Travelog: Paraná, Brazil

i went to the city of Curitiba. this makes it three states i've visited in Brazil in total (Santa Catarina [my home state], Rio Grande do Sul [though i was like 3 years old or something when i went], Paraná [this one]), all in the southern region.

my impression of Paraná before was that it was kind of a cultureless limbo place because you don't hear much about Paraná. Rio Grande do Sul has the most culture (big gaucho culture). Santa Catarina was in second place, i guess. it was a wrong impression: there are a lot of cool things and cool people (maybe) to see and meet in Curitiba. maybe that's because it's the capital of the state, but in my opinion Florianópolis (the capital of SC) is kind of boring (?)

i took most of the photos here with my 3DS camera. this is the first photo i took:

looks cold. and a bit russian.

these are from the Passeio Público park. it had carps in the water. there were flowers, and birds in cages (scarlet ibises and macaws, parakeets). didn't take many photos here, but it is a nice spot for a stroll.

one of the big tourist spots is the Museu Oscar Niemeyer. it reminded me of an UFO. the photo makes it look sort of like that one I WANT TO BELIEVE poster.

you may know Niemeyer as the guy who designed Brasília. his biggest influence was Le Corbusier, but his flavor of modernist architecture has a lot more curves compared to the brutalist architecture of the former. outside of his architecture, Niemeyer is also a somewhat controversial figure in Brazil for being a socialist (and an atheist in a deeply religious country).
i didn't go to the MOC proper (the UFO-looking building curitibans nickname "the eye"), and i'm not even sure if you can right now; it's kind of confusing. i descended the ramp and visited the Museu de Arte Contemporânea do Paraná. i'm not sure if Oscar Niemeyer was the one who designed the MAC, but having to walk 200 meters to get to the entrance of the museum (according to google maps at least) reminds me a lot of Brasília's car-centric design.

the following photos are all from the contemporary art museum:

cute, weirdly guroi.

the low resolution makes it hard to see the kimono, but there's a kimono there.

there were some ukiyo-e.

buddha: "not my problem"

katana, wakizashi and tanto i think

cool elephants.

if you ever come to Curitiba, you'll notice the lack of benches. that's because of the homeless situation they want to put under the rug. here's the anti-homeless architecture bus stop right outside the museum named for a socialist architect:

then i visited the Jardim Botânico. there's not much to see inside the greenhouse. there are a lot of statues in Curitiba, for some reason.

next, i went to another museum, the Museu Paranaense:

bees.

weird guitar.

romani flag

finally, i went to the nearby city of Quatro Barras, but it was a small town and there wasn't much to photograph. you have the Saint Sebastian Parish Church and you have an stone marking where Dom Pedro II rested under a tree one day (the tree fell and isn't there anymore).

i can't think of Saint Sebastian without thinking of the homoerotic fascination mishima had for him. i almost bought a statuette of him in a souvenir shop in Urubici (SC) for that reason alone, but the paint wasn't good enough for the price, so i didn't.

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