The best views are for the poorest people. The favelas or slums extend up the hills of the coastal cities in the sorts of locations that would be the millionaires’ row in most countries.

Lifts or Elevators. Apartments often have two (or more) lifts of which one is for servants, tradesmen, wet and sandy people from the beach  and those carrying rubbish.

Coffee in self service restaurants is free provided free of charge from insulated containers at the exit. It is taken standing up. I guess it is a good way to move the customers from the table after they have finished eating. There are often free cups coffee in supermarkets and stores.

Self-Service restaurants charge by the weight of your plate.  Meat, fish, salad, beans, rice, chips are all weighed together. It is a much better system than the Spanish “eat until you vomit” for a fixed price or the English “all you can pile onto a single plate”  It makes calorie control much easier.

Plastic self-adhesive hooks are very hard to find and double the European price when available..

Gasoline For many years gasoline has been mixed with alcohol. Cars marked  Flex can also run on 100% alcohol and some can run on liquid gas.

Sugar Consumption is astonishingly high at 50 kilos per capita per year. See US Department of Agriculture This leads to high figures for obesity related deaths.

Monarchy It is the only South American country to have had a monarchy. In the early 19th century the Portuguese royal family fled from Napoleon and set up the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarves. In 1822 independence was declared under the Emperor D. Pedro I. In 1889 the last Emperor was deposed and a republic proclaimed.

Beer here is the same Pilsener style beer that you see all over the world. It is the only country that I recall where draught beer is more exensive than canned or bottled beer. In most bars you can buy beer by the meter which does save a lot of work for the waiters. The strangest thing about the beer here is that I have seen several people add salt.

Cars I was wrong when I said there are no expensive status symbol cars. Apparently there are plenty but they mostly live in their garages while their owners drive more modest vehicles. It is inviting theft, hijacking and kidnapping to drive around in a $250,000 car. Expensive cars are used for safe trips to secure places. This type of crime is decreasing. I am preparing a piece on security and crime in Brazil

This blog reflects my personal experiences and observations and nothing more.  It may be inaccurate in places and maybe some observations are based on the wrong interpretation of what I have seen. I do try to verify any factual claims and quote the sources when they are potentially controversial. My sense of humour can be a bit ironic so do not take everything I say too seriously.

Once I have posted an article I will only change incidental things like mispellings or bad grammar.  I might occasionally annotate an article to correct an important fact which might mislead someone who reads the article but not the comments. Any normal clarifications and corrections will be posted by me as a comment.

The idea of a blog is to have a dialogue. So if any Brazilians do not like what I say, want to correct wrong information or have something to add please join in. Use a false name and a fake email address if you like. I will not censor or edit any comments as long as they are not abusive.  And if any foreigners want to add something or ask a question please join in the fun.

This will be a very boring blog if it is just me telling you what I think. If anyone wants to write an article please send it to me and I will add it to the blog. If you want I will correct any language errors.

It is hard top know where to start, Portuguese is so similar to Spanish that it is quite easy to learn. On the other hand almost every word has a little trap in meaning, spelling or pronunciation that makes it different. Sometimes a word has all three differences. There are quite a few words in both languages that are not shared at all.

Brazilian pronunciation is quite different from Portuguese Portuguese and several people have told me that they do not understand much when a Portuguese person talks. The reverse is not true, there is a lot of Brazilian culture in Portugal, mainly cinema and TV and so they are used to the accents of their former colony. It is much the same but less extreme with American and British English. When I get stuck here I talk in Spanish with varying degrees of success.

Flavia’s friends and family mostly speak at least fairly good English – I am not sure that it is a good thing for me to expect them to speak it much.

Flavia´s daughter Jana

Outside of the professional and educated classes very little English is spoken and they tend to look a bit blank when I try my European style Spanish with an English accent.

My studies were going quite well until Flavia arrived in Europe in late April. Since then there has not been much time for reading or the iPod lessons – and I have been a bit lazy. I had hoped to find a Portuguese class for foreigners here but there do not appear to be any. There are few foreigners here and they are mostly working for multi-national organisations who have their own in-house training. There are individual tutors but that is a very expensive way of learning a language. I need to find someone learning English and spend an hour or two helping each other a couple of mornings each week.

I can get the gist of most conversations, read a newspaper and understand a lot of TV programs like news broadcasts and documentaries. I am totally lost with soap operas, jokes, slang, complicated language structures and different accents. It is getting a bit easier each day. I am not talking much yet.

The victim will be my Spanish. I don’t think that I will be able to speak both languages and the two will slowly merge and I will talk something called Portañol in both countries. The important thing is to be able to communicate.

Brazilian Portuguese can sound very strange to an English speaker. Take my name: like the Spanish they do not start a word with a ST sound so it is Esteve. Except that most of their T sounds are pronounced TCH so now it is Estcheve. But they do not end a word with a V so finally my name is Estchevey.  Welcome to the Internetch. The Formula 1 racing driver Emerson Fittipaldi sounds much less glamorous when he is called Fitchipaldgi.

The food. It is wonderful and cheap. The restaurants are excellent and the Self-service and Churrasco places are very different from anything you  you get in Europe. It is not a good country for vegetarians.

The people Very laid back and casual with lots of smiles and very friendly. I have not yet met any of the types that will kill you for your watch.

The traffic It is not too bad and there is usually parking without looking for too long. There are delays during peak hours but, compared with Europe it is all very calm. I suspect that in a couple of years I will not believe that I ever said that. I also like the rarity of status symbol cars – this will change.

The beaches I have never been much of a beach lover but it is part of life here. Whenever there is sun there are people playing football, volleyball, walking or just sunbathing.

The service It is nice to have trained and keen store assistants and waiters. They are usually very helpful but not pushy. Brazilians are hard workers.

The music. There is a vibrant cultural life and Brazil has wonderful music and dance. Sadly the youngsters seem to be much more interested in rap, hip hop and other American styles.

Cold water washing for clothes and dishes.  In Europe we are convinced that hot water is necessary.  There are soaps and detergents that work perfectly well in cold water. As fuel costs rise this becomes more important.

The weather It is wonderful, at least at this time of year. I suspect that the summer humidity would not be comfortable.

Lists like this in Brazil are usually six items which would have given me much less work. In fact there are more likes, I might do another list like this. I will also do a list of things I do not like.

One thing I have noticed about Brazilians is that they are extremely clean and very concerned about all forms of hygiene. It is a long time since I have lived in the tropics and I have forgotten how important it is to be very fastidious, even in the Brazilian winter. Mould appears very quickly and food rots much faster – even than in Andaucía in August.

For instance most Brazilians will not touch the food they eat. A sandwich is held in a paper napkin and a sweet is partially unwrapped and taken off the paper with the lips. If they are eating something like nuts they will wash their hands first and probably again afterwards. I love to eat chips (french fries) with my fingers but that is not allowed here Dirty dishes are washed very throughly and rinsed carefully. The food shops and restaurants are extremely clean indeed and as little as possible is touched by employees.

Vegetables can have insecticides and fertilisers on them so anything that is not peeled has to be scrubbed with soap and water and then rinsed. This does make something like a salad quite time consuming to prepare.

I am not suggesting that none of the above applies to Europe. Nowadays food hygiene in European shops and restaurants is pretty good. My guess is that home hygiene here is of a much higher standard. Certainly higher than in my home. Flavia is giving me an intensive course in how to keep the kitchen clean