BRAZIL – actually, I wanted to write those letters in different colours if the settings of the Blog would allow it. Why? Because Brazil cannot simply be described with one colour but I would need a large spectrum of colours to illustrate its diversity. In the following post, I will try to depict my experiences from an eye-opening and exciting excursion.
On October 18th, a group of ten Master of International Business students met at Frankfurt Airport, thrilled and excited for the highlight of our programme: The excursion to Brazil as part of our regional specialization module. Glad to leave rainy and windy Germany we entered the plane to arrive 13 hours later in sunny and hot Brasilia, the capital of Brazil. At the hotel, we dropped off our luggage, changed boots with Havaianas, jeans with shorts, and pullovers with t-shirts – ready to dive into the “Brazil experience”.
Brasilia is a planned city that was erected in the 1960s, in parts completely symmetric, and divided into different sectors: the hotel sector, financial sector, government sector, embassy sector, and other sectors. Interesting – yes – but smart?! Opinions differ on this case. Anyway, we had two days packed with interesting visits: The Secretariat for Innovation, the German Embassy, KfW, and Banco do Brasil, Brazil’s biggest bank. The presentation at Banco do Brasil was about digitalization in the banking industry and was especially stunning to me as it revealed the backwardness of the German banking system with regards to mobile and online banking systems. Fortunately, Frankfurt School produces a lot of smart and technology-savvy finance experts to help Germany catch up in this business!
The next destination was São Paulo, a vibrant mega-city, the economic heart of Brazil, and the biggest German industry location outside of Germany. Definitely a “must-see” for students of international business!
In São Paulo I began to realize the diversity our lecturers were talking about in the classes before the excursion. Here are some examples:
Besides realizing the diversity of Brazil, we visited Natura, the biggest cosmetics company in Brazil and had interesting lectures with guest speakers like Xiko da Rocha Campos, Vice President of Visa in Latin America.
Starting our trip in the well planned and organized Brasilia, followed by fun, chaotic and crowded São Paulo, we were looking forward to our next destination: Paradise – or Paraty! A little, picturesque town on the coast of Brazil founded by the Portuguese and surrounded by beautiful nature. It was time to relax and digest the impressions of the preceding days while going on a Jeep and Cachaça tour and a sailing boat trip.
Relaxed and excited for more adventures we headed to our last destination, Rio de Janeiro. In the vernacular, Rio is called Cidade Maravilhosa, the marvellous city and it certainly deserves this name. Do you think you have seen the most beautiful view of a city from the Statue of Liberty in NYC or Montmartre in Paris? Rio de Janeiro proves you wrong! On our first day, we took the cable car up the Sugar Loaf and enjoyed a unique panorama of the city. It’s just AMAZING.
However, Rio de Janeiro is also a city of contrasts and the colourful little houses on the hillside of the mountains are not beautiful architecture but the result of a stark economic and social gentrification that shapes the city. From the famous districts of Copacabana and Ipanema, it is just a 10-minute walk to be right in the middle of an adjacent favela. We were able to spend half a day in Babilonia, a small but famous favela located next to a super-rich residential area, to understand the blatant inequality in the most unequal continent of the world.
The first day full of astonishing impressions of the city’s beauty and striking inequality was followed by two days of business-related visits. At our partner university, FGV, we listened to an interesting presentation about the economic and social impact of the precedent and coming mega-events in Brazil (World Championship, Olympics,…). Afterwards, we went to one of the biggest urban restructuring projects worldwide, Porto Maravilha. On our last day, we visited the famous ThyssenKrupp steel plant in Santa Cruz. Famous, not for its success but for its failure. Nevertheless, as business students, we are taught that it is important not to look only at the success stories but also to examine and accept failure, to always stand up and do it better next time.
Talking about next time, each of us swore to come back to this wonderful, interesting and promising country. We had a blast and would like to encourage everyone to board a plane and dive deeply into the “Brazil-experience”. It’s worth it!
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