Merry Christmas!

In the last post before Christmas I thought I would show some pictures of the Christmas lighting here in Belo Horizonte. Here almost no one puts Christmas lights in their windows, but some of the parks and roads in the centre are filled with lights. 

Merry Christmas everyone!!!

Haus München

Today I went to a German restaurant called Haus München. There was a sign at the entrance saying that they had 321 different kinds of beer. Many of these were from Germany and Belgium, but they had beers from all over the world. Despite this big selection of good beers, many of the Brazilian customers chose to drink the local Brazilian beers. The ones who were a bit more adventurous indulged in a Heineken or Stella. The only reason I can see for this behaviour is that the more exotic beers (from a Brazilian point of view...) were more expensive. However, I do not understand why you would go to this place if you want to drink beers that are standard in Brazil. I definitely enjoyed my selection of German and Belgian beers.

There were some other things that were quite nice with this place. Some of the menus were normal menus, whereas others were on iPads that the waiters passed around. Another cool thing was that the waiters served the beers in the same way as champagne is served, see below.

Conference part 2

I ended up taking a lot of pictures during the conference. We put up a lot of them on the conference homepage: http://www.enbraer.com.br. There are some pictures at the bottom of the page and many more if you click the links called 13 till 16 Dezembro. So if you want to take a look at a lot of crazy scientists you can check the link...

Conference

There is a conference, which is related to my work, here in Belo Horizonte now. Almost all who are attending it are Brazilians, which means that almost everything will be in Portuguese. Since my Portuguese still isn't very good, I didn't plan on attending it very much, but it turns out that I am the official photographer...

Colour sketch view from my flat

View from my flat, using a colour sketch mode in my camera...

Pictures from Belo Horizonte

In most of the buses here there are two people working, one driving the bus and one who is handling the money. This person is controlling a turnstile and only letting through people who have paid. This reduces the time the bus has to stay at every stop since the driver doesn't have to worry about any payments, and it creates a lot of jobs. 

Below is a picture of the Brazilian version of an ice cream truck.

Can you guess what the pictures below are showing?

No, they are not holders for flowers or anything similar. 

They are bins for household garbage...

Gothenburg, sweet Gothenburg

I managed to come back to Gothenburg for a few days as well. It was really nice to meet so many fantastic Swedes again. Unfortunately that doesn't happen too often anymore. Thank you very much for the party and the nice gifts!

Edinburgh, sweet Edinburgh

Last week I was back in Edinburgh for a few days. Edinburgh is a really nice city filled with amazing people. 


I was at a ceremony which felt like it was a part of the Harry Potter stories. A lot of people running around in gowns and hoods with different colours.
The idea of the sorting hat in Harry Potter is taken from here. In reality the hat is not used to sort people, but instead people who are graduating from the university are hit in the head by the hat. This tradition is very old and most people who have graduated from Edinburgh University have been hit in the head by the same hat. The hat is believed to be made of John Knox' trousers and a part of it was taken aboard on the space shuttle Discovery during a space mission in 2006.

I wish I could have stayed a bit longer in Edinburgh and played some more samba football ;)
Thank you very much to everyone in Edinburgh for the wonderful time I had there! I miss you all...

Brazilian football

The last matches of the Brazilian football season were played today. One of the local teams, Cruzeiro, were on the borderline of being relegated, so I decided to watch their match which also was a derby against Atletico-MG. Cruzeiro is vastly popular here in Belo Horizonte, so the match was quite important. The team has never been relegated and have the last few years been fighting to win the league, not to stay in the top division.

As is common in the southern parts of Europe, the Brazilian players like to take a short rest during the matches. Very often they decide to lay down for a while. They seem to have a problem with falling asleep though, instead of sleeping they roll around for a while before they get up again. This behaviour generates a lot of free kicks, which creates many good goal scoring opportunities. This could be one of the reasons behind the many goals that are scored.

Another reason could be that the Brazilian football is known to be very attack minded, which also was the case in this match. There were a lot of goals, Cruzeiro won the match 6-1. However, the many goals scored in the match were not mainly due to fantastic attacking football (which you hope for and expect of Brazilian football), instead the defenses were next to nonexistent. Almost all of the goals could have been avoided with some very basic defending or if the defenders actually would have defended.

It was therefore a very different match compared to the British and Swedish football I am used to, but it was entertaining. Even some of the divings were quite hilarious...

Corinthians won the league two points ahead of Vasco da Gama after both teams finished the season with a draw.

Parabéns!!!

Here is a short language class. It's short but important, especially today...

Parabéns!!!
Happy birthday!!!
Grattis!!!
Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!!!
Gelukkige Verjaardag!!!

No, it's not MY birthday...

Cachoeiras in Carrancas

We had a holiday in the beginning of this week to commemorate the proclamation of the Brazilian republic. I celebrated this by going out to the countryside to a place called Carrancas. The town is really small and there is not much to see in the centre. There are, however, a lot of beautiful cachoeiras around. Cachoeira is the Portuguese word for waterfall. I have included a lot of pictures below, but there was still a lot more to see.

If water flows over stone for a long time, it can etch holes in the stone. Here a heart shaped hole had been formed.

I saw one of the biggest wild spiders I have ever seen. The spider in the picture below is the size of my whole hand!

In one place the water had been smoothing out the stone for a long time and thus created a natural slide. The slide was incredibly smooth and it was possible to pick up a quite high speed before splashing into a natural pool.

Here follows a few pictures of one of my favourite waterfalls in Carrancas. It is called Zilda's waterfall. It's not the biggest, highest or broadest fall, but it had a bit of everything. And while roads often had been made to the bigger waterfalls, you had to go through the forest for a while to reach this one. I found a small path that lead into the forest and decided to follow it without knowing where I would end up. After walking for a while in (relatively) boring nature, I ended up next to this waterfall. Along the way I found a little dog, which followed me to the waterfall. I never found its owner, but it disappeared while I was enjoying the waterfall and the pool below it.

Just as there was a storm coming in, we found a little pub in the middle of nowhere, so we decided to stay there for a while.

Someone brought a guitar to the cachoeira and left it in a tree while he went for a little swim. I thought it looked really nice with the bag hanging in the tree over the flip flops and with the guitar high up in the tree.

Buses

There are a few seats reserved for old people, pregnant women, people with small children and for people with disabilities. All this is very normal, but on the buses here, these seats are also reserved for obese people, see the picture below. I have never seen this before.

Mariana

The Portuguese and the British built railroads to transport the gold (and other minerals) in this area. Many of these railroads are since long abandoned, and Brazil now has a very small network of railroads. Brazil would have had significantly more railroads if the big police in the north wouldn't have interfered in order to establish a huge market for cars.
There is still an old train running from Ouro Preto to Mariana, which is a neighbouring town. The view from the train during this ride is spectacular.

I went into one of the old mines between Ouro Preto and Mariana. You enter the mine using an old small train car, which is connected to an engine with a loong rope. This slowly lowers you into the mine and afterwards pulls you up again. The mine is not active anymore and many of the tunnels have been filled with water. The water is very clear, since nothing can live there. Sometimes people go diving in the water and the visibility is supposed to be up to 50 m.

Entrance to the mine.

Entrance to the diving area.