Tuesday
Dec202005
Nao Falo Portuguese
Tuesday, December 20, 2005 at 01:37PM
Sao Paulo is a trickier city than, say, Rome, to get about in without knowing the language. Between me & Sean, we have English, my French, and Sean's Spanish (which latter is the most help here, more for making ourselves understood than for understanding). At any rate, we arrived at the Sao Paulo airport woefully unprepared to say anything sensible like "I don't speak Portuguese" or "Do you speak English?" I must have spent too much time in my phrasebook studying the "Social--drugs" section:
"I don't take drugs.
I take ...occasionally.
Do you want to have a smoke?
Do you have a light?
I'm high."
Which is a section that never ceases to make me giggle in its dry, academic way. But this is doubtless why we spent a long time in a line that turned out to go to GATE 2, not baggage claim 2. The voice on the end of the line explaining to me why my phone card wasn't working was infurioratingly indecipherable (it turned out that all I needed to do was wait for the click before I started dialing). The taxi stand ladies spoke English, but our driver didn't, which is why we had no idea we were in for a 2-hour cab ride to Cristiane's when we clambered in (I'd have gone pee first...!). Nevertheless, so far it seems that the Brazilians in Sao Paulo are more than patient enough and willing to wend their way through my shy pantomime until they figure out how they can help me, for which I am eternally grateful.
So after a cab ride through some poverty-stricken cinderblock shanty towns and some nicer neighborhoods (distinguished by the fact that the graffiti was only on the abandoned buildings, instead of all of them) and some rather corporate-america looking strip malls and then a kind of cool, crazy, hilly district full of sidewalk bars packed with happy-looking Brazilians drinking beer, we found Cristiane's apartment building and rode the elevator to the ninth floor, where we discovered that Cristiane has possibly the best view in Sao Paulo. Apparently she scored it through a clown connection. Out Cristiane's window is a panarama from the skyscrapers to the parks to the shantytowns of Sao Paulo, and drifting up to her window are sounds of traffic, cheering at the football game, fireworks, and loud music emanating from the clown theatre next door. It's awesome. She took us to lunch at a vegetarian buffet and then left us to our own devices to wander the neighborhood. We went into a trendy-looking clothing store (I didn't bring any shorts! Silly me) and hit language barriers again, as all the very nice clerks said mysterious things to us as we entered. We managed via shrugs and smiles and so forth to get them to understand that Portuguese is Greek to us, and they bawled for someone named Regina to come down the spiral staircase and help us. This was all very embarrassing as we really just wanted to browse, but Regina turned out to be an awesome Brazilian woman who works on some of the one-of-a-kind hip shorts the store sold, and she stocked my dressing room with things she considered and pulled from the rack without consulting me more than giving some discerning glances at my waistline to make sure she was getting the right size. If I ever experessed interest in an article, suddenly the same item in twenty different colors would materialize in my dressing room. She chatted with Sean about Brazil while I tried on nearly the whole store, and I did emerge with a new pair of shorts (NOT one of the R$350 custom pairs) and a shirt that makes me feel very tomboy-brazilian. In general, I recommend against shopping while sleep-deprived; it tends to remove any inhibitions about pulling out the wallet...
It was getting too hot to walk around up and down hills on the sidewalk, so we went to a bar that Cris had shown us on our walk earlier that's near her building. There were no servers in sight, so I braved the walk to the counter, where people seemed to be cooking and paying no attention to me. Regina had taught me one phrase: "Nao falo portoguese." I don't understand Portuguese. So I said this to the cook, who grunted and shrugged as if to express his sympathy for my ignorance, but I still hadn't gotten any closer to getting a cold Brasilian beer. "Beer!" I said to him. He said something in Portuguese that--surprise!--escaped my comprehension. "Nao falo Portuguese. Beer!" I tried again. I made a drinking motion. One of the other employees of the establishment came over helpfully and said something else indecipherable. "Parlez-vous Francais?" I asked hopefully, but it was no go with either of them. It's just as well, because I don't know the word for beer in French either. Sean, who had designated me chief orderer, was sitting at our table chuckling, so there was no hope of taking advantage of his Spanish.
By this time, there were about six servers and cooks of the place standing around me, laughingly trying to figure out what it was I wanted. Finally one of them got an idea and went over to some of the patrons in the bar--they were speaking English among each other, and they also spoke portuguese, so one of them came over and deciphered my request. "Çervesa!" he cried to the milling crowd of Brazilian servers, and they roared with amusement and brought a grande to my table with Sean. I was so happy to have ordered it that it tasted as good as if I had brewed it myself.
Afterwards, it was back to Cris's. She was out at work, and Sean and I lay down on the bed in exhaustion. I just meant to close my eyes for a minute...now it's nighttime and raining. Cool humid air is drifting in through the amazing open window, the clown show is over. For a while, there was the sound of many people cheering and a few fireworks went off--who knows why? A few windows in view are hung with blinking Christmas lights. Sean is finishing reading the novel he started in the airport. We ate some of Cris's leftovers for dinner and I am happy and looking forward to tomorrow. Cris is taking us out to a live performance her street group is doing in the open market, and then to downtown to see some museums, and then in the evening to some live samba music. Life is good and I'm in Brazil at last!
