Porto Ale­gre was our first stop in Brazil, after the crazy bor­der cross­ing. We arrived late and took a taxi from the rodoviária (bus ter­mi­nal), and checked into a down­town hostel.

The city in itself had noth­ing spe­cial but we stayed there a few days to ease our­selves into brazil­ian cul­ture. A total dif­fer­ent world.

Safety, for instance. Chile and Argentina are pretty safe places, although they have their share of annoy­ances, espe­cially in big cities, where pick­pock­ets and dodgy neigh­bor­hoods can be expected. But we didn´t care too much  about it and walked every­where even at night, took taxis with­out think­ing twice and even though we were not care­less, we were pretty relaxed.

Brazil is not nec­es­sar­ily a dan­ger­ous coun­try but crime does exist, and can be quite vio­lent. There is much more street crime, sad sto­ries and weapons alto­gether. Porto Ale­gre can be quite dan­ger­ous at night and some dis­trict are best avoided — the key is to guess which ones. So we did like we did in Panamá, Perú or Bolivia: go to the ATM and carry the money back in your shoes or your bar, always walk in busy streets, trust your guts and be alert. Com­mon sense.

Another major adap­ta­tion is obvi­ously the switch from Span­ish to Por­tuguese — which none of us speak, by the way. Although I am far from being flu­ent in Span­ish, I can read a news­pa­per, under­stand peo­ple, and be under­stood in most sit­u­a­tion as well. Made life pretty easy: check­ing in a hotel, ask­ing for direc­tions, order­ing food etc. was never a prob­lem. Well, it´s not like that in Brazil.

I had started to learn a few con­ju­ga­tions and use­ful words, but the accent is quite dif­fi­cult, espe­cially the nasal sounds. Ital­ian and Span­ish are both quite easy to pro­nounce for me (prob­a­bly because I speak French) and I was always under­stood eas­ily, even when try­ing a new word or expres­sion. But Portuguese…

I really wanted to avoid speak­ing Span­ish to Brazil­ians. I can imag­ine it may sound arro­gant if I expect to be under­stood this way: after all, if some­one speaks Ger­man to me in France, I won´t have a clue of what he is say­ing. But yet, Span­ish is the lan­guage the clos­est to Por­tuguese that I know.

In Brazil, my mind is per­pet­u­ally try­ing to make sense of of things, using lan­guages that I speak. “Nome” is “name” in Eng­lish, and of course “nom” in French. “Peixe” equals “pescado”, from the latin “pesci”, also “pois­son” in French, and “fish” in Eng­lish. “Cafe da manhã”… okay, “manhã” looks like “mañana” in Span­ish, and “cafe” is obvi­ous. So “morn­ing cof­fee” is… yep, break­fast. “Hoje” is close to “hoy”, although not the pro­nun­ci­a­tion — but it still means “today”.

Trust me, it gets tir­ing after a cou­ple of hours.

Some words left us puz­zled. What the hell was this famous “frango”  we kept on see­ing on restau­rants menus? I really did not want to try pig tes­ti­cles, so we thought about it. The “frango” was appar­ently either grilled, either in a burger. Pig tes­ti­cles do not fit in a burger, so it must mean… “chicken”. Noth­ing to do with the Span­ish “pollo”, or the French “poulet”.

We should sur­vive the lan­guage thing. We should. But would we sur­vive the crazy hedo­nis­tic Car­ni­val celebrations?

Down­town Porto Alegre

Down­town Porto Alegre

Feng At The Mer­cado Central

Fresh Fruits And Veggies

Related posts:

1. Look­ing For The Brazil­ian Border…
2. The Food Saga: The Feast Era
3. Oui, I hablo Spanish!
4. Brazil­ian Car­naval In Paraty (2)
5. Brazil­ian Car­naval In Paraty (1)