Brazil. Part III. Uberlândia—BrasiliaMap
January Some Brazilian gas stations have ingenious on-site devices that allow you to visually evaluate the quality of the gasoline. ![]() The old highway guide signs look identical to the new ones. ![]() An old 211th kilometer marker has been carefully set aside rather than being discarded. I kept eyeing it this way and that, but I didn’t have pliers to pull out the nails and didn’t want to stick the sign in my trunk with a log attached to it. In any case, it was too large to fit in my suitcase. Alas. ![]() There are speed bumps on the approach to populated areas and complicated intersections all throughout the country. No color markings exist to highlight them on the road (or if they did exist, the paint must have worn off very rapidly). The only warning is a sign, which on several occasions I noticed too late. ![]() There are three kinds of no passing signs on the roads. The first one features two retro cars. ![]() The second has two 1990s-style cars. ![]() The third and last type features somewhat more modern cars, with steering wheels and left side view mirrors to make it clearer that this isn’t a view from the front (although it still looks that way). ![]() Practically every city and town is designated with freestanding white concrete letters spelling out its name on the side of the highway. ![]() UberlândiaMapAn absolutely pointless city. ![]() But at least the local pedestrian lights are different: instead of a little red person, they have a hand halting him. ![]() Traffic signs are mounted on sticks in the form of a cross. In the dusk, they look like roadside graves. ![]() Someone will no longer need reminders to obey traffic rules. ![]() Traffic cameras fit easily onto one pole here (compare with the monstrous structure for the same three cameras in downtown Chelyabinsk). ![]() The highway patrol posts are exactly the same as the ones in Russia. And they also like to act like jerks here and narrow traffic down to one lane without warning, just to make it easier to pull over drivers. I received a proper frisking at one of these posts, including having my suitcase rummaged through (nothing in my collection so far, however, compares to the sheer effrontery of the search I was submitted to at the Swiss border). ![]() Many of the patrol posts have adjacent parking areas with totaled cars and motorcycles. Perhaps they serve as a cautionary tale, or maybe no one showed up to claim the vehicles after an accident. ![]() BrasiliaMapWhereas in English and other languages, the name of the country is pronounced “Brazil” and thus easily distinguished from the name of the capital, in Russian they’re both called “Brasilia.” The capital of Brasilia is Brasilia. It takes some getting used to. The suburbs all consist of residential developments that are practically identical in appearance except for their color. ![]() The ground floors are essentially absent (the city has generally implemented many of Le Corbusier’s ideas). This is where the concierge booths and elevator entrances are located. ![]() Green and boring. ![]() The city was specifically designed to serve as a capital; its construction began in 1957 completely from scratch. Consequently, everything here is arranged strictly according to plan. The result is the most dreadful and artificial city in the world (Australia’s Canberra, also a purpose-built capital city, is equally dreadful). The concept seems appealing at first, due to its simplicity and functionality. The ministries (green from this angle) are located along both sides of the main avenue, followed by other government buildings. The avenue terminates at a plaza which contains the National Congress, the country’s main flagpole, the courts, and the presidential palace. ![]() The sun-facing facades of the ministry buildings are outfitted with top-to-bottom green blinds on the outside. Some found this insufficient, however, and hacked a bunch of holes through them to install air conditioners. Interestingly, some of the ministries refused to let their employees deface the buildings’ centralized beauty, while others couldn’t care less. ![]() Each ministry has a post box outside. Brazil’s post boxes are among the most beautiful in the world. ![]() And they were pretty nice even a hundred years ago. One of the old ones can be found outside the central post office. ![]() The trash cans here are the height of a sizable school student. ![]() Almost all of the buildings were designed by Brazilian architect Oscar Niemeyer (who also happens to be a laureate of the Lenin Prize). The entire style of Brasilia is based on these horrid concrete structures. ![]() Admittedly, some of the concepts are cute, like these waterfalls on yet another government building of some kind. ![]() But the general result is a city that negates life. Everything is divided up into sectors: the Banking Sector, the Northern Commercial Sector, Southern Residential Sector #X. What could be worse than a hotel located in the Hotel Sector? All you’ll see out the windows is other hotels. Everything should actually be the opposite: a city succeeds only when there’s layer upon layer of injustice—because that’s exactly what life is. ![]() The city was designed to be perfect, but the result is more like a surgical ward overgrown with weeds. There shouldn’t have been any traffic jams, yet they exist in large numbers. The city wasn’t even supposed to have any traffic lights whatsoever. The bus and metro systems don’t help. There was no dirt planned, but it’s everywhere. ![]() The storefronts are boring (to be fair, it’s the same in the rest of the country), but combatting the sun is important. Stores roll down vinyl curtains to keep out the blinding light and the heat. The name of the store is printed on the outside of the roll. ![]() The city plan contained no provisions for grocery stores or kiosks along the central avenue. The people living there found this inconvenient, so they solved the problem by cutting a doorway right into the second story of a random building and setting up a ladder. Not exactly the pinnacle of urban planning, but there aren’t any other grocery stores for a kilometer around. ![]() This is a fitting metaphor for how Brasilia was envisioned and what it has become. ![]() |
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Brazil. III. Uberlândia — Brasilia
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