xmas eve - the adventure starts

on my first day of "freedom" i enjoyed to just stroll around copacabana streets and beach. i like rio more and more every hour i spend here

for christmas eve i was invited by fellow hospitalityclub member andrea to join their christmas dinner, an offer i accepted gladly since spending christmas in a dorm room doesnt really feel right

as she is living in a part of downtown rio, i had the pleasure of trying the metro of rio, which has a direct line over there and boasts everywhere how bilingual it is... so it was supposed to be easy enough... but it wasnt of course hehe

first, the station i knew was shut down for christmas, but some beer-drinking cariocas sent the touristy myself on the right way so i could finally arrive at the station where of course nothing was bilingual and only in portugese... the bilingual part of the metro is that the tape calls out the station in english as well... great help to know that "estacion carioca" (sp?) is "carioca station".... anyway, all the ad hoc speaker messages were of course in rio-slang portugese - and after half the train got out at one station i was close to switch to taxi - especially since i was the only gringo there at 9 oclock and drunken brazilians seem to be even louder than drunken english lads

but i arrived safely through the rain at andreas place and enjoyed a first glimpse of "real" brazilian culture, music and hospitality... the few hours spent there had a bigger impact than the whole brazilian part of the tour before

the taxi ride back at 3 am was quite interesting as well... they drive like crazy people around here and the tunnelride looked like a car chase from a hollywood movie