Discovering New Worlds Without Leaving the Table

Curiosity often begins with a passport, but it doesn’t always need one. Sometimes a new world is only a conversation away.

The conversation began, as many good conversations do, with the weather. Monica described a chilly Australian morning, Fruitloop laughed about frozen toes after South Africa swung from two degrees to twenty-two in just a few hours, and everyone settled into another Brida table. Before long, however, the discussion moved somewhere much warmer: curiosity.

What does it really mean to discover another world?

For Monica, another world isn’t necessarily another country. It can simply be stepping outside your normal routine. Meeting different people, trying unfamiliar activities, or doing something that feels slightly uncomfortable can be enough to open a completely new chapter.

Rosii immediately connected the question with her own experiences abroad. Studying English for forty-five days in Tampa had been far more than learning vocabulary. It was discovering that real English sounded nothing like the carefully written dialogues in textbooks.

She laughed as she remembered arriving confidently prepared for “How are you?” only to hear completely different expressions from native speakers.

“It was amazing,” she reflected. “I thought I knew English. Then I realised… I didn’t.”

Yet that realisation wasn’t discouraging. It became the beginning of genuine learning.

Sometimes another world isn’t far away at all.

The Mayor shared how a simple trip to the neighbouring village for a haircut had unexpectedly become an adventure. After months of spending most of his time inside his office, even familiar streets suddenly looked different.

“I’ve been going to the same hairdresser for five years,” he explained. “Yesterday I noticed the house opposite for the first time.”

Nothing had changed.

Except him.

It was a reminder that curiosity isn’t only about travelling thousands of kilometres. Sometimes changing your perspective is enough to make ordinary places feel completely new.

For Fruitloop, another world had recently arrived through a YouTube travel series. She had become fascinated by a presenter who travels across the globe tasting local food. Watching Aboriginal communities prepare kangaroo and wallaby, seeing unusual ingredients, and learning how different cultures eat had completely captured her imagination.

It wasn’t simply about exotic food.

It was about seeing everyday life through someone else’s eyes.

That idea sparked another question.

If there was one community or place everyone was curious about, where would it be?

Rosii didn’t hesitate.

She wants to visit the Mayor’s small French village.

Years ago he had shown it to her on a map, and ever since she has imagined peaceful streets without endless traffic jams, somewhere calm enough that life moves at a different pace.

Living in São Paulo means planning almost every outing around traffic. The thought of simply walking through a quiet village felt almost dreamlike.

“I think one day I will go there,” she smiled.

Monica understood exactly what she meant. Having already visited, she remembered the peaceful streets, old buildings, coffee and cake, vineyards and gentle countryside. If she could choose somewhere to live, it would be a small village in Austria or Switzerland where there were bakeries, walking trails, snow in winter, and nature just outside the front door.

The Mayor’s own curiosity, however, pointed in the opposite direction.

Rather than visiting famous landmarks, he hopes one day to visit the homes of Brida members themselves.

São Paulo.

South Africa.

Australia.

Not as tourists see them, but as friends experience them every day.

After years of seeing faces inside little Zoom squares, he dreams of meeting everyone in three dimensions.

That may be one of the quiet gifts of Brida itself.

Every conversation becomes a small journey around the world.

The discussion then took an unexpected turn.

If aliens landed on Earth and only had five minutes to understand humanity, what should we show them?

Monica suggested introducing them to politicians.

Not because it would impress them.

Quite the opposite.

She suspected they would climb straight back into their spaceship after watching people argue over how to run a country.

Rosii chose yoga.

For her, yoga represents something deeply human. It slows the mind, reconnects her with herself and creates a calmness that is often missing from everyday life. If aliens wanted to understand people, perhaps they should first understand that humans spend much of life trying to find inner peace.

The Mayor imagined something rather more French.

A Saturday morning market in Provence.

Fresh food.

A glass of pastis.

A leisurely lunch.

People talking.

Beautiful surroundings.

Not because markets define humanity, but because they reveal one of its greatest strengths: our ability to create beauty, community and pleasure from ordinary moments.

Fruitloop imagined introducing visitors from another planet to something equally universal.

A South African barbecue.

Good food.

Good company.

And, naturally, her son, whose unpredictable personality would probably provide enough entertainment all by itself.

The laughter continued as the group debated Vegemite, kangaroo meat, sandwich spread that schoolchildren nicknamed “camel vomit,” and all the wonderfully strange foods that seem perfectly normal until someone from another country sees them for the first time.

What began as a conversation about discovering other worlds slowly revealed something much deeper.

We often imagine curiosity as something that requires flights, visas and expensive holidays.

But around this table, curiosity looked different.

It was listening to someone describe a peaceful village you’ve never seen.

It was hearing what English sounds like through someone else’s ears.

It was imagining beaches, bakeries, yoga classes, traffic jams and Saturday markets through another person’s daily life.

Perhaps the biggest discovery wasn’t another country at all.

Perhaps it was the simple realisation that every person already lives in a world we have never experienced.

And every genuine conversation offers us a passport to visit it.