While I should be writing

The leaning skyline of Santos

After having visited Santos, I have to say that the leaning tower of Pisa seems like very small thinking. Santos has its very own leaning skyline.

Santos is a small city with Brazilian standards. It has some 400 000 citizens in the city proper, two millions if you include the small towns close to it. Sao Paolo, an hour or so away, has 12 millions citizens.

Santos is situated in a valley, surrounded on three sides by tree covered mountains, with the fourth facing the water. Wherever you look in Santos, you’ll see mountains in the background, often shrouded in fog, and always breathtakingly beautiful. The seaside is an important harbour: every year during summer it is filled with cruise ships, although since the season hasn’t started yet there’s mostly cargo ships now. You can see them in the horizon or crossing the bay. My faithful guide loves the cruise ships and used to work on one, but personally I can’t help but find the cargo ships more beautiful and more interesting and definitely filled with fewer tourists. The city has enthusiastically built high riser by the beach, so many that the city suddenly turned warmer. Without thinking they had accidently built themselves a very effective cover from the cooling breeze from the ocean.

The literary festival is celibrating its tenth anniversary this year, and so far it seems amazing. The organizer owns an amazing independent bookshop, with handsome dark bookshelves and a café that serves an absolutely perfect coffee. And beer. I can’t think of any reason why anyone should ever leave the bookshop, if it wasn’t for the fact that the literary festival takes place at the theatre of the community centre. The only fault I could possibly find with the bookshop was that all the books were in Portuguese. But we all know that that won’t keep me from buying some.

Brazil is in the middle of an election, and as in most countries nowadays that fills people with pure terror. My guide told me that they had their own Trump, and the bookseller/festival organizer added gloomily: “Only worse.”

And I think he’s right. Jair Bolsanora has been called “the most misogynistic, hateful elected official in the democratic world and possibly the most repulsive politican on earth”, admires Pinochet, defended the use of torture, eagerly advocated for dictatorship and said so many hateful things about women and LGBTQ-people that he is actually facing charges for inciting hate speech. His followers don’t mind. They call him “The Legend.”

But as always, there is also resistance. Millions women in Brazil has come together on social media under the hastag: #EleNao, or: #NotHim.

And this weekend, Santos is celebrating its very first Pride.

Found in translation

I have arrived in Brazil, and already found myself in the middle of a movie. It’s just not clear yet exactly which movie it is.

My first impression was very much Lost in translation. I am at a bookfair in Santos, outside of Sao Paulo, and have very little idea about exactly what I’m supposed to do here. My guide explained my schedule to me in the car from the airport, but the only thing I’m sure about is that he is going to pick me up every day for lunch at 1 pm and dinner at 7. I have a flyer where my name is mentioned, but it is of course all in Portugese.

I was groggy from lack of sleep and an even more serious lack of nicotine and found myself nodding at everything while highrisers of Sao Paolo passed by outside of the car window (all of them in different version of sand colour, beige or white) with favelas in between. Our uber driver added his part to this guided tour and my guide translated enthusiastically. “That grass belongs to the university of Sao Paolo, you know X? The football player? He has an apartment in that building. He has several other apartments as well, of course. Sao Paolo is the city in the world with the largest amount of helicopters. Also the city that uses uber most. That’s a pet store. It’s a very big industry in Brazil.” Our uber driver himself had 3 or 4 or possibly 34 dogs. It was a bit unclear. When we left Sao Paolo behind we was caught in a more literal fog: Santos is built in a valley, surrounded by tree covered mountains, and those mountains are almost always shrouded in fog. It was all very beautiful. The road goes so stubbornly downwards that our ears were blocked. My guide asked if I knew how to get rid of it, and I assured himl that I did. Also, I was yawning, so that took care of it.

And yet, my experience is very different from Lost in translation, and I don’t just mean the lamentable lack of Bill Murray or Scarlett Johansson at the hotel bar (trust me, I’ve looked). No, the difference is all in my eminent and very enthusiastic guide and translator. It shall be my mission today to take a photograph of him, since he will be my best friend in the coming week.

Ivander found me at the airport, or if I found him, and greeted me with a so enthusiastic “Hallå! God dag!” that I blinked confusedly at him and answered in Swedish. Apparently he had looked up how to say “Good evening” in Swedish earlier and had a bit of a crisis when it turned out that he was meeting me instead in the morning. But he rose to the occasion and learn “good morning” as well. Ivander had also googled me, read my blog and in general done all the neccessary research, so the first thing he said after “god dag” was: “Cigarette?” I felt a deep and immediate connection with him.

