Lazy Sunday in the Park

My sunday was really easy going.
I woke up not too early and the sun was shining so I decided to go for a nice walk around the area after breakfast. I found a sunday vegetable and fruit market in the roads not far from hear and strolled a little through the stands, of course not forgetting to take care of my wallet... It seemed really calm though and the market was really nice.

When I came back to the hotel my room was just being arranged, so I grabbed my Lonely Planet and sat down in the café next to the hotel entrance to wait for Sandra.
Sandra is also from Bayer CropScience and Germany and arrived in Sao Paulo only two days before me, so we are having the same troubles and issues with bureaucracy and the same experience of being completely new in the city.

We decided to go to the Parque Ibirapuera, which is not far from the hotel and can be compared to the Central Park in New York. It is the biggest park in Sao Paulo City and about 120.000 people (apparently) visit it every sunday. We were two of those today :)
The park is really nice and full with families on one end, and full of kissing and flirting teenagers looking like Emilie the Strange an other Emo Figures on the other end. In between one can find a couple of Oskar Niemeyer buildings and museums. We looked at the Ibirapuera Auditorium (which is also known as the "tongue") and we went to the Sao Paulo Museum of Modern Art of which the temporary exhibition is always free on Sundays. Most of the time though, we spent chatting and sitting in the sun.

Later on we decided to go have a nice drink and go to a Sushi Rodzio (aka "All You Can Eat"). So we drank a Sake with fresh Lytchee (or however you spell that) and had what felt like a ton of great Sushi and Sashimi.
And as I learned from Kaoru how to behave like a good Japanese, we took pictures of the Sushi ;) No seriously, I only took those pictures for Kaoru answering to her picture series of the Bento del Dia in Tokyo.

Here are the pictures from the park and the Sushi:

Feijoada and Caipirinhas

On Saturday I went to have a typical brazilian lunch: feijoada. It is a stew made of black beans and with meat. All kinds of meat, but in the restaurant you could chose whether you want tongue or ear or just sausage in it :D
With it I had Caipirinha, but not like we know it at home. I had it with Maracuja and it was soooooo yummy! And then I had one with red berries which was also soooooo yummy. Basically one can have Caipirinha with whatever fruit one likes and I love it =)

Later on we went to Matthias place, a friend of Susi. From his balcony I had a crazy view over all the high buildings of Sao Paulo, it looked insane! Especially when a plane flew by to land in Sao Paulo Congonhas, which is in the middle of the city (and the lights to lead the planes' way are built on top of the buildings!).

Here you can find a video of it:

Wurst

Sorry to all those readers who do not speak any German, but really, this post would not make anysense in any other language but German... =)

Einer meiner Kollegen, von denen ich gestern einiges Bereich Strategy und Forecasting gelernt habe, hat ein Jahr als Austauschschüler in Deutschland verbracht.
Als er ankam, konnte er genau zwei Wörter sagen. Kartoffel und Wurst. Und was das bedeuten sollte wusste er auch nicht. Es hatte ihm halt irgendwann mal irgendwer beigebracht als die essentiellen Wörter schlechthin.
Kaum in Deutschland angekommen hat ihm seine Gastfamilie zur Begrüßung einen Sekt angeboten. Alle hoben die Gläser und sagten laut "Prost". Rafael dachte er hätte das Wort wiedererkannt, schaute fröhlich in die Runde und sagte laut zum erhobenen Glas "Wurst!".

Es sei ihm so peinlich gewesen, erzählte er mir gestern nachdem wir in der Kantine waren. Ich fands aber total lustig und sagte das sei auch nicht peinlich, die Wörter seien sich ja auch sehr ähnlich. Da musste er auch lachen und sagte dass sei sehr nett, aber nun könnte er ja Deutsch und wüsste genau dass die Wörter sich so ähnlich ja nun auch nicht seien. Wär aber egal, jetzt wüsste er es ja und hätte zudem immer noch eine lustige Geschichte parat.

Fuits and Tennis Shoes

Now, as this might sound like a weird combination, these are the two things I really want to tell you about right now.

