Keep it simple, keep it safe.

On first impressions, the breezy good cheer of most Brazilians seems at best misplaced and at worst mildly dangerous. By this, I mean that you actually worry for their mental health. Surely their reserves of optimism will be exhausted, you think, by contending with the daily round of insane driving, broken and piss-raddled pavements, staggeringly inane bureaucracy, painfully obvious inequality and thoroughly inedible snacks. Then, when they get home of an evening, they must also deal with the improbable laws of Brazilian physics whereby water either comes out of the tap too fast or not at all, a cupboard either won’t close or slams shut on your fingers and a wardrobe door either swings open without you touching it or falls off its hinges if you try and repair it (these examples are all drawn from personal experience).

The funny thing is, though, that Brazilians don’t lose their patience. They just keep on smiling. Worst of all, you even find yourself starting to agree with them; perhaps this or that irritation really isn’t worth bothering about. This is a pretty terrifying inversion of the natural order for an Englishman, because optimism, however small-scale and innocent seeming, threatens to undermine the perpetual whinging which is the cornerstone of our national identity. We whinged our way through Agincourt and Waterloo, we whinged our way through the Blitz, and there can be few who doubt that the Christian Martyrs whinged their way to the scaffold. Our empire, brief and bloody as it was, was an empire built on complaint and the consumption of hot, milky beverages. How, then, forsake it?

As it turns out, it’s really not that difficult. All you have to do is get up on Saturday morning, wander through the quiet sun splashed streets to your favourite café, order a pão na chapa (a bread roll slathered with butter and squished on the hotplate), watermelon juice and açai na tigela and break your fast in the most delicious and leisurely fashion as you watch the traders at the Saturday market chat and drink coffee and vaguely attend to setting up their stalls. This, then, is the perfect spot to reflect on why it is that Brazilians remain, in spite of enough irritations to unseat the reason of most Europeans, so sanguine.

The fact of the matter is that Brazilians actually like themselves – I know, I know: so weird. I’m not saying they’re blind to the faults of their country. But, on balance, they still come out in favour of it. They think it has the best beaches, the most beautiful women, the greatest football teams, the strongest cocktails, the dancingest samba and the wisest attitude towards the unsightly problem of work (the latter being summed up as ‘all in good time’). An indirect consequence of this nationalism is that Brazilians also seem inclined to like each other, and to tolerate each other’s foibles – hence the inability of the cupboards, plumbing and pavements to exercise them. Another decided benefit of this ability to like themselves is that it reduces their perception of lack: even the well-travelled and wealthy who have seen the bright lights and alluring plumbing of other countries don’t seem to spend as much time as we do pining after the next elusive, unattainable pleasure. 

This is why Brazilian tastes can seem narrow and repetitive to foreign eyes; they are content with a limited palate – with their corner cafés and bakeries, their caipirinhas and samba, their rituals of feijoada and churrascaria. The cafés are a particularly illustrative example of this blithe disposition. These little places are open daily from seven in the morning until 11 or 12 at night, and they’re always busy, with people popping in to buy cigarettes or ice cream or an água de coco, or sitting down to a meal or a snack. The secret of their popularity is that they offer good food at affordable prices. The menu is limited, and the same items are offered at nearly every one (which is why the waiters and waitresses generally don’t offer you a menu but expect you to know what you want).

Bearing in mind the simplicity and economy of these places, you might expect them to appeal only to those with less money. But that’s not the case. You see all kinds mixing in there: rich, perfumed women with faces like relief maps of the Andes; labourers in dust-stained jeans and flip-flops; businesspeople; a shy policeman in his bulletproof vest; rowdy students and school kids, old men in pressed shirts and slacks.

The cross-cultural appeal of these cafés says something about Brazilians. First and foremost, it shows that they are, at least on a cultural level, inherently resistant to globalisation. Yes, they do have McDonald’s and Pizza Hut, and they enjoy them. But they also appropriate and edit these global icons to suit their tastes – and the corporations are canny enough to allow this to happen. And yet, if you ever tried to take away from them their uniquely Brazilian pleasures – the feijoadas and churrascarias, corner cafés and bakeries –, you would have a revolution on your hands. That’s because these places and pastimes aren’t merely signifiers of national identity, they’re also symbols of what makes this nation special – its diversity, its lack of pretension and, above all, its faith in equality.

Perhaps Brazil is not as eclectic in its tastes as London or New York. But sometimes less choice is liberating. Provided the food is fresh and delicious, what have we to complain about, what have we to yearn after? On a broader level, Brazilian society is enriched by its relaxed and forgiving self-perception and, on the basis of a very rough quantitative assessment, people of broadly similar economic and social background are happier than their counterparts in the UK. And that can’t be bad.