Second week Brasil

Still in Curitiba

Yesterday evening I went to the theater. I so much enjoy a theater in Brasilian Portuguese. It is the most beautiful language I know. I love the sound of ths language. It is so soft, it is like music. And there are so any things you can say in Portuguese which are impossible to say in Englsh or German or Hebrew and probably many other languages too. In Portuguese you can make a diminutive of every word which gives it a special meaning. If you would say in German or English to someone she is small or call her small it wouldn't sound nice. In Portuguese small is baixa. Calling so eone baixa wouldn't be nice either but f you use th diminutive baixinha it has something sweet and lovable which s impossible to translate. The faster going bus is called ligeirinho , which gives it an emotional meaning legeiro wouldn't have. There are many words for positive emotions of liking in Portuguese which you cannot translate either. One of them is carinho. It is a warm feeling towads someone or something, more than just liking. And when you call the bus ligeirinho it is a "carinhoso" expression for it. Guess it is hard to explain, especially the feeling that goes with it.

Today I took the tourist bus which has a route of 45 km through Curitiba ( hard to believe you can drive 45 km inside this city) and has stops at all tourist attractions. You can get off at 4 of them with one ticket.

The first place I went was the botanic garden. Here one banana tree blooming with little bananas on it. The botanical garden is not so special. The nicest part is one, where you can touch and smell the plants, jardim das sensacoes. One leaf called orelha de lebre ( hare's ear) is soo soft, it really feels like the softest fur. This garden has animated me to touch many plants that I see from now on.

And below, one of my favorite flowers. It grows on bushes and on trees and is so delicate.

The next stop was the Opera de Arame, a theater all made out of steel. It is an interesting construction. You cross a bridge over a little pretty lake to get there.

Curitiba has so many parks, some of them huge. There is a panoramic tower, 109 meters high, from which you have a wonderful view over all the city and can get a good impression of the many green areas in and around.

After the tower I visited the mercado municipal, a huge market inside a building where they sell mainly food. Fruits, vegetables, meat, fish etc, with many delicious eateries and a department for organic food.

My hotel has an excellent location, less than 10 walking minutes from the historical center, which is beautiful. There is the Paco da Liberdade, which used to be a government building and now s a cultural center ( see foto) with a beautiful cafe. In one of the man squares, largo da Ordem, there is a Sunday market whith 1200 boothes where handicrafts of the region are sold , that attracts about 20.000 persons each weekend.

The handicraft market s really huge. I went there at 9 in th morning and thought I'd spend there 2 hours, well, I was there until 1:30.

At the airport in Curitiba there are people who work here wearing shirts where it is written : may I help you? They should change it to "sorry, I can't help you". I have been trying to find out how the free wifi at the airport works. Nobody could help me. But it wouldn't be Brasilif everything worked! At the hotel the wifi broke down yesterday noon, no one to fix it on Sunday. So I went to the airport early enough so I could check my mails. No chance.

But one thing I really love about Brasil is the way they treat older people ( it feels strange to belong to that category) Everywhere there is a priority treatment. At the post office I didn't have to get in line behind 25 -30 persons, at the airport there is a special line for over 60. Never mind that one person took 15 minutes at the check in counter, so imagine the other line with at least 50 people waiting. At the bus always someone gets up and offers me his seat. It is almost embarrassing, but nice, I really enjoy it.

Even if I want to buy a ticket for the bus I don't have to wait, I I can just go straight to the counter.

Monday I left my hotel at 6:45 , tok the bus to the airport, the plane to Belo Horizonte, the bus from the airport to the bus terminal ( one hour for 30 kilometers), from there the bus to Sao Joao el Rey ( almost 4 hours) and from there the bus to Tiradentes ( only half an hour!) and from there a taxi to my pousada (B&B).

Tiradentes is a lovely old colonial town with trees much higher than the houses, cobblestone streets with very pretty little houses and some beautiful churches.

It is really a town to fall in love with.

All surrounded by hills

I absolutely love the vegetation here

And the way the trees are so much higher than the houses.

One street I love, although it is not easy to walk on these stones:

The main church in Tiradentes, the Igreja Matriz de Santo Antonio, is supposed to be the second most beautiful church in Brasiland the one that has most gold in it. As it is forbidden to photograph I just managed to "steal" 2 photos without being noticed:

Unfortunately I was not able to get the lamp hanging from the beak of the golden bird- can you see it on the right? Unfortunately no details can be seen on this picture.

I stayed in a lovely quite inexpensive pousada, which even had a swimming pool, a delicious treat after 7 hours walking at about 34 degrees

And this lovely livingroom next to my room.

The people in the pousada were extremely nice. The manager even drove me to the next town so I could catch my bus on time.

