It’s too good to not post about Brazilians and their luggage. Apparently I already show outwards signs of fitting in to Brazilian culture, for example, through the appropriate packing of luggage. Some of you naïve to Brazilian culture may not know that Brazilians like big luggage. So much so, that while most major airline carriers downgraded the size of your checked luggage to 23 kg per suitcase, not so for Brazil. There is a federal law that all travelers have the right to two checked baggage at 32 kg each, both into and out of the country. So when my friend showed up to drive me to the airport, and I had *three* 32 kg suitcases jammed to the max, he said I already look Brazilian. It took us 10 minutes to pack them into my tiny Honda Civic. When I got on the airplane from Atlanta to Brasilia, I sat and watched another passenger discover that her ‘carry-on’ would not fit into the overhead compartment. For a full 15 minutes, she and her brother took turns trying to shove it in, and then taking it down, rearranging, shoving again, rearranging…totally entertaining!
Luggage helps to easily differentiate the foreigners from the Brazilians in the airport. Brazilians take all of the oversized luggage off the luggage belt, while foreigners have duffel bags or suitcases which clearly don’t contain the 32 kg limit. I chatted away with a Brazilian returning from living in Atlanta for 6 years, and he had…seven suitcases.
Despite me having three suitcases, only 1 and 1/4 of them was my stuff, and the rest was Dr. A’s as he’d been in Canada for four years. The border officer asked me if I had anything to declare (you can bring in $500 to stay in the country), and I said no. And then he asked how long I was staying, and I said one month, and he looked down at the giant, humongous caravan of luggage (I had two carry-on too!) and then looked at me very skeptically. I clarified that Dr. A had just moved back and I was bringing stuff for him…like, clothes, and hangers and stuff. heh.
