Day 5: Rio de Janeiro

Day 5: Rio de Janeiro

Day 5, you say? Why not day 3? Well, a twenty two hour delay at the airport meant I have only just arrived in Rio. People seem to have very different views of it as a city. I began to wonder whether I had made the right decision when I watched the Simpson’s on the flight over. It was the controversial episode about Rio. The makers of the Simpson’s were later threatened with legal action by the Rio tourist board after making fun of the city in a show. Apparently, they showed Homer being attacked by street children, before he was then kidnapped by an unlicensed taxi. Then it showed monkeys overrunning an orphanage in the city, before Bart was swallowed by a boa constrictor snake. It also portrayed the police as lazy and the slums as dirty and dangerous. Whether accurate or not, it was funny. But nowhere near as funny as the man next to me seemed to think. He had an annoying and painful habit of jabbing me in the ribs with his elbows each time we hit a funny part.

With this negative and rather disturbing picture in mind, I decided to take in some of the sights and sounds (and smells) of the city.

To say that poverty and wealth sit side by side, cheek by jowl, is no exaggeration in Rio. You pass large, well kept apartments and houses, followed by areas typified by illegal, slum dwellings, or as the locals prefer to call them, favelas. There was one favela in particular which interested me; Rocinha.

We had studied Rocinha at GCSE level – apparently, it is one of the larger shanty towns in Brazil, and also one which demonstrates the various stages that such a place can go through in becoming more developed through self help. I arrived at around 10a.m. This was a bad idea. People were just stirring from their homes and the closely packed in streets were lined with people, sliding and shoving their way through the crowds in the hot, dry and sweaty atmosphere. The thing that struck me was the sheer lack of any organisation in the way the houses had been built. It was a case of anywhere will do. The result was a chaotic mass of housing, with electric wires running overhead in all directions. I felt intimidated. For a start, I was the only Brit here – that was obvious. The second obvious thing was my sheer stupidity. In hindsight it seems ridiculous, but I was trying to find my way around by studying a map. ‘And what’s wrong with that?’ you might say. ‘You’re a self confessed Geography geek. We wouldn’t expect anything less!’ True. But it’s also true that many of Rio’s favelas do not have street names. Why would they? The council aren’t going to be too keen to dish out addresses to people living illegally here. However, this has changed to some degree. U2 sang about the streets having no names, but can you even imagine what life must be like? I imagined an imaginary conversation on an imaginary street (with no name) between two imaginary young people:

Imaginary person 1: Are you doing anything tonight after imaginary school?
Imaginary person 2: No, I imagine not. Why don’t you come around for a game of football (has to be football – the Brazilians are mad for it).
Imaginary person 1: Yeah. That’ll be good. Where do you live?
Imaginary person 2: In the fairly lopsided house. It is painted red. If you go past the first blue house, then the pink house on the left side, followed by the house with a front window, you should come to a red house….
Imaginary person 1: Is that the one?
Imaginary person 2: No…you then turn right, past three pink houses, then head up a hill, then down the other side, go past four grey houses, though some people say they’re more of a light blue. Then it’s on the right hand side.
Imaginary person 1: Great! I’ll see you there.

But you see, he wouldn’t see him. Because he’d be lost. Or he’d go to the wrong blue house…I mean red. See? I’m getting confused now too. Of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. You wouldn’t be able to get post, you wouldn’t be able to get a bank account for money to be paid in for a formal job, you would struggle to register at school. So thankfully many of the houses now do have addresses. Which means the two imaginary boys could play football together, and both live happily ever after. The end.

Well, not quite the end. In fact, nothing of the sort. Many of the houses are in a terrible, dilapidated state. No running water which can lead to disease if their water source is dirty, many of the parents don’t have formal jobs and have to do informal jobs such as shoe shining for cash in hand. Of course, high levels of illness due to poor living conditions often mean that people here often can’t get to work. This is made worse by lack of bus or transport systems to get them to where they need to be. Some people in Rocinha do have formal jobs, working in the port area of Rio. And equally, it is obvious looking around that many of the areas in Rocinha are improved areas – or periferia as they prefer to call them.

People I spoke to in Rocinha had different things to say. One guy said that there were problems with poor transport, and that at least in Sao Paolo they had built an underground system. Others complained about the drugs problems in Rocinha and that it was being run by drugs lords. I did feel at risk. I did hear gun shots (I presume these were gunshots; it might have been fireworks – it is November).

