This is pretty much all I hear from my Brazilian friends who have escaped to Canada.
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What is Brazil like?
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A few months ago I came upon articles that explained the "whitening" policy that was adopted by Brazilian authorities in late 19th and early 20th centuries. Absolutely diabolical.
It's kinda fascinating how the US and Brazil had very different (almost opposite in fact) approaches in how to deal with the "black problem" as they'd call it during the post-slavery times. One enforcing segregation while the other was basically trying to erase an entire race and its culture by stimulating miscegenation.
If I'm honest I'd say Brazil's strategy was probably more effective, and insidious.
It's funny; in many ways I feel the opposite.
I think the hands off approach to abolition and the insistence on not outright codifying segregation like in the US inevitably allowed Afro-Brazilian culture a permanent place in Brazilian society, even if this wasn't necessarily intended by good-hearted individuals, nor if this has resulted in a full on reckoning with Brazil's slavery past and the present ramifications. When I see Yoruba practices being done or capoeira being played in the street, I honestly get jealous. Black Americans have no real deep ties to their original African cultures, which is isolating and depressing. The nature of American slavery and the conscious attempts to assimilate and brutalize non whites have robbed us of everything from before the Transatlantic Slave Trade. At least Afro-Brazilians have something. Know what I mean?
It's an amazing country to live at times and a horrible country to live at times.
Economy and politics are extremely volatile, so if youlike stability then you would fell really unconfortable living here.
I am born and raised in São Paulo, live here for more than 30 years now ans São Paulo is the 10th biggest city in the world or something like that, so it is extremely busy as any other big city. Crime is a problem, but traffic is just the worse.
Nightlife in São Paulo is amazing if you like urban activities like bars, clubs, parties, cultural activities, etc.
Brazil allows you to live your life the fullest , with the highest highs and lowest lows in a matter of few years, and I don' mean financially, but as as whole. It is a incredible country in that way, but as I previously mentioned... It is not a place that offers stability nor tranquility.
It will certainly provide a different take in life, like most other countries do, which is always welcomed by anyone trying something completely new.
Economy and politics are extremely volatile, so if youlike stability then you would fell really unconfortable living here.
I am born and raised in São Paulo, live here for more than 30 years now ans São Paulo is the 10th biggest city in the world or something like that, so it is extremely busy as any other big city. Crime is a problem, but traffic is just the worse.
Nightlife in São Paulo is amazing if you like urban activities like bars, clubs, parties, cultural activities, etc.
Brazil allows you to live your life the fullest , with the highest highs and lowest lows in a matter of few years, and I don' mean financially, but as as whole. It is a incredible country in that way, but as I previously mentioned... It is not a place that offers stability nor tranquility.
It will certainly provide a different take in life, like most other countries do, which is always welcomed by anyone trying something completely new.
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This is true in some ways, and it's in some aspects better than in the US, but I'd say that black identity in Brazil is something that remains localized in pockets of the population that remained mostly isolated in places where the whitening policy was much less effective. The biggest example would be Bahia and it's capital Salvador, where the black population is still the biggest in the country proportionally.
In others places like the south and southeast, miscegenation resulted in most mixed race Brazilians becoming alienated from the their African roots, and black identity became diluted. It certainly didn't help that most mixed race people were brainwashed into thinking that their whitening was something desirable, which led to further renouncing of their African identity.
For all the damage Jim Crow and segregation did on the US, it at least made the black community more engaged and activist, while in Brazil you see a lot more apathy when it comes to issues of race. I know this is just one aspect of the whole but it's pretty significant.
I've been meaning to try my hand at making moqueca for awhile but I'm always a little thrown off for the need for coconut milk versus, say, a seafood stock. It looks amazing in photos tho'.Ok, let's talk about the good stuff now:
The most famous food in my state is called "moqueca":
Personally, I'm not a fan of sea food but a lot o people go crazy over this. The clay stew pot is also famous in this region.
Welcome to my town.
Honestly, it's great to live here. I'm fortunate enough to have a nice paying government job, my wife owns a furniture business and we manage to get by pretty good with our two kids, splitting our time between an apartment downtown and a beach house north of the island.
Town is safe and clean, it's a beautiful island so you're never more than 15/20 minutes away from the nearest beach, nature is well preserved , there's a bunch of really good restaurants, bars, resorts. You can properly enjoy life here if you've got the financial means.
Negative side of it is that real state is really expensive so renting/buyiny a good place can be a challenge.
