Paulo Rebêlo The Budapest Sun – 14.mar.2007 Is Budapest a big city? It depends on whom you ask. One of the demographic oddities of Latin American countries is the general absence of medium-sized cities. We have huge metropoli – usually capital of a State – where most people live nowadays. And then we have thousands of small cities, especially in the rural areas. In Brazil, this is particularly odd, because the landmass has such continental measures that, in theory, we should have more medium-sized cities and less populated mega- cities.
Categoria: English
Paulo Rebêlo The Budapest Sun – 14.fev.2007 – link original You have just finished a delicious duck breast with croquette potatoes. You are feeling good after the nice wine, directly from the Hungarian countryside. The palacsinta pancake for dessert was marvelous. You are full, your belly feels happy (and bigger) and all you want on Earth right now is to pay the bill, go home and have a good night’s sleep. There’s only one problem: you can’t leave the bloody place. No matter how hard you try to look for the waiter, or raise your hand once in a while, no one will see you. No one will notice that you are done and want to actually pay; they will make you wait until a good soul finally comes to see if you need anything. When they realize you just want to pay and leave, they will make you wait again. And then a bit more.
Paulo Rebêlo The Budapest Sun – 21.dezembro.2006 link original The holiday season is a time when people get along more, cherish each other and even find themselves to be a little more romantic. In other words, it means that nine months from now we’ll be seeing hundreds and hundreds of shiny-lovely-little-Hungarians being born in Budapest. It is the joy of nature, the magic of procreation. There is only one minor problem: they will all be called Gábor. In the beginning of my stay around the city, I thought it was just my personal impression, perhaps the wrong stereotype that we, as foreigners, commonly carry about a place we don’t know. Perhaps it was by chance that I was meeting dozens of Hungarians with the same name, five out of 10 called Gábor. But after few months and a few wines shared with a lot of Gábors later, I have realized there is an ancient and unsolved mystery in Hungary about people’s names. And it should remain unsolved, because it seems no one can clearly explain why on Earth this happens in Hungary. Some say it’s due to the role of having the family name before the first name. Hard to
The Budapest Sun – 09.nov.2006 ( link original ) I’ve already seen many dead bodies in my life. I’ve played pool with convicted murderers. I’ve seen a guy being stabbed in the chest right at my side. I’ve got drunk with pirated whisky and hot beer. The list of bad things I have seen is not short. But I have never before come so close to seeing heaven turn itself into hell as I did while covering the recent riots in downtown Budapest. Even though I’ve been living in the city for fewer than four months, and still feel a little like a lost foreigner, I felt ashamed seeing the places I had learned to like so much being transformed into a raging arena. I can’t stop wondering how the ordinary Hungarian felt after waking up the day after the Oct 23 riots and seeing his country so badly shaped on the front pages of newspapers and TV shows around the world. As for me, as weird and selfish as it might sound, I had to explain to my pals back in Brazil that the Budapest they were seeing on TV was the same “beautiful and peaceful Bp” I usually
Paulo Rebêlo The Budapest Sun (link original) – 14.sep.2006 IF you are a smoker starting to get worried about the recent struggles against cigarettes worldwide, don’t think twice: go watch Thank You for Smoking and rejoice. If you’re a non-smoker, you’d better watch it too and learn how not to use the litany of arguments against grown-up smokers. Perhaps it’s what this movie better accomplishes: it suits different kinds of intelligent-movie lovers, especially those who are not much into the politically correct tendency that seems to be increasingly taking over the world. Directed by Jason Reitman, Thank You for Smoking deals with the life of Nick Taylor, a lobbyist for the tobacco industry in the United States who, although being flawless when it comes to arguing about why people should make their own choices about smoking, currently faces a hard time educating his son and dealing with an ex-wife. Just in case you get the feeling this could be a script slightly similar to Nicolas Cage’s The Weather Man, make no mistake, it isn’t. This movie has intelligence and black humor as its essence, inviting you to wonder why there are so many people trying to rule your life instead
Paulo Rebêlo The Budapest Sun – 31/08/06 – [link original] WHEN I first decided to move to Budapest, I made up my mind that I wouldn’t try to discover anything about life in Hungary and wouldn’t use the Internet to make friendly contacts before arriving. The impression the average Latin America citizen has of Hungary is limited to its famous city Budapest where people breathe history, culture and beauty – and that was enough for me. By chance, someone also told me how most Hungarians seem to like the Brazilian culture. It has been only a week since my arrival and it was rather easy to figure out that, differently from most western European countries, Hungary has many more similarities with Brazil than the average Hungarian would think. However, the first resemblance as a first-time visitor wasn’t exactly a cultural one. It truly freaks me out how the Tourism Office of Budapest puts emphasis on how foreigners should protect themselves against pickpockets and burglars on the streets, including at public transportation spots. Although the orange-colored informative called Well-informed in Budapest states that the Hungarian capital does not belong in the same bad category of many other European cities, in terms