This ain’t no Carnival. People pissed! Image source: AP

Right now, Brazil convulses with the heady combination of indignation and optimism that characterizes popular movements. The People – that vast and oft-evoked abstraction made up of millions of students and truck drivers and dental hygienists and single mothers and retirees and first graders – have gotten so fed up with the economic and political oppression that has always plagued Brazil, Latin America as a whole, and, at many times in its history, the United States, that they’ve taken to the streets to voice their exasperation with the greed, corruption, official acts of violence, and woefully poor quality-of-life that have hampered the upward mobility of most Brazilians in the face of unprecedented “national prosperity” and vanity projects like the World Cup and the Olympics.

What that means, exactly, remains to be seen. Moneyed and political interests are too entrenched in the business of making money at all costs to really engage in the necessary paradigm shift even if they wanted to. And I’m just cynical enough to believe that nothing lasting is going to happen; after all, a columnist from Brazil’s largest daily reflected the general cluelessness of those in power: “From paradise, we have slipped…into limbo.”

Paradise for whom?

No, there will be no New Deal-style governmental investment in infrastructure, no nationwide jobs program, no major overhaul of the educational and health care systems. There’s too much unfettered greed infecting the country’s economical and political elite for that to ever happen. It’s a refrain in heavy rotation: “Brazil never moved away from the slave plantation.”

I have friends who were injured by police during last week’s protest in my beloved São Paulo. I have friends who live in the areas most heavily affected by teargas and rubber bullets in the center of the city. Some of the clashes between protesters and the police occurred on the street where I last lived not a full two years ago, where I last walked not a full two months ago, and where I spent several years becoming part of the city’s social fabric, another brown face popping in and out of lunch counters and convenience stores, hopping the bus to work during the week or home from the club on the weekend. That was my street and my neighborhood and my people and my city. It’s unnerving to know that I could just as easily have been shot with a rubber bullet outside my door or teargassed on my way home from work as any of my friends, neighbors, or coworkers.

It’s easy to change the channel when you have no direct connection to the events on the screen, but it’s something else when you are linked to the places and people being affected by strife. When the air clears, I’m still not sure what will have changed in terms of corruption, accountability, state-sanctioned violence, or quality-of-life. But I know that neither the powers that be, the media, nor Brazilians themselves will continue to blindly brush off indignities and injustices with a tudo bom (It’s all good) and an evocation of Brazil’s trademark deflectors: sun, sex, and soccer.

Maybe that refusal to accept indignities and injustices is the necessary spark. Hell, it only took 9 cents to finally piss enough people off. And that’s just my 2 cents.

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And then, there’s the live show:

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BONUS: The #1 radio hit on April 29, 1970? That’s easy:

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Viator
Most recently, I’ve penned a couple of posts about Rio for art lovers, climbing Ecuador’s Cotopaxi volcano, and getting around Colombia on tour company Viator’s “Things to Do” blogs.

TripAdvisor
Heading to São Paulo and don’t know what to do? Check out my expertly curated city guides at TripAdvisor, or download one of the São Paulo walking tours I devised on partner website EveryTrail.

Travel Channel.com
Need more SP pointers? Take a gander at my posts about São Paulo’s nightlife, its nearby beaches, and how South America’s biggest city gets down during Carnival.

Tech Page One
This is an unlikely venue, but Chris Colin (one of the freshest writers in the game) interviewed me about travel and race, a major theme of this blog, for Dell Computer’s Tech Page One site.

Travel Channel (not .com)
Some of you may have already seen me on an episode of the Travel Channel’s “Jamaica Bared” show. If not, here’s a clip below. Look for Fly Brother to appear yet again on the small screen in the coming months.

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I’m living in that flat, kinda boring part in the foreground.

“He’s baaaack!” Yes, good people: Fly Brother has emerged healthy and unscathed from that electronic limbo called “Taking A Break From The Internets.” After December’s quick and last-minute escape from Europe because of the 90-day tourist visa rule, I ended up back in Florida to await the processing for my student visa to Germany, where I’d be earning my PhD. Subsequently, I ended up helping a friend take care of her autistic 7-year-old and unexpectedly landing a full-time university teaching position in Miami, two situations that, along with my freelance writing commitments, demanded total and complete energy and attention. As a result, the blog suffered.

As much as I love traveling at moment’s notice, there’s much to be said for stability. Re-hubbing in South Florida, a cultural mishmash with amazing weather and hordes of cockroaches, means rebuilding my financial foundation, recommitting to an intense workout regimen, advancing professionally—which includes working on the PhD remotely—, and re-entering American society after seven years abroad. There is, indeed, a lot about the US that remains unattractive—race relations, consumerism, traffic—but it’s nice to be back on familiar soil as I reboot, regroup, reconnect with myself, my family and friends, and my country.

Right now, I’m sharing a house with my friend and her child in the sterile flats of Broward County, but I hope to move a few exits down into Miami, capital of Latin America, in a few months. The commute to work is shorter and I don’t get the suspicious looks in Miami the way I do up in the United States (by that, I mean Broward County). Make sure you all give me a shout whenever headed this way. In the meantime, I’ll be posting the travel- and culture-related musings you used to get regularly here at Fly Brother. So, as they say down here in “The Bottom:” Lehgo!