I've got a couple of properties rented out and it's a nice bonus but there are areas in which buying is almost prohibitively expensive. AirBnB at beaches are always profitable.
What else can I say? There's a LOT of cities in Brazil I wouldn't dare living in for safety reasons. Porto Alegre? No fkng way. Rio? No. Belo Horizonte ? nope. Fortaleza? Never. Recife? Nope. A bunch of others.
Florianopolis is still good. Maybe not for long? There's a LOT of people moving in and I'm not sure city can cope with it - police , free healthcare, free education, social services. I love to know we can provide for less fortunate citizens and I fear we won't be able to in the near future because of the crowding.
Summertime is coming and you also have to watch out for traffic. Roads get pretty jammed with all the tourists we have coming over from all over Brazil and south america.
Overall, I would never complain. I love my town. Also, I don't wanna throw water into your fire. it's just a heads up. Of course you're welcome here!
On a side note, my brother in law is from upstate NY and he says Florianopolis is his dream city. He is currently living in Dubai because of my sister's job but their plans are to move here to retire.
Great food, nice people, extreme inequality (it's insane), severe urban violence. People are gentle but not fake-nice like in America ("how are you doing today?", "have a good one" etc) and if you are clearly a gringo, some will try to get the upper hand on you. No tipping culture, though! Tap water at restaurants isn't really a thing too.
I live in São Paulo. It's the best place to live in Brazil IMO but I'm middle class and Brazilian-white, so it's easy to say that but not really a tourist destination. Rio is the most beautiful place in the world (and also has great, albeit expensive, food) but it's Rio, poverty and violence everywhere, children selling you drugs on the beach and so on. Bahia is also gorgeous and worth a visit. I've never been to the south because it's the south (racism).
Ironically now that we're global pariahs and our currency is worth shit I'll probably visit more of my own country instead of travelling abroad, when travel is viable again someday.
30% of the LGBT community voted for Bolsonaro, so remember that out of every 4 gays you meet, one is an utter trashbag.
Not sure what else to say really.
I live in São Paulo. It's the best place to live in Brazil IMO but I'm middle class and Brazilian-white, so it's easy to say that but not really a tourist destination. Rio is the most beautiful place in the world (and also has great, albeit expensive, food) but it's Rio, poverty and violence everywhere, children selling you drugs on the beach and so on. Bahia is also gorgeous and worth a visit. I've never been to the south because it's the south (racism).
Ironically now that we're global pariahs and our currency is worth shit I'll probably visit more of my own country instead of travelling abroad, when travel is viable again someday.
30% of the LGBT community voted for Bolsonaro, so remember that out of every 4 gays you meet, one is an utter trashbag.
Not sure what else to say really.
I live in Vitória now, is a good beach city in a state above Rio:
Our "post card" is Convento da Penha, a church built in a rock mountain, like Cristo Redentor in Rio
Is a poor city, actually, we have a lot of favelas
I lived in Curitiba too, its in the south of Brazil, its a little bit different because the south have a lot of europeans immigrants in the 1800s and 1900s:
Curitiba is one of the richies citys in Brasil, a great place to live.
São Paulo is our NYC, very expensive, everything happens there:
Brazil is a great place to live if you are middle class, upper class.
Our "post card" is Convento da Penha, a church built in a rock mountain, like Cristo Redentor in Rio
Is a poor city, actually, we have a lot of favelas
I lived in Curitiba too, its in the south of Brazil, its a little bit different because the south have a lot of europeans immigrants in the 1800s and 1900s:
Curitiba is one of the richies citys in Brasil, a great place to live.
São Paulo is our NYC, very expensive, everything happens there:
Brazil is a great place to live if you are middle class, upper class.
You can make "moqueca capixaba" without coconut milk, some people says that its the "true" moqueca https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/brazilian-fish-stew-238413
Oh no. Oh no. Why did you show this to me? (bookmarks)
I do want to still try the Bahian version tho. I don't know which one is more authentic, so the only fair thing to do is to make both!
Not to be a downer, but an explanation I heard for the vibrancy of African culture in Brazil as compared to the US was just the sheer volume of African people being trafficked to Brazil. Between four and five million people were kidnapped and brought to Brazil as slaves, compared to about 400,000 to the North American mainland colonies. Obviously that's not a complete explanation, just a part of the story.
That would make sense; Brazil took in the most slaves. That was a (slightly) amusing part of the book I read; the amount of slaves in Brazil made slavery logistically untenable after awhile, even beyond the waning economical returns of the practice. It got to the point where in São Paulo, around 10,000 slaves just said "fuck it" and left in protest; the slavers asked Portugal for help and they were like "We literally can't do shit about this."
