MNBA

Tuesday 24th May 1988

I awoke to a dull, dreary rainy morning. Most people staying at the Youth Hostel loitered about despondently until the midday deadline forced them out onto the streets in the gloom. Hostellers had to vacate the hostel for each afternoon.

I went into the city centre with the Portuguese guy who was wearing an Xmal Deutschland T-shirt. Xmal Deutschland, often written as X-Mal Deutschland, was a musical group from Hamburg, West Germany, which existed from 1980 to 1990. Founded in 1980 with a completely female line-up, they became chart hit makers both within, and outside, their native country. The lead singer of the band was vocalist Anja Huwe. Xmal Deutschland's last album was released in 1989.

We went to the Portuguese Airline Office where he was dismayed to find that all the flights back to Portugal were fully booked until July. He made a provisional booking on his open ticket and we went for a walking tour of the city centre. The rain-washed streets were packed with people.

We looked around The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes (MNBA; Portuguese for National Museum of Fine Arts) which is a national art museum. The museum, officially established in 1937 by the initiative of education minister Gustavo Capanema, was inaugurated in 1938 by President Getúlio Vargas.

The museum collection, on the other hand, takes its rise in the transfer of the Portuguese Court to Brazil in the early 19th century, when King John VI brought along with him part of the Portuguese Royal Collection. This art collection stayed in Brazil after the King's return to Europe and became the core collection of the National School of Fine Arts. When the museum was created in 1937, it became the heir not only the National School collection, but also of its headquarters, a 1908 eclectic style building projected by Spanish architect Adolfo Morales de los Ríos.

The Museu Nacional de Belas Artes is one of the most important cultural institutions of the country, as well as the most important museum of Brazilian art, particularly rich in 19th-century paintings and sculptures.

The collection includes more than 20,000 pieces, among paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints, of Brazilian and international artists, ranging from High Middle Ages to contemporary art. It also includes smaller assemblages of decorative arts, folk and African art. The museum library has a collection of about 19,000 titles. The building was listed as Brazilian national heritage in 1973.

We were intrigued by the varied selection of old and modern paintings and then went out to browse along the extensive magazine stalls, sneakily reading the English music papers, New Musical Express (NME), Sounds and Melody Maker which were too expensive for us to buy.

We went on to the Rodoviária do Rio Bus Station which was inaugurated in 1965 and is the second biggest one in South America. I bought a ticket to Ouro Preto for 1,200 Cruzados for Thursday night at 23:30 hrs.

Ouro Preto (Black Gold), formerly Vila Rica (Rich Town), is a city in and former capital of the state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, a former colonial mining town located in the Serra do Espinhaço mountains and designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO because of its outstanding Baroque Portuguese colonial architecture.

Ouro Preto is located in one of the main areas of the Brazilian Gold Rush that started in the 1690’s. Officially, 800 tons of gold were sent to Portugal in the eighteenth century, not to mention what was circulated in an illegal manner, nor what remained in the colony, such as gold used in the ornamentation of the churches.

The Sugar Loaf was shrouded in cloud and the rain got heavier as we thundered back to Copacabana on the kamikaze bus. We ran, as best we could in flip-flops through the downpour back to the Youth Hostel, picking up a whole cooked roast chicken and a bottle of wine en route.

Wilson, the hostel doorman turned a blind eye to our consumption of alcohol on the premises but told us to hide it from the girls on the reception desk. In the dormitory we lounged around as the rain became torrential outside the window. Swirling brown rivers hurtled down the gutters of the steep cobbled lane outside the Youth Hostel. I started to read “Carnival of Spies” by Robert Moss, published in 1987.

The review in Publishers Weekly said: Perceiving how cruelly workers are treated in the early years of the 20th century, poor Hamburg boy Johnny Lentz idealistically turns to communism. Trained in Moscow as an expert in promoting revolution, he is dispatched throughout Europe, then to China and later to Brazil to help local organizers.

The purge of his best friend, however, leads him to realize that Soviet leader Stalin has become improbably enamoured of and secretly helpful to Hitler, a man who should be the Soviet Union's enemy. Disillusioned, Johnny becomes a double agent for England and must choose between the love of two sisters who may betray him if his collaboration is revealed.

Robert Moss (Moscow Rules) has done excellent research, using such historical incidents as a little-known communist uprising in Brazil during the '30s to great effect, and his gritty descriptions offer vivid glimpses of different cultures. Although the characters lack depth and Moss relies too often on formulaic thriller devices and dialogue, the novel is nonetheless an absorbing read.

The rain didn’t look like it was going to stop so Jim and I nipped down to our usual nearby stand-up restaurant for lasagne. Afterwards we walked around for a bit in search of a good cake shop and then returned to the Youth Hostel as all was quiet, wet and miserable in the town.

I had a long hot shower and then read some more of my book before going to sleep early at 22:30 hrs.