Some days, Belgium feels like a beautiful, grey-scale painting. Elegant, historic, and utterly charming. But my soul was painted in the riotous, technicolor chaos of Brazil. Today, the longing for that color was a physical ache, a dull thud behind my ribs that no amount of Belgian chocolate could fix.

I was wandering through the Marché du Midi, the Sunday market that sprawls along the central boulevard. It’s a feast for the senses. The sharp, earthy smell of cheese, the brilliant colors of seasonal flowers, the chatter of a dozen languages. But my feet carried me past the stalls of waffles and beer, pulled by an invisible thread toward a small, unassuming stand run by an older couple with kind, weathered faces.

And then I smelled it.

Cinnamon. Cloves. The warm, sweet perfume of baking dough. It wasn’t the scent of Belgium. It was the scent of my grandmother’s kitchen in Rio, the air thick and sweet on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It was the scent of pão de mel.

My heart did a little flip. Honey bread. The one thing that could transport me 9,000 kilometers in a single breath.

“Uma, por favor,” I asked, my Portuguese softer than usual, tinted with the nostalgia.

The woman smiled, her eyes crinkling as she wrapped a small, golden-brown cake in paper. It was still warm, its weight solid and comforting in my palm. I found a spot on a nearby bench, ignoring the drizzle that had started to fall, and peeled back the paper.

The first bite was a time machine. The dense, moist cake gave way to a sticky, sweet honey filling that coated my tongue. The spices bloomed cinnamon, a hint of nutmeg, something else I couldn’t name but knew in my bones. I closed my eyes, and for a moment, I wasn’t on a cold bench in Brussels. I was a little girl again, sitting on the cool tile floor of my vovó’s kitchen, watching her hands, wrinkled and strong, knead the dough with a practiced, rhythmic motion.

She never measured anything. A handful of this, a pinch of that. “Mia, meu amor,” she would say, her voice a low, warm hum, “cooking is about feeling. Not numbers.” She’d let me lick the spoon, the raw honey and cinnamon a sticky, heavenly mess on my fingers. Those were the moments I felt most loved, most seen. Not just a granddaughter, but her little apprentice, the keeper of her secrets.

The market sounds faded away. I was just a girl and her grandmother, sharing a secret language of flour and honey. The ache in my chest didn’t disappear, but it changed. It softened, melting into a warm, bittersweet glow. It was the feeling of being homesick and at home, all at once.

I finished the last crumb, licking the sweetness from my fingers just like I did when I was a child. The rain was falling a little harder now, but I didn’t mind. I had found my color for the day. It wasn’t the brilliant green of the jungle or the electric blue of the coast. It was the warm, golden brown of honey bread.

It’s funny, isn’t it? How we carry our homes within us. How a scent, a taste, a sound can unlock a whole world we thought we’d left behind. I’m a Brazilian woman living in Belgium, a blend of sun and rain, of samba and classical music. I am both here and there. And sometimes, on a grey Sunday afternoon, all it takes is a little piece of honey bread to remind me that I’m exactly where I need to be.

Want to know what other Brazilian secrets I keep? Some things are too sweet for just words… and they’re waiting for you on my Friends2Follow, where I share the parts of me that don’t fit in a blog post. 😉

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