All in all I have to say, Brazilians are great people and in many respects they are more cultured and better-mannered than most Europeans. They are open, polite and eager to help. I have not seen one Brazilian losing his temper or being stressed out or unfriendly in my time over there. They love to talk and are genuinely interested in the people they meet (and they love meeting people). I always felt safe and welcome wherever I went (and if I accidentally was about to step into a favela district people would stop me immediately and tell me not to go any further). And they have a great sense of humor. I guess, if you are as poor as most of them are, social relations and laughter make life easier. In a way, I think, they have a richer life than many of us.
There were a few peculiarities that I found rather amusing and I’ll try to describe them in the following post. When I said, their life seems to be richer, I would especially refer to their extraordinary ability to “fall in love” within what seems to be minutes. As a foreigner you face the constant dilemma: should I be polite and reply to this strange guy’s question (which is in 99% of the cases: “Vocé é de onde?” - Where are you from? without being bothered by any previous introduction) or will this give him the impression I’m interested in him and I won’t be able to get rid of him for the next 20 mins or so.
Nothing to worry about if you’re looking to improve your Portuguese by having a nice conversation or you are looking for a date, a guide or some other kind of information but a bit tedious when you really need to go somewhere or just want to do your sightseeing alone. I have not figured out how Brazilian girls deal with it.
One might guess that Brazilians are only that over-enthusiastic when it comes to tourists and therefore declare their deep affection (usually followed by a certain kind of invitation or in some cases accompanied by a marriage proposal) after only half an hour of friendly conversation.
But I have questioned my friend Miau on this and he said that indeed Brazilians don’t need too much time to pair up. Usually it can be accomplished in one evening. The recipe is as simple as effective (North-European men, listen and learn! At least to parts of it :)
Men: see a girl they like (girls: if you are foreigners, the chance that a Brazilian guy will like you lies around 99%), approach her, ask her to dance, or in absence of music either where she’s from or what’s her name. Make some compliments. If reaction not entirely negative attempt to kiss. If girl still says “no” after more than 10 attempts consider – but don’t understand why - she might not be interested.
If girl sticks around, make sure other equally interested Brazilians don’t have a chance to get near her. Every male that she might strike up a conversation with is considered a serious rival and has to be treated with utmost jealousy. Take her home.
Girls: see a guy you like, look at him for more than 2 seconds, wait.
A real different habit and offensive to European ears is the constant hissing and whistling in order to attract attention. Advice: get used to it, it is as polite as saying “excuse me” or “hello” in our country.
What is harder to get used to is the fact that the use of handkerchiefs seems to be entirely unknown in this country. The Brazilians have 2 methods to rid themselves of snot (and they all seem to suffer from constant colds): either blow their nose the “Styrian way” (with 2 fingers and straight to the ground) or, more frequent, pull everything up with as much noise as possible. Also, noisy spitting (men only) is totally acceptable.
Another thing that can be slightly annoying is their idea of service in clothes stores. Basically, the moment you come near the shop’s entrance a shop assistant will assault you, show you items you don’t want to see, question you (not only what you’re looking for but also “What’s your name?”, “Where are you from?”) and basically does not let you do what you came in for – look around in peace.
Sometimes Brazilians seem to like communicating so much that they don’t notice the “little signs” we Europeans have to show that we would like to be left alone or are not interested. Also, they seem to like talking so much that they often forget to listen (at least that happened to me quite a lot - I would be telling a story and instead of some kind of comment or reaction the other person would just start talking about something completely different – in most cases ask “Vocé é de onde?”)
It surprises me that they don’t learn foreign languages better since they like talking to people so much. English is really hard for them, they say, but I suspect they were also a bit lazy at school. Like the Spanish they like to mutilate English words and often it took me forever to understand what, for example, a “heive” is (to spare you the time: it is a “rave” party). They have the tendency to attach an [e] at the end of foreign words, like “internetsche” or (my favorite one) “hippi hoppie”. Try to figure out the dish of the day on the right side:
This guy did not know about the blunder on his T-shirt until we told him:
But not only English ortography is a problem, also their own language has some difficulties (ice cream is “sorvete”):
With music styles they have a different categorization system. I have to say, I met quite a few Brazilians with an excellent taste in music. Some beach barracas in the South had the most up-to-date electronic compilations and even in remote Jeri they played some house and techno in the “clube”. What I cannot comprehend, however, is their unrivalled love for a local music style called “Forro”. Whenever a Brazilian overenthusiastically tells about a Forro-Party that night that everybody will go to the foreigners shrink back in horror. I would describe this kind of music as unpleasant noise with a dance rhythm beyond definition. I have a suspicion why Brazilians love Forro so much: it is danced similarly to Lambada. And since they are so “romantic” it takes more than this tuneless soundpollution to ruin their enthusiasm.
I also found it interesting that almost anything that is not Forro, Techno or “Hippi Hoppie” is called “Reggae”. So an evening of Reggae music can just as well be an indie rock band or a singer songwriter presenting his work. Also, be prepared: Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” is experiencing a great revival(?) there at the moment. You might not want to pack it on your ipod.
Brazilians love electronics and technology. Most of them are quite good with computers even if they cannot affort one, but internet cafes are rather cheap and omnipresent and they spend a lot of time in them (as we all know, the perfect match for their passions is Orkut, the online community). Most of them cannot even affort a watch but every house has to have an enormous satellite dish. In the most remote areas you will see this weird combination of poverty and modern technology...
But with all this craving for modernity there is still a strong connection to religion. “Deus é fiel” (God is faithful) is the most common “graffiti” to be found on houses, hot dog stalls and front windows of omnibuses.
There could be much more to tell, all these amusing situations and anecdotes but I will leave that to personal conversation (come and visit me in Berlin and I’ll tell you all about it :) I hope I did not offend any Brazilians with this post – it was not my intention. If I got anything wrong, I’m open for criticism and corrections, just let me know!
With this I close my Brazilian travel diary, I hope you liked it (quite a few people already told me they only looked at the pictures. Next time I won’t put up any, so you’re forced to read! ;)
Let me know your comments, thoughts and of course, if you’re going to Brazil!
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