Porto Alegre: It's All in the Name

I’ve always firmly believed that cities have vibes. Like, vibes. You know? Sometimes it’s obvious, as with Houston’s muggy white-collar hum or Austin’s “let me make you a mix CD” aura. Sometimes, it’s subtler than that: Madrid calls for quiet strolls through parks, Miami’s sensual spice makes you want to work up a dance-floor sweat, and the streets of Amiens smell like old books and black coffee. Usually I feel a city’s vibe almost immediately, but that was not the case when my plane touched down in Porto Alegre almost three weeks ago.

Porto Alegre is Brazil’s tenth most populous metropolitan area, and it’s the capital of Brazil’s southernmost state, Rio Grande do Sul. Its location far down in the Southern Hemisphere (next to the beautiful Guaíba River) makes it the perfect destination for those of us seeking to escape the Texas summer heat. I was delighted to find two charming members of the local LC waiting for me at the airport--just as advertised, but better. Both of them helped me with my luggage and patiently conversed with me as my sleep-deprived brain struggled to form grammatically correct sentences in Portuguese. The car ride to my host’s apartment was a feast for the eyes, zooming through various neighborhoods of Porto Alegre in a matter of minutes.

I could describe this Brazilian city as “strangely familiar.” While it physically resembles my hometown of Maracaibo in Venezuela, the weather and the hills make it feel more like New Haven in the late fall. To give credit where credit is due, much of the familiarity I feel here is due to the amount of quality people that have come to serve as my gateway to the city. Upon dropping me off, the local AIESECers introduced me to my host João, a 22-year-old humanities student at the local private university. João has proven to be the epitome of warm, welcoming and chill—a.k.a. everything I need to hit it off with anyone.  His apartment, though lacking a heating system to combat the winters below the Tropic of Capricorn, provides a cozy, small and relaxed environment where loud music and pizza are welcome at all hours of the day.

Anyway, even though I was exhausted from 17 hours of travel, I accepted João’s invitation to go to his university with him. And what a wonderful first night it proved to be! I got to meet João’s colleagues from the Literature and Linguistics department, and I even got to sit in on one of his classes and have some really interesting conversations with João’s professor. Didn’t see that one coming. It also turns out I have more in common with his friends than I foresaw. The fact that João’s friends speak no English for the most part hasn’t stopped us from bonding; over the past three weeks, I’ve returned to their department’s equivalent of a common room at least every other weekday just to hang out, listen to music, chat, and play lots of pool. João and his friends taught me the ins and outs of Porto Alegre, such as the best parks, the fastest bus routes for me to take to work, the best times to visit certain museums, and the quickest shortcut to take if a protest blocks a popular street.

Unfortunately for me, no amount of description or unnecessarily Instagrammed photos could fully convey the human aspects of the city. Here, the more familiar facets of Brazilian culture—itself a mixture of European, African and indigenous traditions—overlap with the strong influence of the South American pampas. This places gaúchos (as the residents of Rio Grande do Sul are known) in an interesting cultural position, with Porto Alegre breaking away from stereotypical images of Brazil. For example, chimarrão, the Brazilian equivalent of yerba mate, is unique to the gaúchos. This beverage is prepared by pouring hot water into a special container (called the cuia) with the tightly packed mate herb. The beverage is then sipped out of a steel straw called the bomba. On the streets and in cafés you will find teenagers and adults alike with a cuia in one hand and a hot water thermos in another. Some parks even have dispensers that provide free ground mate leaves for people to pack into their cuias on the go. Chimarrão is not only a ubiquitous drink, but also a social one, passed around and shared with friends when in a group.

Gaúchos are ultimately very proud to be gaúchos. They’re proud of their traditional southern dances, their bitterly cold winters, their distinctive accent, and their chimarrão. Their overall satisfaction with their city shows. This place managed to make a complete stranger feel at home pretty quickly. Of course, it took getting lost a few times, but the moments that have characterized my weeks here so far speak for themselves: playing ping-pong with my coworkers during our lunch break, grabbing drinks at the local bar with João’s friends after class, walking around the downtown area with my AIESEC buddy, grocery shopping with João, people-watching on the bus to and from work, walking past angry graffiti that covers more and more wall space with every protest…. I have yet to feel extremely out of place here in Porto Alegre, and that’s more than I can say for a lot of places.

Maybe by mid-August I will have figured out a good way to describe Porto Alegre’s vibe. All I know is that something here is worth a second winter. For right now, I’ll settle for taking sneaky pictures of the streets on my way to the grocery store and being overly poetic about how beautiful this city’s skyline is. And if you think that’s cliché, wait until you hear my description of the sunset over Lake Guaíba. ■

--Jesús