I enjoyed Guatemala, Uruguay, Peru, and countless other countries, but I can spend months or even years without thinking about them. I explored, took pictures, wrote stories, and left. Occasionally, I even told myself it was a one-time trip because I had learned everything I wanted to know.

But I can’t really leave Brazil these days.

It’s a very addictive place, and like most of my addictions (hello, coffee!), it grew slowly on me.

See, it took me a long time to “get” Brazil.

I realized fairly early on that Brazilians aren’t Latinos, and that the country is quite unique—you can apply some Peruvian logic to Chile and use acquired Chilean survival skills in Argentina, but Brazil is just different.

Take the language, for instance. Portuguese is brutal. I picked up Spanish easily enough, but it was only during the pandemic, after at least six or seven trips to Brazil, that it finally clicked.

The Brazilian logic escaped me for a long time as well. I kept running into Brazilian mysteries because so little made sense to me, from the magic CPF to people suddenly clapping on the beach.

The thing is, I like solving (cultural) mysteries. I also like to learn and figure out why people do this or that.

That’s probably when the addiction really started.

I’ve always felt welcome in Brazil, whether I was a dumb gringa or an experienced “brasileira da temporada.” Brazilians are warm, helpful, and very good at explaining things. Most of them don’t really care about how it’s done abroad, but they recognize a teachable moment when they see one.

I will always remember this old lady in a supermarket in Porto Alegre. I was buying bananas for baby Mark, and I wasn’t sure which variety to get—the closest one to our usual imported bananas in Canada, hopefully.

But there were the banana-da-terra, banana maçã, banana nanica, banana ouro…

I sighed. “I have no idea. Which ones do you just eat as-is?” I asked an old lady nearby in broken Portuguese, as she carefully picked fruits I didn’t even know the names of.

She took me by the arm.

“These are bananas. So you take one and hold it with the stem pointing up. Now you have to peel it because you can’t eat the peel…”

I thanked her profusely, of course—even though in my country, we do know how to peel a banana, really.

And this is Brazil for you. People are willing to explain the simplest things to you—even if they’re mistaken—without making fun of you.

Damn. I love this country.

And that’s why, even when I’m not in Brazil, I can’t quite forget it.

I have a few friends there, for a start. All of them somehow stumbled upon the blog and contacted me at one point. I’ve been chatting with my oldest Brazilian friend for at least seven years, and for three or four years with the second one, whom I met in person in Belo Horizonte.

We have pictures of our happiest moments on the fridge—unsurprisingly, most of them were taken in Brazil.

Plenty of things I use daily were also bought in Brazil—indústria brasileira for the win!—at one point or another, and made their way into my backpack to find a new home in France or Canada, from Havaianas and clothes to soap, creams, and more.

Hell, even my mum now routinely starts sentences with “Well, in Brazil…”—she mixed up the time difference with Canada the other day; never mind she learned it 25 years ago.

And now, thanks to Tom, I’m officially a Brazil addict.

Tom contacted me earlier this winter. A long-time (like, very long-time) Brazil addict originally from the US, he calls São Paulo home, and he is an endless source of entertaining stories about his adventures in Brazil—I keep telling him to write a book.

As far as I know, he has yet to open a Word doc and start typing. Meanwhile, he is selling funny, cheeky, and culturally relevant t-shirts about Brazil on his new store, Brazil Addict. You will also find him on Etsy.

Browse them all and try to get the joke—warning, this requires Brazil 101 knowledge.

He sent me one of his Brazil t-shirts to France. I wanted a surprise design, and I received “noite de axé”—an axé night, a music genre that originated in Salvador, Bahia.

I love it. It’s comfy, colorful, and I love axé.

Obrigado, Tom.

You didn’t just send me a t-shirt—you sent me a little piece of Brazil.

And that’s the thing with this country—it sticks.

You leave, but it doesn’t quite leave you.

So yes—Brazil addict. No cure, no intention to recover.

(If you want your own tee, use the code JULIETTE20 at checkout for 20% off, valid through the end of the year. No, I don’t get a cut. Tom is just nice.)