Just add people, and stir. The monumental twins rising before you are part of the congressional building of this country's capital city, which was created ex nihilo fifty years ago and has since attracted more than two million inhabitants.
A democratically elected president—you might think he was Polish, given his name—conceived this futuristic outpost on the plains as a sort of promised land, one that would unify the nation and sever its old-world ties. The military swooped in some years after the inauguration of the city, however, and a junta camped out for twenty years. The nation ultimately emerged as a federal republic, with colorful leaders including a minister of culture who is a world-renowned songwriter and guitarist. If you're lucky, he might be in town singing in his mellifluous native language.
Most likely, you began your journey to the capital in the coastal metropolis to the south that happens to be the birthplace of the architect responsible for these towers. A winner of his discipline's Oscar nearly twenty years ago, the maestro returned to his hometown some time ago, and his work is enjoying a revival as he approaches his ninety-ninth birthday. Perhaps you even passed him in his celebrated neighborhood while on your way to admire the "dental floss" beauties cavorting on the beach. Or maybe you spotted him in a café, parked in front of a TV: Like his compatriots, he no doubt has his eyes on the pitch as his country prepares to kick derriere this summer—or should we say winter. And surely you toured the spaceship-like contemporary art museum that he designed a decade ago on a promontory across the bay (indeed, the edifice once graced the cover of this magazine).
Staring at these administrative buildings, you are the victim of an optical illusion: They don't really sprout out of the bowl—which is the chamber of deputies—but share an esplanade with it and with a dome that houses the senate. Gazing upon the surrounding urban landscape as it began to take shape, one journalist described it as "a strident chord in a desert of silence…[a] Daliesque perspective to an improbable horizon." Many observers have since proclaimed the entire master plan a catastrophe: Its citizenry is trapped by the sweltering heat in air-con isolation and is forced into cars by distances too vast to walk (sound familiar?). Perhaps the whole conceit was a delusion. If it's utopia you seek, dream on.
Where are you, anyhow?
http://www.concierge.com/cntraveler/whereareyou
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than to teach ten thousand stars how not to dance - e e cummings
