A good traveler has no fixed plans, and is not intent on arriving. ~Lao Tzu

Brazil’s National Motto: “The country of everybody!”

Brazil
Best of:
All you can eat
Hedonism
Clean bathrooms with plenty of paper
Extremely friendly, laid back people - you can sit down to any group of Brazilians as a stranger and will be welcomed with smiles and warmth. You may get made fun of, but, hey, that’s all part of sharing the love
Good roads
Soccer mania – when Brazil plays in the world cup, the schools, government offices and businesses officially shut down for the games
Happy yellow, green and blue everything
Giant wild blue macaws
A drunk, friendly president who never finished high school and has only 9 fingers and the nickname “Squid”
People making out passionately everywhere
No nukes and absolutely no interest in warfare of any kind except when it involves soccer teams

Half the country is a jungle

A soap opera about two old truckers and their adventures (one of which involved them unknowingly booking a vacation at a gay resort in the middle of nowhere. After their initial shock, they ended up dancing in boas and making lots of new friends)

The tendency for fans at a soccer game to inadvertently and collectively yell out the expletive “Ah, the whore that bore you!!”

The local election hour when all the candidates have their five minutes – my favorite candidates from this state are the extremely intense Johnny Guerra Gai (Johnny “War” Gai) who yells into the camera; the pissed off middle aged woman who was filmed squinting into the sun, glaring at the camera and telling people that a vote for her is a vote against the bourgeois; “Baby Pea Pantanal” (the pantanal is the name of the great wetland region here – like naming someone Baby Pea Bayou); the mad half bald scientist with poofy crazy hair sprouting out of the back of his head, humongous square glasses and doomsday classical music in the background (he apparently wants to bring the nuke to Brazil); and of course our personal favorite, Dr Tomei, a 75 year old colleague of Jonas’ father in his law program ( Dr Tomei is technically an OB-GYN, but the thought is too scary to contemplate. Once he showed up to class with blood on his shirt, after a hurried C section. His campaign ads include women as “our water in the desert,” the assertion that impotence is due to a lack of religious fervor, and soccer analogies throughout.)

76% of Brazilians categorized themselves as “happy” in a recent poll

Brazilian MUSIC

Brazilians are beautiful. It’s confirmed – the more you mix the ingredients, the tastier the pastry.

Fresh orgasmic fruit juice smoothies

The fact that Brazil is truly a melting pot. Fornication went on in a big way among the races here and no one seems to care about their roots or genetic structures. They are Brazilian and that’s all that matters. A group of friends will inevitably include Black, White, Japanese, Amerindian and Arab. Completely mixed in each person – it’s impossible to tell “what” someone is.

Churrasco – a Brazilian barbeque, an orgy of meat. The cattle are all Brahmin here and the more fat that drips and sizzles from the meat, the better. Goes on all day.

Passion fruit mousse

Eternal summer

Nicknames – everyone has one, especially soccer players. They range from “Big skinny” to “phenomenon” to “the loving one” to “Little Ronaldo the cowboy” …Pele is called “the big black.”

The flip flop as the tool (and footwear) of choice for a multitude of purposes.

Almost closed to outside investors – Even Burger King went out of business in Brazil. They cannot keep up with the massive governmental taxation - foreign investors and mammoth corporations are kept at bay.

The poor of the large cities control them. Street kids run barefoot on the pavement, through traffic, as if the world is their playground, the urban walls their jungle gym. They know their very presence terrifies the rich and small middle class and they can intimidate anyone into giving up their wallet just by standing next to them. Many of Rio’s rich have views of the hillside favelas from their windows. This presents a constant and uncomfortable reality check for anyone who would like to pretend the poor do not exist. No wall is high enough to hide them.

Gasoline costs: Around $6/gallon. This means most cars here are extremely fuel efficient and small, like Europe. The government is also rapidly expanding a new bio-diesel program in conjunction with the oil companies here.

Telephone booths shaped like animals from the Pantanal – giant parrots, cranes, leopards, and toucans.

