Santa Maria

I’m just back from a trip to the south of Brazil. First there was a conference in Santa Maria and then I stayed in Porto Alegre over the weekend. Before the conference everyone told me that Santa Maria is a tiny tiny place that barely exists on the map. I didn’t really believe this since I have realised that many people here have completely different references. Once I said that I think Belo Horizonte is a big city (~2.5 million in the city with over 5 million in the metropolitan area). One of the people I was talking with couldn’t help herself but started laughing. Then she said that she was from Mexico City with over 20 million people in the metropolitan area… In the end it turned out that about 270 000 people live in Santa Maria, so it is very small…

The conference was relatively small and nice, but there was especially one big problem; all the talks were in Portuguese! After having studied Portuguese for one week my Portuguese has improved, but I’m still far from being able to understand technical presentations. Some of the presentations had ppt-slides in English, which made it better, but it was still really difficult. It was still really nice to meet and get to know a lot of nice people, as always on conferences.

They really enjoy barbecues in the south of Brazil. In many restaurants there is a big buffet table in the dining room. This is filled with a lot of fruits, vegetables, rise and so on, but no meat. Instead they have waiters running around with big pieces of meat on enormous skewers. They walk around the tables asking if you want a slice of what they are carrying. If it looks delicious (which it does) you just make a sign and they cut a tasty piece for you. 

The conference organised one of these barbecues one evening. There was a stage in the big dining room, but for most of the evening it was empty. Well, instead of hiring a band for the whole night, they put a projector and a screen showing a recording of a band from some other place. They played traditional music from the south of Brazil, which sounded awfully similar to German traditional music. Later in the evening, there was a live band and dancers showing traditional dances as well.

Apparently, the south of Brazil has a lot of influences from Germany. I saw the drawing below painted on a sports hall. It might show who the (southern) Brazilians see as their main rivals in football…

View from my hotel room in Santa Maria. Perhaps not the best view ever, but still not bad at all…