If someone had tried to come up with the strangest and most unexpected plot twist in my life, it would have been moving to Brazil.
I swear, I never wanted to live here.
The most I had ever imagined was coming to Rio, hang-gliding off a cliff like in the animated movie, and flying back home. I had dreamed about that since I was around ten.
To be honest, I did not even dream about Carnival. I thought it was an insanely overrated event with a huge crowd of people. Forgive me, everyone.
In general, I was convinced that Brazil was unsafe, dirty, lacking infrastructure, and that it was always around forty degrees outside.
So when my boyfriend suggested moving here, his answer was something along the lines of:
“Absolutely not. Never in my life.”
YouTube only made it worse
But he is not the kind of person who gives up easily.
So he started showing me different videos about Brazil on YouTube.
That only worked against him.
About ninety percent of the videos had titles like “I Got Robbed in Rio” or “Homeless People Attacked Me in São Paulo.”
Every single one seemed to scream that everything I believed about Brazil was true.
Now I understand that titles like that are made for views. People are often more interested in watching chaos than something calm and kind.
But back then, after watching those videos, my boyfriend heard another:
“If you want to go that badly, go by yourself. I’m not going.”
I still have chats with my friends and angry video messages about how much I did not want to move there.
Watching them now is very funny.
A compromise called Florianópolis
A few more days passed, and my boyfriend came back to discuss it again.
Presumably after saving up for, or putting on, a bulletproof vest first.
This time he suggested looking at Florianópolis.
It is a city in southern Brazil, located on an island.
In the materials we found, it was presented as a calmer place to live. We also saw information that people relocating from different countries often choose it.
And most importantly, we could not find a single negative YouTube video about Florianópolis.
So eventually we reached a compromise: first, one month in Rio, where I was planning not to leave the house at all, and then Florianópolis.
Spoiler: after Rio, we also spent a month in São Paulo. Another city I had mostly read horror stories about before the trip.
Everything turned out differently
Long story short, we have now been in Brazil for two and a half months.
And I realised that a lot of what people say about it online should probably be divided by at least ten.
During all this time, we have not been robbed once, and no one has harassed us.
Instead, this is where we met some of the most positive and open people.
For me, Brazil turned out to be one of the nicest countries I have ever been to.
So much so that I wanted to stay.
But that deserves a separate story.
Brazil turned out to be the country I never planned to live in, but did not want to leave.
In the end, I apologised to my boyfriend many times for resisting so fiercely.
Brazil really did turn out to be incredible.
Sometimes it is worth not being quite so categorical.
Sometimes it helps to stay open to the world and to other people’s ideas, even when at first they sound completely ridiculous.
Previous part: “What Travel Means to Me”
Read: “People in Brazil”
She unexpectedly found herself in Brazil and now lives here, sharing stories about a country she never thought she would choose.
