The beer detour

This is how the Lonely Planet describes the visit in Blumenau on a South America Journey. And to be honest, that's excactly what it was for us...
We went there to visit Nestor and Susan, see a how the germans lived here and still do. Just to mention it: we've been there for four days and there was beer on every one of them, and not just one! Not that it was a bad thing ;)
After Nestor welcomed us with a beer in the afternoon, we went to a brewery called "Eisenbahn" to have some more.

The next day, after playing with the cats, watching some Kolibris and drinking a beer in the afternoon, we went to the Beer Fest in the Villa Germanica. It's like a fair about beer where lots brazilian micro brewerys (lots of them with german names like Ein Bier, Schornstein or Handwerk) and some international ones show and sell their Beer.

We had some and had another outside before we went home.

On the third day we went to visit Susans town, named Pomerode. We met her family and went to the "Osterfest" to have look at lots of Easter decorations accompanied by a german Volksmusik Band.

Having seen that, we went to a nice beer garden to have a Schornstein Pils (or two)...

For dinner went to a Pizzeria and shared a 50cm Pizza with the four of us. We nearly made it:

For completing the evening we went to the Schornstein Brewery and shared one Beer:

The next day was about shopping. Buying some "German/Brazilian" souvenirs in the Villa Germanica and all the ingredients for serving Nestor a Döner which he used to love during his time in Germany...

The cooking took part on the day of our departure and it was actually quite good and I hope Nestor felt a bit like beeing in Leipzig again ;)

I'm pretty sure I am supposed to drink a lot of beer as a german, but to be honest, it has been a while since I had that much beer in four days in a row! But we really enjoyed it, espacially because of Susan, Nestor and his family who made it four great days with friends!

So if you ever visit Blumenau prepare yourself for Beer!!!

São Paulo

When we left Rio in the morning the sun was shining and it was about 35°C warm, 6 hours later we arrived in São Paulo and the rain was pouring down and the streets were flooded. We arrived wet but safe at Maxis and Rodrigos place which was actually pretty lucky because we took the wrong street and when we stopped at the corner a guy who worked for the city came up to us on his motorbike and told us: "You really shouldn't go down this street, you could have been assaulted. I followed you to make sure you were ok." I actually do now believe that anybody would have robbed us in this rain but it was still very kind of him.

Apart from the wet beginning we had a very nice time in São Paulo. Florian became very good friends with Schatzinha (one of my friend's cats, see her play with a hairband here) and we visited the japanese neighbourhood of Libertade, went to museums and markets and got to know some of Maxis and Rodrigos friends. Also they took us out into a grilled meat-restaurant (Churrascaria), where we ate so much that we were afraid to explode if we'd moved to fast.

- Sandra

Florian dances Samba

After we visited the most touristy places our hosts took us out to a really nice bar with live music and those you know Florian probably won't believe it, but he actully danced ALL NIGHT LONG. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures to prove it...

We also did a very nice tour through the historic center organised by a brazilian guy from couchsurfing. He was so awesome. He actually does this tour every week on his day off work and on the day we did it, it was the first time that a bigger amount of people participated. He told us that before he always only had one or two people, but this time we were about twelve, so it was much more exhausting for him to keep everybody together and make sure everybody understands what he was telling us. But all in all it was a really great tour which showed us again what a fantastic thing couchsurfing is.

- Sandra

Rio de Janeiro

After 3 hours of flight to Lisbon and another 9 to Rio, we are finally here!
It is warm and humid and I'm pretty sure if it was possible it would be more than 100% humidity! But I don't want to complain, because it is way better than minus degrees and snow!
So we arrived on Monday at about six in the morning and our first task was to find the right bus to our hosts in Niteroi. That actually quite easy. All we had to do was to wait at the right spot for the bus with the right number. It became a bit more difficult during the end.
The bus was quite empty at the airport, only us and about five other people. So we sat down pretty much in the front. But after driving for about an hour it was impossible for anybody to squeeze in.  What you should know, is that you can leave the bus only at the back. And as we had to realise, it is not very easy to get 3 backpacks and a suitcase to the end of a bus full of people who can't move!
With some portuguese words thrown at us we made it... So if you ever want to go by bus in Rio with your luggage, go to the back!!!!
After we got out, it was only a five minute walk and we arrived at Livia's and Enrico's place.
A shower and some glasses of water we left to visit the first tourist attraction: The sugar loaf.

We took the cable car up the two mountains and had wonderful view over the city!
Being down again, we found a nice little restaurant at the foot of the mountain and had our first beer in Brazil!

That was enough for the first day so we went home, went to a supermarket to get some food, cooked some pasta and went to bed...

At the second day we went out to see Christ the Redeemer. We were lucky with the weather because there were no clouds when we arrived at the top, just lots of tourists stretching out their arms...

After we have taken all of our pictures, the clouds came and we left... Somehow it took the whole day so all we did afterwards was getting back to the center, getting more maps of Rio, buying some more food, cooking, having a "Bohemia" Beer and now writing a blog.