Just to add to this post:
- One interesting thing about Florianópolis is how many people who live on the city are not natives. Many, many people under 40s are from other places like São Paulo, Rio Grande do Sul or Rio de Janeiro.
Also, traffic is really awful on summer. The main reason Florianopolis wasn't a World Cup hosting city in 2014 was because of it.
It's horrible, The most thing I want is to get away from here, I live in a town with a population of just 70.000, and people are afraid of walking in the streets because of crime, I always have a little anxiety when I'm at the street at night, and is even worse in big cities. This country is corrupt in its genesis, it's a brutal and violent society, built by the genocide of the natives and the slavery of the africans, creating a brutal unequal society, if you think US is unequal, you have no idea how Brazil is, is disgusting, and is like a caste society, white people always in the top and the black or "pardo" always in the bottom, but we like to say there is no racism here. There's a lot of others bad things about here, and good, of course, but that's enough....
OP
OP
Vitória looks like it could have a Blitzball stadium installed.I live in Vitória now, is a good beach city in a state above Rio:
Our "post card" is Convento da Penha, a church built in a rock mountain, like Cristo Redentor in Rio
Is a poor city, actually, we have a lot of favelas
I lived in Curitiba too, its in the south of Brazil, its a little bit different because the south have a lot of europeans immigrants in the 1800s and 1900s:
Curitiba is one of the richies citys in Brasil, a great place to live.
São Paulo is our NYC, very expensive, everything happens there:
Brazil is a great place to live if you are middle class, upper class.
You can make "moqueca capixaba" without coconut milk, some people says that its the "true" moqueca https://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/brazilian-fish-stew-238413
Most of the country yes, but not the south.
I live in the coast of São Paulo and feel like summer lasts 10 months, beaches are ALWAYS full.
South of the country has more temperate weather. Some places even had snow I think it was like a month ago?
As they said before, if you're paid in Euros or USD, welcome to paradise.
If not, welcome to hell.
I'd like to tell you more, but I don't even know my own country, because shit job that barely pays enough for the bills. Like 70%+ of Brazilians, I guess.
(Well, yeah, we know the reason. Amazon deforestation will turn this country into a giant desert very, very soon.)
If not, welcome to hell.
I'd like to tell you more, but I don't even know my own country, because shit job that barely pays enough for the bills. Like 70%+ of Brazilians, I guess.
It's currently very dry here in Rio, temperatures up to 40ºC in mid-winter because reasons.
(Well, yeah, we know the reason. Amazon deforestation will turn this country into a giant desert very, very soon.)
It's very hard to describe Brazil because as a country it's very, very variated and one state shares very different cultures, people, typical food, climate and sometimes it's hard from someone from one state to understand another. However, many of the states shares some common characteristics, such as: Inequality, traffic problems, carnival, brazillian soap operas, violence, beautiful nature, work routines, rice and beans (or beans and rice, if you live in Rio lol) and some more "common food".
I'll talk about some states I've visited (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais), although most detailed will be from Santa Catarina because it's the state I've lived in for 30 years.
Porto Alegre: Awful city, I went there two times and didn't enjoy any of them. The city is ugly, building are old with full of graffitis (the ugly ones, not the beautiful paintings), trash everywhere and there's lots of inequality. It's also a very dangerous city. I have been only into few place in the city, though, such as Shoppings, the USA consulate and Gremio's football stadium (which I went to watch a David Guilmour's concert), so I don't have a complete panorama of the city, but I know many people who were from there or visited and hated it. There isn't any beach or any cool natural landscape either. The climate is wet, rainning at least once every two weeks if not more, thunders are common and the winters are more rigorous than the ones in Florianopolis, reach twice or thrice temperatures below 5ºC, but usually stays at 20ºC at noon.
Since it's the capital, however, salaries are better than any other place from the south bar Curitiba, which is another city with a similar "profile".
In Rio Grande do Sul, which is the state where Porto Alegre is the capital, there are a lot of really beautiful places to go, such as Gramado and the mountains (which is called "Serra Gaúcha"). European colonization is strong, especially gramado which is a really touristic place. It can also snow in the higher places during the winters and temperatures can do down as -10ºC or even more.
