Polish man has holiday inside Sao Paulo airport

Robert Wladyslaw Parzelski took a flight from London to Sao Paulo. Upon arriving he set-up camp on a concrete bench. It would be 18 days before he left.

This story, which appeared in The Guardian last week, is really interesting for a number of reasons. One, because it definitely has clear echoes of Steven Spielberg’s film The Terminal (life imitating art and all that); two, because the airport really didn’t seem bothered that he was there which meant he could have stayed probably for as long as he wanted; three, and lastly, that no-one really knows what he was doing there.

Parzelski could not speak Portuguese or English, which made it very hard for the airport’s cleaning staff to ask him what exactly he was doing there. So, after someone informed the paper’s of his presence, they then found a Polish doctor to speak to him. Parzelski told the man that he had been sent to Sao Paulo to pick up two specially-commissioned telephones!! Yes… telephones! And that the man he was supposed to meet never showed up.

It does seem one of the strangest reasons to visit Sao Paulo, but hey, each to their own.

Parzelski is now back in London after the authorities managed to get him onto a flight. You can read the story in The Guardian here.