Brazil

I went to Porto Alegre for the 2014 World Cup, and the city was a party with a fog machine. Some mornings the highways disappeared into thick gray haze, and by afternoon the fan fest was packed in front of giant screens, everyone yelling at the same time. Inside the Beira-Rio, under that curved white roof, the stands were a wall of Dutch orange. You don't watch a match in Brazil. You stand inside the noise.

Not everyone was celebrating. There was graffiti on the pillars asking "Copa pra quem?", the World Cup for whom, and it stuck with me. Brazil spent a fortune on stadiums while a street sign two blocks away still had to ban horse carts. That tension was part of the trip, the joy and the anger sitting right next to each other. It's a messy, loud, generous country, and I'd go back for the next big tournament in a heartbeat.