BrasiliaAnother déjà-vu: When the plane brakes through the dense layer of clouds, an intensely green and sparsely populated landscape becomes visible though the curtains of rain. My inner eye recalls the touchdown in Cardiff/Wales 1995 with very positive memories.First red dirt roads contrast with the green fields and forests, but then the red dirt is swiftly and increasingly being replaced by grey asphalt. Suddenly the landscape changes and is apruptly converted into city: Brasilia, Brazils capital.

Since I only carry hand luggage I quickly leave the building. It is still raining. I stop at the tourist info, asking for the bus to the center. A young guy apparently working there and just having finished his shift walks with me to the bus station and explains in detail and broken English how to get to my accomodation. Then he even calls the hostel with his private cellphone just to find out that it's fully booked. The alternative accomodation turned out to be a very cheap but also very small, basic and windowless place.

This is the price you have to pay if you refuse to reserve your accomodation in advance. Being on the motorbike it makes complete sense not to reserve in advance, since you often don't know how far you get that day. But going by plane it was just the habit - I just did not think about making a reservation. Neither did I arrange a city tour - since I am used to explore cities on foot or on motorcycle.

But now I realized that especially Brasilia is farely impossible to explore on foot. The distances are just too large. The city is rather planned for cars, not for pedestrians or cyclists. You will understand this latest when you try to cross the 6-lane eixo monumental without any traffic lights available and the cars and buses heading for you at some 80 kph.

I just had planned to stay for two nights, so it would make sense to arrange a tour for the next day. The landlord of my accomodation offers tours (although in Portugese) in his private car for 40 EUR for a 4-hour-tour, so I agreed with him upon starting the tour at 10 in the morning of the next day. He gave me a good feeling since I was mostly interested in Brasilia's modern architecture and he told me to be an architect. The next day at around eleven, without the landlord showing up, I started getting slightly impacient. It was still raining.

When he finally arrived, he apologized and told me that he had a severe headache and a friend of his, a taxi driver, would do the tour with me instead. Now I got really pessimistic and sceptical and thought about cancelling the whole thing. But I didn't have a choice - and finally the tour turned out to be better and more interesting than I had expected, although it was very difficult to take fotos due to the pouring rain. Actually the rain did not really stop for the entire duration of my stay. Luckily I had only planned two nights - which proved to be by far enough to get a good impression of the city.

Once again I had a very positive experience with the local people. I had agreed with the young taxi driver who took me on the city tour, to make a tour of 4 hours for a fixed price. Finally the tour took us some 3:40 hours and the driver consented to bring me to the airport the next day (which usually takes some 20 Minutes) - without extra charge. Since I had already paid him I was not at all sure if he would really show up - why should he? However he did - and even 5 Minutes before the agreed time. Another example of how wrong our prejudice towards other people can be.

Some 80-90 percent of Brasilias public buildings (just like a significant number of buildings in Sao Paulo - like for example the South America Memorial) are designed by Brazil's No 1 architect, Oscar Niemeyer, a Brazilian architect with German ancestors and "a pioneer in the exploration of the constructive possibilities of reinforced concrete. His buildings have forms so dynamic and curves so sensual that many admirers say that he is more monumental as a sculptor than as an architect." (Wikipedia) You don't have to find his buildings beautiful, but they are at least interesting and impressive - and that's why Brasilia is UNESCO cultural world heritage. Apart from Niemeyers buildings there are above all some huge modern hotels and a few equally huge and modern shopping centers of which at least one has some architectural ambition.

Brasilia has always been heavily disputed. It had to be built since this was fixed in the constitution - but it was a costly project: Brasilias construction had its toll on the public deficit and the inflation. These factors did contribute to the instability of the government and the military coup of 1964. The city's success of it is still not secured: Due to its large extension you need a car here - but there is by far not enough parking space - and the traffic congestions become more and more frequent. The city was only planned for 500.000 inhabitants (for reasons of safety and controllability of the crowd) - but it's becoming increasingly difficult to control this number. Brasilians metropolitan area has - including its sattelites - 2 Million inhabitants, many of whom are forced to use their car to get to work.