Coffee, cake and cool people

Some nice things about Brazil that impressed me as soon as I arrived.

First, coffee is delicious and it is freshly brewed. And people prepare coffee for you every time they have an opportunity. And nobody takes the coffee and runs away. Instead, they sit down and chat a little bit. The day goes by in a much nicer way because of these freshly brewed coffee breaks, or coffee rituals, if you prefer.

Freshly brewed coffee is so important that they sell all the apparel that you need to freshly brew one single cup. All you need is paper filter and a plastic support for it. The ones for a single cup are called "medida certa". They are available at the supermarket for less than two dollars. And I guess I do not need to tell you that I got one set for me...




Second, there are delicious home made cakes to accompany coffeek. On the day of my arrival, a friend stop by the house to see me and brought a delicious and super healthy apple cake, that was quickly eaten (as you can see from what was left of it on Monday). On the second day, the cleaning lady prepared a wonderful chocolate cake, which also went very nicely with coffee or without it.



I should confess that in addition to the yummy experience, there is a positive psychological impact in having coffee and cake prepared for you many times along the day. You feel pampered every couple of hours. My conclusion is that the Gross National Happiness Index should definitely include coffee and cake in their variables.

Last, but not least, I had two cool hosts in São Paulo, my sister and her boyfriend (first picture). Cool people is the icing of the cake (pun intended). It certainly makes the entire Brazilian experience really nice. And to give you an idea of how cool they are, I have only one thing to say: they are the kind of people who wear All Stars.


This is as high as someone can get in my scales of coolness (you only get higher if you have more than one pair...).