When Papai mentioned our weekend excursion to his co-workers, they were like, "Why are you going to Blumenau? What is there to do there??" We wanted to visit Blumenau for two reasons.
- We heard from our friend Don Black who married a Brazilian and spent some time living in Brazil that he found really cool Christmas ornaments in Blumenau.
- At Christmas time Blumenau has a German Christmas Village. We wanted to see that.
Blumenau is about an hour and a half drive mostly south and a bit east of Joinville. The drive was beautiful. It was so cool to see all the new-to-us plants and vegetation. Everything is so green here! The freeways here in the south are pretty well maintained. There are toll booths ($1.80 reais or about $.72 American) for a car at each stop and the amount increases depending on the size of your transportation. There were also these speed checks every once in awhile--tall, electronic sensors on the side of the road to check our speed. It works well here. Whatever the speed limit people slow to 10 or 15 km below it to pass by the speed checks. (Another interesting fact--in Portuguese kilometers is spelled "quilometros" but they still abbreviate it with "km".) Anyway, I enjoyed the drive down as much as the rest of the day.
They have Ampm here, and Shell as well.
These beautiful flowering trees are all over!
We passed a golden chicken...
Speed check...
We were able to find the Christmas Village Weihnachtsdorf fairly easily (my husband is awesome, and goes prepared) and we scored a parking spot right at the entrance! The Christmas village was decorated cute for the holiday and was filled with little shops full of tourist delights. We enjoyed going through "Casa do Papai Noel" (Santa's house or more directly translated Father Christmas's House) and seeing his living room, dining room and bedroom upstairs. I loved that in the bedroom Papai Noel had pictures of him and his wife enjoying the sights all over the world. He particularly had a lot of pictures of himself surfing and hanging out on the beach. It was cute. I wish I had taken a picture of that. Neither kid wanted to actually talk to Papai Noel as they were afraid he would only speak Portuguese but in the end I bribed them to go back so we could get pictures. Papai translated for Papai Noel and the kids left with a handful of candy.
We made it to Weihnachtsdorf!!
Santa's house
Even the trash cans are decorated!
There was also this really cute elf village with 4-5 small playhouse sized homes and an elf next to each one (just a statue/doll thing-not a real person). The kids loved going in and out of those and playing with the things in the playhouses. Another thing they loved was playing on the playground. There was a typical Brazilian playground--painted wood and metal. The kids could have stayed a long time but we were really there to find our Christmas ornament.
Elf Village
Once we started walking around the shops we realized this place was much smaller than we originally thought and we were able to go through all of them pretty quickly. The village consisted of one big circle with a few shops in the middle and two pub/restaurants on either end of the middle section. There were a couple of chocolate shops, a bread/sausage shop, a beer related shop, and a bunch of shops selling mostly similar tourist items on the outside circle. I found some awesome leiderhosen aprons that I thought would be fun to give my sister and my dad but they had Oktoberfest written on them in pretty big letters so I ended up not getting them since we're not really into drinking. There were lots of T-shirts, mugs, hats, magnets, and all the normal tourist pleasures. We found Blumenau shirts for $7 reias each ($2.80) for the kids and hats for them as well. Papai thought about getting soccer team mugs for his co-workers for Christmas but we didn't end up doing that. I decided on a cute little German home barometer that works a bit like a cuckoo clock. When the sun is shining the girl comes out of the house and when it's raining the boy comes out of the house. I also came home with a dish cloth. We didn't have any luck finding special, one-of-a-kind, or distinctly Brazilian/German type ornaments. That was a bit of a disappointment.
My souvenir on the left, some wreaths I liked on the right
Christmas cookies
We enjoyed the live accordian polka music from two entertainers fully decked out in traditional German garb and we ended up having lunch at one of the German pubs there at the village. It was famous for it's German potatoes, which we didn't end up getting. Instead we got burgers and fries for the kids and a meat platter to share between us. It was pretty good.
After lunch we explored the larger open area on the other side of the village. There was a huge building/venue that was mostly closed except for the the inside foyer/hallways. which had some Christmas tree and holiday dinner table displays--Festival of Trees style. As I'm typing this up I keep thinking I wish I had taken more photos! But to be honest it was just so hot and humid, I think the heat was melting my brain and my stomach was iffy as well so I was pretty lax about taking pictures. Back outside again we found a HUGE Christmas tree with a short tunnel through it in the center of the square. Another portion had a few boutique type shops in which I found some really cute things but I haven't had the "spending" bug as much as I often do at home. For one, we have limited space on the way home and two, being here even in this supposedly much more 1st world area has been very humbling and I find I don't really "need" so much.
In this area we also finally found the "snow" area. We were able to catch the last minute or less of the "snow" (soap suds falling onto rocks painted white--Brazilians want a white Christmas as well!). It would have been nice to stick around to get the full affect but it only snowed every half hour and we had some other things we wanted to see. We found a huge advent calendar and some face cut-outs of Santa and Mrs. Claus. We notice a bunch of people walking into a large convention center and walking out with bags of stuff for free so we went in to ask about it. It turns out the gifts were for families who work for the city--it was like their Christmas bonus so we walked out empty handed!
That was pretty much it for the Christmas village and we were burning hot at 2 or 3pm in the afternoon so we headed back to our car. Since we were in Blumenau though we thought we'd drive around and check out a few more of the sights. I had done a little research about the main attractions but we realized once we had a good laugh about Papai's co-worker's reactions--there really wasn't a whole lot more to do in Blumenau. We checked out the Prefeitura Municipal de Blumenau (Blumenau's City Hall) which was a cool traditional German structure. While we were there the kids got to play on the old train wagon (Macuco) in front and we caught a glimpse of Ponte Aldo Pereira de Andrade, a bridge that is supposedly a point of interest in Blumenau. The kids weren't thrilled about any of this stuff so we stopped at a playground to let them play for a bit. True to my resolution, I opened my mouth and chatted with a lady who sat next to me on the bench--just to practice my Portuguese. Good thing Brazilians are known for being warm and caring. The lady was very nice and talked to be about the different things to see in Blumenau.
