Something funny happened in Curitiba—I was asked over and over again if I was Brazilian.

At first, I found it weird. This is a city where I can easily pass for Brazilian, physically at least. In Bahia, it’s pretty obvious that I don’t have African roots. In Blumenau, it’s also pretty obvious my ancestors weren’t German settlers. But I could be one of them in Curitiba—it’s pretty neutral-whitish Brazil.

And it’s not like people automatically assumed I was from Argentina or Uruguay, like in Florianópolis, where Brazilians often attempt to speak Spanish to me because of the number of tourists from those two countries.

No, in Curitiba, the “você brasileira…?” was asked with a hint of hope.

“No,” I replied the first time.

“Venezuela? Me También!”

Nope, sorry, not Venezuela either. My Uber driver was disappointed for a second, but he rejoiced when I said, “pero podemos hablar en español.” We chatted in Spanish, and that made him happy.

And it turned out that the next person who asked me the “você brasileira?” question was also hoping I was Cuban, like her. So again, I switched to Spanish, much to her delight.

I realized that the supermarket cashier whose Portuguese I found so hard to understand was actually from Guinea.

“You know Guinea? In Africa.”

Yep, I know Guinea. I had never considered that he wasn’t from Brazil and that his Portuguese was heavily accented. I guess that’s why I kept asking him to repeat himself, and he kept asking me to repeat myself.

I chatted in Spanish with half of Curitiba.

I chatted about Amazonas with the other half—a surprisingly high number of Manaus residents made their way to Curitiba, and they love telling stories of “that time they got off the plane and nearly froze to death.”

“In Manaus, turning on the fan is like turning on the air fryer!” the pharmacy employee explained. “It just blows hot air. I swear, I had never felt cold before. It was freezing when I landed in Curitiba!”

“Which month did you arrive?”

“December.”

“But that’s… summer.”

“It was only 20°C!”

And then tonight, I got stuck in a downpour, so I had to shelter under a residential porch. A woman was also stuck, and we started chatting. It turned out she was from Japan, on a two-year work assignment in Curitiba. She didn’t speak English and I don’t speak Japanese, so we traded Brazilian stories in Portuguese.

I had no idea I would get to meet the world in Curitiba. The locals may be a bit colder than in other parts of Brazil, but the immigrants make up for it.

Here are the people of Curitiba, summer 2026 edition!