Saturday, May 26, 2012

How come I have a Pound Penny (GBP)? Como exatamente eu tenho um centavo de Libra esterlina?





I was probably in Florence, at the train station, waiting the train to Pisa. I search my pocket reaching for coins to go to the toilette and somehow, someway I find one cent of a pound! Wait a second. I have never ever been in England, how's that possible?

It turns out this coin is pretty similar in size and shape to the coin representing 5 cents of an Euro. My best guess is that some Brazilian has passed it to some food shop guy as if it were 5 cents of an Euro and the food shop guy in turn passed it to me. Karma!!!

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Do I bring back luck to the places? Será que eu trago má sorte para os lugares que visito?


I can say I'm a generally lucky person. I have won contests and prizes (not the lottery yet) and many times I was able to be happy for being so lucky. However, as the Yin and Yang there must be some balance in the universe. Read on to find out more about it.
Back in 2008 I decided to travel to India. It was an amazing trip where I had lots of fun visiting all the different landscapes India has to provide. However, approximately 1 month after I had left India a terrible series or terrorist attacks happened in Mumbai. See here-> Wikipedia - 2008 Mumbai attacks
They were killing on sight any tourists on the gateway of India area, exactly where most tourists gather and where I was about a month before.

Fast forward to 2012. In the flight to Frankfurt I was able to spot UFC fighter Paulo Thiago on the plane. He was flying for his fight in Stockholm on that Saturday. It was meant to be an easy fight and Paulo was supposed to win HOWEVER he was knocked out on the first round.

As I mentioned before this trip was mostly focused on Italy. Just today I say these news  Italy earth quakes - 2012.

Wow, let me tell you that that's an awkward series of coincidences.

Now obviously I don't believe in any of what I wrote LOL, just wanted to show you folks these weird stories.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Germany versus Italy versus France


One thing that stayed in my mind throughout the trip was a constant comparison between these 3 countries. I know it's hard to make any fair comparison as they are quite different but somethings just come to my mind.

Certainly if I had to choose where to move to I would choose Frankfurt, and if that was not possible I would choose Berlin. I was once again impressed with how awesome Germany is.
Simply put everything works. There are no delays, nothing malfunctions. Everything works all the time.
Trains arrive on time, buses arrive on time, people are on time, events start on time.
There're almost no traffic jams, subway system is perfect.
And what about the people! Germans are simply one step ahead. They are incredibly kind and polite. You can see it on the simple things, like waiting everyone go off the train before boarding.
Even the beggars are nice and friendly. Streets are clean. There are signs everywhere, it's impossible to get lost. If you get lost in Germany you are severely bad at directions LOL
Not to mention the fact that neither Frankfurt nor Berlin are top touristic destinations, at least as compared to Paris or Rome so the prices are the best ones. Did I mention unemployment rate is 5%!!!!
Did I mention the focus on bikes and subway? There are cycle roads everywhere. Subway is vast and cover the entire cities. Even considering they have got amazing cars in BMW, Mercedes and Audi.

Italy is a totally different country. Some say they are the Brazil of Europe. I must agree. It's intense and chaotic. It's really not so organized as Germany is.  When going from Germany to Italy you have that feeling of going from first world to third world. They have got the lame politicians too.
Unfortunately for lack of time we couldn't visit more cities like Bologna, who in my opinion represent Italy better these days.
The touristic cities are beautiful but they're own fame brings lots of bad things in the form of scammers, high prices, scarce resources.
When we arrived in Bologna for the first time we felt we had arrived in Italy. And the Italy that I have seen in Bologna was one that I liked. It's more organized, it's clean, people are kind. It's still historical, actually from the medieval times. Hopefully on the next trip I can go to more cities like Bologna and less cities like Firenze (Florence).

It's hard to judge France based on only 3 days in Paris. It's probably like trying to judge Brazil based on Rio de Janeiro, which is what everyone does outside of Brazil and pisses us off LOL
It's like a middle stage in between Italy and Germany. It's not so organized and clean as Germany, but it's not so chaotic like Italy.
There is no question as to the fact that there are thousands of gorgeous buildings in Paris. There is no question to the fact that they have one of the best public systems in the world.
Hopefully I can get to meet the country side. Not only Provence, but Lyon, Bordeaux, Dijon. And hopefully by the next time I don't have mental blocks and can at least say some basic things in French.

All in all the country I liked the most was Germany. The simply seem to be like 10 years ahead of the rest of Europe (Except the nordic countries) and maybe 50 years ahead of Brazil.