My First Churrasco

Yesterday evening V. and her husband invited me and others (including Estrela) to their lovely house for some churrasco. They live on the outskirts of town with a view of the biggest hill in the city. Due to V.'s good directions, I was successfully able to make it there on the bus.

When I arrived we sat outside on the front patio sharing chimarrão and enjoying the sunset and V.'s roses.

 

 

So, it is kind of funny, that I, a vegetarian, would first move to Texas, aka land of BBQ and cowboys, and then come to the state of Rio Grande do Sul, aka land of churrasco and vaqueros (cowboys), for a stint. It's all about meat here! Churrasco is when the meat is put on a metal stick and grilled. Yup, that's one big slab of meat.

My hosts were sensitive to my strange practices and made some accommodations for me. Yay for grilled onions (on the left)!

And of course there was lots of other delicious food to enjoy too: potato salad, tomato & onion salad, garlic bread, salad with carrots, beets & tomatoes, yummy dessert and amazingly delicious homemade wine. V.'s husband has been making wine (both white and red) for decades now and it's really good stuff.  It was a great evening with great company (luckily they ate more meat on my behalf) and delicious food.

Little Germany: Part III

After the trek to see a beautiful waterfall, we went into town. It was a perfectly maintained place.

With cute hydrangea street signs.

We walked under a lovely green canopy.

 

 

And since this was the kind place where every other store was selling delicious chocolate, we had to take a look at how it was made.

Including a groovy machine with a sign asking you to please not touch the controls...makes you kind of want to touch a button, doesn't it?

And then I took in the afternoon with this lovely gentleman.

Then it was time for a ride back through windy mountain roads with pretty views.

Little Germany: Part II

From Nova Petrópolis, we drove to Parque do Caracol in Canela. In the dictionary, caracol translates as snail, curl (of hair) or spiral staircase. Hmm...I should have asked C.C. and M. what it was meant to refer to in this situation...

Here we saw another interesting cast of characters.

Including a lazy frog.

And a traveling bee. (Luckily it wasn't a wasp or I would've taken off running.)

We walked through the woods.

We passed by signs though I'm not sure we were following them. This one in particular is telling us where we can go for a picnic.

The Portuguese word for picnic is Piquenique, which is pronounced "Picky-nicky." It always makes me happy to hear that. Similarly, Brazilians pronounce "Hip hop" as "hippy-hoppy." That also makes me happy.

We made our way to the top of a waterfall.

Then we walked around to view the waterfall in all its splendor.

After oohing and ahhing, we made room for the children behind us to see too.

Then, hot and tired, we settled down with bottles of water to cool off and relax.

Clearly this man was of the same mind as us.

Eventually, we jolted ourselves out of our pleasant stupor and returned to the car for part III of our adventure...

Little Germany: Part I

 Welcome!

 

Bet you thought I was in Brazil, huh? Well, so did I, until today made me think otherwise.

I'm splitting this post about my travels into several parts because otherwise I think I'll overwhelm y'all with photographs!

Little Germany: Part I

Today I was picked up by C.C., friend of a wonderful woman I met in Austin who just happens to be from Porto Alegre. This woman just happens to be the only Brazilian in a capoeira group that also contains a friend of mine, who just happened to see a post I put on Facebook about going to Brazil and got the two of us in touch with each other. And after that meeting this lovely woman got me in touch with C.C.

Life can be really cool that way sometimes. Or really, lots of times.

C.C. brought along her friend M. and the three of us set off in her car to explore mountain towns a few hours outside of Porto Alegre.

First stop: Nova Petrópolis

We took a stroll through the Parque Aldeia do Imigrante, the Village Park of the Immigrant. What immigrant, you ask? Why all the German immigrants who came to southern Brazil in the latter part of the 19th century, of course.

We saw a few of these Germans...

Their creativity...

And the buildings they used to live in...

...where I nearly kidnapped a kitten to come live in the hostel with me.

But s/he seemed a little attached to the peacock. So, a bit forlorn, I parted ways with the lovely creature...

We then ate lunch in a rather German-looking place. It was tasty stuff. The dessert table was a little insane, offering us something like 20 different choices. Yes, I got seconds.

Then we got back into the car and continued our adventures...stopping not much later for a necessary photo opportunity. ;-)

 

And then onward, to Part II!

Historical Violence

Tree and the Land Below
Originally uploaded by Blue Dragonfly Girl

I've been reading a book called "The Brazilians" that my mother gave me for Christmas this year. The other day, I made it to Part III, "The Curse of Violence in Brazil." The description of violence in Rio Grande do Sul (the state where I'll be going) appeared to be the perfect setting for a Cormac McCarthy novel:

"The history of Rio Grande do Sul, a cattle-raising, wheat-growing state in the extreme south of the country and on the borders with Uruguay and Argentina, is soaked in blood. The earliest inhabitants found themselves in constant conflict with warlike Indians, as well as with Spaniards who contested Portuguese control over the sparsely settled region.

"These ongoing struggles made violence part of everyday life...They also produced a tough, belligerent, freedom-loving breed of settler in whose veins mingled the blood of soldiers and adventurers, Portuguese colonists and runaway slaves, Spaniards and Indians. The region's horsemen, known as gauchos, were rugged, fearless fighters who worked the countless herds of wild cattle that roamed the immense southern grasslands.

"The tradition of violence in Rio Grande do Sul did not fade away once the borders between the Portuguese and Spanish colonies had been permanently fixed in the late eighteenth century. During the regency that ruled Brazil after the abdication of Dom Pedro I, a number of regional revolts erupted in various parts of the country. At the end of the nineteenth century, a savage civil war between two political factions tore the state apart. All kinds of atrocities were committed by both sides, the most gruesome involving captors using knives to slaughter prisoners by slitting their throats from ear to ear, the manner gauchos used to kill sheep.

"The violence marking the history of southern Brazil was qualitatively different from violence occurring elsewhere in the country. It did not arise from class conflicts. The clashes with the Spanish (and even the struggles against the Indians) were in the nature of battles between equals. nor did the violence have anything to do with the institution of slavery, inasmuch as relatively few slaves were imported into the region, whose economic well-being did not require an abundance of cheap labor." (p. 236-237)

However, according to the author of the book, Joseph A. Page, despite a historical difference in  violence, Rio Grande do Sul is now on the same wavelength and experiences violence pretty similar to the rest of the country...definitely material for another blog entry.

Geographically Speaking

So Brazil of course is that big green country in South America. If you look closely, you can see Porto Alegre (which Wikipedia likes to translate as Joyous Port or Happy Harbor)  way down near the bottom, close to Uruguay.

Porto Alegre is the capital city of the lowest yellow state, Rio Grande do Sul, quite literally Large River of the South.

Zooming in a little closer, the red section represents the metropolitan area of Porto Alegre.

And, zooming in even closer, here's what you might see when flying in for a landing.  If you click on the image to enlarge it, you'll be able to see a huge plane in the bottom left hand corner, so I'm assuming that's where the airport might be...