Now back to bed. Be well, all!
"I don't take drugs.
I take ...occasionally.
Do you want to have a smoke?
Do you have a light?
I'm high."
Which is a section that never ceases to make me giggle in its dry, academic way. But this is doubtless why we spent a long time in a line that turned out to go to GATE 2, not baggage claim 2. The voice on the end of the line explaining to me why my phone card wasn't working was infurioratingly indecipherable (it turned out that all I needed to do was wait for the click before I started dialing). The taxi stand ladies spoke English, but our driver didn't, which is why we had no idea we were in for a 2-hour cab ride to Cristiane's when we clambered in (I'd have gone pee first...!). Nevertheless, so far it seems that the Brazilians in Sao Paulo are more than patient enough and willing to wend their way through my shy pantomime until they figure out how they can help me, for which I am eternally grateful.
So after a cab ride through some poverty-stricken cinderblock shanty towns and some nicer neighborhoods (distinguished by the fact that the graffiti was only on the abandoned buildings, instead of all of them) and some rather corporate-america looking strip malls and then a kind of cool, crazy, hilly district full of sidewalk bars packed with happy-looking Brazilians drinking beer, we found Cristiane's apartment building and rode the elevator to the ninth floor, where we discovered that Cristiane has possibly the best view in Sao Paulo. Apparently she scored it through a clown connection. Out Cristiane's window is a panarama from the skyscrapers to the parks to the shantytowns of Sao Paulo, and drifting up to her window are sounds of traffic, cheering at the football game, fireworks, and loud music emanating from the clown theatre next door. It's awesome. She took us to lunch at a vegetarian buffet and then left us to our own devices to wander the neighborhood. We went into a trendy-looking clothing store (I didn't bring any shorts! Silly me) and hit language barriers again, as all the very nice clerks said mysterious things to us as we entered. We managed via shrugs and smiles and so forth to get them to understand that Portuguese is Greek to us, and they bawled for someone named Regina to come down the spiral staircase and help us. This was all very embarrassing as we really just wanted to browse, but Regina turned out to be an awesome Brazilian woman who works on some of the one-of-a-kind hip shorts the store sold, and she stocked my dressing room with things she considered and pulled from the rack without consulting me more than giving some discerning glances at my waistline to make sure she was getting the right size. If I ever experessed interest in an article, suddenly the same item in twenty different colors would materialize in my dressing room. She chatted with Sean about Brazil while I tried on nearly the whole store, and I did emerge with a new pair of shorts (NOT one of the R$350 custom pairs) and a shirt that makes me feel very tomboy-brazilian. In general, I recommend against shopping while sleep-deprived; it tends to remove any inhibitions about pulling out the wallet...
It was getting too hot to walk around up and down hills on the sidewalk, so we went to a bar that Cris had shown us on our walk earlier that's near her building. There were no servers in sight, so I braved the walk to the counter, where people seemed to be cooking and paying no attention to me. Regina had taught me one phrase: "Nao falo portoguese." I don't understand Portuguese. So I said this to the cook, who grunted and shrugged as if to express his sympathy for my ignorance, but I still hadn't gotten any closer to getting a cold Brasilian beer. "Beer!" I said to him. He said something in Portuguese that--surprise!--escaped my comprehension. "Nao falo Portuguese. Beer!" I tried again. I made a drinking motion. One of the other employees of the establishment came over helpfully and said something else indecipherable. "Parlez-vous Francais?" I asked hopefully, but it was no go with either of them. It's just as well, because I don't know the word for beer in French either. Sean, who had designated me chief orderer, was sitting at our table chuckling, so there was no hope of taking advantage of his Spanish.
By this time, there were about six servers and cooks of the place standing around me, laughingly trying to figure out what it was I wanted. Finally one of them got an idea and went over to some of the patrons in the bar--they were speaking English among each other, and they also spoke portuguese, so one of them came over and deciphered my request. "Çervesa!" he cried to the milling crowd of Brazilian servers, and they roared with amusement and brought a grande to my table with Sean. I was so happy to have ordered it that it tasted as good as if I had brewed it myself.
Afterwards, it was back to Cris's. She was out at work, and Sean and I lay down on the bed in exhaustion. I just meant to close my eyes for a minute...now it's nighttime and raining. Cool humid air is drifting in through the amazing open window, the clown show is over. For a while, there was the sound of many people cheering and a few fireworks went off--who knows why? A few windows in view are hung with blinking Christmas lights. Sean is finishing reading the novel he started in the airport. We ate some of Cris's leftovers for dinner and I am happy and looking forward to tomorrow. Cris is taking us out to a live performance her street group is doing in the open market, and then to downtown to see some museums, and then in the evening to some live samba music. Life is good and I'm in Brazil at last!
Now back to bed. Be well, all!
Reader Comments (1)
My highschool phrasebook never had conversational spanish for getting high. I feel shunted ;)