“I am going to be with you all the time!” he said happily, but then added conscientiously: “While at the same time respecting your Swedish space.” Ivander was convinced we were in a quite different movie: “I am going to be Andrea, and you Miranda!” I looked down on the clothes I’d traveled and slept in for the last sixteen hours and felt that nothing was more unlikely than me turning into either Meryl Streep or Anna Wintour.

The car ride to Santos to about three hours, and he used the time to teach me to say hi, how are you and thank you in portugese; discuss European royalty (“Do you know your queen is Brazilian?” he said. “I love her!” Although his real favourite was the Danish royal family, he found queen Margrethe “so cute!”) and play Eurovision songs for me. His research had led him to believe that I was not a huge fan, but we still both happily sang along together to Måns Zelmerlöws Heroes while the high risers of Sao Paolo passed by outside.

I also managed to negotiate a free first evening (the schedule of course said for him to pick me up for dinner at 7 pm). For a long time it seemed uncertain how it would go, since I mumbled something vague about being tired and he unfortunately thought I implied that he might tire of me. “No, no! I could never tire of you!” he immediately assured me.

I don’t want you to worry that I am suddenly going to become all demanding and unreasonable. He has already taken me to a bookstore, so a, I don’t know what other demans I could possibly make, and b, he took me to a bookstore, which as we all know is the beginning of a beautiful friendship. I will return later with a report on Santos.

Dialects

I am writing this at a coffee shop in Naperville, some 45 minutes outside of Chicago. It’s ten o’clock, and I have already experienced two tipping incidents. One was more of a moral pondering at breakfast at my hotel. I like to consider myself a basically nice person, and I accept that tipping is a way of life here, and the waitress was very nice. And yet: is it morally justified to tip the standard 20 percent when the coffee was horrible? When the coffee and the cappuccino was weak, disappointing, letting me down just when I needed it the most? I sat there, paralyzed in the face of this decision, and then I decided that I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. She got 15 %.

I then moved on to the coffee place next door which is the kind of hipster looking-place where the coffee is brewed in what mostly resambles a laboratory. Still, I took nothing for granted and leaned closer to the nice woman behind the counter and whispererd: “Your coffee… it’s pretty good, isn’t it?” She answered confidentially: “Yeah. It is.” Me: “It’s not… weak, is it?” Her: “No. No, it’s pretty good.” And it was! And I forgot to tip! It was one of those modern ipad-paying-things and I signed with my finger and then I couldn’t press “complete transaction” and she did it for me, pressing “no tip” in the process. Sure, I paid seven dollars for the coffee, but still! It was worth a tip! I apologized so profusely that she started looking at me sort of strange. “No, you’re good”, she kindly assured me some ten times. Coffee does not bring out the most normal side of me, assuming that there is one.

Anyway. Naperville. After ten days in DC I was quickly reminded that you can’t live in most cities in the US without a drivers license. Everything in Naperville is ten minutes away by car. My publishers office, a cinema, the train station, a restaurant I was thinking of visiting. And everytime I think: “Well, that should be a nice walk” only to discover that it takes some two hours to walk there. And I’d probably have to walk by the high way to get there.

Naperville is fourt-largest city in Illinois (I have a feeling this doesn’t say much), it’s the wealthiest city in the Midwest and the eleventh wealthiest in the nation, voted second best city to live and ranked amongst the nation’s safest cities by USA Today and Business Insider. It is also the home of my American publisher, Sourcebooks, and a great independent bookshop, Anderson’s. When my first novel, The Readers of Broken Wheel Recommend was published in the US, my publisher had this great competition called Readers, Recommend Your Bookshop, where readers could vote for their favourite independent bookshop who could then win money. Anderson’s won. As soon as I’ve finished this great cup of coffee, I’m going there, and then I’m visiting Sourcebooks. They are working on the English translation of my next novel Pine Away Motel and Cabins, and I am of course thrilled to hear more about the plan ahead.

I have also thought quite a lot about dialects these past days. The thing with dialects is that while I can’t consciously adopt them, I tend to pick them up without thinking. This almost always leaves to embarrassing situations where it seems like I’m mocking them by suddenly talking, for example, like an American teenager. I learned this when traveling for a month in Ireland. And even if you manage to keep up the dialect during an entire conversation, without slipping sarcastically back and forth, it can still lead to social awkwardness, like the time I was having a nice Guinness at a bar and everyone suddenly realized I knew absolutely nothing about rugby. I tried to excuse myself with a “I’m from Sweden!” but then older man beside me wasn’t having it. “Why are you talking like that, then?”

