Sao Paulo - my experiences with this really challenging metropolis

 Hi all You highly esteemed readers of my posts and followers of my blog. Due to the really intensive professional activities in which I have been involved massively during the last weeks, I did not find earlier the right moment for writing a new post here in my blog. But today`s definitely the right day and this is definitely the right hour for doing it. 

Finally - after a quite "cold" week with quite low temperatures (approx. 18 °C) with several rain showers and some stronger blows of wind - yesterday another weekend with wonderfully warm and sunny weather has arrived here in Vinhedo, where I live with my familly and from where I work at least on 4 days per week from out of my home office. 

The idea to share my meanwhile 25 years long experiences with the city of Sao Paulo with You popped up in my head last night, when I visited friends over there. Actually I had dropped my wife and 3 of her girl friends at at the flat of another girl friend of them in the afternoon. The girls held their monthly "girls party" there and I used this opportunity for arranging a meeting with a great friend of mine.

I know Bernd Mayer since meanwhile more than 10 years. At that time Bernd was the Managing Director of the VDI Brasil (https://www.vdibrasil.com/), the German Engineers Association`s branch in Brazil, and we met for the first time upon my participation in the VDI`s wonderful annual "Brazilian-German Engineering Day" event in Sao Paulo. 

My great friendship with Bernd continues uninterruptedly since then and we have met during all these years many times upon different events of the VDI and AHK (https://www.ahkbrasilien.com.br/) in Sao Paulo, where Bernd since a couple of years is creating and realizing wonderful innovative Brazilian-German development projects, supported by and in close cooperation with German ministries and local German and Brazilian companies and institutions. 

Our traditional meeting place since many years is the rooftop bar in the spectacular building "Edificio Italia" (https://www.edificioitalia.com.br/), for which Bernd and I share our passion. It`s a quite famous, old, traditional and very fancy place, which gives You - through the glass walls all around the bar - a really exciting impression of Sao Paulo from above, especially on a clear day in the afternoon and during nightfall. This is a warmly recommendable place for doing a relaxing chill-out on a saturday or sunday afternoon. Try it out - once You find the opportunity and - please !!! - give me Your feedback. 

My first contact with Sao Paulo was clearly negative. I had arrived there in the middle of 1995, when I got started on my job as engineering & project manager for Henkel do Brasil at it`s chemical & adhesives production plant in Jacarei (today: BASF), about 1 hour by car away from Sao Paulo city, besides the Dutra highway, which connects Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. 

From my first visits to Sao Paulo on - during meetings with engineering companies and visits to equipment suppliers - I felt completely lost and desorientated in this huge ant hill like conglomerate of streets, buildings and masses of people. My experience with bigger cities until this time had been limited to sporadic visits to European metropoles like Paris, Rome, London and Madrid, which by far did not compare to Sao Paulo in many circumstances.

The two main reasons for me for not getting friends with Sao Paulo were clearly my incapacity to get a more or less reliable orientation there and the fact - as I feel it still today - that one and the same places there changes completely between day and night. Sao Paulo did really not easen it for me, to develop affection to it for quite long time. I practically made myself totally dependent during the first years on experienced "local guides" (colleagues, friends, business partners,...) for accompanying me during my visits to and activities in Sao Paulo. 

For sure this also had a lot to do with the welknown fact, that (not only) as a newcomer You need - the same like in most other bigger places all over Latin America and on other continents - to be quite careful when starting to move around in cities like Sao Paulo because of the crime risk there. To walk or drive into very poor quarters (favelas) might not be the best idea, but on the other hand to move (no matter whether during day or night) in very rich quarters does also require some precautions and knowledge and respect of some basic rules. 

Thanks God - and maybe some helpful instinct, experience and awareness - so far I never suffered any undesired situation, wherever I lived and moved, including Sao Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and many other challenging places in Brazil, Mexico and several other countries in Latin America and Africa. What definitely has helped me a lot, is the huge experience which all my lots of friends, colleagues and business partners have shared with me. Nothing better than to learn from others instead of trying "to invent the wheel" by Yourself. 

Answering sincerely Your respective questions, I can calmly tell You, that I somehow have made peace with Sao Paulo about 10 years ago. This was the time, when I - due to my high professional and personal involvement - started to attend lots of different business and private events in Sao Paulo and when I started to go there quite frequently. 

To make it clear for You - my experience with and in Sao Paulo is still very much limited to certain areas and quarters and locations. I have by far not become familiar with Sao Paulo. Thanks to Waze and Google Maps, I anyhow don`t need to have more than a general orientation in this city for getting through to where I want to. But even with Waze and Google Maps I warmly recommend for everybody, to keep his eyes open and his brain attentative. Small errors can create big trouble here - like almost anywhere in the world, maybe here the size of the problems could just be a little bigger than at other places. 

What I can resume for You now is, that today I consider Sao Paulo a wonderful city, where You can easily find all kinds of restaurants, cultural and sports events, beautiful parks, museums, theaters and so on. Especially for people like me, who enjoy the luxury to be living just a hour away from downtown Sao Paulo on the calm and beautiful countryside. For those who live and work permanently in Sao Paulo the situation can be pretty different. Lot`s of my friends and business partners living in Sao Paulo suffer the terrible situation to which they are exposed almost permanently with regards to heavy traffic, criminality and several other negative circumstances more. 

But Brazilians are very familiar with all this and nothing expresses their wisdom better than the famous proverb of "the coin, which always has to different sides", means that You will hardly find a place in the world, where there are only good, beautiful and pleasant circumstances. I personally meanwhile fully agree with this - and I clearly focuss on limiting my personal experiences with the kind of circumstances, which I prefer and keep as much distance as possible to all others. So far I have been quite successful with this strategy. 

Now I am really curious about the comments from all my readers and friends who live in Sao Paulo, knowing that several of them already seriously consider me a "traitor" because of my publicly outspoken real passion and affection for the "marvelous city" Rio de Janeiro, which - coming back to the above mentioned Brazilian proverb of "the two sides of the coin" - can definitely also be considered a real nightmare with regards to traffic, criminality, missing and/or bad basic infrastructure for great parts of the population etc. But that`s another story for one of my future posts here. 

To describe my feelings for Sao Paulo with a music play, nothing serves better than the classical Sao Paulo samba song "Trem das onze", here played and sung by the important Sao Paulo samba band Demônios da Garoa:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZNw5WOQcus

Here`s what wikipedia knows about this band:

Demônios da Garoa is a Brazilian samba band. It was formed in São Paulo in 1943, its members drawing influences from a variety of cultural sources to develop their own characteristic style. In 1949, they met Adoniran Barbosa, one of the most important composers of "musica popular brasileira" or MPB. Together, they personified current socio-cultural trends. In 1994, it was recognized as the oldest performing group in Brazil by Guinness World Records.Today, "Demônios da Garoa" is one of the main samba bands in São Paulo and also one of the most respected musical groups in Brazil.

I hope (at least some of You) You found this sharing of my experiences with the city of Sao Paulo interesting. That`s good enough now for today. See You back here again in my blog upon the publication of next post. 

Enjoy the rest of this beautiful (at least here in Vinhedo/Sao Paulo/Brazil) sunday, fill up Your batteries and have a great start into the next week by tomorrow morning.