Somehow, telling people I'm Brazilian is usually enough to make the conversation wander straight to Brazil, even when that wasn't where it was going at all. They want to know where I'm from, what brought me here, whether I miss the heat, and then suddenly they're telling me what they think they know about my country.
"Do you speak Spanish?"
"No."
"But you're from Brazil."
"Yes. Brazil speaks Portuguese."
And somehow this always surprises people.
Portuguese is our official language, but what we actually speak is Brazilian Portuguese, and to me that already feels like a different language. Brazil is the largest Portuguese speaking country in the world, and the only country in the Americas where Portuguese is the national language. And even that doesn't tell you very much, because Brazilian Portuguese doesn't sound the same everywhere either. We have accents that change dramatically from one state to another, words that change depending on where you grew up, expressions that make perfect sense to one Brazilian and absolutely no sense to another, and enough regional slang to keep you confused for years. Sometimes I hear someone from another part of Brazil speaking and I think, I know you're Brazilian, but I don't know what you're saying. That is Brazil.
And I think this is where people get Brazil wrong from the beginning. They try to imagine one country when what we actually have is a country so enormous that it is almost impossible to describe it as one single experience. Brazil is one country, but it contains so many different versions of itself.
The Amazon is Brazil. Rio is Brazil. São Paulo is Brazil. The Northeast is Brazil. The South is Brazil.
The mountains, the cerrado, the Pantanal, the Atlantic Forest, the huge cities, tiny towns, fishing villages, places where you can walk for miles and barely see another person, all of it is Brazil.
And the distances are absurd. You can spend hours on a plane and still be inside the same country. Even Brazilians sometimes need to remind themselves of this. We talk about "going to another state" almost like we're going somewhere else entirely, because sometimes it genuinely feels that way.
And then there is the landscape. This is the part I will fight anyone over. Brazil is beautiful. Not just Rio. Not just the beaches you see in travel brochures. The whole country is full of places that make you stop and think, how is this not more famous?
There are mountains and enormous waterfalls, deep forests, dunes, red cliffs, white beaches, turquoise water, rivers that look like seas, wetlands filled with wildlife, islands that look completely impossible and little towns sitting in places where the landscape changes completely around them. Brazil has 26 states and thousands of municipalities, and every time I think I've seen enough of the country to understand it, I find another place that makes me realise I haven't even scratched the surface.
And then there is the food. This is where things get complicated very quickly. We don't even always agree on what things are called. Take mandioca.
Depending on where you are in Brazil, it can be mandioca, aipim or macaxeira. Same thing. Same root. Three names. And nobody thinks that's strange.
Then you get into food itself and things become even more regional. What someone considers completely normal food at home can be something another Brazilian has never eaten, never cooked and possibly never even heard of. This is one of the things I love about Brazil. There is always another Brazil behind the Brazil you think you already know. You also find Brazilian things all over the world without necessarily realising they're Brazilian, Havaianas, for example.
People see those little flip flops everywhere now and probably just think of them as Havaianas. But they were created in Brazil in 1962, inspired by Japanese zori sandals and redesigned in rubber for the Brazilian market. They became such an ordinary part of Brazilian life that, for years, they were treated almost like a basic household essential. Now they're sold all over the world.
And that makes me laugh a little because Brazilians have been wearing them forever. We weren't trying to make a fashion statement, we were just putting on our Havaianas and going to the supermarket. And then there is Pix.
If you've ever been to Brazil, you will understand why I find it funny when people talk about instant payments as if this is some futuristic idea. Pix launched in 2020 and was created by Brazil's Central Bank. It became part of everyday life incredibly quickly. You can owe someone five reais, scan a QR code, send them the money in seconds and walk away.
And Brazilian life being Brazilian life, Pix isn't just for serious things. You can owe someone the price of a coffee, someone can ask you for two reais, you can split lunch, you can pay the woman selling something on the street, you can send money to your mother while she's sitting three metres away from you. Pix became so normal that it stopped feeling like technology. It just became money. There are so many things like this.
Brazil has a long history of people creating things that became part of everyday life without the rest of the world necessarily knowing where they came from. The electric shower, for example, became such a familiar part of Brazilian homes that nobody walks into a bathroom thinking, what an incredible piece of engineering this is. We just turn it on and get our very hot shower. And then you have Santos Dumont.
Now, this one is a conversation by itself because the history of aviation is full of arguments, but what is not really up for debate is that Alberto Santos Dumont was a Brazilian pioneer who made major contributions to early aviation and, in 1906, publicly demonstrated the 14-Bis flying under its own power in Paris. Brazilian aviation authorities still recognise him as a central figure in the history of aviation.
And I love that story because it is so Brazilian in a strange way. A man from Minas Gerais goes to Paris and decides he's going to make a machine fly. Of course he does. And Brazil has given the world so many people like that. Scientists. Musicians. Architects. Athletes. Designers. Writers. People who became famous internationally and sometimes somehow still feel like our little secret.
