19th March, 2008
Today has been eventful, for sure. Arriving from
Lima to Sao Paulo, rushing home to change and a
shower, and rushing back again to Guarhulous
airport: all in the space of three hours. And from there on to Londrina, via Curitiba.
Curitiba: I first heard of this in 2003, in the
context of an extremely efficient public
transportation system.the green views from the top, the perfect
parallels and perpendicular roads, the planned
houses, make Curitiba an urban planners delight. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curitiba#Urban_Planni
ng
A hugely interesting thing about Curitiba is the
24 hour street, which is always open, on which
there are about three dozen shops which remain
open, 24 X 7
From Curitiba, on to Londrina: named after London
(Londres in Portugese), as a mark of recognition
to an English cotton company that made the
original investment to settle there.
All along, i flew by TAM airlines, the airline i
first heard of when its plane crashed into
Congonhas airport about one year ago. But its a
really nice and efficient airline, and i was lucky
to see a plane which had signatures from thousands
of TAM employees; looked super.
Londrina is a small city, about half a million
people. I had a couple of hours, so i strolled
along the bazaar near the bus station. There is a
pretty interesting museumhttp://www.londrina.pr.gov.br/english/tourism/weis
s.php3 The most important thing for me, in addition to
the story of Londrina's evolution, was to see the
first (non-metro) train in brazil. As the museum
functions in the building of the old railway
station, there is a bit of railway to it. Two
coaches, in defunct condition was all i got to
see, but then, it was a train nevertheless !
Also had my first haircut in Brazil, in the
bazaar. I walked up to a unisex saloon and got my
haircut. It started with a shampoo (unlike in
India, where shampoo is a separate item on the
barber (or artist's) agenda and moved on to the
haircut. Pretty neat, in ten minutes and 7 reals.