“The people who planned Belo Horizonte in the late 19th century, were part of the elite who aimed to put Brazil into the modern world. This ambition looked up for a bourgeois and urban way of life, and admitted that being modern meant having history and a past. In this way, photographs, maps, notebooks and paintings, as well as some objects of the commission who built the new capital, were produced and kept. This demonstrates the intention to register for the future generations the enterprising and go-ahed mentality of this people, as the importance of their time”.

Yes, we’re the same.

After two weeks without sunlight and non-stop rain for days, I can say I understand why do people want to run away in the European winter. The city under the water, it’s hard to get anywhere, it’s hard to get anything done.

I do also have many questions before Christmas. I don’t know what makes Belo Horizonte, but it can make me crazy if I stay here in these all-rain week. But we’re almost on the last week of the year and everybody has an excuse to get off the hook for a while.

I’ve tried to bake a cake last night and it didn’t work while I ran around home trying to put things in order, woke up late for work today morning and I’ve decided not to worry: I’ve just seen the first sun light in days.

Last monday, the 12th of Dezember, was the day when Belo Horizonte reached 108 years. Just some time more than a century, not much compared to other cities, like Berlin for example.

And, as we are talking about numbers, it makes me wonder about more information and statistics of the existence of the city. I’m sure it’ll be simple to find exact (or more or less exact) numbers about many people have lived here so far or how many babies were born in the last decade.

Still, I wonder about more specific information. For example, a very famous book that has its story based in Belo Horizonte is “Hilda Furacão”. The story mixes real and fictional facts about a girl of the high society that moves into a hotel and starts being a prostitute. I can’t help thinking if this girl ever existed, or if any other girl followed her steps, fascinated by the glamour of this imaginary Hilda.

In the other hand, other statistics would help to understand the citizens of BH: what’s the percentage of people in the city that keeps a collection of things, and what do they collect? Which was the most played song in radio stations in all these 108 years? In a specific research, what would we find: people here are more down to earth of imaginative, tending to excessive dreaming? How many people can speak Dutch? How many people died happy? And why do people come here and why do they leave?

Today morning in the bus I saw a poster, saying that, thanks to them, 28 missing people were found since 2001. That’s one number, but they never say what theses people were doing to get lost, and how they were found. I spend a lot of time thinking about think this unsolved questions. Things that will remain unsolved for the next century, maybe. But some things will remain the same, it will be dry on August and rainy on November. And the beat goes on, the beat goes on…

Kein weiterer diskutieren.

Well, today is a day to turn tables here in Belo Horizonte, too. Sundays in Brazil are the days when we have soccer matches. Seems that today was an important day, because we had the two teams from BH playing against each other: Cruzeiro x Atlético in a really tense situation.  Turns out that Cruzeiro was about to go to like 2nd class in Brazilian championship. But they have won the game today, so everybody went crazy on the streets. I haven’t gone anywhere, but I can hear people screaming their happiness from my window. The match is over, now people go on with the celebration until late in the night.

I just don’t care about none of this, but soccer is, maybe, the only reason why the mass would put their hammers on the table here. Some people call this passion, but I don’t understand. Sundays will be always lazy days, specially in this time of the year, when things are speeding before finally slowing down. And since we are not in the upper part of the world, don’t expect much snow while waiting for Santa Claus. It will rain a lot, and soon there will be just summer. And the beat goes on.

I don’t know if anybody have noticed it, but I’ve been late with my weekly post. But, like happened once, I couldn’t say anything about Belo Horizonte last week. I was plunging into the tropical summer heat of Rio de Janeiro.

Rio is an opposite city of Belo Horizonte, maybe that’s the reason why belorizontinos (someone born in BH) like going there so much. In a few words I could say that Rio is: loud, healthy, sunny (even when it’s rainy), nostalgic. In some particular way, it is an impressive beauty, somehow decadent, somehow outdated and eternal.

The city makes a specific song play in your head in each corner you turn. Girls from Ipanema, Corcovado, the lights of Hotel Marina turning on. I think that’s the living proof that the beauty of Rio is so nostalgic, because poetry wouldn’t match so well the sunny breeze. Above all songs about Rio, my favorite is “Carta ao Tom”, a letter from Toquinho and Vinicius to Tom Jobim. One of the lines say, and that explains what is this melancholic feeling that flies around in the city,

“well, my friend, there’s just one thing for sure
we need to end up with this sadness
we need to reinvent love”.