Reflections on Rio

Travelling, moving city, or just spending time with friends from different cultures allows us to experience an alternate way of life and time. Dinner at 5 PM, or dinner at 10 PM? Multi-generational household, or single unit? Engaging with these differences reveals so many of the things we take for granted - working hours, family structure, relationships, and beauty standards - as culturally specific constructions.

Coming back to Rio has made me think a lot about culture as I try to capture what exactly is different to London (outside of the obvious beach and weather). It has become a frequent topic of conversation, especially in my conversations with foreign residents of the city. What attracts people to live here, to uproot themselves from the comfort of their home cultures and social networks? The answers were always unlikely to be ‘sensible’ ones such as job prospects, safety, or functioning public services.

Some people who visit Rio have noted on how it just feels a bit different here than other cities they’ve visited - one of my friends describes it as ‘life in HD’, which I love. The music is louder, the streets more crowded, the bars buzzier, the opportunities for where a day can take you, endless. There is a real energy to the city residing in the chaos. My friend lent me a book which describes the streets beautifully as “archives […] true libraries of history”.

All this makes it hard to pin down, to capture what gives this place (or any space indeed) its own distinct character. I could choose many things but what stands out to me right now are three attributes: the qualities of openness, joy, and an appreciation for beauty.

• Openness: Tourists and newcomers are often surprised at how open Cariocas are, and how easy it is to build connections in this city. People’s leisure time tends to be less mapped out, and its very normal to make a friend one night, and plan something with them the next day. This can sometimes backfire however - culturally Cariocas avoid saying no which means we can easily overcommit and underdeliver on promises. With that in mind, take your new BFF’s plans for a morning hike with a grain of salt.

• Joy: Despite many obvious issues, the city is full of happiness - lots of humour, music, and culture on the streets. This joy is not blind to inequality or societal shortcomings, but rather exists to overcome it. Life can be difficult, and much can be taken from you by the cruel turns of fate, so why deprive yourself of joy, celebration, and community, the things that make us feel human? A perfect example of this is carnaval - I am always struck by how fantastic the energy is on the streets during this time of year, with people creating groups and blocos merely for the sake of making something wonderful. Here I admire the act of ‘joy as resistance’.

• Appreciation of beauty: The landscape helps with this one - the nature in and around the city is resplendent, and the combination of mountains, forests, waterfalls, the bay, and the beaches make for beautiful backdrop to urban living. Life in the tropics is big and bold - you are likely to see many beloved UK houseplants in their natural habitat, except much larger (and more alive) than the ones at home. The landscape and the tropics are often romanticised in popular music, art, and architecture, with the cable car at Sugarloaf mountain as a perfect example of this habit. Built in 1908 (the third in the world!), the cable car was inspired and continues to draw in crowds today on the promise of providing a new way to experience the city.

So there you have it - my two cents on some of the aspects that make this city so exciting. Below I share some of the activities I have done, things I have eaten, and places I have visited which have fed this perception. I hope to keep up sharing these tips in future blogs.

What to See and Do…in Rio de Janeiro

Culture

• Forró de Rua (£) - This group organises weekly forro classes in the gardens on the Museum of Modern Art. Every Saturday you can join them for classes split by level, taught outdoors with a beautiful view of the Marina. Not bad!

Food

• Ruda Restuarante (£££) - Stop by here for innovative, tasty, and fresh contemporary Brazilian food. We had the ‘Menu Executivo (Lunch Menu) for 89 reais (+service). This includes a starter, main, and dessert. The menu changes weekly so you can come back more than once if your heart desires.

Nightlife

• Braseiro Labuta (££) - This bar has some of the best caipirinhas I’ve had in recent memory. It is across the street from Armazem Senado, where live musician play. This means you get live music and a place to sit, which is a win-win in my books. Just make sure to tip the musicians when they come asking for contributions.

Nature

• Vidigal / Dois Irmãos hike (£) - This is a real highlight I would recommend for anyone who likes the outdoors - I even made a TikTok of the hike (my first). I went with members of a Hiking WhatsApp group - I recommend joining one if you want to try any new hikes and prefer not to attempt any unaccompanied (I personally do not like doing new hikes by myself).

Thank you for sticking around until now. Next week I will be sharing more about my upcoming travels - any tips on must-sees (and can-skips) will be much appreciated.

A sabbatical and a blog.

Where I am now: my sabbatical

Two weeks ago I left my job to start a sabbatical that will last for the remainder of my 20s.  The CIPD report that over 90,000 people in the UK take some kind of a career break every year, whether to take care of others (such as a child or parent) or for themselves.   And yet, in the run-up to requesting my sabbatical, I felt a bubbling of negative feelings for wanting this for myself. Had I given up?

I had up to that point lived my life with both feet planted on a proverbial ‘achievement escalator’ - focussed on achieving good grades at school, wanting to do well at university, and coveting the right career. This wasn’t down to a need to tick boxes but rather because the things I was naturally drawn towards - learning and reading - led me to find direction and purpose in these parts of life. However as time went on, and I was able to have more freedom in my choices, I started to feel a growing sense of restlessness. Was this going to be my routine for the next 40 years? With my generation’s pension age reaching 67 (for time time being!), this question was not hyperbole but reality.

At the same time, acute shocks such as Covid, and a general worsening political and terrestrial climate all made for gloomier days inside and outside the workplace. And therefore, at the end of January, I closed my work-issued laptop, and opened a myriad of doors to new projects and adventures - among them, this blog.

Why the rooted cosmopolitan?

I grew up moving continent, country, and school, never spending more than 3 years at any educational institution, or 6 in a house. This lack of spatial boundaries has afforded me some wonderful and some difficult experiences. This background has made me open-minded, curious, and adaptable, but also restless and fickle.

Enter the ‘journey of self discovery’ so many of us are undertaking in our 20s. In this process I have searched for enlightenment through books, blogs, and videos about topics such as the ‘third culture kid’, the Latino diaspora, and immigrant experiences (which I’m happy to share if helpful to anyone else!). These have helped me find the language to express what I found myself feeling - at once a global and a local citizen.

Through this search I found the idea of the ‘rooted cosmopolitan’.  Kwame Appiah coined this term to describe someone who ‘understands the value of community’, and recognises the ‘the globe as one of the communities to which [she] belongs’. In his view, a global conscience does not prohibit a deep sense of place and commitment to one’s surroundings, in contrast a so-called ‘rootless cosmopolitan’, a term which was used to degrade citizens with a perceived lack of national allegiance.

What I hope to do in this blog

As I choose to step off of the aforementioned achievement escalator and into something new, I hope to use this blog to document the variety of my experiences. This may range from the practical (such as travel tips) to the philosophical (as much as my own personal reflections can be), but all with the intention of reflecting my experience on this journey.

This story starts with a chapter in my ‘hometown’ of Rio de Janeiro. I hope you stick around to share in this journey! Next week I will be reflecting on the experience of ‘re-entry’ into my birth country, and sharing more about my favourite city on Earth.