A (Brazilian)'s comparison of international friendliness.

So, the other week I was having drinks with some people including this one visiting (Brazilian) doctoral student, and he was saying that Americans do live up to their reputation for friendliness, and that he had spent some time in Germany, and they were like that a lot there, too, where people he had just met were much friendlier than they would be in Brazil ("Braziw").

"Brazilians are friendly," he said, "But not right away, unless they know that you're a friend of a friend."

He then said that he thought that friendliness to strangers was a factor of a country's economic development; if someone in Brazil you didn't know was friendly to you if you just met them at a bar or randomly, for example, there's always a question right away if they're trying to pull something on you.