After our successful weekend in Salvador we had a good and bad start to the week in Rio. The 'luxury' airport bus back to Zona Sul had provided a classic example of Brazil's lack of organisational skills that we mentioned in our last blog. Chaos at the bus stop with people getting onto the bus with big suitcases and seating themselves at the back only to have to carry them to the front when they wanted to get off and negotiate not just the people standing in the aisles but new people getting onto the bus. The bus driver having to stop every 250 yards or so once he got to the beach/hotel area as everyone wanted to get off somewhere different and then get out of his cab and open the luggage compartment so those who'd been lucky enough to put their bags in there could try to retrieve them.....
Monday morning we had to get back to the airport for 8.30 as we had an appointment to get our registration papers renewed with the Policia Federal - luckily we had a BG driver this time!
Anyhow, Brazilian bureaucracy thwarted us yet again as we found there was a strike which we were told 'may' be over on friday - in the meantime there was nothing they could do for us. We refrained from asking why the appointment had been made or whether it would have been beyond the wit of man to tell us not to bother to show up.
Luckily our day improved! It was a beautiful blue sunny day and I accompanied Patrick to UFRJ where we managed to play Fred Laier the recording we'd made with Margarida
in Salvador and I also spoke to some of the Lagesed students about plans for english classes. They mostly speak pretty good english but would like help with fluency, colloquialisms and pronunciation.
Even the bus ride back to Zona Sul was less scary than usual!
In the evening we went to a charity concert at Fluminese football club as part of a Cello Festival that's taking place in Rio at the moment. It's meant to be the oldest football ground in Brazil and certainly added to the occasion for Patrick! Our experience so far is that concerts over here seem to be much more informal, relaxed events with a far higher degree of audience participation than in the UK and this one proved to be no exception.
It started with a Dudamel/El Sistema type group which was appropriate as it was a Children's Aid event. They played a piece by Bach and were followed by professional musicians playing a well known piece by Villa-Lobos arranged for 16 cellos, accompanied by an excellent singer. It was quite something to have so many cellos on the platform at the same time!

The highlight of the evening for me was the sequence of sensual Tango pieces by Piazzolla by a small group of very passionate and inspired musicians. We found out afterwards that the concertina player had played with Piazzolla himself and it certainly showed.
The evening ended with an arrangement of Jimi Hendrix songs which turned out to be pretty amazing and was visibly appreciated by a large section of the audience! Again, a talented and dedicated group of presumably classically trained musicians (largely of a certain age, needless to say!) having the time of their lives jamming together. Their enthusiasm and professionalism shone out and they produced a great sound from their mix of cellos, double bass, guitars and drums.
Having since googled 'Rio cello encounter' it seems that every concert they'll be doing will have different music and we're quite intrigued now to try and catch some more to see what else they can come up with!
Something else I did recently was go with a group of International Club women to visit the studio of Monica Carvalho in Copacabana. She works with natural materials collected largely in Brazil's cerrado area and her studio was full of beautiful artefacts she'd made using things like seed heads, grasses, wood and shells. It was so nice to see something natural and simple after all the gaudy, largely plastic tatt you see in most of the shops here.
We also went to an interesting talk the other evening by an American woman who's been living here for 30+ years, was involved in publishing and is now writing a blog about the transformation of Rio. She thinks this began in 2008 (pacification of favelas really took off then; petro dollars; Lula and like-minded politicians running Rio; Rio awarded the World Cup & Olympics etc etc) and it was fascinating listening to other long-term residents' views on what she said and their opinions on whether the present boom is sustainable. It certainly seems that, other than the exorbitant rental prices etc, we've chosen a good time to be living here.
At the weekend we tried out our small Weber BBQ upstairs on the terrace. Saturday's offering was fish - sardine, langoustine and trilha from the market - and Sunday's was that old Corbett staple - chicken sate! We even sat up there looking at stars and new moon over Ipanema - all quite romantic and definitely something we need to do again! The weekend saw us see off three episodes of The Bridge - even more Nordic and more noir than The Killing. We have nine more gripping episodes to come!!