A Small Town of 60,000+

We currently live in Farroupilha, Rio Grande do Sul. I found out the name Farroupilha actually means "Ragamuffin", which I think is kind of a fun name.  There is a story behind it, but I don't know it well enough to tell, and unfortunately neither does Tiago.  Well, Tiago calls Farroupilha a “small city.” Let's see... I grew up in Abingdon, Va, population 7780 (according to Wikipedia). For the past three years we lived in Wise, Va, population 3300. Seeing as there are more than 60,000 residents of Farroupilha, I always laughed at his description before. To me, 60,000 residents sounds like it must be a pretty exciting place!!  Now that we live here, I have begun to understand a little better why he says this city is small. So let me tell you a little about why we feel like we still live in “hickville.” :)

First, there is relative size:  Our neighbor city about 20 minutes away, Caxias do Sul, has a population of about 200,000. Then there is Porto Alegre about an hour away, which has a population of about 1.4 million. Of course, these are nothing when compared with Sao Paulo's 19 million residents... Basically, what I have learned is that in Brazil, there are also no small independent towns spread out around an entire county, with only 2000 or so residents apiece. Apparently, if an area is worth settling here, it is worth settling completely. You will come to a huge city, and once you leave it, you can go for miles without seeing much of a community at all until the next city. There are HUGE gaps of basically empty land in between cities. (I will link a map of our state here, so you can see what I mean more easily.)

Now, besides relative population to other places, another reason this can be called a small city is the limited shopping options in Farroupilha. There are small stores for pretty much anything you can imagine, but because of their sizes, it is often difficult to find the exact item we want and for the price we are willing to pay. Let's take diapers, for example. A necessity for any family with a baby, of course. Can we find diapers here in our city? Yes, inferior brands for high prices. The last time we bought diapers on sale at the local grocery store, we ended up with diapers that were made almost entirely of plastic and still used only adhesive tape on the tabs, which tabs were actually very small for the size of diaper we bought. It only took a couple days to see that they were not going to work. These diapers were self-removing: once full, they somehow automatically fell off, and we were left with a little naked-bottomed baby! Or, on the occasions they didn't fall off on their own, Lissie was easily able to undo the tabs herself and take them off – something that had not happened often before, even with our Parent's Choice diapers. So now we have learned to drive a little further for diapers, and shop at the mall in the next city (Caxias do Sul). Nope, no mall for us here.  (No Walmart either, for that matter...)

Okay, let's talk restaurant options. There are some amazing places to eat here, and in another post maybe I will tell more about them as they are just that good! One day we counted all of the places we love to eat here in Farroupilha, and we came up with what I thought was a suprisingly low number: 5. A city with 60,000 residents, and 5 restaurants that we choose between when deciding where to eat. Now that is not to say that there are only 5 restaurants total in the city. I have no idea how many there actually are, but as I say, there are 5 known good options to us. So let's compare to, say, Wise County, Va., since it was our most recent previous home. In Wise, we usually chose between Fishtales, Asia Buffet, Applebees, Nuts Bar & Grill, Robo's Drive-In, Roma's, and Mi Finca. That's already 7 options.  Of course if we actually felt like spending a little more, there's the Tavern on Main (is that it's actual name? I've already forgotten!). And that's not even including all the fast-food chains that we also happen to like! So how weird is it that Wise County actually had more dining-out options for us than here?

Basically my point is this: While 60,000 doesn't sound small to me, I now can understand what Tiago means when he says he is from a “small city” in Brasil. It really does seem more like a small town than what I used to consider a big city!  I was nervous before we moved about living in such a big city, and yes there are still aspects of big city life here in Farroupilha. (Bus system, lots of people downtown, many buildings with 5+ stories, scary-bad drivers – but let's be honest, you can find those everywhere.)  The truth is this an area that people move to in order to get out of “big cities.” There is plenty of green grass, trees, fresh air, and the feel of a small town (outside of “downtown). At “rush hour,” while traffic does become denser, it continues to move at normal speed. There actually is a butcher and a baker (probably more than one of each), and there may even be a candlestick-maker if I look hard enough. So, my fears of our big city life (most of them anyway) were all for naught! Tiago was right: This is a nice little town.