It is saturday today and I woke up at 8 already, even though I stayed up until 2am brazilian time yesterday watching a movie. I had the most amazing breakfast ever, and breakfast is probably the thing I like most about being here so far (well, I must admit though that I haven't seen that much yet)! Fruits, Fruits, and Tropical Fruits! And they taste soooo much better than the ones that we get in Germany after riping for weeks in a warehouse.

As it was still early and I had nothing better to do, I walked the four blocks to the shopping center Ibirapuera. On my way I realized that what Ulf told me on Thursday night was absolutely true. The people walking on the street keep looking at each other carefully. They look into your face as if they wanted to say "I saw you, I know what you look like..." The hotel I live in is in a barrio called Moema, which is pretty safe and many people are walking around on the street, but still one can see that people are always aware of what is happening all around them. It not like the dreamy wandering around like I prefer to do it in Cologne ;)

The shopping center is pretty big and with many different shops for all kinds of styles and things. However, what one can find most are tennis shoes. And I dont mean sneakers, but the typical white, shiny tennis shoes. Paulistas seem to love them, cause I saw at least 10 shops for tennis shoes on the three floors of the shopping center and they were all called things like "the world of tennis", "tennis no.1", "all tennis", ... I would have expected to find more soccer shoes to be honest ;)

Afterwards I went to the supermarket to get some water and fruits and now I am back in the hotel. Its 12.15 and I am wondering what to do with this beautiful day... It is at least 25°C outside, no sign of the coming "winter", so I willl go through my Lonelyplanet now and see what cool stuff can be done. Lets see what I find...

Madita grüsst Pims :)

I just watched Madita, a movie my sister gave me the last night in Germany.
We used to watch it when we were little and Madita and Pims remind me of ourselves when we were small...
Its like travelling 15 years back within seconds =)

Numb3rs

I can forecast here and now, that I will use a loooooot more numbers in my new job than I thought I would.
But thats okay, I guess I will get used to it :D

So, that was one thing I learned today. On my first real day in Brazil. Meaning, awake and communicating ;)
I spent all day with the three strategy guys and they explained me how the forecasting works in Brasil and one jokes in Brazil and pretty well also: How a work day works in Brasil. And I like it.
It was a long day though, I just got home, spending two hours in the every(fri)day traffic jams of Sao Paulo to get back to the hotel.

Its a friday night, but I think I am going to stay in and watch a movie. I just went to the "Tante Emma Laden" across the street and got some water and guaraná and the "lanchonette" next to it had a little bbq put up where I ate a yummy little piece of meat on a wooden stick ( I think in English thats a Kebab, but then a Kebab is something totally different in German, where what I ate is a Spiesschen; so whatever, I ate meat on a stick... :D)

Now all of that was a little chaotic, but I think you know me well enough to know that this is how my brain works ;)

Arrived

The moment I left my family at the security check, I really thought I did a terrible mistake leaving. 5 minutes later, the feeling was gone, but that was a shock second, really.

The flight to Madrid was, well, like always. And when I got off the plane I thought: Wow, nearly two years ago I arrived packed like this to live here for a while... mh, wouldnt be a nice idea to just stay here... maybe the next job... ;)

My flight to Sao Paulo was everything but always or calm. The news of the Air France flight really haven't helped me in being calm and unfortunately the weather did not want to help me either.
It was very turbulent and I did not sleep for more than half an hour in one session because I was woken up by heavy shakes every once in a while. Once over Brazil the turbulences were finally over and I got to sleep for another hour before landing.

In Sao Paulo they had the massive amount of 3 people ready to check the passports of two jumbojets who just arrived from Madrid and Rome... I stood there, half asleep for over two hours and was already scared that the driver leaves without me.
But of course, everything turned out well.

I checked into a nice little hotel, this time its a little closer to night life too, and had some rest before I had some appointments for work.

Tonight I will go to dinner with some people and I think its gonna be fun =)
On Saturday I hopefully meet Thais, Camilo, maybe Julio and some others for a little IE reunion, which would also be amazing.

So thats it for the day, I need a tiny bit of sleep before going out... Tomorrow at 8, I gotta be ready for a training day in office...