Do you know these ste­reo­type pic­tures of beau­ti­ful lon­ley beaches with some palms and tur­qoise water. I never really liked them. Not because of the beauty in it, but because they always seemed to be at the end of the world. Since I’m a city kid I need people around me and some­how an urban envir­on­ment to feel well.

Arriv­ing in Rio de Janeiro was one of these big excit­ing moments in my travel life. I mean I traveled to a lot of big citys but I knew this city is dif­fer­ent. Influ­enced by movies, Baile Funk Music and the Graf­fiti of Os Gemeos & Pix­a­caos I had a deep wish to exper­i­ence this upcom­ing coun­try and espe­cially Rio de Janeiro.

I can say that Rio is dif­fer­ent and full of con­tro­versity. It is not a beauty. Turn­ing these amaz­ing beach­sides into on rich ghetto full of archi­tec­tural bore­dom­ness is just one of the mis­takes a city can ruin it’s own soul. But fuck it. You are sit­ting there on the beach and when you are turn­ing your head and dis­cover the beauty of the smooth roun­ded mon­tains around the city with it’s nat­ural rain forests you for­get about the rest. Okay not really because than you also have to ignore the 700 favelas that take over nearly every free space of the city and espa­cially the mountains.

This also marks one of the biggest prob­lems of the city and as a for­eigner you are not really able to build your own pic­ture. The heavy war between the police and the favela drug lords still con­tin­ues with tou­sands of people get­ting killed every year. Thanks to graf­fiti artist BEAM who showed me around these “No Entry” areas I was able to explore some favelas myself and what I saw belongs to some of the most intense exper­i­ences in my travel life. I mean I never showed 10 year old kids on crack with guns how to write their names with spraycans. BEAM told me that the situ­ation gets even worse because after cocaine cheap crack arrived in the favelas just a couple of years ago and fucks the people like never before.

But next to all these prob­lems the cari­ocas (Rio loc­als) have a life­style you can’t com­pare. I would describe it as a relaxed smooth­ness com­bined with a pos­it­ive energy. They know they live in a spe­cial place and the Samba rhythms all over town are just on expres­sion you can see from the outside.

I’m excited how things develope in the next years. It is for sure that Brasil belongs to one of the fast­est upcom­ing cit­ies world­wide and Rio has a poten­tial like very less citys in this world. If they get their prob­lems fixed it is one city I would defin­itly wanna live in for some years. And I don’t say this for many citys.

Note:
I’d like to thank LEICA cam­eras for invit­ing me to be part of the Leica Explorers team. I spent 1 month in South Amer­ica last year and traveled all the way down to Patago­nia. If you are inter­ested in more pic­tures of Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires and Patago­nia please check my Leica Explorer­ers Blog over here.