World Cup in Rio

There was plenty of sunshine last week in Rio. Thank God for that because the rainy days can be drab and cold, especially at night. Today is a day of torrential rainfall. It began several hours ago and there doesn't appear to be an end to it. From our window, I see streams of water running down the slope of Pedra da Gavea and the pool below is very close to overflowing. So far I've stuck to my no sweater in Rio rule. The common area of the house is open so it can get chilly and windy, and at those times a soft, warm blanket does the trick. Although it's winter here, I guess I never expected the nights to be this chilly. Still, the no sweater rule stands until we go further south at the start of next month.

Thanks to World Cup, the month of June has flown by. Brazilians have been scheduling their lives around their team's football games and the rest of us have no choice but to follow suit. There were at least two official statutory holidays this month. Why? Because Brazilians are just that awesome and have so many holidays! Add to that the weekends and the days when the entire country shuts down for football games, and basically you have half a month of holidays. Most Jiu-jitsu gyms that people in the house train at have only had morning classes or open mat on the days that Brazil plays and all evening classes were cancelled. The traffic in this city is pretty horrendous. It can take 30 minutes or 3 hours to get to the same place, and how long it will take really depends on the time you leave. When there are games at Maracana Stadium, everyone finishes work half day. It just makes sense to let people leave early so that they can get home at a decent time. I even heard that some schools gave an extra two weeks of school holidays at the start of World Cup. Imagine that! Too bad that they don't give you extra school holidays so easily at home. Basically, it's been a month of partying, gringos just about everywhere (a surprising number even in Barra) and everyone who doesn't want to be in this beautiful mess, simply stays away.

Copacabana is where anyone who isn't Brazilian goes to watch football games. The rest of the country heads to a local bar, or like most of the world, catches the game from home. It's hard to decide where to go. Being at Copacabana is always exciting but getting into Fan Fest can be a pain because you have to leave several hours early. On the beach, near Fan Fest, is another large screen where we watched the Brazil vs. Mexico and Colombia games. This spot isn't enclosed and doesn't have any audio but I actually prefer being here to Fan Fest. I like the fact that you can escape the crowd and just walk off the beach a lot more easily than if you were in Fan Fest. The soundtrack of the Chilean fans with their Viva Chile chant, the rowdy Colombian and Argentinian fans, the cursing and the odd excessively drunk person makes watching the games here just as entertaining. Also, if you get there early enough, you can plop down in the sand, be pretty comfortable and actually see the entire game (there is a downside to large standing crowds when you're a short person). And like service at all beaches in Brazil, the snacks and drinks come to you, whether it's grilled shrimp, beers or caipirinhas. Some of the guys in the house went to Tijuca to watch a game. Tijuca, like Barra is a suburb of Rio, and basically the set up is the same. A large screen set up in the street, a mostly Carioca crowd, a lot of cursing and a ton of beer just being splashed all over the place every time there is a goal. I didn't feel like getting drenched in beer so Tijuca never happened for us. For the Brazil vs. Chile game, we stayed local and went to a bar near Barra beach. Having a comfortable seat, a platter of grilled meat and finger foods and a clear view of the game was luxurious :-)

We were eating at Canto, after returning from Copacabana when we heard the news about Neymar. We were all hoping that maybe it wasn't true, that it wouldn't be that bad but it was. Somehow, everyone knew, without Neymar, Brazil was done. Even at Gordo's, the following day they basically told the guys that it was back to the regular schedule after the next Brazil game. They knew it was the end.

The question was where do we go for the semi-final game? The guys at the house had already been warned by Gordo, the owner of the Jiu-jitsu club closest to the house, to be careful about going out. Gringos are easy targets. Jacira, the maid, asked to leave early so that she could get home before the game, in case fights broke out on the street. I think it would be fair to say that a lot of people in the house were cautious about heading to Centro, especially after the warnings. It was a cloudy day to begin with and we didn't want to get stuck in the rain in Copacabana. I wasn't really too worried about safety there since there is so much police presence. However Mother Nature made the decision easy for us. It started to rain and I don't care about football enough to sit on the beach or walk to a bar, getting soaking wet. So we stayed home and I'm glad we did because by the fifth goal the most enthusiastic football fans in the house were snoozing on the couch. The dreary sky and the rain should have been a sign of the foreboding doom, but who expected total annihilation? A few of the people in the house who went to a local bar came back at half time, and said that Brazilians had already started to leave and that Olegario Maciel, the main street was totally dead. So much for all the fear mongering. I asked the maid the next day if she was sad about the game? She just smiled, shook her head and said that she needs more money and needs to work!