Free Music on the Street

Look at these guys and listen to their amazing music :-)

Total improvisation in the city centre of Belo Horizonte -- now this is Free Music! Made by free people - free in their minds :-)

Football in Minerao

Last week I was on a big football match - for the first time in my life. The local team Cruzeiro played against a team from Chile for the Copa Libertadores - the Champions League of South America.

Being at a game in the stadium is very different than watching on TV. Everything is way bigger, way louder, more powerful... I mean, you don't just sit and watch - you don't sit at all! Instead you sing, you shout, you jump to the rhythm of the drums...

Being in the middle of thousands fellow "warriors", it reminded me of some ancient times.. When the other team has the ball we cry-out "fuck you" and "motherfuckers" and all sorts of original profanity. When they lose the ball you sing the hymn of your team! Expressing your emotions that kind of strong way is very good to free your mind ;-)

Les Miserables

Tonight we had a wonderful time at the house of my friends... Brazilian music, mixed with some steaks and beer/cachaca. Great dancing and singing added on.. I don't want to forget these great moments... ever.

About 3 p.m. I went home and just around the corner on a big avenue I saw something I can't forget. A woman and two boys sleeping on the street. This is not unusual here, but this time two things hit me very deep.

The memories of the party and the bar just 20 meters away full of young talking and laughing - what a fucking contrast! We were happy, the people at the bar were happy, but these 3 people were fighting with life. It had been really hard on them...

The smaller boy was about 7 years old. He had hugged the woman, just like a child hugs his mother... Indeed, she was his mother. I know this because I saw their faces... I saw they loved each other... Sleeping like angels... The other boy was a little older, I guess his brother. So it was a family surviving on the streets of BH... They were very poor, the boy had no shoes... May God be with them...

Inhotim: Nature and Art

Inhotim is a very beautiful and harmonic place, designed to merge wonderful nature with modern art. It is located near Belo Horizonte. About 20 small buildings are spread all over the park containing interesting art works. Unfortunately I don't have photos from inside, but you can look at the site . The most surprising fact was that this place is private, but non-profit. Students pay 5 R$ (about 2 Euros) to enter - about one caipirinha in a bar. And the best restaurant I have ever seen is there.

Here are some pictures of our trip. Barbara, Denise, Gabriel and me.






What does this statue mean? A small angry man, sitting on the head of another man. Both sitting on books. Big man's brain on the floor, instead he has a squared box-head. The small man looks like Napoleon or some dictator. The big guy looks to me like an educated, but obedient man who would do everything the small man says. Including war.


Cool colorful cars. Note the shield of the left car - LGB which stands for lesbian, gay and bisexual people.






Wonderful palms...











These models were real people from Minas Gerais. The artist captured them dancing - something that people here love to do, and do it really great. Now everybody sing it:


"The boy is young, the boy is young.. but hey - she's beautiful and she feels good!
The man is old, the man is old.. but hey - he can walk, so he can dance!
The girls are girls, the girls are girls.. but hey - this doesn't matter, it is fun!"


Going to Bahia.. in the carnival time. Magic time.








She's beautiful...

Hugging and Kissing

Have you heard that small things can change the world and make it a better place? It is true... Just hug and kiss your friends every time you meet them. And again when you say good bye. This will make you feel much better... and will make the world better.. Just try and you will feel it. It's the easiest thing to change this world!


Don't believe me? I wouldn't believe it too... But since I am in Brasil, I believe it. Here, instead of greeting your friends with a moderate handshake, it is the most natural thing to kiss them and give them a warm hug. And the same when saying goodbye. And when you meet someone for the first time you give them 2 or 3 kisses!

Now imagine you get kissed and hugged about 20 times.. every day!! It is a warm feeling that makes you so much more happy and relaxed. It is a kind of love you recieve and transmit to others... It just removes the daily stress and frustration. Instead, you get love.. And because everybody does it, it makes everybody more smiley, more happy and less nervous and less aggressive. What a change!

PS: I want to dedicate this post to my wonderful friends here, and all to the warm people in Brasil who treat strangers as friends.

PS: I will try to implement this when I come back in Germany, so people - beware {O} {O} {O}

PS: Here only men and women kiss, but men and men don't kiss, they only hug or give a special handshake. I guess hugging among men is somehow prejudiced by the fear of being taken for "gay". But I think men should hug, it's a kind of friendship.

PS: This guy gives free hugs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

Young Genius at the Lab

Today I met Gabriel, a 16 year old guy in our little lab.. He is still at school, but he was working on some project using Ontologies (these are highly abstract models containing wisdom, that is used by computer software, so it can understand the real world).

As we programmers are passionate about programming, our first question is very often this one: "What programming language do you work with?". So he was working with Java, but mentioned that he also loved Groovy (just like me), because of it's elegance and he also knew about Rails and Grails. It turned out that his real love was C++ because his true passion was game programming... GAME PROGRAMMING!!! Game programming is maybe the most challenging area of all software development! It has everything - mathematics, graphics, artificial intelligence, networking...

So we continued chatting about some C++ IDEs for Linux and he knew and had used three popular IDEs. And he also knew about source control... And all the time he was talking passionate about our craft.. In perfect high-level English. Man, what amazing knowledge with 16!

The best thing was that he had started programming only 3 years ago.. What a quick progress! I could only admire Gabriel and imagine him working on some crazy AI stuff at Google after 5 more years. Keep on pumping Gabriel...

The Journey Begins

The journey started in the night between 5. and 6. March, at about 1 a.m. The day had already been chaotic, me trying to finish all things on my list, and still discovering more and more. Backup important phone numbers, print map of the city, take some familiar food... prepare for 6 months in the unknown. Since I knew Brazil was dangerous, I tried to prepare for the worst - being robbed just after arriving and losing my phone, money and baggage. But this was too much paranoia - the opposite happened :-)

It was a cold night, windy and snowing in Frankfurt. During the flight to Lissabon I tried not to imagine how Brasil would be.. but I couldn't stop. It was a mixed feeling of awareness for danger and happiness. I didn't want to be a greenhorn in the wild west, speaking almost no Portuguese and not knowing the environment and the rules...

From Lissabon I switched to another plane. When it took into the sky I knew for sure - now there is no going back! I was finally free from the dilemma of going to Brazil or throwing everything into the trash! This thought was punching me hard in the last 4 months.

While wating in the check-in room I was looking at the brazilian passengers.. normal people talking.. and one guy looking dangerous! Ha another one too! Hmm, 3 dangerous guys in my plane! I decided to keep an eye on them, but it was not necessary. In the plane I was sitting next to Bruno - the first dangerous guy :-). With him I spoke Portuguese in real conditions for the first time!

Bruno turned out to be a really cool and friendly man! He was a little older than me and worked in Portugal and visited his family in Brazil. He had a bad headache because of drinking too much beer last night with his friends. But that didn't stop him from drinking about 8 beers during the flight - no tea, no coffe, only beer :-).

We were close to Belo Horizonte when I saw the most beautiful and amazing clouds in my life! Big fat clouds looking like mountains arround us, and the sunrays parsing through them. This was heaven!

When we arrived in BH, it was a great warm summer evening. A crazy change - from snow to 28 degrees. Even my camera had condensed some water, so the picture got bad.

The airport was full of lights and many people outside relaxing in the cafes. And Tulio and his brother Tasso were waiting for me :-), and greeted me warmly. Here I met Tulio for the first time... but with him and his Brother I felt I was with old friends... at home :-)