Tuesday, 21 October 2014
After lunch, we went to the house of Alberto Santos-Dumont. He was arguably the first person to successfully fly a dirigible (a lighter than air aircraft) as well as a heavier than air aircraft, the precursor to the modern airplane. There is some ambiguity as to who was the first person to fly an airplane, the Wright bothers or Alberto Santos-Dumont, and I haven't read much on this topic but what little I read seems to suggest that it was Alberto Santos-Dumont, and not the Wright brothers, who first successfully flew an airplane.
In Brazil, Alberto Santos-Dumont bought a small lot on the side of a hill in the city of Petropolis, and in 1918 built a small house there filled with imaginative mechanical gadgetry including an alcohol-fueled heated shower of his own design. The hill was purposely chosen because of its great steepness as proof that it was possible to build a comfortable house in that unlikely site. After building it, he used to spend his summers there to escape the heat in Rio, and affectionately called it A Encantada (The Enchanted), after its street, Rua do Encanto (Enchantment Street). The stairs are the most curious, each tread alternately hollowed in the right and left, like an alternating tread stair: it allows that the stairs be steep enough to fit the little room available in the house, but still enable people to climb it comfortably. As the first hollow was in the left side of the stairs, people must step first with their right foot to climb it.
The house is now a museum, and here there were many letters written by Santos-Dumont to various people in his lifetime, a packet of his cigarettes, a telephone, and many other small memorabilia of his. The house had no kitchen as he apparently used to dine in the nearby Catholic University. He was never married, and later on in life suffered from multiple sclerosis. In 1932, at the age of 59, he committed suicide due to depression. It is sad. Nearby the house there was a replica of the first airplane that Santos-Dumont flew.
And then we were done with the tour, and we drove about 1 1/2 hours back to Rio where although it was a gloomy, rainy, cloudy day, the temperature was much more tolerable than in Petropolis. Here Sebastian, Normando and I walked along the Ipanema and Copacabana beaches, stopping at Confiteria Colombo at Fort Copacobana (Sebastian seems to have a fixation on this place!) where I tried Bohemia beer, it is good. The place was very cosy, beside the Copacabana beach, where we could hear the waves crashing as we drank our beers. Then for dinner we had a slice of pizza and more beer, and then we said goodbye to Normando Lima. It's a pity, here is a nice cute guy but no opportunity for me to get to know him better, as I leave Rio tomorrow. Welcome to my life.
Before walking back to my favela, Sebastian wanted to show me this place which is very famous not only in Rio but in the whole of Brazil, it is a place called Bip Bip where every night, musicians play traditional Brazilian music such as bossa nova, and when they finish a song, you do not clap but snap your fingers. The owner is a man named Alberto, who reminded me of a grumpy version of Santa Claus, and this place has been operating now for 45 years. There are limited places to sit, but one could always buy a beer and stand and watch. We watched several songs being performed (I thought the most talented of them all was the man who played the flute; exquisite!) and then we went our separate ways back to our hostels. After spending 2 days with Sebastian, it was quite sad to say goodbye but such is life.
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