Kyle Berg

Valeria was happy to see a familiar face anyway after living in a foreign country for 9 months. But her birthday made her miss home even more. Although I wasn’t family or a native Argentine, I was still glad to be able to share the day with her and a couple friends.

We met around 8:30 for breakfast and found a small cafe where I tried another flavor of the popular suco juice drink, a pastry, and some cheese bread. Being together did both of us good because, even though we were from two very different places, we could relate to each other’s circumstances. When I talked about how I felt as a foreigner in Argentina, Valeria understood perfectly and related a similar experience from her time in Brazil. I had almost decided not to go to Brazil, but even after being there only a short time, I was glad to have the time with a friend.

The hotel I stayed at was reasonably priced at 59 reales per night, but I didn’t want to stay there more than one night at that price. Fortunately, we found a Hostelling International hostel close to the center for 18 reales per night and included breakfast. As with any hostel, it was nothing fancy. But it was cheap, clean, and almost empty. In my unit of two rooms with six beds each, I only had 1 or 2 companions. From here we parted ways so Valeria could go teach a brief Spanish class at her school. We then met up again around noon and went to lunch with her friend.

I wish I had taken pictures of the place where we ate lunch. I had heard about such restaurants in the U.S., but had never visited one. They had an all you could eat buffet and the waiters walked around offering a wide assortment of cuts of beef, still on the spit. Upon receiving approval, they would cut off a slice and set it delicately on your plate. If the wheel at the table was turned to green, they would keep coming to offer you more, and if it was red, theoretically, they were to leave you alone. However, it didn’t seem to matter what color we selected, they kept coming and coming. Had I known we were going to eat there, I would have skipped breakfast. Needless to say, the food was excellent. The only concern I had was I had no idea how much the buffet cost. On the way in I saw a sign for something at 19.99 and thought perhaps that was it. I also figured that if Valeria was going to eat there, it couldn’t be too expensive as she didn’t have a lot of extra money to spend. It ended up being 38 reales (U$S22) each with drinks and tip included. That was a lot more than either Valeria or I wanted to spend, but it did provide us with an inside joke the rest of the trip. We laughed about how a tear almost rolled down her face when she saw the bill, but couldn’t say anything because her friend had selected the restaurant.

Her friend (whose name I cannot recall, but was extremely tall, spoke excellent English, and was considering playing volleyball in the U.S.) dropped us of at one of Curitiba’s numerous parks. I asked Valeria’s permission to walk around a while and take a few pictures of the lovely maze of bushes and flowers that comprised the center of the park. Then we went into the greenhouse type building and took a few pictures overlooking the park and in front of a small waterfall. We then met Valeria’s friend Thiciane and her mother and slowly strolled through the other sections. Being a little warm and wanting refreshment, we stopped at one of Curitiba’s many malls for a cone at McDonald’s. Because Buenos Aires hardly had any Christmas spirit, I especially enjoyed seeing the Christmas decorations and hearing Portuguese translations of various carols. Finally, we spent a few minutes at a Japanese park in the center and then Thiciane and her mom said goodbye for the day.

While Valeria went to her language school to teach another class, I went back to the mall to sit down and read while waiting for Valeria. I was so tired I couldn’t bring myself to pull of my Spanish novel (as ended up being the case the whole trip) and reviewed my Rough Guide Brazil travel book to try and figure out what the heck I was going to do after Curitiba. Southern Brazil was well developed, but there was a severed dearth of detailed tourist information.

I walked to the language school at 9 p.m. and then we went in search of a cheaper supper. We were both tired and resorted to the food court of another mall. I was magnetically attracted to the Subway restaurant and found it an oasis of American goodness because, again, it was something Buenos Aires did not have. But Subway must be somewhat exotic in Brazil because a footlong sub was 14 reales. Nonetheless, I enjoyed speaking with a young worker who did his best to express himself in broken English. When I had a question, he even called in his boss who spoke slightly better broken English. Valeria then took her long bus ride home, I went to my hostel to crash, and we agreed to meet the next morning outside the hostel.