But I have been in the US for almost two weeks, which means that my English is getting more and more fluent and the Swedish accent weaker and weaker. And I have to adopt some dialect, right? Apparently my subconscious have chosen to go in the All British direction.

Today, in the elevator:
Janitor: “So how you doin’?”
Me: “Oh, quite well, quite well, thank you. And you?”
Janitor: “Goin’ pretty good so far.”
Me: “Splendid day outside, isn’t it?”
Janitor (leaving the elevator): “You have a good one, now.”
Me: “Have a good day!” (At least I managed not to add “my good sir”, but my tone implied it).

This also makes most people guess I’m from England. A drunk/high guy outside a grocery store a few days ago asked me where I was from and guessed England. I answered said I was from Sweden. His comment: “Donald Trump likes you guys!” Me: “Eh. I believe you might be thinking about Norway…”

American service industry workers

I’m not sure if I’ve mentioned how much I love the people working within the US service industry? Theirs is a hard and ungrateful job, as shown repeatedly on Not Always Right. Everytime I visit this country I am fascinated by the experience of having people behind a counter or at a bar or restaurant actually meet my eyes, smile, ask me how my day has been and reply cheerfully that their day is going great, thank you very much. I know, I know, it’s all superficial and yes, I know that the statistical likelihood of their day actually going great is very small, as shown repeatedly on notalwaysright. But it’s still very refreshing. I mean, disinterest and impoliteness is superficial too. In Sweden, a normal transaction involves “was that it?” and “do you want a bag?” and no eye contact. It feels normal to me when I’m at home, but it’s always jarring when I’ve recently been to the US. I always end up behaving like a cheerful idiot, at which point the poor woman behind the counter is looking slightly terrified that I’m a maniac.

Anyway, I went to this shop yesterday, and was served by this teenage girl who looked completely expressionless the entire time, moved with the speed of a sloth and didn’t make eye contact the entire transaction. There was a lot of wrapping to do, so I stood there, fascinated, as she very slowly went through the moves. Now, this didn’t bother me at all. I am, after all, Swedish, and I’ve worked behind a counter too, so I’ve both experienced and shown apathy. But then, when she had almost finished wrapping everything, she suddenly looked up and said:

“Did you use to listen to Amy Winehouse?”
“Eh”, I said. “I guess? Sometime?”
“I saw this documentary about her. It’s on Netflix.”
“How… nice?” I said, suddenly feeling almost Brittish in my uncomfortable politeness.
At this point she had finished wrapping my things, and bagged them. But she just let it sit there on the counter while making eye contact with me.
“And was it … a good documentary?” I said.
“Well, yes. I mean, it wasn’t wow-good or the best thing I’ve ever seen-good. But it was interesting. So sad, don’t you think, with all that talent?”
“Er, yes”, I agreed quickly, and she nodded a little sadly and handed me the bag.

See what I mean? Even the apathetic teenagers behind the counters are interesting in this country.

Georgetown

It’s Saturday, and I’m having brunch in Georgetown. Georgetown is a part of DC that’s so expensive that it looks like a small town in a movie or, say, Gilmore Girls. Every store either sells antiques or expensive clothes brands. All the houses are small and charming, some in bricks, some in wood, many painted in cute pastel colours, and all the streets are shaded by perfect trees of the kind otherwise mostly seen in unrealistic architectura design proposals. The street lamps – charming, of course – has large flower baskets in splendid lilac colours. The interior design stores are so expensive that normal people have to chose between a lamp and rent, but don’t try to find them through google. If you google home decor or interior design in Georgetown you’ll not be given a list of stores. You’ll be given a list of interior designers who’s just waiting to “help you realize your dreams”.

It is, as I’m sure you can imagine, the perfect place for brunch, except that this part of the town is so rich that the waiter came as close to being unpleasent and indifferent as any American service worker can. By now I’ve been in the US for so long that I automatically said “thanks”, “thank you”, “how’s your day going?”, “thanks” about a million times before I noticed that he was barely responding. I felt like I was trying to make a French waiter like me, and we all know how meaningful that is. Anyway. I got my revenge by only tipping him 15 percent. Moahahah. In your face. That will teach him!

Afterwards I sauntered through residential streets where all the car looked so black and shiny that they probably came with their own Secret Service agent. This being DC, they very possibly might have. A paranthesis: a friend told me that he was once having dinner at this restaurant when he suddenly found himself surrounded by older white men. And they in turn was accompanied by men with guns. My friend was new in DC at the time, so his immediate thought was that he was in the middle of some sort of mafia meeting.

And no. I will not go there and make the obvious joke on the similarities/difference between the mafia and politicians. I’ll leave that to you.