Don't Mention the Warsteiner (or: Blumen Germans)

Brazil is a former Portuguese colony, but it's a big country, and it's seen its share of immigrants from a lot of countries. In the particular bit of south-east Brazil we're travelling through, their heritage is German. Not exactly what you picture in Brazil.

We stopped off for a very wet 24 hours in Blumenau, a town based on an old German settlement and the epicentre of German-style beer brewing in Brazil. It is most famous for attracting thousands of people to its very own Oktoberfest every year, which takes place in its bizarre little 'German village', full of souvenir shops that optimistically stay open all year round.

On our way from the bus station at lunchtime, we discovered that Blumenau also has some of the worst traffic congestion we've ever seen. But the centre of town is quite nice, sitting on the bank of a river (which looked very muddy and high by the time we left) and really feels like it could be somewhere in Europe - quite a few buildings are in the olde white-paint-with-black-beams style, including the old and new town halls, which look attractive if a little false. The former, now a department store, is allegedly the second-most-photographed thing in Brazil (behind the statue of Christ in Rio), which I tend to doubt as this doesn't look like a major tourist destination for most of the year. Still, as I say, a pleasant little stopover to break up our journey.

(It also has a very modern-looking church with three bells in its tower, a rather dry beer museum with very friendly staff who really like their visitors' book signed, and apparently the world's only cat cemetary - with just 7 cats buried there - which we couldn't visit because its parent museum was closed.)

Almost all of the street names and many of the shop names are in German. Unfortunately nobody here seems to speak any German anymore. Too bad, as I speak a lot more German than I do Portuguese, and I'd been mentally polishing it. We had lunch in the German village and were greeted with a "Guten Tag". In my bext GCSE German - which has served me, if not well, at least enough to get me fed in Germany and Austria a few times - I asked for a table for two. I got a blank look and a 'no', which was a bit surprising since the 400-seater restaurant had 3 occupied tables. Once we each clambered over our respective language barriers it turned out that he spoke as much German as I do Portuguese, so we fell back on our usual sign language and tucked into the buffet.

But what about the beer, you ask? A few places in Argentina had Warsteiner on tap, and plenty more had it in bottles. That's a proper German beer. We tried a little Wunder Bier in the German village - I think it may be brewed there. It falls a long way short. If you have time, inclination and preferably a car you can tour a few breweries and check out their tasting rooms. I'm afraid we had none of those, but did get to try some Bierland pils in the unlikely surroundings of a shopping mall foodcourt while sheltering from the rain. And it wasn't bad. Give them another hundred years, maybe they'll get there.

Back on the bus as I write this - and out in the country, it looks more like South East Asia than Europe. Mud and palm trees, small fields with simple irrigation, a mixture of shacks and neat little houses. Still a lot for us to see in Brazil!