While I should be writing

I have left the beaches and mountains of Rio de Janeiro for autumn in Sweden, and while I do miss my adventures abroad, it is also nice to be back. We’re having a remarkably fine autumn this year, the kind that I always think of as “Anne-autumns”. It refers of course to Anne of Green Gables (“with an e!”), and her quote: “I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers!”

I spent the weekend at my familys cottage in the archipelago of Stockholm, looking out over muted colours (everything is more grey by the sea) and an increadibly calm ocean, and then I lit a fire and wrote for a little while, and then of course I read.

I hadn’t brought any books there, secure in the knowledge that there’s plenty of bookshelves to raid. This lead to a very nostalgic reading experience: I just read a lot of nice, great books I’ve read before. My reading list included:

The Crooked House, by Agatha Christie. As it did not contain Miss Marple or Hercule Poirot it was not one of her best, but it was still good enough. It also included a preface by her where she wrote that this was one of the books that had been most fun to write. This made me reflect on whether or not there is any sort of link between an authors experience of writing a book (if they like the book or ar dissatisfied with it, it the writing was hard or fun and so on) and the reader’s experience of it. On the whole I think not.

Break In, by Dick Francis. I’ve written about Dick Francis before (and he’s mentioned in The Readers of Broken Wheel), but it is worth stating again: Dick Francis is one of my favourite, most reliable writers of all times. He was a former steeplechase jockey turned bestselling author, and he all his book somehow involves horses: jockeys, horse photographers, horse painters, detectives, trainers and so on. All his main characters are invincible but charmingly human and full of doubt about themselves. And all of his books were researched by his wife. Whenever she developed a new interest in life, it made its way into his books (photography or becoming a pilot, that sort of things). Dick Francis often stated that he wanted both their names on the cover (“Dick and Mary Francis”), but she apparently wasn’t interested in it.

Sylvester by Georgette Heyer. Another satisfyingly reliable writer. My absolute favourite is of course The Grand Sophy (The title! The heroine! Her first entrance on the scene, but a dog, a monkey and an amazing horse!).

Since I was there for three whole days, this is by no means a complete list, but I have to get some writing done today and can’t spend my entire morning remembering the happy reading of the weekend. It is sad but true.

Brazil is a very civilized country. Example number one: if you order several beers, they bring them to you in an ice bucket. Proof number two: if you only order one large beer, they give you one of those individual coolers that European restuarants save for wine. Just saying.

It’s also a very social country. If you order a large beer (60 cl), they ask you how many glasses you wants. The assumption being, of course, that you’ll share it with friends. Never have I felt so Swedish as when I ordered a large beer (it’s just 60 cl!), with one glas. I was at the Carioca de Gema, a great bar/club in the Lapa district, and the band played samba, and I happily refilled my tiny beer glas, and I marveled at the naive thought that the beer would ever get a chance to get warm.

And then my eyes met those of a dark haired beauty across the dance floor. But that, as they say, is another story. Suffice it to say that she taught me all I know about samba and that we’ll always have Rio.

One of my favourite parts of the tour was Selaron steps, made by the Chilean artist Jorge Selarón. They run from Joaquim Silva street and Pinto ;artins street, straddling the Lapa and the Santa Teresa neighbourhoods, and they are beautiful.

All in all, there are 215 steps measuring 125 metres, covered in over 2000 tiles collected from more than 60 countries around the world. And it all started with a painter who didn’t like the stairs outside his house. He began renovating them in 1990, choosing fragments of blue, green and yellow tiles – the colours of the Brazilian flag. At first it was only a sideproject to his main artistic work as a painter, but it won’t surprise anyone who knows artists to hear that it soon developed into an obsession. Constantly out of money, he started selling paintings to fund his work, not unlike other addictions, and scavenged construction sites and urban waste on the streets of Rio for more tiles. In later years, most tiles were donated by visitors from around the world. Selarón himself considered the work as “never complete” and claimed that “this crazy and unique dream will only end on the day of my death.”

On January 10, 2013, at the age of 65, Jorge Selarón was found dead on those stairs. By then, they were world famous.

I won’t bore you with longwinded descriptions of the magnificent view from Sugarloaf Mountains, or even the cute monkeys or sloths that I saw, or how taken I was by Christ the Redeemer. I’ll just say that the statue of Christ was a difficult tourist attraction to navigate. There was all the usual tourists taking selfies and so on of course, with the notable difference that these tourists were mimicing the outstretched arms of Christ. If Carina had been with me, I, too, would have stood there on the staircase preventing anyone from coming or going. As it was, Paul was satisfied with taking a photo of me just looking up at the statue.

Which brings me to Paul, a charming gentleman who kindly proposed to me before lunch. “Do you speak English? Good! Stay close to me. We’re going to be together all day”, he said on our way up to see Christ. He’s name was Paul, or, as the guide called him, “Mister Paul” (“Mister Paul! Mister Paul! I’ve found you the perfect seat”), and usually he prefered cruises. He tried to go on at least two a year. Rio was more of a bonus trip. His wife died five years ago, and his daughters think he’s getting too old to travel so much, but he doesn’t agree. His helicoptre trip is booked for Friday.

I had wandered around the Christ statue for some time when he found me again. “I’ve been looking for you”, he said, perhaps a tad reproachfully. “I was going to offer to take your picture.” Which he did, and then I returned the favour, as soon as I had figured out how his camera worked. He had a real, digital one, and he kindly offered to send me a usb-memory with the photos he planned to take in Rio. He made a video after all his trips, and if I “had a new telly, you could watch the photos there.” Usually he added music as well.

It was while we were regrouping over coffee (I made the mistake again of ordering it with milk, but Paul kindly stated that he liked it. “It’s not coffee, mind you, but it’s quite good”) that he proposed. The conversation went something like this:
Mister Paul: “Are you married?”
Me: “No.”
Him: “But you will be?”
Me: “Who knows? I guess it depends on wheterh or not I meet the right person.”
Him: “You’ve met me! And I’m free!”

He also kindly forgave me for visiting Ireland several years ago without seeing him. After all, I could always come back. “You know what I’ve been thinking?” he said at the end of the trip. “Instead of us just meeting like this in Rio, we could go somewehere together! You don’t even have to come to Ireland. It could be anywhere!” Personally he prefered cruises, since they took care of everything so you didn’t have to worry about your flight or luggage or anything really. “Harrow-free, I call them.” But he was quite prepared to be flexible.

So now we’re having a beer together tomorrow at Copacabana beach. He works fast, does Paul.

Rio de Janeiro is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve seen, and the trip from Sao Paulo to Rio on a clear, cloudless day is without a doubt my most beautiful flight. In Rio, you get dramatic mountains, perfect beaches, the ocean and an urban environment all in one glance. In every glance, actually. And often enough Jesus.

Rio is also the only city I visited where natives, when you tell them you’re staying in one of two of the most touristy areas possible, reply: “oh, good” and look relieved. No one has suggested that I venture out to find the “real” or “authentic” Rio. When I checked in at the hotel, I received information about when breakfast was served, the password for wi-fi and advice on how to avoid getting robbed.

It’s also over a hundred days since Marielle Franco was killed in an execution-style murder, and no suspected has yet been arrested.