Rio is certainly an interesting place. Translated, it apparently means ‘River of January’. I tried to go with the flow. I enjoyed it – but I wasn’t about to stay until the new year. It was different to Gateshead. Or Middlesbrough. Very different.

Onwards I go. Next stop, Bangladesh.

Day 2: Gateshead (or to locals 'The Heed')

Day 2: Gateshead

First thing’s first. For anyone who feels like heading to Gateshead at some point, don’t make the mistake that I made this morning. I asked a local man if Gateshead was part of Newcastle. It seems that it was the equivalent of me asking him for a candlelit supper beside the Tyne Bridge that evening. In fact, the offer of a dinner date may have been met with a more favourable response. So I can now, quite clearly and categorically, state that Gateshead is NOT part of Newcastle. It may be separated by less than a kilometre, and both share the same river – The Tyne – but people in Gateshead feel very much separate and apart from their larger and more heavily publicised neighbours. Gateshead was once jam-packed with Industry – rope works, shipbuilding, and various other manufacturing enterprises. It was literally the heart of manufacturing in this region. It was difficult for me to imagine this as I looked at a very different Gateshead in the 21st Century. Over the last ten years the whole landscape has altered and changed. Make no mistake, by the early 1990s Gateshead appeared dead on its feet. Most manufacturing firms left to either go to more spacious premises on the edge of the city, or even left the country altogether. For instance, so much shipbuilding went to South Korea. But more of that later.

So. What’s changed? Well, firstly, having got off at Newcastle Central station after a harassing and frankly miserable train journey my first job was to get across to the other side of the river (to the south side) to Gateshead. I decided to take a longer route to visit the Newcastle Quayside first. When I arrived it was early on in the day – around eleven o’clock – but despite being quiet now, you could easily imagine the hustle and bustle of a Friday, Saturday or Sunday night. Or actually, any night in Newcastle. Every night seems to be party night.

I arrived at the Pitcher and Piano bar. Close by was the new bridge for a new millennium. Not surprisingly, it is called the Millennium Bridge, or the winking bridge because of the fact that it tips sideways to allow boats to pass beneath. This was expensive. I managed to pick up a leaflet with information about it. Apparently, the bridge cost around £22million! For a bit of metal! And you’ll never guess how many permanent jobs it created; one! Evidently, this person’s job is to press the button when the job is to tilt up, and presumably to check that there are no people on the bridging being tilted at the same point. However, it was important for other reasons. It joined up Newcastle and Gateshead quaysides and has encouraged people to visit the attractions on the other side of the river.

So, I crossed the bridge. And what an experience it was. It was like….well…crossing a bridge. I wondered if I had missed something. But it did its job, looks quite pretty and got me to where I wanted to go – the Baltic Flour mill. I had heard all about this. It used to be a Hovis flour mill; I had to put up with some terrible jokes from my Geography teacher about this, who said that the people who owned it were upper crust…that they used their loaf when they decided not to knock it down, but to renovate it instead…that there have been few crumbs of comfort for the people who lost their jobs. Oh dear.

So – its now a Visual Arts Gallery. And it was actually quite good. For a start, it was free.
And I’m from Yorkshire and am half Scottish, so the word ‘free’ is a marvellous and much under-rated term. From the top of the Baltic Flour mill, you could see for miles. That is, you would be able to if the world’s widest man wasn’t stood right in front of me. He also had an uncanny knack of waving his arms in front of my face. In between, I could see the new Music Hall – The Sage – glistening in the sunlight. Its metal shell made it look a bit like a metal slug. But its created a fair number of jobs, attracted lots of tourists (they reckon half a million a year) and artists such as Sting and classical performers have been there. As I scanned the skyline I could see the Baltic Quay private housing development. I overheard an American couple in the lift talking about a guy who had bought an apartment there for a million pounds thinking that Newcastle/Gateshead would get European City of Culture for 2008. But Liverpool stole it from underneath their noses. And the same guy lost hundreds of thousands on his property in days. Gutted.
The apartments have attracted more young people back into the city though. Of course, they pay taxes, go drinking and for meals (which creates more jobs) and it has helped to revitalise the area. There’s also a Hilton Hotel there and a twenty screen cinema. I went there on the afternoon, mainly to escape the rain. As I went into the cinema, I did notice a lot of youths hanging around and I did wonder what these developments have done for poorer, local people. But it is an improvement, and it is a start. I’m sure I’ll see worse problems when I arrive in Rio.