Oscar Niemeyer changed the way people thought about architecture.
Ayrton Senna made an entire country stop whatever it was doing to watch Formula One.
Gisele Bündchen became one of the most recognisable models in the world.
Paulo Coelho's books travelled practically everywhere.
Rodrigo Santoro, Alice Braga and Wagner Moura became familiar faces to international audiences, sometimes without people even realising where they came from.
And then there are the people who made Brazil sound like Brazil.
Samba. Bossa nova. Choro. Tropicália. MPB. Funk. Forró. Sertanejo. And a thousand regional sounds that don't fit neatly into a list.
Brazilian music has travelled all over the world, but the strange thing is that sometimes I don't think Brazilians realise how much of it has travelled with us.
Then there is Carnaval, which everybody knows about. Football, which everybody definitely knows about. And this is where I have to admit that all my reasonable thoughts about Brazil disappear.
I remember the 1994 World Cup being the first one I really understood as a child. I remember Brazil winning, and I remember what that feeling was like. And then came 1998. Romário, Bebeto, Ronaldo, Roberto Carlos, Cafu, Rivaldo, Dunga, Taffarel, that generation is still somewhere in my head as the Brazil that made football feel almost unfair. And yes, I love Neymar. He is the hero of my generation in a completely different way, and there is no denying what he gave Brazilian football. But I have a soft spot for that older generation. Those players belong to a Brazil that, in my memory, felt enormous. Maybe that's partly nostalgia. Probably a lot of it is. Because some of the more recent World Cups have been, let's just say they have not given us what we wanted.
Brazilians are very good at suffering over football. We suffer together, we celebrate together, we yell at the television together. And every four years we convince ourselves that this time we are bringing it home. And then, somewhere in the back of my mind, there is still this ridiculous hope that one day Brazil will give us another team that makes us feel the way that 1994 and 1998 did. Actually, part of me would happily bring that whole generation back for one more World Cup. Just put Roberto Carlos back on the left, Ronaldo up front, Bebeto somewhere nearby, and let me pretend time has stopped.
And yes, if Brazil is playing against any other country, I become completely unreasonable. I am not elegant, I am not calm, I am not analysing tactics, I am basically a wild animal in a cage screaming at the television. That is the Brazil I recognise immediately, no matter how long I've been away.
But football is not the only thing that gives me that feeling. There is something about being Brazilian that is difficult to explain when you live outside Brazil for a long time. You can complain about the country all you want, and believe me, I do. I have plenty of things I don't like about Brazil. I can be incredibly frustrated with Brazilians, too, especially when it comes to corruption, dishonesty, the little "jeitinho" that gets used to justify things that shouldn't be justified, the way people sometimes bend rules because they assume everyone else is doing it. Sometimes I honestly think the biggest problem with Brazil isn't Brazil. It's us. And that's the uncomfortable part because you can't separate the country from the people. There are people there that I love, there are people there that I would do anything for, there are people who are good, generous, clever, funny, incredibly resilient and completely capable of making you laugh when everything is going wrong.
So I can't just say, "Brazil is amazing." It isn't that simple for me. I don't romanticise it, and I don't even particularly want to live there again. But say something cruel about Brazil in front of me and suddenly I will defend it like it's my job. That's the strange contradiction. I can spend an hour telling you everything that drives me crazy about my country, and then five minutes later become offended because you said something negative about it. That's Brazil. And maybe that's why I find it so difficult when people reduce it to Carnaval, football and beaches. Those things are real, they're beautiful, they're ours, but they are not the whole thing.
There is a Brazil that is incredibly sophisticated and a Brazil that is chaotic. There is a Brazil that produces world class science and a Brazil that still struggles with things it absolutely should have solved by now. There is a Brazil that can frustrate me beyond words and a Brazil that can make me feel something I cannot quite explain. There is the Brazil of my childhood, the Brazil of my family, the Brazil of hot afternoons, noisy streets, food that somehow tastes different when you're eating it there, people talking too loudly, people getting involved in things that are absolutely none of their business, people laughing in the middle of a problem, people finding a way to make something work when there really shouldn't be a way. There is the Brazil I miss, there is the Brazil I don't miss at all, there is the Brazil I defend, and there is the Brazil I criticise, and somehow all of those are true at the same time.
So no, I don't think I can give you a neat explanation of Brazil. I could sit at this table with you for hours and still think of another story, another food, another city, another person, another ridiculous thing we do, another brilliant thing someone invented there, another place you probably have never heard of that I would tell you to put on your list immediately. Because Brazil is not one story. It is not one colour. It is not one accent, one food, one landscape or one stereotype. It is too big for that. And maybe that's the Brazil I want you to see.
Not the perfect Brazil, not the terrible Brazil, just the real one, the complicated one, the beautiful one, the maddening one, the one I can leave and still somehow carry with me.