In this area we also finally found the "snow" area. We were able to catch the last minute or less of the "snow" (soap suds falling onto rocks painted white--Brazilians want a white Christmas as well!). It would have been nice to stick around to get the full affect but it only snowed every half hour and we had some other things we wanted to see. We found a huge advent calendar and some face cut-outs of Santa and Mrs. Claus. We notice a bunch of people walking into a large convention center and walking out with bags of stuff for free so we went in to ask about it. It turns out the gifts were for families who work for the city--it was like their Christmas bonus so we walked out empty handed!
I spy Olaf in Leiderhosen....
That was pretty much it for the Christmas village and we were burning hot at 2 or 3pm in the afternoon so we headed back to our car. Since we were in Blumenau though we thought we'd drive around and check out a few more of the sights. I had done a little research about the main attractions but we realized once we had a good laugh about Papai's co-worker's reactions--there really wasn't a whole lot more to do in Blumenau. We checked out the Prefeitura Municipal de Blumenau (Blumenau's City Hall) which was a cool traditional German structure. While we were there the kids got to play on the old train wagon (Macuco) in front and we caught a glimpse of Ponte Aldo Pereira de Andrade, a bridge that is supposedly a point of interest in Blumenau. The kids weren't thrilled about any of this stuff so we stopped at a playground to let them play for a bit. True to my resolution, I opened my mouth and chatted with a lady who sat next to me on the bench--just to practice my Portuguese. Good thing Brazilians are known for being warm and caring. The lady was very nice and talked to be about the different things to see in Blumenau.
Prefeitura Municipal
Train wagon
Flower garden
Hillside of purple flowering trees--the picture doesn't do it justice.
VINES and jungle like trees!
Nativity at the Prefeitura
Ponte Aldo Pereira de Andrade (bridge)
Flower clock
Purple grass to match Safari Girl
Then we were off to try and find the Castelinho (little castle). In all the photos of Blumenau this is what comes up. Parking was hard to find on a Saturday and the streets are one way so when we didn't see a spot we had to go all the way around the block to start the search again. I think we went around nearly 10 times but we finally found something. One of times we had a bit of a scare. We were stopped at a light in the lane closest to the meridian. On the sidewalk to our right there was suddenly a loud explosion! We were busy watching the silver statue street performer (just like at Pier 39 in San Francisco) to our left so we didn't see anything. People on the sidewalk ducked and everyone looked around to see where it came from. Most people were looking up in complete confusion towards the second story of the building above a store--maybe someone dropped a firework or something. The explosion didn't do any damage it was just loud, unexpected, and unknown. People looked and walked carefully for several minutes afterward. It looked like no one ever found out what it was or where it came from. When we finally parked we had to walk right past that area and it was a bit nerve wracking! But we made it fine and nothing weird happened.
The Castelinho is just a building made in a charming German architecture and has a department store called Havan inside. I had read somewhere that there was a dungeon in the castle at one point and sure enough inside the store they had huge glass squares in the floor that let you peek into some brick cells of the dungeon. I can't find the source of my info now--basically what the Castelinho is is a store and a photo op. It really wasn't super exciting but it was fun to see all the same. We took a walk through the store just to see it, since it's all over southern Brazil. It was nice and had some Ikea like furniture and decor. We also wanted to use the bathroom there. In exploring the store I couldn't believe the prices and had to snap a few pictures to remember. In case anyone thinks things are cheap in Brazil let me assure you--they are NOT!!! Even with the dollar worth 2.5x the real, the prices are just outrageous on a lot of things!
Super Hero guys $10 in the States $20 in Brazil ($50 reias), Monster High Doll $12-25 in the States $30 in Brazil ($70 reias), Imaginext $12-15 in the States, $38 in Brazil ($95 reais). It's cRaZy!
The Castelinho is just a building made in a charming German architecture and has a department store called Havan inside. I had read somewhere that there was a dungeon in the castle at one point and sure enough inside the store they had huge glass squares in the floor that let you peek into some brick cells of the dungeon. I can't find the source of my info now--basically what the Castelinho is is a store and a photo op. It really wasn't super exciting but it was fun to see all the same. We took a walk through the store just to see it, since it's all over southern Brazil. It was nice and had some Ikea like furniture and decor. We also wanted to use the bathroom there. In exploring the store I couldn't believe the prices and had to snap a few pictures to remember. In case anyone thinks things are cheap in Brazil let me assure you--they are NOT!!! Even with the dollar worth 2.5x the real, the prices are just outrageous on a lot of things!
Super Hero guys $10 in the States $20 in Brazil ($50 reias), Monster High Doll $12-25 in the States $30 in Brazil ($70 reias), Imaginext $12-15 in the States, $38 in Brazil ($95 reais). It's cRaZy!
After seeing Castelinho we headed home. At some point we drove by the Carlos Gomes Theater and saw that. It was a pretty building.
All in all, we enjoyed our day in Blumenau. It was super hot and we weren't super impressed with the city itself but the German Village really cool to see and it was fun for the kids as well. It was the perfect start to the holiday season.
On the way home we got to stop by the entrance of Joinville and get pictures of the city entrance and the iconic Joinville windmill. I was glad for that. When we see these two buildings we know we're almost home after a weekend adventure!
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