kissing queues in sao paulo

today i spent the afternoon just wandering aimlessly along avenida paulista - the main avenue in sao paulo...normally every other day i make my way along this street until number 1374, which is where the office is...but today i was just wandering and observing....

the avenue was alive with the normal street sellers, selling everything from jewellery to music to yakisoba, but on sundays there are also more markets near the Trianon park and underneath the Modern Art museum there is an antique market...

two observations from today and also from the past 10 days in sao paulo...paulistas (people from sao paulo), young and old, love to queue and they love to make out in public

my brazilian friend, denise, told me that there is a job about paulistas that if they see one person standing still they will stand behind him and start a queue....and in just one week i have seen lines a plenty - whether it is for the elevator at work, or for food, or the metro, or i saw one today at the antique market that snaked around and around and around and i tried to follow it but couldn't work out what it was for! i guess it's not unexpected in a city of this size, but lines, mostly well ordered and well mannered, do seem to form everywhere....

another thing that you will see everywhere here is couples - young, old and middle aged - making out - at the metro station, on the metro, at the table next to you in the cafe or restaurant, standing in a line for something....brasilians love to beijar - KISS....as I'm walking around the city John Paul Young's hit, "Love is in the air", plays in my head constantly...

now as a single girl who recently moved to the city, these public displays of affection and this sound track is somewhat promising of what might be to come...however then i was searching the internet to find out more about the life in my new city and i found this unfortunate and demotivating posting by a very bitter expat...i think the final sentence says it all ;) let's hope i'm not making a similar post in two years time ;)