Day 1: Middlesbrough CBD

Day 1: Middlesbrough






Yes, I know. It’s hardly Cairo with the pyramids, or LA and Hollywood. But it only cost £1.25 single to the bus station, and we did learn about it at GCSE level. It’s attracted a fair amount of press attention too recently. Apparently, according to some TV programme presented by some bumbling idiot and his sidekick, it’s the worst place to live in Britain. I’m not sure about that. Yes, it’s got some problems. But where hasn’t? Its very pleasant on the outskirts, and North Yorkshire is undoubtedly an attractive county. I got off the bus at Middlesbrough bus station and immediately stood in a pile of dog excrement. Not nice. Sadly, my shoes are of the grooved variety and twenty minutes later I was still attempting to remove orange segments from my shoe. The dog clearly had serious digestive issues judging by the consistency. Anyhow, I’m here. The bus station of course is in the frame of the CBD, as any Geographer worth his or her salt will already know. It’s actually quite big. I don’t know if this is because of the sheer number of people wanting to leave the town, but you can see why it needs to be in the frame. Land values would be much too high in the core for it to locate there. Anyway, I stepped along Albert road with its independent, locally owned shops. It wasn’t long though before I was outside the marvellous building that is Debenhams. A sweet, sugary smell floated past me as I stood admiring the multi-storey building that is Debenhams. This wasn’t the smell of dog excrement making a comeback, but instead the rather more pleasant aroma of Dinky Donuts, located in front of Next, Burger King, Top Man, etc. All of them chain stores, all able to afford the high rents, most of them building upwards with upper storey use to maximise land in the core. I resisted temptation and the allure of a donut, and headed towards the other side of the core and into the frame once again, past the Town Hall, past the ‘Hairy Lemon’ pub, past the building that was once the Odeon cinema (then Jumpin’ Jaks nightclub), and to the improved area of the frame which is where the new UGC cinema proudly sits next to the A66. Satisfied that I had seen enough I headed back towards the town centre. Of course, I had missed out recent improvements put in place by the town council. Anyone from the area knows that Captain Cook was a famous local resident, having been born in Marton, on the outskirts of the town. A permanent reminder of this can now can be found in the core, where a zone of improvement is evident. Captain Cook’s square backs onto the bus station and is a section of chain shops which effectively acts as an extension to the CBD. It’s the council’s attempt to stave off competition from other competing shopping centres, such as the out of town retail outlet, Teesside Park. Has it worked? Well, it has improved the town centre. There can be no doubting that. But judging by the cars that were piling into Teesside Park as I go the bus here, the town council have a tough task on their hands. Before I left, in true Geography style I did a survey to see if people thought that Captain Cook’s Square had made a difference to the CBD.

Interview 1: Young male, aged around 20 years

Me: Excuse me, but could you spare a moment please?
Youth: Yer wha?
Me: I said, could you spare a moment please.
Youth: Why, like?
Me: Because I’d like to ask you if you think Captain Cook’s Square has made a difference to the CBD.
Youth: Sort of.
Me: What do you mean, sort of?
Youth: I mean it sort of has.
Me: Yes, but in what way?
Youth: I mean its sort of berra than it woz.
Me: OK. So you like it then.
Youth: It’s alright, suppose.
Me: OK….thanks.

Interview 2: Elderly lady (rude to state her age)

Me: Excuse me, but could you spare a moment please?
Lady: Spare some change?
Me: No, spare a moment…for me to ask questions.
Lady: What questions?
Me: Well….I was wondering if you think Captain Cook’s Square has made a difference to the CBD.
Lady: Captain Cook’s dead.
Me: Yes…I know…but the square is named after him.
Lady: Is it? Oh. I’ve never been.
Me: OK…thanks anyway.

This is not going to plan.

Interview 3: Middle aged female (rude again to state a lady’s age)

Me: Excuse me, but could you spare a moment please?
Lady: Yes, certainly.
Me: I was wondering if you think Captain Cook’s Square has made a difference to the CBD.
Lady: Yes. I’d say so. It has extended the CBD. There are more pedestrianised places for people to shop. Its more shopper friendly. Its also fairly accessible and has a range of chain stores to compete with Teesside Park.
Me: Thanks!
Lady: No problem…a pleasure.

Wow. My faith in humanity just about restored, I decided to call it a day. I will return to Middlesbrough in the months to come to look at Industry on Teesside. But for now, it’s adios to the town. Before my flight to Rio de Janeiro, there’s time on the way to Newcastle airport to pop in to see Gateshead and inner city regeneration.