On Cristiano Ruschel Marques Dias’s first day at work in Ireland, he was somewhat horrified to be asked “What’s the craic?” by his manager.
“I was so confused. I said, ‘You guys are talking about drugs, right? I’m sorry but what do you mean?’ My manager said, ‘It’s what’s the craic like, what’s going on?’ Then I said, ‘Sorry, it sounds like something else’. My manager burst out laughing and said, ‘Oh my God, that’s deadly’.”
His manager’s use of the word ‘deadly’ only caused Dias more confusion. He thought: “That’s deadly? That’s a bad thing. Or should I call an ambulance or something?”
While Dias admits he struggled to understand accents and expressions when he first moved from his native Brazil to Dublin, it has become easier over time.
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“Now I’ve learned many expressions. My girlfriend and I always say, ‘Sure look, you know yourself’ and ‘In fairness...’ She gave me a book of Irish expressions. I now try to drop some of them in conversation when I am speaking.”
He met his Irish girlfriend Isabel through the National Symphony Chorus.
The first thing Dias did when offered a job in Dublin was to request an audition with the chorus.
“I started singing when I was 10 years old, and in the beginning I did it as doing the audition meant that I could skip a double Portuguese lesson.”
Dias was asked to join his school’s choir after the audition. “When they called me to the first rehearsal, I was still not very convinced, but after that rehearsal I was hooked.”
When Dias joined the chorus in Ireland, he was shocked they didn’t have a WhatsApp group.
“In Brazil we have WhatsApp groups for everything, like organising socials, organising everything. I asked, how do you organise the socials? They said, what socials? I was like, what the hell?”
[ ‘Life in Dublin was very chaotic. It was bad then and I’m sure it’s worse now’Opens in new window ]
Dias set up a WhatsApp group-chat for the chorus’s younger members and started to organise karaoke nights for them. Isabel, also a member of the chorus, attended the socials and eventually asked Dias out on a date, and the couple have been together since.
His move to Dublin had been prompted by a year he spent on exchange in Manchester during his time at university.
“When I moved to Manchester, I saw so many societies, I joined like half of them. I joined the mountain-biking society, the historical re-enactment society, the wakeboard [a watersport] society. Any society that I could join, I gave it a go, to make the most of the experience. When I went back to Brazil I thought ‘Wow, there’s so many possibilities’.”
Dias was inspired to start participating in “hackathons”, online competitions where teams of people collaborate intensely to solve a particular problem or create a project. His success at these events meant he was hired as a software engineer in Brazil while still at university. The job gave Dias the opportunity to come to Ireland and work with the Irish team for a while.
“I liked it so much that I thought, okay, maybe I should graduate someday so I can move somewhere like this.”
He found people in Ireland to be especially friendly.
“On my first day here, I was waiting to get the Luas to go to work and some guy just started chatting to me. I remember thinking that was a bit weird. But on the second day, the same thing happened again. I thought this must be how things are here. On the third day I was actually enjoying it, I was just having chats with people at the Luas stop. It’s the same thing in the pub, people just talk to each other.”
At the end of his time with the Irish team, Dias went back to Brazil, finished university, and started to apply for jobs in Ireland. He moved to Dublin full-time in November 2020.
Dias has, however, found renting here incredibly stressful. “I would send dozens of applications for a place, go to a couple of viewings, and just get ignored.”
His workplace provided him with accommodation up until the 2020 Christmas break. Dias then left Dublin to go back to Brazil for that first Christmas, with his belongings in storage and nowhere to live in upon his return.
![Cristiano Ruschel Marques Dias: 'People kind of expect that [drinking alcohol] of you. But I feel that nowadays there are ways around it.'
Photograph: Dara Mac Dónaill](https://www.irishtimes.com/resizer/v2/Q23CASQW6VB3XKFCPTZMO6TXVA.jpg?auth=9c181c8915f264601c5fa625ad5c5f0c5b5e59886f7d939988bd0aa039251f10&width=800&height=533)
“There was a chance that I would come back and maybe stay in hotels for a while, and if it became financially impossible, I would have had to move back.” Luckily, a property he had previously viewed suddenly became available that Christmas.
While Dias loves how friendly Irish people are, he does sometimes struggle socially as a non-drinker.
“People kind of expect that [drinking alcohol] of you. But I feel that nowadays there are ways around it. There are ‘zero’ drinks, and people are more accepting of you having soft drinks.”
His drink of choice in the pub since moving to Ireland? A rock shandy. During his first few weeks here, a friend found out he didn’t drink and told him, “Let me introduce you to the best drink ever, and he bought me a rock shandy.”
Despite having had two bikes stolen while living here, Dias still feels that it’s safer here than in Brazil. He was robbed at gunpoint twice back home – once as a child when his family experienced a carjacking, and again as a teenager when robbers took his school backpack.
“These things are more of a reality in Brazil.”
Dias sees his future as being in Ireland, and hopes to buy a house here.
“I’m really happy with what I’ve built in Ireland.”
We would like to hear from people who have moved to Ireland in the past 10 years. To get involved, email newtotheparish@irishtimes.com or tweet @newtotheparish
