Sept, 2011: Estação da Luz, Sao Paulo, Brazil

The first time you need to be clear about Brazil is: they don't speak Spanish in Brazil. It is the language of Spain's Iberian neighbor that they speak: Portuguese. This was what I learnt on KrisWorld while flying back from Mexico from the movie Fast Five. In fact, Vanity Fair, the magazine, think it is the most educational moment:
"Q: What is the most educational moment in Fast Five?
A: An inconsequential character explains why Brazilians speak Portuguese."

In Fast Five, the "inconsequential character" (some official from Rio de Janeiro") explained that the Spanish conquistados heavy-handed approach to colonizing Brazil resulted in the Indians rising up and fighting them off the land. While Portugal took a different approach: with gift and then exchange of trinkets for the natives's land. And that is why, nestled in Spanish-speaking Latin South America, is this Portuguese-speaking Brazil.
And, it is great news to Portuguese-speakers that Brazil is around. Because without Brazil , the Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) world is a pretty lonely one. If you trace the Lusophone world out of the coast of Portugal, you first arrive at the west coast of Africa in Angola. After round the Cape of Goodhope, you stop at Mozambique in the African East coast. You would need to cross the Indian Ocean before another Portuguese-speaking town: Goa. After that, we may be familiar with forts and churches in Malacca from her Portuguese colony era, but I doubt the language is speak there anymore. And 葡式蛋挞 remind us that Macau used to be a Portuguese colony. This low concentration of ex-Portuguese-Colonies may be the result of Portugal more "relaxed" approach to the business of colonization (I guess the Spanish, English and Belgian were far more aggressive at it). Hell, the Portuguese weren't even part of the 八国联军. But, Brazil, 5th largest country in the world, adds quite a big number of speakers to this Lusophone world.

If you want to find out more about the Portuguese language while in Sao Paulo, there is a excellent Museum of the Portuguese Language. The museum is actually housed within the restored Sao Paulo train station: Estação da Luz. Which can be translated into "Station of Light". Not to be confused with The Stadium of Light (Sunderland FC in England), or the Estadio da Luz (Benfica of Lisboa in Portugal). That this a Stadium of Light each in England and Portugal is quite a coincident: The Station of Light in found in a ex-Portuguese colony, and it is designed by an English architect, Henry Driver.
I got up bright and early on my first Sunday to pay the station a visit. So early that one of the road near the hotel is still closed to vehicular traffic for the Sunday morning market.
Going by the state of rail travel in South America, I was expecting a run-down station with urine stench of the homeless/lobos that call it home. I was pleasantly surprised to find a working station: bright, airy, clean and tidy, with a sizeable crowd to make it busy, but not chaotic. When I was there, there was even a grand piano placed at the entrance for a any passerby to sit down and play a tune.
The station look like the hub for the city Metro, tram and long distance railway station. Which explained the crowd. As for the cleaniless, one of the reason may be that this is a re-built station, the original having been burnt down.

One wing of the station has been refurbished as the Museum of the Portuguese Language. It is a spacious museum celebrating the language. There are English signage, but mostly they are in Portuguese. In any case, the video and picture installation does give an idea on how the language arrived in Brazil. Given the huge influx of immigrant into Brazil, the museum also highlight how other languages, eg. Japanese, made their way to Brazil.
Before the restoration of the station and the clean-up of the Luz area, this used to be a red-light district (although I doubt the 'Luz' part of the name came from this). As with Time Square in New York, the area is now so clean of sleaze it would be hard to imagine those days when passengers empty out of the railway station right into the red-light district. Although, if you go for a walk-about in the park right in front of the station, you realize that this is still, albeit on a much smaller scale, a red-light district. Even on that bright sunny Sunday afternoon, I saw some working ladies (mostly well-endowed in the bossom department) being chatted up by some old Brazilian uncles. Kind of reminds me of the area around Chinatown Complex in Singapore.
On weekends, the station also served as the borading point for tourist train services. It was too late to board one on my first Sunday in Soa Paulo, so I planned to do it on the next weekend.