Over the past few weeks I have felt a different quiet homesickness taking over my mind and energy.
I miss my family and friends, sure. But whenever we can, we adjust the time diference and video call. I get to see their faces, hear their voices, follow the messiness of some routines from afar. We text almost every day for daily check-ups. Like, how was work today? Or something like that.
But there’s limit to what technology can do.
I can’t video call my favourite spots. I can’t stroll through my favourite neighbourhoods without a purpose. I can’t step into my cinema spontaneously and watch whatever is on that moment. Or sit down at Estadao Lanches, one of my favourite places to eat in the whole world at 6am in the morning after a night-out, ordering a full main course or an unapologetically large pork sandwich as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Well, for São Paulo it is.
Having the opportunity to visit big European cities just gives me this feeling that there is nothing like having my own overwhelming, grey and overcrowded hometown to call mine.
There’s 12 million of us, it is not actually mine. But you got the point.
It was there, in that density and apparent chaos that I learned how identity and soulfulness can exist within a vast metropolis.
São Paulo is not just a big city. It is a world of its own.
What makes Sao Paulo special is its dual identity as both the country’s economic centre and its creative and cultural soul.
In a short walk you have the hustle and bustle of the large Manhattan-inspired avenues, the mind blowing architecture of Oscar Niemeyer and Lina Bo Bardi and the largest number of museums, theatres and cinemas that I’ve experienced in any city I’ve visited so far.
It is a place that became a melting pot of cultures and where the “Brazilian spirit”, if there’s one, can be experienced from Michelin star restaurants to endless queuing to take the metro at all times of the day.
Sao Paulo’s charm and magic comes from its diversity.
And that was not at all accidental.
São Paulo was at the centre of a political, economic, and social project that, throughout the 20th century, attracted people from every corner of the world. This cultural convergence occurred alongside a hygienist project that sought to erase the Black and Indigenous roots of the population. An issue too complex to be explored fully in this post, but one that nonetheless shaped the unique city São Paulo has become.
Waves of Italian, Japanese, Lebanese, Portuguese, and many other communities settled there, merging their traditions with local customs. Over time, the city became a place not defined by a single identity, but by the coexistence of many.
Perhaps this is where its true magic lies. São Paulo teaches you to navigate difference from an early age. You grow up hearing multiple accents, tasting multiple cuisines, and witnessing multiple ways of inhabiting the same streets. Diversity is not a concept discussed in policy documents.
It is an everyday lived experience.
It is easy to romanticise European cities for their beauty, order, and historical charm. But returning to São Paulo always reminds me that beauty can also be found in excess, in noise, and in the constant negotiation of space between millions of lives. Its greyness hides a vibrant and not that grey interior life. Its overcrowding generates encounters. Its chaos produces creativity.
The person I am today is a direct result of that place. My deepest traumas and the way I learned to survive that beautiful mess. My taste in art. My interest in food. The culture I carry on my body. My accent. Even the way I walk through the streets of Dublin confident, firm, occasionally a little grumpy comes from years of walking the streets of São Paulo and learning how to move within its intensity.
For me, São Paulo is not simply a place of origin. It is the reference point through which I understand cities, culture, and belonging. It is proof that a metropolis can be exhausting and inspiring at the same time, and that, sometimes, soulfulness thrives precisely where everything seems overwhelming.