Vacation time – on average most Brazilians get two months of paid vacation, counting the numerous federal holidays and official vacation time. Those working for the government frequently only work three day weeks or half days.

Brazilians know better than anyone how to enjoy themselves with very little. Give them some music and a corner to roast some meat and they will throw the best party in the western hemisphere. Somewhere, somehow, in this melting pot of colors and cultures in the middle of the jungle and the savannah, they got it right.

Worst of:

A government that manages the country like a dictatorship. Every law that is passed is done in the interest of the government and its officials. The bureaucracy is astounding, dinosauric and immoveable. Brazil does not let anyone in – it is next to Iran on the list of least globalized countries. Again, those working for the government frequently only work three day weeks or half days.

Taxes – Businesses cannot survive – 95% go under in the first year. Corruption was recently listed as “endemic” in Brazil by the World Bank. A politician from the “anti-corruption” platform party was recently caught in an airport with $30,000 USD in cash in his underpants. He claimed it came from selling fruit.

In one of the major cities of Brazil, a local news channel set up a hidden camera in a nearby house to video tape a street where a rash of car theft had been going on. They caught the thieves on tape, breaking into a parked car. The thieves heard someone approaching and hurried off. Two police officers strolled up to the vandalized car and peered in the broken window. One reached in and removed the car radio the thief had intended to steal, stuck it in his jacket and walked off. An hour later the same cops were called to the scene of the crime by the victim when she discovered her car. They filed a report and left the scene.

Rich – poor gap: One of the greatest gaps in the world. Literally mountains of poor living on top of one another on the hillsides of the cities, next to neighborhoods of astoundingly wealthy people. The rich are rich here through corruption and an incredible greed. If one has a lot of money in Brazil, you can be sure they gained it through bribery and thievery.

Apathy: Like the Americans, the Brazilians are living in a gigantic self involved bubble, completely uninterested in the rest of their continent. It is quite rare to meet a Brazilian who speaks Spanish or has ever been to another country in Latin America (except right over the border of Paraguay where they buy cheap black market goods). They are so involved in being Brazilian that they cannot move forward and are to a large extent apathetic. The poor hold huge violent riots, but they are misguided – it is not to fight for equality but rather because their soccer team lost or because a high powered drug lord was moved to an isolated prison.

Soccer games are frequently too dangerous to attend. We went to a Corinthians game in Sao Paulo, the populist team of the city.
Jonas and his cousin Thiago were extremely nervous and we left the game early to avoid the angry crowd after their team lost. Jonas related to me that once after a game he and his cousin were chased by a group of boys through the city because one of the smaller kids wanted his cousin’s watch. Thiago refused and the little one ran and got the big ones. Jonas and Thiago were lucky to escape by running at top speed and eventually hiding – people are frequently beaten or killed. We watched scenes from outside the stadium on TV – fans going crazy, cops mace-ing little kids, people running without knowing why.

Beef Beef Beef all the time

Gasoline: Brazil is completely independent in oil. They could, like Venezuela, charge their people almost nothing for gasoline. But, being that it is a government-owned enterprise, they issue huge taxes on gas. The money then of course goes into the pockets of the officials high up in the oil sector, Petrobras, and other governmental sectors of Brazil. This means bus fares are extremely high – as high as those in the US. Which means the poor often cannot afford to work outside their neighborhood, cabbies can barely squeak out a living and public transportation is not affordable for most.

Art – the artesianal crafts and public art here are beyond bad, unless you like carved capybaras that resemble turds with eyes, misshapen leopards with tumorous growths, gigantic warped catfish statues in the town square and coconut figurines.

All you can eat – grotesque amounts of food consumption

Walls – middle and upper class houses are always surrounded by obscenely high cement walls, frequently with electric wire running the length.

Eternal summer

Middle class salaries – one of our friends here works six days a week and makes on average $10,000 USD a year. He manages a business for an extremely wealthy man who owns multiple businesses.

Gold high heels (this could apply to anywhere in Latin America)

Green yellow and blue everything

Tags: Brazil

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