The best typical food there is barbecue (think of the best cow meat of the world) and a hot tea called Chimarrão. There aren't many interesting beaches in the states, AFAIK. Rio Grande do Sul has a culture that is also shared in Uruguay and Argentina, which is the Gaucho's culture, which can be compared to the Cowboys but are not the same things.
Some pics of Porto Alegre:
Gramado:
Serra Gaúcha:
I'll talk about some states I've visited (Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, Paraná, São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais), although most detailed will be from Santa Catarina because it's the state I've lived in for 30 years.
Porto Alegre: Awful city, I went there two times and didn't enjoy any of them. The city is ugly, building are old with full of graffitis (the ugly ones, not the beautiful paintings), trash everywhere and there's lots of inequality. It's also a very dangerous city. I have been only into few place in the city, though, such as Shoppings, the USA consulate and Gremio's football stadium (which I went to watch a David Guilmour's concert), so I don't have a complete panorama of the city, but I know many people who were from there or visited and hated it. There isn't any beach or any cool natural landscape either. The climate is wet, rainning at least once every two weeks if not more, thunders are common and the winters are more rigorous than the ones in Florianopolis, reach twice or thrice temperatures below 5ºC, but usually stays at 20ºC at noon.
Since it's the capital, however, salaries are better than any other place from the south bar Curitiba, which is another city with a similar "profile".
In Rio Grande do Sul, which is the state where Porto Alegre is the capital, there are a lot of really beautiful places to go, such as Gramado and the mountains (which is called "Serra Gaúcha"). European colonization is strong, especially gramado which is a really touristic place. It can also snow in the higher places during the winters and temperatures can do down as -10ºC or even more.
The best typical food there is barbecue (think of the best cow meat of the world) and a hot tea called Chimarrão. There aren't many interesting beaches in the states, AFAIK. Rio Grande do Sul has a culture that is also shared in Uruguay and Argentina, which is the Gaucho's culture, which can be compared to the Cowboys but are not the same things.
Some pics of Porto Alegre:
Gramado:
Serra Gaúcha:
I'm sorry for ressurecting an old thread, but I found it while looking for another one and saw that you were interested in Porto Alegre. I lived there for almost 10 years, and still want to go back, but I really need to ask: what did you see that piqued your interest? Because it's really not a tourist city, no relevant landmarks and such.
If you want to know more about the city, feel free to reach out!
OP
OP
Seeing it in the Brazil national team 'all or nothing' series on Amazon Prime lol.
Oh, yeah, I guess football is one of the cities highlights. The "Caminho do Gol"that we had during the World Cup was cool enough that FIFA tried to implement it on other cities during the championship. But that was 2014 Porto Alegre, with the then mayor doing his best to hide the city problems.
Come prepared to speak portuguese.
I live in Rio and previously lived 8 years in Minas, 2 different realities in these 2 places alone so it is not easy to answer.
Spent the last holiday (pre covid) in buzios and it honestly might be the nicest place I have ever been to ( I stayed in the tourist area close to praia do canto I think it was called in one of the pousadas, so I dont know the reality of most of the city),
I recommend visiting Buzios (lots of tourists for a small place though, found a lot of people from Argentina).
I live in Rio and previously lived 8 years in Minas, 2 different realities in these 2 places alone so it is not easy to answer.
Spent the last holiday (pre covid) in buzios and it honestly might be the nicest place I have ever been to ( I stayed in the tourist area close to praia do canto I think it was called in one of the pousadas, so I dont know the reality of most of the city),
I recommend visiting Buzios (lots of tourists for a small place though, found a lot of people from Argentina).
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I visited São Paulo a few years back for work and got to attend a football game a few towns over.
What struck me the most (from an American perspective) was:
* Everyone I encountered was very friendly
* Fantastic food
* EXTREME inequality
* HOLY SHIT ARE BRAZILLIAN SPORTS FANS ON ANOTHER LEVEL
Seriously. American football fans think they're hardcore. The Super Bowl is a snoozefest compared to the energy at a regular Brazilian football game.
Also, one factoid that I didn't know before visiting: Brazil has the largest Japanese community outside of Japan.
What struck me the most (from an American perspective) was:
* Everyone I encountered was very friendly
* Fantastic food
* EXTREME inequality
* HOLY SHIT ARE BRAZILLIAN SPORTS FANS ON ANOTHER LEVEL
Seriously. American football fans think they're hardcore. The Super Bowl is a snoozefest compared to the energy at a regular Brazilian football game.
Also, one factoid that I didn't know before visiting: Brazil has the largest Japanese community outside of Japan.
