Officially I am Brazilian… and French. At heart I am Brazilian. My personality though is more European I’d say. To be honest, I don’t really feel like I have a nationality. I was born here, but I often feel foreign. I grew up in England but don’t consider myself English. I drink black tea with milk. That’s about it. I hate british weather… I like the politeness, that’s all. My grandmother on my father’s side was English. My grandfather French. I love Paris, I feel at home there, but I don’t feel parisian or French. I hate the general bad mood the parisians have. They’re a grumpy lot. They live in one of the most beautiful cities in the world but they’re still not satisfied! Why is that??
I lived 6 years in Germany. I am not crazy about it, but I learnt to appreciate their straightforwardness. Ask a German something and you’ll get a nice straight answer. Ask a Brazilian something you’ll get a whole other story… depending on what they think you want or ought to hear. I like how blunt and to the point the Germans are… I learnt to be more honest and give straight answers, say more what I feel and think and less what I think people want to hear. That’s how I like other people to be with me too.
Sao Paulo is a polluted, relatively dangerous, extremely ugly and way too big city…. We have the most chaotic traffic every after maybe India, but still… Traffic jams occur at all hours! Public transportation sucks!! But people are generally happier here than in Paris. Paulistas work really hard… they go to work early, leave late, sit in traffic for way too long all the time, yet they are still happier than the Parisians. Why?? It is a mystery to me!!
I love that you can’t go one day without being talked to in the street by someone. I love that everyone takes the time to smile, talk, and play with my daughter. I love that people smile at each other. There’s communication between people all the time… I feel like I am seen… I exist. In Europe so many times I felt like I was invisible. People don’t look in your eyes… I’d stare people down in the metro and they would just turn away. Here people look back at you. There is a humanity here that I never felt in Europe.
I miss the beauty, the simplicity, the order and the way things just work in Europe, but I don’t miss the loneliness.
A little while after I arrived (back) in Sao Paulo I decided to go to the center. On my way back (it was around 6pm) I decided to take the metro. I had just arrived back and really didn’t realize it was well, rush hour… As I walked down the stairs at Praça da Sé to get the metro I suddenly found myself surrounded by I don’t know maybe a thousand people? It was about as crowded as the Paris metro is on New Year’s Eve just after midnight. There was a huge line to buy tickets, then an even bigger line to go through the turnstiles then another line to get to the platform. It was overwhelming how crowded it was. As I stood there in awe wondering what was going on, slowly realizing this is NORMAL for this time of day I started looking around and seeing people’s faces… I was so shocked to find that not ONE person was grumpy, complaining or in a bad mood. Everyone was laughing or joking. It made everything so much more bearable! Then I noticed there was a jazz band playing on the upper platform… (something they tried to do to encourage people to wait a bit longer to use the metro). I just know that when I finally arrived home I wasn’t pissed off, or angry but happy and in a good mood. See that guy looking back in the middle of the frame? See how he’s smiling? Well, that’s how everyone was, really!
That’s why I moved back.
