody their hormonal level, girls included. On the lower bar a board says “Get naked, get a free shot” and I guess somebody actually does every now and then. Everybody knows the songs they’re playing (unbelievable), so they sing out loud while dancing. It looks like one of the resident DJs, probably the local hero, is Eugene Hütz (the man in the picture), which by the way is Alex in Everything Is Illuminated.

As a girl told me, the place is “totally unpretentious” and you feel like you could do anything, like you shouldn’t care about what people think of you. You just get in the flow, dancing and screaming and teasing girls and having huge quantity of fun! Thank you Ale!

Last time I’ve been in Rio de Janeiro I spent my best night at Rio Scenarium, a sort of samba dance floor with real Brazilian live music and a stunning choreography right in the center of Lapa, the historic center of ancient Rio. During daylight, this place is a huge antiquarian’s shop three floors high, with all sorts of things hanging from the walls and from the roof. At night, two thousand people easily fit in to have fun, dance, drink caipirinha and meet people.  Last year this was declared as one of the top 10 bars worldwide by The Guardian.

The setting is so surreal that I first I was speechless, like I were in a different time-space.  Colors everywhere, strange things surrounding joyful people, wonderful traditional music, party atmosphere.  Definitely a must if you happen to travel to Rio.

Wow, I just realized that since my trip to Vienna I’ve already been again to Brazil and then to New York! Time to catch up!

Walking in Vienna you get the strange feeling: from one point of view it’s like the time stopped in the 19th century, with huge imperial buildings surrounding everything, people riding carriages, and those wonderful cafeterias where you can sit and sip a cup of chocolate cream or have a slice of sachertorte or drink a glass of Ottakringer bier. On the other hand, modern glass-and-steel buildings stand just in front of ancient cathedrals (just like the Haas Haus in Stephansplatz, where I stayed), you can keep on talking on the phone while riding the very efficient metro, you can hire public bicycles from the many parkings scattered all over the city center and pay by credit card to the automatic counter and most importantly you can feel the good wealth of their economy.

After a while I realized they talk a different German. That is, the Austrian language is very similar to German but there are quite a few different words. For example, in the morning instead of greeting you with Guten Tag (good morning in German), they rather say Grüß Gott (God greet you). In a book shop I even found a German-Austrian dictionary. Anyhow, if you talk English everybody will understand, and if you talk Italian they you will probably get away with it as well.

On Sunday night I’ve been to Rathaus Platz. In front of the building they had assembled a temporary movie theater and then in the nearby park there were plenty of kiosks to buy drinks and food. Thousands of people gathered in that place to have dinner and attend the show, with age ranging from teenagers to the fifties. It was so crowded that I had an hard time buying some food and then finding a spot to sit down and eat it. After a while the show began, and I realized it was the movie of a classical music concert recorded somewhere else who knows when. I couldn’t believe it. I mean, positively impressed for how much they care about classical music.  Can you imagine something similar in your country? Certainly not in mine.

I flew with Austrian Airlines and I have to say they’re fun: they play Strauss concerts all the time! One interesting note: it looks like Vienna is very well connected with Eastern Europe and in fact you can see lots of Eastern people walking around, talking Russian or reading newspapers written in Cyrillic.

Tomorrow I’m flying to Vienna to attend YAPC::Europe. Will stay there most of next week.  I’m sure I’ll enjoy this trip because I’ve been to Austria in the past and I loved wiener schnitzel, sachertorte, Stiegl, Augustiner bräu, the general mood and of course the many wonderful monuments and sights in and around Salzburg. And oh, by the way, one more tick in the travel page.  I’ll keep you posted.  Stay tuned!

So I’ve been to Matteo and Flavia’s wedding, and it’s been amazing. The wedding was on Saturday night. I got to Vitória the same day and spent half the afternoon by the pool on the roof of our hotel, together with the groom (meanwhile the bride was relaxing in a spa), then we dressed up and 7pm went to the place. No church, just a restaurant organized as a ceremonial room, with a small ritual table in the middle of several dinner tables. No grand-pa/mas in sight. Just the four parents and about fifteen pairs of uncle-aunts. Average age was in the 30-35 range. Men were dressed with a dark suit, while ladies had a long soirée dress. Lots of ladies. Gorgeous.

Everybody was sit down when the bride arrived and as soon as she entered the room, revealing to the crowd, we all stood up, silent, staring at her. No march, just a romantic song. No claps. Just admiration. Then the priest talked about 40 minutes, in Portuguese. I didn’t understand much, but I got that he wasn’t reading or following a pre-defined phrasebook, as Roman Catholics do. He just described what was flowing out of his heart, like somebody would do to make sure his two friends are doing the right thing and are conscious of the meaning of that act. After the ceremony, we had dinner, buffet, with some fried local specialties, sushi and beer, and finally everybody went to the floor dancing. No samba, just modern dance music, like Disco Inferno and the likes.

The next day most of us went to the bride’s father’s house for a churrasco party on the pool side. Unfortunately we Italians had to leave in the middle of the party in order not to miss our flight back to Rio.

It’s been very different than what I imagined, and I liked a lot as it was. By the way, Vitória is a lovely place.

Anyways, this time I’m going to visit the city of Vitória and to attend a Brazillian wedding!  Stay tuned.