PS – Recently, I was asked what happened to my dream city of São Paulo. In a word: inflation. I still love that place more than any other on Earth, and I plan to always have a presence there. Right now, though, it’s more expensive than New York and it’s just not the time for us. One day, we shall be together again.

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Now, I, Fly Brother, should have known better. I’ve lived in four countries outside of the States and have snagged more than a few visas with little more than a Coke and a smile for the consular official, so I’m usually up on my visa game. But we’re talking about Europe, here; specifically, Germany. I mean, we spanked Germany in 1945. Badly. By rights, I should have the run of the place, nahmean?!

Remember dat?

Well, I’m in the process of applying for a PhD program in Germany (fingers crossed), and the Germans are actually pretty good about letting foreigners (well, Americans, at least) apply for work and student visas while on German soil. Catch is, you have to register with the municipal government in the city you’re living in before your 90 days are up. In order to register, you have to provide a lease agreement or some other proof that you’re indeed living in Germany, and in my case, I was going to register as the roommate of a German friend I live with.

Well, when I went to register with the municipal government, I found out that said friend never registered with the municipal government. In fact, he’d moved from his hometown, two hours away from Berlin, ten years ago and never filled out the simple single-page document stating his new address in the German capital. So in order for me to register, we’d have to wait for the landlord to send a letter stating that said friend still resides in the same apartment. Two weeks later, no letter. Landlord’s office said they’d send another one, but it wouldn’t arrive before Christmas. That’s when I get the idea that maybe I should check to make sure I’m not spending a little too much time in Germany. This was December 21st, Day 89.

Well, I had to get the hell outta Dodge. Immejitly. Germany is known as being a stickler for rules and regulations (me, not so much), but I didn’t want to jeopardize any future chances of obtaining a work or student visa in Europe—remember, we’re talking almost the entire EU here, not just Germany—so I went online and found a 600-euro one-way ticket from Berlin home to Florida, including a transatlantic crossing on—ta-daa—the Singapore Airlines Airbus A380! For an airline geek like me, it can’t get much better than this: flying on the world’s largest passenger airplane operated by arguably the best airline in the world.

Well, my elation was short-lived, however, when I realized that a) I didn’t really have 600 euro earmarked for last-minute plane tickets, b) I had, oh, about 12 hours to pack for a trip with an undefined return date, c) I would conceivably have to remain out of Germany for another 90 days minimum, and d) all the plans that I’d made, including Christmas and New Year’s parties, work projects, German lessons, social activities, errthing, had to be postponed indefinitely or canceled. Yes, I’d get to spend Christmas with my family (always a good thing, even though I’d just seen them at Thanksgiving), and I could send off my PhD application and apply for the student visa from the States, but damn if this wasn’t an expensive way to take an unscheduled break from the limb-numbing central European winter.

Pretty. Cold.

Well, on Day 91, I embarked on my six-airport, five-leg, three-airline itinerary (the type you get when you snag a “cheap” last-minute deal): Berlin to Munich to Frankfurt on Lufthansa, Frankfurt to New York on Singapore (the route goes JFK>FRA>SIN and back), and New York to Washington to Jacksonville on US Airways.

The saving grace was that borderline-luxurious flight on Singapore, which included two full meals in economy, plus between-meal snacks, served up by an attentive, courteous flight crew. To top it off, I caught four great films I’d either been meaning to see for a while, or figured, “why the hell not?”: Frankenweenie (Tim Burton!), Oslo, August 31st (poignant and evocative), ParaNorman (EXCELLENT soundtrack), and Vertigo (one of the few Hitchcock opuses I hadn’t seen).

Kim Novak emoting on the A380

And though I’m still unsure when exactly I’ll be returning to Germany, I did make it home in time to catch the 24-hour A Christmas Story marathon on TBS. All is right with the world.

Merry Christmas, everybody!

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Which ones do you folks like best?

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Right now, eight of the nearly fifty airlines that have ordered 787s are operating the type and new nonstop, such as Japan Air Lines’ Boston-Tokyo, ANA’s San Jose-Tokyo, and United Airlines’ Denver-Tokyo, have already begun or are slated to begin soon (Tokyo’s seeing a lot of 787 action!). Other carriers, like United, Ethiopian Airlines, and LAN, are using the plane for “rightsizing” existing routes, with United flying the new-new between hubs in the US.

The airlines aren’t the only beneficiaries, though. Besides getting access to additional nonstop markets, passengers will experience larger windows, more room throughout the cabin, and better pressurization, and lightweight composite materials create for a less-gas-guzzling airplane that, in theory, should result in lower fares but don’t hold your breaths on that one.

Anybody else as excited about the new 7-8 as I am? Prolly not. :-/

Check out this video of ANA’s 787 interior. It’s pretty fly.

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One of the main purposes of this website is to encourage people in general, and black folks in particular, to do more international traveling. Well, one enterprising young lady has taken that mission a step further with the Nomadness Travel Tribe.

Starting off as a simple Facebook group uniting a few ethnically-diverse, internationally-focused travelers, founder Evita Robinson has stoked interest and aroused passions, turning the Tribe into a multifaceted movement with over 3,500 members, and facilitating group trips to Europe and Latin America, States-side events in various cities, and educational outreach to plant the travel bug among the kiddies.

What’s it all about? Evita explains:

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