Brazil semi-wrapup

I still have a few days left in Brazil, but with all five lectures now complete, I’ve been reflecting on the trip as a whole.

In any just-completed life situation, it’s good to ask yourself what was most surprising in what happened, as a corrective to any smug sense that might creep in that you already knew everything all along (no one does; every day is filled with stunning shocks of some sort, if you only pay attention).

Probably the biggest surprise on this trip was my positive reaction to São Paulo. Based on things I’d heard, I tacitly expected São Paulo to be a sort of bizarre, otherworldly dystopia with the constant danger of automatic weapons fire, and despicably high and insular skyscrapers serviced by the helicopters of the ultra-wealthy fading in the mists high above.

Needless to say, that’s not really what São Paulo is like. It’s dangerous, but not that dangerous. And there is the biggest helicopter fleet in the world, but not that big a fleet. And the skyscrapers really aren’t all that tall. And it comes off as a perfectly cosmopolitan, hardworking, and fun place to be. The biggest unexpected negative of São Paulo, in fact, is how outrageously expensive a city it is.

Money evaporates in São Paulo as it does in few other places, such as London at its worst, and pre-crash Reykjavik at its worst. (I find the supposed expense of Paris to be vastly overrated, and Tokyo wasn’t nearly as bad as I’d heard it would be, though granted, I wasn’t looking to rent an apartment).

Overall, the most consistently, brutally expensive city in my travel experiences would have to be London. How on earth can you people afford to live there? It’s just ridiculous the way money vanishes from your pocket in London, with so little to show for it much of the time.