Salvador

Salvador is a very strange place. It has a beautiful, old (relatively) city centre (Pelourinho) with lots of baroque churches and pretty little houses where you can walk around on foot. The rest of the city is less interesting and, in any case, the centre is the only part that is "safe" for tourists. Although it does seem safe because of the heavy presence of the tourist police, I feel much more threatened here than in Rio. That is partly because here, being white, one is way more conspicuous than further south. (I keep seeing these lone tourist walking purposefully and assertively in the streets, as suggested by Lonely Planet, but I have given up on that in this city.) But accroding to a Brazilian guy from somewhere near Brasilia it is also because this area is essentially very poor, all the middle/upper class people live in the suburbs and they would, for example, never even dream about attending the free concert on the main square of Pelourinho that we went to on Sunday. The concert was great fun by the way, super crowded though, and everyone advised me to use my bra and/or panties as a purse,which was probably wise.

Hostel life is fun, if only because it provides you with a constant source of company. As said, it is kind of hit or miss. It is tiring to spend time with someone who thinks that the capital of Hungary is Istanbul (the Norwegian angel) or that the attractive Brazilian prostitutes want him because he is so sexy (a French guy, of course). On the other hand, the Spanish, or rather Basque, woman that I met on the boat, turned out to be very nice and interesting. Last night I talked to her about what it is like to be a Jew in Eastern Europe, in exchange she told me about Basque fight for independence and why it would be better if they had their own country. Good Spanish practice session, I am getting better by the day.

I am trying to immerse myself in local culture as well, but here it seems that the locals here have figured out the tourists quite well and constantly try to sell you something: bracelets, drugs, themselves, whatever. Some of them are really nice and chatty but it is sometimes difficult to be friendly back knowing that there will always be a request in the end that you will not want to satisfy. I had one very long conversation with a very pretty, 28 year-old Brazilian woman, who told me about her fiance, a 65 year old Danish guy, who bought her a house here and a car (even though she does not drive) and who owns 23 thousand books, has two ex-wives and beautiful lips, apparently. She constantly kept talking about how deeply in love she was with this man - all the while stroking the legs of a Norwegian guy sitting next to here in a very sexy manner.

This has become like a diary, I doubt that anyone will read these longs posts, but when you are on your own you pay much more attention to the environment around you it is good for me to write down my impressions.