Brazil

I was there for the first time last week, and was asked today why I hadn't written about it.  After-all, it's a significant place by any account, and one that's supposed to inspire us with it's effervescent culture, a growing economy and allegedly some fantastic beaches.

Sure, it was nice, but it didn't impress me.  Perhaps as I was in Sao Paulo.  Not the prettiest, and not the cultural centre.  No beaches, parades or Carnivale in sight.   It's the business capital and yes it was very busy, with incredible traffic and people swarming in every direction.  20-27M people by public accounts.  That's big for a city if that's not obvious to you.  The image at left is Sao Paulo as seen from the ISS, and you can see it's clearly not the most eco-friendly city in the world either.

It had that very large developing-place grey-ness to it.  The air was grey with the exhaust from countless millions of cars, the buildings were grey as that was efficient, and the people were too.  By that I mean they were serious.  This was the place to make money, not fun.

It's interesting to compare/contrast another BRIC country I just spent some time in - China.  In Shanghai, it's about showiness, everything glittered, glowed or screamed for attention.  I imagine Rio de Janeiro might be like that in Brazil, but at this point, I'll only be able to imagine it.

The truth is travelling the globe sometimes take you to places that aren't memorable, and that means we don't talk about them, write about them, or share our photos of them (I didn't actually take a single picture).  But this last point - that it isn't all wonderful - it is worth highlighting here.

Sometimes for something to stand out, there has to be another thing or place it stands out from.

(As a P.S. I am back in Brazil in a couple weeks, and will arrive with an open mind to try to see the colours)