The difficulty with writing about your impressions of a country you’ve been in for only nine days, especially if you have been moving from city to city with indecent haste, is that you haven’t had time to have many experiences that did not take place in transit zones.
Let me tell you then about the São Paulo metro which is huge and modern, with some stations that seem to go down into the earth forever. Getting off the train at one of the bigger stations, Republica, I noticed people bursting out of the doors and sprinting to the escalators.
The reason for this quickly became plain. In most big cities where people rely on subway trains to get around, an escalator convention exists whereby you stand on one side and walk on the other. Like the Irish, the Paulistas have failed to develop this etiquette. They get on to the escalator and then stand wherever they like and don’t worry about blocking those behind them, because what kind of idiot would walk up (or down) an escalator? So if you’re in a hurry and not in front of the crowd, forget it.
Stadium lifts are another arena in which foreigners struggle to adapt. I saw one European journalist fuming as he waited for the media lift in São Paulo. Apparently, the elevator was taking its time. “F***ing shambles,” he hissed, as though back home all lifts magically opened the instant he pressed the button.
Overseas cranks In another lift at the same stadium, some Brazilian volunteers standing outside the door on level 10 began a conversation with the
attendant. They had been chatting for a few seconds when one of the foreign journalists suddenly leaned forward and stabbed his finger at the button to close the doors. One of the men outside put his arm out to prevent the door from closing, and looked at the journalist with surprise. “I don’t have time to talk!” exploded the journalist, in a heavy South African accent. “If you want to talk, get in the lift; otherwise you can talk some other time.” Contemptuous stares were exchanged, and it looked as though the subsequent conversation was dragged out to annoy our South African friend.
The airport check-in desk is one of Brazil’s most renowned crucibles of chaos. You go there primed by various horror stories to expect the worst, and the casual attitude (often verging on blithe bewilderment) of the airline staff seems calculated to annoy. After seething through the check-in and security processes, it’s disarming to find yourself taking off and landing on time, with your bag arriving safely at the other end. It’s a reminder that there is no point sweating the small stuff. If Brazil is stereotypically associated with a relaxed and casual outlook on life, maybe it’s because it’s an adaptive response to official disorganisation. If you kept getting angry over the little things that go wrong you would give yourself a stroke.
Airports are usually boring places but even there you get occasional flashes of excitement. On Monday evening, after the Germany-Portugal game, I was in departures at Salvador airport trying to find out what gate my flight was leaving from, which is not necessarily as simple as it sounds. The terminal was packed with World Cup fans, mostly Mexicans trying to get to Fortaleza.
There was an abrupt commotion and loud screams. "Cristiano! Hey! Cristiano! " There, just a few metres away, was the unmistakable figure of Cristiano Ronaldo, walking by in an adjacent corridor, visible to the crowd through a wall of glass separating it from the main terminal. He was wearing a blue baseball cap on backwards, tracksuit top and shorts, with black flight socks pulled up to his knees.
Ronaldo fever Everyone rushed towards him, pulling out their phones and pressing themselves against the glass. A milling stampede formed on the public side of the partition and rolled alongside the superstar. People shouted out "Cristiano!" and beat their hands on the glass to get him to look around. Ronaldo was embarrassed, not knowing where to look or how to respond. He is among the most self-conscious of footballers at the best of times, and barely three hours after a 4-0 defeat in the World Cup is not the best of times.
The people seemed to take his lack of interest in posing for photographs as a slight. They started to shout “Messi! Hey Cristiano! Te amo Messi, te amo Messi! Ha Ha! Ha!” They were like children tormenting a zoo animal.
The World Player of the Year gazed in the other direction and walked, but he looked sad. You wondered how the situation appeared from his point of view. Is this how people always react to him? Whenever he encounters a crowd outside of a match setting, do they immediately start behaving like animals, or to be more precise, behaving towards him as though he were an animal – admittedly, an incredible animal, a unicorn, say, or King Kong, but not a human being who should be treated with respect? This is the meaning of the fame that he sought, but if it was a reflection of what happens when he is unlucky enough to meet strangers in his day-to-day life you could understand if he had by now accumulated a reservoir of contempt for humanity.
It was notable that Ronaldo, the captain, was walking alone. The rest of the Portugal squad followed at some distance.