One thing I love about Brasilians is that they are so communicative and friendly. In the diningroom every one talks to everyone and you get to know everybody while having tea or breakfast. It is so nice. There were Jorge and Neide- Jorge telling me about all kind delicious Brasilian foods and how to make them and complaining that his wife Neide was addicted to her laptop and hardly talked to him. And there were Auxiladora and Nelson, a couple from Belo Horizonte who gave me some advice about what to see in Tiradentes, and Paula, the cook, who made the most delicious pao de queijo, a speciality of Minas Gerais, bread rolls made of manioc flower and cheese, and who promised to mail me the recepy!

Yesterday I left Tiradentes to go to the not so far away beautiful town of Ouro Preto, but as there were no direct busses I had to go back to Belo Horizonte and from there to Ouro Preto so the whole trip took about 6,5 hours.

Ouro Preto is a very special town, probably the prettiest in Brasil. It is built on a very hilly terrain with extremely steep streets, some so steep that not even a car can go up or down. The historical center has so many beautiful old colonial houses. The name Ouro Preto means black gold and was given to the city because the first gold that was found there was inside of a black stone! Then began a gold rush, at the end of the 17th century. At that time the settlement was named Vila Rica (rich settlement). At that time Brasil was still a Portuguese colony and Portugal demanded that 20% of the gold found be sent to Portugal

As with the time gold became less and the Portuguese demanded ever more and made laws that made life for the Brasilianpopulation more and more difficult, a group of Brasilians in Ouro Preto in 1789 tried to plan a revolt against the Portuguese. They were led by the famous Joaquim Jose da Silva Xavier who was a dentist and therefore had the nickname Tiradentes ( teeth extractor). The group was betrayed by one of its members and Tiradentes was caughed and hanged. He is one of the most famousBrasilian heroes. The town of Tiradentes, where he was born, was so named after his death.

In Ouro Preto there is a museum in honor of Tiradentes and the men who together with him planned the revolt against Portugal, the so called inconfidentes, the Museo da Inconfidencia Mineira.

Which is on the main square, the Praca da Republica.

Some more pictures of Ouro Preto where you can see the beautiful old houses.

And some more impressions of Ouro Preto

And the Teatro Municipal ( theater and opera) of Ouro preto, the oldest one in South America

Another tree I fell in live with

And more of Ouro Preto

As you might have noticed, I am really in love with that city.

On the picture bellow you can see in the background the peak " pico do Itacolomi", a symbol of Ouro Preto. The first person who found here gold recognised the place when he came back by this peak.

Ouro Preto is very touristic and therefore a very expensive city. So I chose the cheapest hotel I could find, the Pousada Vila Rica. It was built in 1750 and reminds me of Frankenstein's Castle. Its furnishing is kind of basic, as you can see in the following pictures

The room even had a TV which you could watch if you were tall enough to reach up to the buttons , which also served as cupboard for hanging your clothes.

A very decorative lamp. Sorry, I turned it around but it insists in remaining horizontal.

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Very comfortable stairs

And it even has a piano

Probably from 1750..

From Ouro Preto I took the train Maria Fumaca ( in English: Mary smoke) to a nearby town, Mariana

There used to be good trains in Brasil. When I lived in Sao Paulo in the fifties of the last century there was for example a regular train from Sao Paulo to Rio de Janeiro, I even had to learn the names of the 15 villages where it used to stop by heart at school. (I could still tell you all of them if it interests you). For some sad reason there are only 3 little old trains left in Brasil which look like they came out of the museum and they only transport tourists for exorbitant prices. The train from Ouro Preto to Mariana has an average velocity of 18 km per hour, so it needs one hour for the trip. This train is 100 years old!

Marianas historical center is much smaller than Ouro Preto but very beautiful too. In Ouro Pretos old town there are 25 churches. The Brasilians are very religious. Every time the bus passes near a church you can see some women in the bus making the sign of a cross. That keeps them quite busy with so many churches. In Mariana I counted 4 churches along one single street, which is not even 500 m long. Here you can even see 2 churches next to each other.The streets are also paved with cobble stones. Mariana is supposed to be the oldest city in Brasil.

What I love about it are the colourful cute small houses with their pretty windows.

I was walking along the street and an old woman was standing by the window. I greeted her when I passed and she started chatting with me, asked me where I come from ( Sao Paulo I said, as usual), wanted to know if I was married and where I was staying, told me she was going to be 100 years old and that her memory was excellent,

She showed me some photos of her children and grandchildren, told me very proud that they had all finished university, 2 were doctors and one was a lawyer. She was so sweet. I asked her if I could take a photo of her and she said, with pleasure. When I said good bye she sent me a kiss and said "God bless you" . This is Brasil.