pirulito

Obelisk in the center of Praça Sete de Setembro, BELO HORIZONTE (MG)

Today (June 14, 2012) is 7.5 years ago, when I arrived in Brazil. Since then, I stayed in Belo Horizonte, and made a number of travels to become more acquainted with the beauties of the immense country.

December 14, 2004. I arrived at Pampulha Airport in Belo Horizonte. The end of a long travel, from Amsterdam. One day before, I departed from my hometown Breda (near the Belgian border) to Amsterdam Airport. There was snow that morning, and there were a number of traffic jams on the road to Amsterdam. Therefore, I arrived too late to check in for my scheduled flight to Atlanta. My flight got rescheduled, and I took the next flight to New York. I had to run for the check-in, the passport control, and the boarding. There was a very long queue in front of the passport control in New York. I only had one hour to get my next flight, to Atlanta. I talked with one of the customs, and he guided me along the queue and I was about to be the next to attended by the police officer. I heard some grumbling and whispered curses behind me, but I did not care. Again, I had to run for the boarding protocol. In Atlanta, I had to run again, for my connective flight to São Paulo. In São Paulo, I had to book my domestic flight to Belo Horizonte, and I had to run to the bus stop, where a bus was about to depart from Guarulhos Airport to the smaller Congonhas Airport. This bus trip took almost two hours. One more time, I had to hurry, to get my flight. I sighed with great relief, when I landed in Belo Horizonte. The end of a travel that took one full day…

The Obelisk at Praça Sete was inaugurated at the first centenary of the Brazilian independence, on September 7, 1922. The obelisk, nicknamed ‘pirulito’, is considered as a zero point in Belo Horizonte. Two main avenues – Avenida Afonso Pena (north-south) and Avenida Amazonas (east-west) cross here.

The original picture was taken in January 2005