House of Cheesy Bread (qualidade)

Brazilians love things with cheese, which suits me admirably. They even have a shorthand for things with cheese on a menu – just a big ‘X’, which seems very apt to me as I am somewhat of a cheese worshipper. Early on we discovered pao de queijo – basically like a little hot cheese scone thing, and have had days where our unsuccessful forage for food has led to nothing more significant than a succession of these little delights on a series of street corners.

In the airport leaving Sao Paulo I discovered to my utter delight a cafeteria called Casa de Pao de Queijo – literally, House of Cheesy Bread – and toddled over to get a coffee.

They have a bizarre system of paying for things here, which seems to be designed around the idea that only one person has access to the till. So, in a bar for example, you just rack up a tab which your waiter marks drinks on and you pay on exit. This all just serves to make it take a tediously long time to play out the interaction where you get something in exchange for some money. House of Cheesy Bread was perhaps the most extreme example I’ve yet encountered, which involved a woman going down the queue for the till asking customers what they wanted, then marking it on a piece of paper which she gives to you, which you then give to the woman on the till, who then puts it in the till and generates a ticket which you pay for, and then you have to wait because she doesn’t have any change, so she goes away to ask someone else for some change, and comes back empty handed and asks you to wait while she gets some change from the next customer, who doesn’t generate any either, and then finally you get to give the ticket to the person behind another counter, who then gives you the wrong thing because the woman on the till put the wrong thing on the ticket, and so you have to ask another person to change it, and so you finally get your coffee after complicated interactions with five people.

I am mounting a ‘take no prisoners’ approach to learning Portuguese and have been decoding newspaper articles word-for-word, which takes ages but really gives you a very solid appreciation of the information you eventually understand. Yesterday’s article was about Ignacio Lula de Silva’s pronouncements on the South American trade agreements. He seems to be straddling a rather difficult position, on the one hand trying to broker an agreement with the other richer South American nations to concede a little in order for poorer nations to grow (“We have to understand that a good commercial relationship is not one where I sell a thousand and buy ten. A good relationship is that where I sell a thousand a buy 900, to maintain an equilibrium”), whilst addressing the poorer nation’s claims that Brazil and Argentina and acting like imperialists, and still trying not to sound like he’s bossing everyone about. (“Everything I say ends up as a negative headline. Governments, politicians and the press should understand that the honourable thing in international relations is the respect for the sovereign decisions of each country…each country decides what is good for itself.”). I’m really interested in the language that Lula uses – it’s simple, direct, bold, and, unless my translation is way off, not particularly couched in nuance. Whether he actually follows through with these bold pronouncements is, according to the Brazilians I’ve spoken to, another thing entirely.