Why Rio?

What is it about Rio that everybody (specially foreigners) wants to go there? Who nicknamed it as "wonderful city"? Beaches are awful and quite dangerous, sometimes even durty, pickpockets and violence are almost part of the tour, "favelas" are just accross extremely luxurious buildings, local accent sounds like fulltime surfers speaking, water is inexplicably expensive and so is the beer just produced in there, even in the centre, actually like almost everything else... Carnival and New Year's are as crowded as messy, it rains a lot as tropical as it is, and rain destroys poor infrastructure as brazilian as it is. So, why?

Is it Christ up there blessing the city? Is God really brazilian as they say? Is it the Sugar Law? Is it all about samba? Bossa Nova? Girl of Ipanema? Is it Lapa or its old and famous tram above the archs? Is it the bars? Parties? Ordinary pretty people? Typical brazilian drinks (read "caipirinha")? Is it Flamengo football team? Is it Maracanã size? What is it? Why is that?

"O Rio de Janeiro continua lindo", students sang on the bus journey from the university to the centre. Along the long way, terrible views of brazilian reality, at some point it'd even stink... Yet, they sang and "sambed". At Cinelandia, once, I took my digital camera and digital pictures – all alone, wrapped in a brazilian flag dress. Nothing happened apart from the nice photos of a square named Mahatma Gandhi. In Santa Teresa, Ruins Park holds a mansion where pulsating culture used to be celebrated in the beginning of last century. In Recreio, "big sidewalk" looked charmer than Copacabana's and so was the beach. 

Patrícia Álvares

Finally, Vila Isabel showed me Noel writing his samba, with a waiter serving his beer and his inseparable cigarette – all quiet in a small square (unlike Drummond and Caymmi in busy Copacabana seats). In this Isabel Village, good beer is cheap.

Patrícia Álvares

And the sidewalk... Oh, the sidewalk had samba scores all along... Chiquinha Gonzaga, Noel Rosa among other great names of this so brazilian beat... "Oh abre alas que eu quero passar", prophesied one of them for people stepping on it without even caring... Or maybe they are aware of it everyday.

And suddenly, walking on the scores, as if it were not enough, I found this wall sprayed with such a curious graphite, providing the history of art as it follows:

Patrícia Álvares

So I guess this is it. No matter why or how, Rio always finds its way to touch each one's heart or weakness. I cannot explain when it exactly happened to me. Maybe it was a long time ago, on Machado de Assis books, and it was just forgotten somewhere inside. Brazil does have better beaches, better bars, parties, monuments and prettier people from north to south. Yet, Rio remains there, with the "wonderful city" exclusive title – despite any bad campaign in the media, regardless all its usual problems. That is when I realized Rio is just like us: brazilian human beings in its purest sense – warm hearted, emotional, cruel, sad, happy, contradictory, beautifully unique. It is the best picture of such a continental and full of contrasts country and it makes us consider that, who knows, God is really one of us.

Patrícia Álvares