Updated

Brazil is known around the world for the beaches of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Tourists prefer these cities because of their coastlines and great tourist attractions, like Christ Redeemer. But Belo Horizonte is becoming Brazil’s third largest city and is unknown to the outside world. A question that could be done is: What is the reason for the international anonymity of this great city? The answer was published in one of the most famous newspaper in the world: The New York Times.

Last week The New York Times published news showing that BH is as attractive as RJ or SP. Of course the attractions are completely different, but they stand out just the same. According to them, BH is not famous because it has no beaches, no big Carnival, and no remarkable attractions, apart from some buildings designed by Oscar Niemeyer. Some tourists treat it as a simple refueling shop as they go toward picturesque colonial-era mining towns like Ouro Preto or Diamantina.

However, the capital of Minas Gerais is claiming its fame as the bar capital of Brazil. Not bars as in slick hotel lounges or boozy meat markets, but bars as in botecos, informal sit-down spots where multiple generations socialize, drink beer and often have an informal meal. It is almost unbelievable, but there are about 12,000 bars in the city, more per capita than anywhere else in the country. The reason for so many bars nobody knows, but one theory has turned into a popular saying: “There are no seas, thus there are bars.”

The best time to know its bars is in the annual Comida di Buteco competition, when some 40 top bars square off in categories like hygiene, beer frigidity, service and most importantly, best appetizer. The bars typically have yellow plastic tables and serve beer in bottles of 0.6L, but it is not difficult to find those that look like restaurant with green and white tablecloth, uniformed waiters, and wall of cachaça. There is one with an interesting theme; its name is Bar do Caixote (Nogueira da Gama Street, 189, João Pinheiro). Its chairs and tables are literaturely wooden crates, and it is a place where friends can have an informal talk, drink beer and have a tasteful appetizer. Another one which is a regular participant of Comida di Buteco is Mercearia Lili (São João Evangelista Street, 696, Santo Antônio). It stands at a steep hill that requires superhuman parallel parking skills or taxi service.

When you need a bar break, take a trip to the Pampulha neighborhood, where you can find some Niemeyer buildings, like his famous Church of São Francisco de Assis. The Belo Horizonte’s most famous restaurant, Xapuri (Mandacaru Street, 260, Pampulha) stands in this beautiful side of the city. It is one of the best place to try the traditionally cuisine of Minas Gerais. Besides the bars you can also find unusual gifts at the Hippie Fair (Afonso Pena’s Art fair), two long blocks on Afonso Pena Avenue full of clothes, jewelry, household goods and crafts. When you’re done, stop at food stalls at either end for fried fish or coconut sweets, or pop into the beautifully landscaped Municipal Park park just below the fair to relax. In either place, you won’t be far from a vendor ready to crack you open a can of Skol. In Belo Horizonte, the world’s a bar.


Adapted from: http://travel.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/travel/28next.html

by Maycon da Costa – Intermediate I -Teacher: Gabby

Comics

Take my word from it

BH and the Trance Movement

Trance is one of the most important types of electronic music.
This music style, developed in the 1990s in Germany by Jam el Mar and DJ Dag (Dance 2 Trance), is generally characterized between 130 and 160 beats per minute, repeating melodic synthesizer phrases, and a musical form that builds up and down throughout a track.


Other important names for the Trance society are Tiesto, Paul Van Dyk, Judge Jules, Markus Schulz, Gabe and so on.

What about Belo Horizonte?

If you want to talk about the beginning of electronic music in BH, you have to talk about the Noise Family. This famous name for electronic music began its “career” at the end of the 1990s playing at small parties and in clubs like Brodway in Santa Tereza, and others in Santa Efigênia and Savassi. The first local festival was the “Eletronika” in 1999. It brought only 3000 people to Serraria Souza Pinto.

Since then the festival has been growing more and more. In fact, last year the event involved 15000 people over the course of three days. Meanwhile, night clubs, parties and important events have made BH an important place for the trance movement.


On November 30, 2007 the most important electronic party in BH will take place: the British festival Creamfields. Lasting for more than 12 hours, the festival will bring famous names like Infected Mushroom, Benny Benassi, Shant, Anderson Noise and others. Besides that, events like XXXperience, Flowers, Tribe, Enigma and other not so significant acts have been turning BH into an electronic city.



Therefore, the trance movement has attracted much attention to BH. The lovers of trance believe that it is more than a type of music; the electronic music brings freedom, meditation and a complete harmony between body, mind and soul.

Written by Suzana Almeida Gontijo – Intermediate I – Teacher: Gabby

Travel with English

Greece in Belo Horizonte

If you can’t go to The Louvre in Paris, France, don’t worry. Liberdade Square has received a visit of four Greek sculptures. The exhibit goes on until November 15th and you don’t need to pay anything to see them! The sculptures are authentic perfect replicas of “Venus de Milo”, which represents Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty. It was found in 1820, next to the ruin² of an old Greek theatre on the island of Milo. You can see “Venus Genitrix” too, which represents the mother of all the gods, the universal mother. It was made approximately in 450 B.C. There is the “Discobolus of Myron”, which was carved by Master Myron, between 460 and 450 B.C. The statue is of an athlete throwing a disk. The last one is “Winged Victory of Samothrace”, also known as “Nike of Samothrace”. It was discovered in 1863 on the island of Samothrace. It is an ornament of the entrance of the sanctuary dedicated to the protectors of the seafarers³.

The objective of the exposition is the diffusion of knowledge about the significant contribution of the Greek civilization for modern society. Liberdade Square, which was inspired in the gardens of the Palace of Versailles, also in France, was the setting chosen to inspire in the public the respect and admiration by the historical values.

¹ Carved (to carve): it’s what some artists do in rocks; they “design” faces, bodies, objects, animals, etc in rocks. With this job, the artists produce some statues.

² Ruin: it’s an old place which was not preserved very well. (Ex.: Coliseum, Italy.)

³ Seafarers: it’s a man who works and sometimes lives in a boat or ship (Ex.: Cristóvão Colombo)


Written by Thaísa Santos Faria – Intermediate I – Teacher: Gabby

Students room

Mineirês - The new culture


Belo Horizonte is a crazy city

Sometimes it even seems silly

Because it has its own tongue

You never know if you are wrong


And if you do not understand

Don’t think that you’re alone in a land

Now I’ll teach you a thing or two

To recognize the “UAI” we do

You can be Brazilian or British

You can speak Portuguese or English

Even if you don’t know why

You can always say “UAI”


From fleas to big bears

No one actually cares

I don’t know how to explain

But everything is a “TREM”


Finally, when you wan to go out

It doesn’t matter what it’s about

It is better not to go by car

Since you’ll probably end up in a bar!

Written by Simone Cristina Valentim Fogliene – Intermediate I – Teacher: Gabby